June 19, 2013 THE VILLADOM TIMES meant to force landowner peasants onto collective farms -- had ever taken place. He called the Ukrainian famine, or Holomodor, “a big scare story in the American press.” Duranty described the situation as “Russians hungry, but not starving.” Gareth Jones, a young Welshman who spoke Russian, toured the same countryside where Duranty said there was no famine. “Everywhere was the cry, ‘There is no bread. We are dying,’” Jones reported. “In a train, a Communist denied to me there was a famine. I flung a crust of bread which I had been eating from my own supply into a spittoon. A peasant fellow-traveler fished it out and ravenously ate it...‘We are waiting for death’ was my welcome, ‘but see, we still have our cattle fodder. (They had eaten the oxen) Go farther south. There they have nothing. Many houses are empty of people already dead.’” Jones was banned from covering the Soviet Union again. Duranty, warmly praised by the otherwise “reptilian” Stalin, as Farr called him, continued to receive news exclusives from the Soviet government. They made him look good. Two years later, Jones, investigating war crime allegations in Manchuria, was kidnapped and murdered by “Chinese guerillas.” The murder took place just before his birthday. He had spent 12 days, supposedly held in custody by people who could not read English. His family believed his murder was payback for honest reporting. Duranty -- an Anglo-Saxon Englishman and a former Harrow and Eton boy with a fake Cockney accent, dabbled in Satanism and sodomy before he settled for adultery, liquor, and narcotics. Duranty continued to be honored by Stalin and the Soviets, especially after the U.S. recognition. Duranty had said Stalin was authentically Russian, even though everybody who knew Russia knew that Stalin was a Georgian from South Russia with Ossetian ancestry. Duranty’s stories portrayed Russia as a rough-and- II • Page 19 I will not say which birthday I recently celebrated, but my wife gave me a nice card decorated with some Van Gogh sunflowers, and my son and daughter-in-law took me to the park with my fearless grandson. In lieu of a birthday cake, I got the treat of a lifetime. Some folks who were being castigated by the audience at a public meeting blamed everything on the press, presumably including me. I felt powerful and validated. I love being the Bad Guy -- until somebody plays the CD, which can be utterly convenient. The press, of course, is always to blame. Reporters who invented the Adventures of Bill and Monica were the real culprits. How nasty were the reporters who asked why Governor McGreevey hired a handsome young foreignborn non-expert as a security advisor? My all-time favorite among Lost Reporters is Finis K. Farr, who vanished from the radar after writing acclaimed biographies of several American authors and a bluntly honest biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “FDR,” which may have gotten him the Deep Six in the literary community. He has all but vanished. Farr was an honors graduate of Princeton University and worked at NBC through the 1930s. He served as a U.S. Army officer in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II and won the Bronze Star for service behind enemy lines against people who, at that stage of the war, were not in a playful mood and usually took prisoners only if they wanted information. Farr shrugged off Roosevelt’s death in April of 1945 as a non-event compared to his real problem at the moment. He was stuck behind enemy lines with a handful of American and Chinese Nationalist officers, while the hundreds of tribal mercenaries they had armed and recruited decided to either desert or change sides. This newsman paid his dues, and not behind a desk. Farr’s nastiness was non-partisan. He noted that Roosevelt and Eisenhower, both college football players, had pulled strings to stay out of combat in World War I. “Ike was yellow,” as Farr put it. This was not saloon talk. Farr really earned that Bronze Star and narrowly avoided a posthumous Purple Heart. Farr said Roosevelt’s first term at the beginning of the Great Depression, when Herbert Hoover seemed clueless, probably did the country a lot of good. Farr also claimed that Roosevelt lied his way into office for the third term by pledging to keep us out of war when he was palpably trying to get us into one. Farr said Roosevelt was visibly dying by the fourth election bid. In 1944, the president had already had a stroke that almost killed him. The stroke was not much reported, and he looked about 90 rather than 63 in his last photos. But FDR had a great team covering for him. The greatest cover-up man of the era conned Roosevelt rather than conning others on Roosevelt’s behalf. I refer to Walter Duranty, Pulitzer Prize winner for the New York Times and the man who influenced Roosevelt and Congress to officially recognize the Soviet Union in the immediate aftermath of a planned famine that killed seven to 10 million people. Duranty denied the famine -- which was Made a mess? Blame the press! tough democracy and Stalin as the