(With Class of 1960)

Princeton University-Class of 1961 Speech Delivered by James D. Zirin

Racquet Club March 3, 2008

Until now Tom Pulling was noted for his LONG AND FLORID introductions.

I want to thank our president John Graham and co-chairs Tom and Frank Richardson for having me. In 50 years no one at Princeton ever asked me to speak.  

The first question I asked was, WHY ME? As I told Tom Pulling , I never had a dinner. He said, Moses led his people across the Red Sea, and he never had a dinner. I said, And Jesus never had a dinner either. Hew replied that Jesus did have a dinner. “Don’t go there.”

When I asked Pulling for his advice on what I should say, Pulling said, “you can’t go wrong with too much brevity—or too much levity.” I will try to be responsive to both. I feel like man who comes home, dead drunk, at three in the morning, kicks open the bedroom door and falls flat on his face. When his wife said what do you have to say for yourself, he replied, “I would prefer to abandon my prepared remarks and take questions from the floor.”

My title tonight is “PJ&B Prince Juries and Back—How a trial lawyer became an amateur journalist and TV talk show host. and kept his day job as well.” For those of you who don’t know, PJ&B was our name for  the shuttle train that went between Princeton and Princeton Junction.

My wife said that finally I was making a speech on a topic I knew something about—ME!!!

First and foremost, I am proud to be a lawyer. I hope an honest lawyer. In England there was an eminent jurist named Lord Strange.  He died. His headstone read “Here lies an honest lawyer---Strange.”

But I speak tonight on how I became interested in journalism (later TV journalism) as an avocation. At the heart of it is that I like telling a story. First rule of storytelling—don’t tell them what they know already. I WILL PROBABLY VIOLATE THAT RULE AND FOR THIS I APOLOGIZE.

We were all fortunate to be part of an extraordinary generation in history. We were RIGHT ON THE CUSP. My class (Class of 1961) entered Princeton in 1957 A LITTLE OVER 50 YEARS AGO..

--Let’s go back 50 years from 1957. The generation that preceded us had witnessed transforming events of epic proportions.  

·         Theories of Einstein and Freud

·         WWI AND THE VERSAILLES SETTLEMENTS

·         Stock market crash and Great Depression.

·         WW II and the horror of the Holocaust.

·         Invention of Television

·         Development of atom bomb and the COLD WAR

--AND THERE WERE MANY OTHERS

--And to go forward 50 years from 1957, and compare with what we have EXPERIENCED.  

·         The Sixties (Drug Culture and sexual revolution which we missed by 10 minutes)  

·         Cuban missile crisis. (We thought the world might come to an end).  

·         .Johnson’s “Great Society,” (Chuck Frisbie will remember that LBJ gave the speech at our law school graduation).  

·         . Assassinations of JFK, King and Bobby Kennedy (as a federal prosecutor I stood in the honor guard around RFK’s coffin in St. Patrick’s.  

·         Viet Nam and lessons UNLEARNED about fighting an unpopular war.  

·         Watergate.

·         . Iran hostage crisis, and THE heightened awareness of a fanatic Islam.  

·         Reagan’s eighties—“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.” AND THEY DID. Followed by the Decline and fall of the Soviet Union and COLLAPSE of world wide Communism  

·         Development of the internet bringing ideas, facts and swift free communication to millions of people  

·         Then the dire events of 9/11 (My office was in One World Trade Center on 9/11-I was on my way there when Tom Pulling called me at home to tell me to turn on the television).  

·         .Iraq and the War on terror  

REMARKABLE EVENTS OF WHICH OUR PARENTS COULD NOT HAVE CONCEIVED--AND IT’S NOT OVER YET!!  

As ROBERT MOSES AND LBJ biographer Robert Caro’57 (with whom I worked in the summer of 1959 on the Daily Home News in New Brunswick:  

            “During the 50 years since our graduation, we walked through a watershed in American history. A ‘watershed’ has a very specific meaning: It’s a mountain divide, and on one side of it the water runs in one direction, and on the other side the water runs in the other direction. Our college experience was on one side of the watershed, in a calm prosperous America....It all changed in the mid-60’s. We had Vietnam, we had the civil rights revolution, and for the rest of our lives  we’ve been walking through a totally different landscape.”  

And on the relatively tranquil side of all that we had those precious four years at Princeton.  

 Think back to the Princeton of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. IT WAS VERY DIFFERENT THEN.  

--As I recall, we had only two African-Americans in the Class. Now an African-American may be our next President.  

--No women. When in 1959, I and a few friends brought to campus some beat poets (Allen Ginsberg, Le Roi Jones, Gregory Corso) to read their work, they wrote an impromptu and spicy piece of doggerel for us:  

            “There are no girls in Tigertown,

            And Tigertown is falling down.

