“The evil that men do lives after them,” Marc Antony orated in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. “The good is oft interred with their bones.” Such posthumous asymmetry is even more pronounced in the case of Roy Cohn. Best of luck sifting any good from the bony residue of this Rottweiler lawyer and political fixer, who died in 1986 after a banner career dedicated to anti-Communism, persecutorial vendettas, reputational assassination, legal and political skulduggery, Manhattan social climbing, Studio 54 boogalooing, Provincetown sex partying, and miscellaneous villainy.
As Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark document in their thumping new biography, American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump, what good Cohn did in his pell-mell life was confined mostly to a smattering of friends, allies, and useful contacts, winning their personal loyalty. (The future TV-news-and-talk-show doyenne Barbara Walters was forever grateful to Cohn for clearing up her father’s tax problems, helping keep dear old dad out of the clink.) He seldom if ever bestirred himself on behalf of mere mortal strangers and other background extras. That was for liberals and other lily-livered, do-goody weenies—losers like you and me.
