Wayne Barrett
Wayne Barrett Tricia Romano

Last year for Christmas, I got my Trump-loving family Wayne Barrett's biography on Donald Trump, The Deals and the Downfall. I was hoping that they'd read it without knowing what was about to hit them. It was the first book to shred the moron about to become president culled from years of reporting at the Village Voice , where I worked and where Wayne had long roamed the halls making interns cry. He made politicians cry, too, I'm pretty sure of it, especially Rudy Giuliani, "America's mayor," about whom Barrett once called (among many other things) a "used 9/11 memorabilia salesman."

He was scathing, but funny:


"Rudy Giuliani knows a lot about love.

Ask Regina Peruggi, the second cousin he grew up with and married, who was "offended" when Rudy later engineered an annulment from the priest who was his best man on the grounds, strangely enough, that she was his cousin. Or ask Donna Hanover, the mother of his two children, who found out he wanted a separation when he left Gracie Mansion one morning and announced it at a televised press conference.

Or ask Judi Nathan, his third wife, whom he started dating while still married to Hanover and New York mayor. In two SUVs, he and an entourage of six or seven cops traveled 11 times to Judi's Hamptons getaway at a taxpayer cost of $3,000 a trip. That's love."

He was a nose-to-the-grindstone, old-school reporter. His dry, sarcastic wit infused his densely packed sentences. Every word in his articles was a fact that could take down the rich and powerful. His stories were hardboiled, almost noirish, in style. They weren't easy reading.

He'd been at the Voice as long as I was alive; I was a lowly nightlife reporter, and felt impossibly frivolous and ridiculous in his presence, but he was always encouraging of my writing. He was a fearsome presence around the office, and had a reputation for making bringing people to tears. You didn't want to make Wayne angry. (I luckily never did).

That is, when he was in the office—often he was working remotely, giving orders to his worker bees over speakerphone. The interns holed up in his office, located a few feet from Nat Hentoff (who also just passed away), poring over public records.

Months would go by and then, blockbusters would come. Blockbusters that beat the New York Times and left the rest of the media in their wake.

He passed on his journalistic knowledge. His interns—including Rolling Stone's Matt Taibibi—went on to great things; they are everywhere in media right now, working at the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, New York Times, Fast Company.

While many writers want to be loved, Wayne loved to be hated. He wrote in a goodbye piece to the Voice:

"The greatest prize I've ever won for the work I've done in these pages was when Al D'Amato called me a "viper" in his memoir."

Wayne was sick over the last few years with lung cancer (didn't smoke) and a sufferred from interstitial lung disease. I took to emailing him out of the blue to see how he was doing.

Tricia Romano
2/14/15

to Wayne
Tell me something good, mr. barrett.

Here's something entertaining for you that i wrote.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2025417805_femalefansxml.html

On Feb 14, 2015, at 5:56 PM, Wayne Barrett wrote:

you just like guys in tight pants, or maybe writing this will get you into the locker room next time. alot hotter than the parties you used to cover. i've been writing more lately—a mario farewell (went to the funeral too), a silver indictment piece and this week on state senate. go to pt twice a week; it's really exhausting but at least i'm moving again. so great to hear from you. guess you saw that vv is up for sale.

Re: please tell me Trump won't be president
On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 1:10 PM, Tricia Romano wrote:
where is all the investigative reporting on how disgusting he is? where?!
how are you feeling Mr. Barrett?
xoxo

Wayne Barrett
1/26/16

did u read bill's trump car piece? excellent. i've helped at least 30 reporters from all over, some of whom have come to my house to go through the basement files ( i keep everything). wapo piece on taj was most recent. buzzfeed sent 2 reporters, in my basement for 3 days.i am lying low but will jump in when it looks like he's the nominee. i think he could destroy the party, deliver senate to dems, and in this part of the season, television journalists are ignoring solid investigative pieces. i think that will change up the road. u better get around to see me in bklyn someday.

I never did, but I called him a few weeks ago. He couldn't believe the criminals Trump was lining the halls of the White House with. So many unbelievably bad people the whole thing was turning into a sordid game of Would You Rather. (Answer: none of them). He was entertained and horrified, and amused, too. Gallows humor. I could tell he was chomping at the bit to take Trump down. He had once written in the Voice: "It was always the conduct that prodded me to write, not the person. And that is what I lived for, a chance to say something that revealed and mattered. To me, the story will always be the thing. It is all I can see."

Wayne was bedridden, but fiery, though small tasks took a huge amount of energy.

Trump doesn't know how lucky he is that Wayne Barrett died on the eve of his inauguration. You could say he dodged a bullet—Wayne Barrett's pen.

Now, it is up to the rest of us to finish the work he started.