"Jimmy's World"
In an article titled "Jimmy's World", which appeared in the Post on September 28, 1980, Cooke wrote a gripping profile of the life of an 8-year-old heroin addict. She described the "needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin, brown arms." The story engendered much sympathy among readers, including Marion Barry, then mayor of Washington, D.C. He and other city officials organized an all-out police search for the boy, which was unsuccessful and led to claims that the story was fraudulent. Barry, responding to public pressure, lied and claimed that Jimmy was known to the city and receiving treatment; he was announced dead shortly after.
Read more about this topic: Janet Cooke
Famous quotes containing the words jimmy and/or world:
“Whar have you been for the last three year
That you haven’t heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the Prairie Belle?”
—John Milton Hay (1838–1905)
“He remained in the grip of a certain devil whom the modern world knows as self-consciousness, and whom the mediaeval, with dimmer vision, worshipped as asceticism.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)