Nicholas von Hoffman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nicholas von Hoffman is an American journalist and author of German-Russian extraction, descendant of Melchior Hoffman and son of Carl von Hoffman. He became famous as a columnist for the Washington Post and later well-known to TV audiences as a "Point-Counterpoint" commentator for CBS's 60 Minutes, from which he was fired by Don Hewitt in 1974.
Von Hoffman never went to college; he worked in the Chicago stockyards and later served as a political organizer for the community activist Saul Alinsky; Ben Bradlee, then the editor of the Post, hired him from the Chicago Daily News.
He was said to have been a brilliant reporter, and wrote an incendiary column for the paper's Style section. In her memoirs, Katharine Graham, then the newspaper's publisher, wrote of him: “My life would have been a lot simpler had Nicholas von Hoffman not appeared in the paper.” She added, however, that “I firmly believed that he belonged at the Post.” [1]
Hoffman is the author of more than a dozen books, notably: Capitalist Fools: Tales of American Business, from Carnegie to Forbes to the Milken Gang (1992) and Citizen Cohn (1988), a biography of the late Roy Cohn, which was made into an HBO movie. His most recent title is Hoax: Why Americans Are Suckered by White House Lies (2004).
Von Hoffman was in Afghanistan and predicted that the United States and its allies would be defeated shortly after the fall of Kabul.[2] Shortly thereafter the Taliban went into full out retreat and the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar fell. Columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan created a parody Von Hoffman Award which he gives out for egregiously bad predictions.[3]
Hoffman also wrote a libretto for Deborah Drattell's Nicholas and Alexandra for the Los Angeles Opera which was performed in the 2003/04 season under the direction of Plácido Domingo.
Currently he is a columnist for the New York Observer.
Von Hoffman was fired by Don Hewitt for calling then President Richard Nixon the dead rat on America's kitchen floor. His collaborations, both literary and otherwise, with Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau are worth noting. He also writes for Architectural Digest.
[edit] External links
- New York Observer: index of von Hoffman columns
- New York Review of Books: articles by von Hoffman
- The Big Lie (excerpt from Hoax)
- Von Hoffman in the Wall Street Journal, Commenting on the Clinton-Dole Segments on Sixty Minutes, March 2003
- Von Hoffman in The Nation, Commenting on David Brooks, June 2004
- Nicholas Von Hoffman articles published by The Nation
- Nicholas Von Hoffman's blog at The Huffington Post
