Remembering Dave Berkman, Milwaukee’s Brilliant, Irascible Media Critic

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Shepherd Express box on Water Street

The recent passing of former Shepherd Express editor Doug Hissom, reminds me another legendary figure from the paper’s earlier days, Dave Berkman, the “Media Musings” columnist who also taught mass communications at UWM. A man for all seasons who enjoyed a good party, my pal, Dave, died at 81 on New Year’s Eve in 2015.

A learned, liberal civil rights activist, Dave Berkman and I were great friends for many years in Milwaukee. Yet, as often true with one so close, we had our differences, some personal, some political. But it always was with mutual, professional respect. 

For example, he took me to task in print in 1994-95 for my role on WNOV-AM radio’s controversial, top-rated “Carter-McGee Report.” This, after helping us get off the ground via an interview on his Sunday morning “Media Talk” show on Wisconsin Public Radio. He ran this incisive program with great success for 13 years.

Dave Berkman also took pleasure in debating our late, treasured friend, fiery Milwaukee activist George F. Sanders. They went at it hammer-and-tong in 1993-94 gatherings on the patio of my Northridge Lakes apartment, and in 1995-96 house parties given by me and my wife, Susan Orr, host of “Jazz in the Afternoon” on WYMS-FM.

Pointed Political Barbs

One of the best was when Berkman and Sanders exchanged pointed political barbs—to the delight of all in attendance—the night we hosted a TV fight party at our Landmark on the Lake apartment watching Mike Tyson bite the ear of Evander Holyfield.  

Previously in New York in 1988—as one of his close Milwaukee pals and an outspoken columnist with the Daily News—I was invited by Berkman, a visiting professor, to speak to his senior, interracial “capstone issues” class in television criticism at Brooklyn College.

I was flattered and happily accepted, having always been impressed by his credentials, including membership in the Minority Task Force on the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, the state boards of the ACLU in Wisconsin and Connecticut and service with the Newhouse School of Public Communications/Syracuse.

Picking me up at Grand Central Terminal, we then stopped at a tobacco shop for him to buy one of his 60 omnipresent pipes. Along the way, he told he also had some 6,000 books and 600 LP records. I was properly impressed.

“You’re going to find these kids—and a few older students—extremely sharp,” Berkman said, as we sipped coffee in the college cafeteria. “And I’ve found the minority students here to be brighter than those I left behind at UWM.”

Black Comedies?

   After delivering my positive and negative thoughts on the state of race in television programming, the interracial group began by discussing the relevance—or non—of the popular “Cosby Show,” which is why Berkman invited me. I’d written a Daily News column about it which, he said, “piqued the interest of my students.”

The consensus was “yes,” we all admire Bill Cosby as a performer—and I admired his ability to command big bucks. But “no,” his show was not typical of Black family life in America and, thereby, plenty phony and misleading.

Then, at Berkman’s insistence, we discussed why the only successful, Black-oriented TV shows such as Cosby’s were comedies. The list was noteworthy. To wit:

“Sanford and Son”; “The Jeffersons”; “Good Times;” “Julia”; “Baby, I’m Back”; “What’s Happening”; “That’s My Mama”; “Frank’s Place,” and the Black version of “The Odd Couple.” And, of course, “Beulah” and “Amos ‘n’ Andy”—which began on radio, moved to TV and were dropped in the early 1950s in the wake of protests over their images of Black people. 

Along with Berkman—who was Jewish—I had long maintained that white America didn’t want to be confronted every week with Black-oriented dramatic television shows that make people stop, take stock and feel guilty. Hence, funny Black folks on TV were preferable to serious Black folks telling it like it is.

Berkman urged me to listen to an older student, Dr. Calman Blitz, 71, a podiatrist and Brooklyn College graduate who entered school way back in 1937. Said he:“Attitudes haven’t changed much. Three days ago, a teacher asked students what they think of when they hear the names Italian, Irish, Puerto Rican and Jew. Many said Mafia, drunk, lazy and grasping. It was the same 50 years ago.”

This elicited a wry smile from Berkman, as we adjourned to the cafeteria, accompanied by Rodney Levy, a college-age Black student, who wore a yellow “I’m happy I’m nappy” button his jacket. “Black students don’t speak up much,” he said. “If there was a real black consciousness in schools like in the ‘60s, you’d probably have a riot.”

“Didn’t I tell you how bright these students are?” Berkman laughed, as Levy and Darren Greggs—another Black student—laughed along. He then asked them to recount for me an infamous episode of the college newspaper’s so-called April Fool’s joke issue a couple of years back.

They said the paper—called Kingsman—ran an upside-down nameplate on the back page that read “Knigsman.” Underneath, the words “Brooklyn College’s Black Newspaper” appeared. And most stories were racially flavored parodies. The following week, there was an apology.

“As a long-time Milwaukee journalist—both print and broadcast—I was appalled,” Berkman said. “As a result, I was determined to cast my lot here as a visiting prof to assess the racial temperature of the students. But these kids seemed to take it all in stride.” 

For example, Kevin Taylor, a young white student, said he didn’t see race and was happy to be pursuing a career in TV. Rigoberto Landers, who is Black, didn’t like the Rev. Al Sharpton’s attacks on the news media he admired. Christine Rhone—a native Jamaican—said she aspired to be a news anchor, adding that “partly because of TV images, some men from Jamaica come to town to make it big in drugs and go home rich.” At that point, Dave stood up and applauded.

Finally, when I think of Milwaukee’s Dave Berkman, our day at Brooklyn College is one of my best memories. Ironically, a few years later—when he bashed me in the Shepherd Express for some of my comments on “The Carter-McGee Report”—I’d call and remind him of my remarks to his Brooklyn College class. And we’d both chuckle.

Indeed, my late pal, Milwaukee’s Dave Berkman was one for the ages. And I miss him to this very day.