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FeaturesSeptember 2010 “Organized” crime On the President's favorite philosopher, Saul Alinsky. It is a matter of no small amusement for the journalist and agitator Nicholas von Hoffman that his beloved mentor, Saul Alinsky, learned the craft of “organizing” at the feet of Chicago’s most notorious mobsters. This was nearly eighty years before the self-proclaimed radical became a household name, having posthumously inspired an up-and-coming organizer who went on to become the forty-fourth president of the United States. Alinsky’s entrée to the Al Capone gang (which, tellingly, he called a “public utility”) was neither his ruthlessness nor his penchant for rabble-rousing, though a surfeit of both qualities surely impressed his friend Frank (“the Enforcer”) Nitti. It was, instead, his academic credentials. A freshly minted doctor of criminology from the University of Chicago, Alinsky sought out, bonded with, and closely studied anti-social types. His experience pro ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 29 September 2010, on page 11 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/-Organized--crime-6271
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Christopher, for better & for worse On the critic, polemicist & raconteur Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011).
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