            Escape, escape, escape!…….”  

--Gays all in the closet. No gay community that we were aware of. Only in my ‘40s when I read of classmates who tragically died of AIDS did I realize the truth. 

            --Our Class had more than its share of future leaders. We also had more than our share of great journalists. On the Prince, my closest friends and colleagues were Frank Deford (perhaps America’s greatest sportswriter) and Joe Ferrer , who went on to great things at Time.  

I was a reporter on the Prince in those days.

I interviewed and reported on some extraordinary visitors to campus: Adam Clayton Powell, Fidel Castro, Ali Khan, William F. Buckley who sadly just left us.  

--I wrote a Buchwald knock-off column called “P.S. from Princeton.”  

--In March of 1960, Frank Deford and I went to Fort Dix, New Jersey to interview Elvis Presley when “the King” got out of the Army.  

            I remember that press conference quite vividly: In the audience with a press pass trying to get some publicity was the statuesque actress Tina Louise: Tina Louise was one of hose shining divas without a last name (Madonna, Cher, Ann-Margaret---Hillary) She asked, “Elvis” Will you continue to make those suggestive movements?” The King said, “Yes ma’am”  

--On the Prince I learned a sense of irreverence, sarcasm and outrage.  

            --One of my lead articles:--“The heat this weekend was just too much for Student Center Manager Arnold W. Strohkorb.”  

            --There was the polemical priest, Father Hugh Halton, who had denounced the University as a spawning ground for Godless radicalism: In a piece of parody I wrote that speculated Halton might become a Cardinal, my headline was: “Will Hugh Wear  the red hat now?”  

In 1958, an obscure Princeton professor in the politics department named Otto Butz had published a controversial book in which he had collected and edited 11 essays by undergraduates.  

The book was  called “The Unsilent Generation.”  

--Not sure what he meant by “unsilent.” Perhaps it just meant being what we used to call a “doer.” But the theme was a harbinger of things to come. The times, they were a changin’, and all we needed was a channel for our activism. Our impulse towards activism, I would argue, led  organically to the great movements of the 1960’s.  

 --The University was less than enchanted with Butz’ book. Which it claimed was superficial and appeared to confirm Halton’s worst fears about the University. ---Butz’ contract was not renewed.  

It was on the Prince that I found my personal channel for activism. I knew that I wanted to write, and I wanted to tell a story.  

 So why, you might ask, did I go to law school and become a lawyer and leave journalism as the road not taken? I often ask myself the same question.  

. It all started at Princeton when I began attending criminal trials—just for the hell of it. At first I did it for the spectacle and drama of it all. Then I did it as a journalist in the summer of 1959. Noticed that the lawyers always went in the back room with the judge. I guess I didn’t want to be on the outside looking in.  

 But I knew I wanted to be a trial lawyer. There was the drama of the law. The art of being a trial lawyer, just like the art of being a journalist,  is the art of telling a story.  

 So shortly after graduation I became a federal prosecutor here in New York, and it was more fun than I had ever had in my life.  

 In the law, you learn never to jump to conclusions. For there is always the unexpected in the courtroom—Cooper and Mann Act Case. Exclusion of witnesses. “Lady of Easy Virtue.”  

 Before I knew it, I had tried 36 criminal cases to a jury. One was the first criminal prosecution of partners in a national accounting firm for signing a false certificate covering audited financial statements.  

 So when I returned to private practice, it was logical that I would represent accountants when they were charged with some dereliction of duty.  

            --Began to handle cases involving some of the largest financial scandals of our time

             --American Express Salad Oil

             --Equity Funding

             --Bernie Cornfeld and IOS

             --DeLorean  

            --Law brought me into some interesting situations. In 1992, I took the deposition of Margaret Thatcher. Afterwards, she invited me to tea, and I later got to know this iconic figure of British politics. I had tea with her after the deposition and a memorable long visit some years later shortly after 9/11. In the law as in life, one thing always leads to another.

 The practice of trial law has been a satisfying experience filled with excitement, controversy and UNEXPECTED twists and turns.  

            --One story I can share occurred shortly after I left the prosecutor’s office. Accompanied by a client, I went to Los Angeles to try I case. Upon arrival in Los Angeles, he insisted that we go to a hot Italian restaurant in West Los Angeles. W entered the restaurant and it was jam packed with people. The headwaiter suggested that we wait at the bar.  

            --Immediately, I had the instinct that this was a mob hangout; this was reinforced by when I went to the men’s room and saw photos of Lansky and Genovese over the urinals.  

            --The bartender, a heavy set individual approached us. “Are you from New York,”  he asked. I said, “Yes.” “Your last name don’t begin with a “Z”, does it?” 

