Photo credit: Janet Donovan
“I joined Facebook in June out of this lame and cynical attempt to promote this book which has fallen very flat. I tried to put up excerpts and said: ‘Here’s where I think Jimmy Hoffa’s body is. I got three comments and five likes. Jim Grady says on Facebook: ‘I woke up this morning and I had bacon and eggs for breakfast.’ He gets 350 comments and 8000 likes.”
Marc Smolonsky, John Sopko, Dan Moldea
Grady, author of Six Days of the Condor – think Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway flick Three Days of the Condor – and his wife Bonnie Goldstein – one of the best investigative journalists in the business – hosted a book party in Dan’s honor for his latest publication: “Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer: Adventures in the Jungles of Crime, Politics, and Journalism.”
“I want to thank all of you for coming today. We’re here to honor someone who fights for true justice in the American way, has a relatively good time while doing it and never, ever, angers anybody and has always been a darling in the mainstream media and the mafia,” said Grady sarcastically.
“The list of fans for Dan is endless. There are a large number of ‘families,’ about 29 scattered from the Northeast to the shores of Los Angeles. There are certain inmates in jail in Las Vegas now who love him. A number of people in organizations as pure as the National Football League are huge fans of Dan, as are a large number of corporations like MCA. We’re not going to go there. We’re going to just say the New York Times has seen the error of its ways and now is beginning to recognize Dan for the man he is. He’s far more humble than he should be. We are all here because we love him, we admire him and we respect him.”
Desson Thomson, speechwriter in the Obama administration and Jonathan Broder of CQ
“As this book shows, I am a sucker for good sportsmanship,” replied Dan. “Because I did this book myself after seven books with main street publishers, I’m not going to break any sales records. I think last week I was 1.1 million, 125,000 on Amazon. All seven of my previous books are all out-selling this one and all of them are out of print. In the end, I did what I wanted to do and that was to give my side of the story about some of these crazy situations that I’ve found myself involved in. It’s a memoir, not a suicide note. So my thanks to all of you for your presence and kindness on this special day. “
Dan Moldea, writer Georgiana Bloom and photojournalist husband Rick
Dan went on to recognize everyone in the room. “Paul Levy, old friend, public citizen … Ralph Nader, the brains of the Ralph Nader operation for many years. A man of high principle and integrity who could have been making a fortune in private practice as an attorney, but instead decides to stay in the area of public interest. Michael, our Pulitzer Prize winner here from the Washington Post. Roy how many years at NBC? Thirty-six years at NBC. John… one of the greatest investigators journalists in America; probably the greatest mob writer of Las Vegas. He’s a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Jeff Goldberg, my good friend Jeff Goldberg back there, one of the greatest researchers in the world. It’s just he will not leave his house.” And so on….like a scene out of Rainman.
“I want to toast Dan for a million things,” said journalist and author Myra MacPherson who has a book coming out in March, “but one of the things to laud is that his brain is really a memory bank. There’s not a politician in the world who could have done this, and not another writer – that’s because you care about all of us and you always write such wonderful, kind notes to everybody. You know, your image is not your real person.”
Final toast: “To the bad-ass that’s a good guy.”