greatest statesman of his era. This opinion ignored the Holomodor planned famine of 1931-32 in the Ukraine and Perm-12, a post-war labor camp in the Urals, each of which killed more people than the Holocaust. Kolima in Siberia killed 900,000 more. Vice President Henry Wallace thought it was a fun kind of place. When Stalin finally died, Duranty lost his credibility even with the Russians, who were sickened by Stalin’s atrocities and who shot his chief hatchet man, Lavrenti Beria. Duranty moved to Los Angeles and sponged off of leftists in the film colony and newspapers. According to his biography, written by S.J. Taylor and published by Oxford Press, an eminently reputable publisher, Duranty panhandled John Gunther for a $500 check while Gunther was distraught over the impending death of his son, as described in “Death Be Not Proud.” While Jones was honored by anybody who remembered who he was, Duranty was described as a Stalinist propagandist by Mark von Hagen, professor of Russian history at Columbia University, and as slovenly by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., who recommended that Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize be rescinded. George Orwell put him on a British Intelligence don’t-trust-him list. Joseph Alsop called him a traitor to the profession, and Malcom Muggeridge said Duranty was the greatest liar he had seen in 50 years of reporting. The New York Times still lists a Pulitzer Prize for the reporting of Duranty. Now you all know why I never got a Pulitzer. Samuel Johnson said that “biography has lent new terrors to death.” TV coverage and CDs have lent new terrors to blaming the press. When in doubt, check them out. I can make mistakes. Keep an eye on me -- and everybody else. We do not need another Duranty, but we do need a lot more people like Farr and Jones. Area Author Richard Muti, former mayor of Ramsey, recently published his fourth book, which made its debut on Father’s Day, June 16, 2013. Given the book’s inspiration and focus, the date could not have been more appropriate. Muti wrote and published “Essays for My Father: A Legacy of Passion, Politics, and Patriotism in Small-town America, to mark the 100th anniversary of his father’s birth. The elder Muti, a lifelong resident of Ramsey and a local business and political leader, instilled in his son a love of history, politics, and public policy—subjects that make up much of the book’s content. The book is a collection of essays about Governor Chris Christie and New Jersey politics, the national political scene, unnecessary wars and wrong-headed government, rare displays of political courage, less rare displays of political cowardice, an Italian-American heritage shared by 17 million Americans, public employee unions, and other public policy issues that challenge state and federal government. Former prosecutor/crime novelist Linda Fairstein said, “Richard Muti’s essays are smart and provocative, personal and political. ‘Essays for my Father’ is a fascinating journey across America’s cultural landscape.” Screenwriter David Klass calls Muti “a superb writer with a fresh voice.” “Muti touches off sparks on the electrified rails of politics and society, with a gusto and street-level perspective that only a New Jersey mayor and prosecutor can offer,” added Peter J. Woolley, professor of comparative politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Muti’s previous book, “The Charmer: The True Story of Robert Reldan—Rapist, Murderer, and Millionaire—and the Women who Fell Victim to his Allure,” co-authored with Charles Buckley, drew heavily on both authors’ experience as career prosecutors. “The Charmer” was an Award Finalist in the 2012 USA Book News Best Book competition and is in its second printing. Like his father, Muti is a product of Ramsey’s public schools. He later graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served five years as a Navy pilot in the late 1960s. He left the Navy to accept a fellowship at Harvard Business School and obtained an MBA in 1971. Five years later, he began attending Rutgers Law School four nights a week, while working in the real estate business. Upon getting his Author pens ‘Essays for My Father’ Cover art from ‘Essays for My Father.’ law degree in 1980, Muti was appointed an assistant prosecutor in the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office. He spent 19 years as a successful trial prosecutor, handling more than 2,000 cases and achieving a 99 percent conviction rate. In 2000, Muti retired from the practice of law and began teaching part-time at three New Jersey universities. Elected as mayor of Ramsey in 2002, Muti has been involved in politics, teaching, and writing ever since. After his Op-Ed pieces on public policy and the American cultural scene were accepted by The New York Times and other media. He published his first book in 2008. The author, who is now a member of the Ramsey Board of Education, lives in town with his wife Lorraine and their golden retriever Miss Moneypenny. For more information about the author, visit www.richardmuti.com.