Calvin Butts

Joseph Berger's long tribute to the late, legendary former New York City mayor Ed Koch made the front of the New York Times Sunday Metro section -- "So, How'd He Do?"

But Berger stained Koch's memory by citing the irresponsible, inflammatory voices of Rev. Calvin Butts and Al Sharpton and bizarrely suggesting Koch's rhetoric played a part in racist assaults against blacks: "Despite his condemnation of the mob beatings, it was hard to tamp down a sense among blacks that his public rhetoric -- in the 1988 presidential campaign, for example, he said Jews would be 'crazy' to vote for Jesse Jackson because of his 'Hymietown' slur about New York and his support for a Palestinian homeland -- may have helped foster an atmosphere in which some young whites felt emboldened to commit such assaults."