            --When I said yes, he said “don’t you recognize me DA? You sent me away for five years for extortion.” I began to worry that there might be ground glass in the Scotch. Then, he said, “anything you want in the place is yours, DA.. I’m trying to go straight.” I said I am trying to go straight too, I’m now a defense lawyer, and I’m tired (just flew in) and would like a table to have dinner.”  

            --The bartender looked out across the restaurant where two stereotypical mobsters out of “The Sopranos”(heavy set, polyester suits, bulging jackets, napkins splattered with tomato sauce tucked under their double chins) were seated. He snapped his fingers, the two got up and left, and we had our table.           

My experience as a prosecutor sometimes CAME IN HANDY, but I often thought of the road not taken and found I had the time and inclination METAPHORICALLY to board the PJ&B and shuttle back into journalism—as an op-ed columnist in the genre of 700 words.  

. And in the last 15 years or so, I have produced over 100 columns for Forbes, the London Times, the LA Times and other publications.  Topics have been far ranging.  

Most of these, to be sure, have been about law: Rule of Law, selection of judges, tort reform, well known trials, constitutional issues. A GOOD SHOEMAKER KNOWS TO STICK TO HIS LAST.  

Some have been about foreign policy (Iran, Cambodia, the Balkans), others about national security:-- 9/11, the Patriot Act..  

Others have discussed other issues of public policy: gays in the military, Clinton’s parting pardons, the media, defoliation and supply side interdiction of drugs in Latin America.  

Some have just been travelogues reporting on visits to China, Cambodia, Egypt, Berlin.

Others have had fun with the peccadilloes of public officials, e.g. “Senator Larry Craig (he of the tapping on the floor in the Minneapolis airport men’s room) and his strange bedfellow—the ACLU”  

OR Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hiring some 150 lawyers for his Justice Department from Regent Law School, a fourth tier law school of recent accreditation which just happens be faith based.  

OR Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Lorin Duckman who let lots of bad guys out on bail. Explaining Duckman’s bizarre behavior, I wrote this for the London Times:  

“Duckman, who often sits in his shirtsleeves when he tries cases. Judge Duckman has a collection of duck paraphernalia, wears shirts and ties festooned with geese and mallards and publishes a monthly newsletter about himself called “Duck News.”  

--Some articles have been criticized as too conservative; some have been more libertarian (like my recent book review of Jack Goldsmith’s “The Terror Presidency” about rescinding the torture memorandum.  

            --In the law you are bound by the contours of the case the client presents to you. But as a writer, you are bounded only by your own imagination.  

            . As for the TV show, well that’s something I really didn’t anticipate. As I was telling John Graham over dinner, it was really serendipitous.  

            --Friend, a lawyer, named Jim Goodale, invited me to appear as a guest on a cable talk show he had founded called. “Digital Age.” It was supposed to be about the Internet and the issues of the day.          

            --I appeared. Talked about an article I’d written about the Predator Drone. He invited me back. Then he invited me to be co-host.  

--I asked him where do we get our guests? He said, “That’s your problem!” So where did I go? Back to the Class of 1961 at Princeton University.  

            --So I interviewed:  

            Georgescu, Wisner, Hitz.—all excellent guests.  

--I EVEN asked Goodale if I could interview Tom Pulling.  

            TOM PULLING?? ON DIGITAL AGE? You’ve got to be crazy! He is computer illiterate.  

            --So I turned to other Princetonians:  

            Governor Tom Kean ’57 about the 9/11 Commission

            Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter ‘80.  

Now I’ve done it for about four years. Have interviewed:  

                        --Police Commissioner Ray Kelly  

            --Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass  

            --Columbia Journalism Dean Nick Lemann  

            --Pollster Doug Schoen           

            --General Wes Clark  

            --Many others  

CONCLUSION  

Why did I do all these things? Why did I figuratively ride the PJ&B? I don’t know. All I can tell you is that I have had so much fun doing it, and it all started at Princeton.  

And somehow it came from being part of an “unsilent generation.” For, as the Chinese proverb goes, we have been privileged to live in interesting times. ......  

And interesting times feed good stories.  

John Kennedy was spot-on in his Inaugural Address in 1961 (which happened to have been a very good year):  

“I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.”  

I am grateful to all of you for the honor of letting me speak to you this evening, particularly because you are all people I care so much about.  

I am even more grateful to my wife, Marlene, for putting up with me and sharing this unique and quirky journey.  

I hope I didn’t sound too much like Woody Allen’s Zelig. And this probably has been like most such speeches--“Why can’t you be more like me?” But I hope that it has also been like “How proud I am to have gone to Princeton.—and to have gone to Princeton when we did”  

Tonight, you don’t honor me so much as you honor the members of our two extraordinary classes, the “unsilent generation”—everywhere.

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