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supergeeThe Fires, by Joe Flood, is a nonfiction tale with elements of classical tragedy. Its protagonist is John T. O'Hagan, fire commissioner and then fire chief for New York City in the 60s and 70s. He is a hero who started in the working class and worked his way up through effort and education. He overcame a corrupt system to gain office, he set out to reform everything about dealing with the harm fire can cause--equipment, materials, firefighting techniques, etc.--and he succeeded. Flood tells us that the death rate from fires decreased 75% and O'Hagan deserved more credit than anyone else. He even had an agon, struggling with builders to keep them from cutting corners in ways that would increase fire risk. (Flood informs us that both World Trade Center disasters were made worse by unsafe practices O'Hagan tried to prevent.) And he met Nemesis, on national television during the 1977 World Series when Howard Cosell proclaimed, "Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning."
O'Hagan was one of the great overreachers of the 60s, along with John Lindsay, Robert McNamara, and, alas, Robert Moses. Ever since Robert Caro published The Power Broker, the consensus has removed Walter O'Malley from his old place as Third Worst Person Evar, since Moses bears far more of the blame for the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers. (He presumably still remains behind Hitler and Stalin.) Moses was That Bad, or close to it: maximized his power, ruthlessly destroyed his opponents, and cut the Bronx in half, leaving the South part to die.
And yet I'm tempted to a certain amount of sympathy for this particular devil when I think of him as a figure of First SF: a future in which people zipped around in nifty vehicles while all the social problems were solved by proper application of The Rules, as determined by Computing Machines. It didn't work for Moses, it didn't work for McNamara in subduing Vietnam or Lindsay in subduing New York, and it didn't work for John O'Hagan, whose computers didn't tell him how much more attention needed to be paid to the South Bronx and other poor areas. More's the pity.
O'Hagan was one of the great overreachers of the 60s, along with John Lindsay, Robert McNamara, and, alas, Robert Moses. Ever since Robert Caro published The Power Broker, the consensus has removed Walter O'Malley from his old place as Third Worst Person Evar, since Moses bears far more of the blame for the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers. (He presumably still remains behind Hitler and Stalin.) Moses was That Bad, or close to it: maximized his power, ruthlessly destroyed his opponents, and cut the Bronx in half, leaving the South part to die.
And yet I'm tempted to a certain amount of sympathy for this particular devil when I think of him as a figure of First SF: a future in which people zipped around in nifty vehicles while all the social problems were solved by proper application of The Rules, as determined by Computing Machines. It didn't work for Moses, it didn't work for McNamara in subduing Vietnam or Lindsay in subduing New York, and it didn't work for John O'Hagan, whose computers didn't tell him how much more attention needed to be paid to the South Bronx and other poor areas. More's the pity.
