"Boss Tweed" with the Honorable Edward I. Koch

Boss Tweed 4/20/06
With Edward I. Koch, Pete Hamill and Kenneth Ackerman

Listen to a conversation with Kenneth Ackerman, Pete Hamill, and the Honorable Edward I. Koch on William M. Tweed, a symbol of the quintessential big city political Boss.

Video limited to 10 minutes, to view the complete video please visit www.nyhistory.org

Category:

Education

Tags:

• museum
• history
• visual
• arts

[pfizzbones]

Just by the own admissions of him, saying how he hated Federal work, it shows how disassociated we are with the way things should be today. You were hand-tied back then...the way it was supposed to be in Congress. But locally, he made his mark. Albeit corrupt, and disgusting. We need to have the power of the states and local government again. Not federal. In Tweed-like neighborhoods, we need balls and spine and guns.

[cha5]

Tweed stole between 40 million and 200 million dollars, That money went into the Tammaty machine not into things like remodeling The Lower East Side or cleaning up Five Points.

[cha5]

People could also say drawing cartoons doesn't do jack shit although a cartoonist had a hand in taking Tweed down hard.

[cha5]

So does abolishing the poor law qualify as jack shit? Not to mention drawing international attention to things like

'Five Points' long before Tweed was on the scene?

[Supergungun]

Writing books doesn't do jack shit. Now Tweed, he was different, he actually supported Immigrants with money.

[cha5]

That Al Capone comparison is really unfair, Tweed did make quite a fair number of improvements for N.Y.C. the widening of Broadway among other things, and he drew attention to the plight of immigrants and the urban situation although if your house caught fire and you weren't a Tammaty voter you were shit out of luck.

[cha5]

Uh no, There were some others Elizabeth Ann Seton, Lincoln,

Dickens was very concerned about poverty and always drew attention to it right up to his death.

'The Boss' wasn't unique in that regard.

That's a bit like saying Al Capone was the only one concerned about the plight of poor Italian Americans in Chicago.

[Supergungun]

He was the only person from that era who even gave a tiny bit of help to the poor. Just accept that.

[cha5]

But "The Boss" was certainly in a class of his own, no question about that.

[cha5]

And also except for little things like graft,, bribing officials, The Tweed Courthouse which was built with taxpayer money

(a massive amount of taxpayer money,)

voter fraud, intimidation, He courted the poor and the immigrant vote certainly and made a big show out of concern for immigrants and the poor, even though it was more of a concern for them as a voting block than anything else.

Plus The Merry Men got considerably more than 1/3, see above.