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Hey, Danica McKellar, did you ever get high with Fred Savage?
Published on 8/5/08
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In March 1964, The New York Times printed a front-page article about the murder of a young Queens woman named Kitty Genovese—a gruesome hour-long stabbing spree that was ignored by more than three dozen of her neighbors. A.M. Rosenthal, the Times editor who assigned the story, was so jolted by what he called the “disease of apathy” that surrounded the incident that he penned this probing short book, which was published later that year and has just been reissued.
As Rosenthal recalls, the article sparked a national uproar and an extraordinary amount of soul-searching about societal breakdown. Psychologists, sociologists and others offered rationale for the collective inaction—everything from too much TV violence to big-city meanness—while the 38 witnesses were widely damned. Rosenthal provocatively asks: Are they really that different from the general population? Someone certainly should have picked up the phone that fateful night, but grand-scale apathy has long been a problem in America.
The story continues to be relevant, and Rosenthal’s account of reporting the article makes for an intriguing read. But ironically the book suffers from its own sort of apathy—and arrogance. After the murder, the Times was criticized for lumping all the neighbors together, including those who weren’t particularly near the crime scene, though journalist Samuel G. Freedman fails to acknowledge this in his new introduction. Overall, this book neglects the search for truth that Rosenthal so strongly advocates.
