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In a departure from the usual political or government figures as speakers at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, hedge-fund architect Stephen Schwarzman was this year’s keynoter—giving a humorous talk that poked fun at himself and at various political figures before offering a sobering commentary on the country’s direction.
Remarking on the life of dinner-namesake Al Smith—a beloved New York governor who was the first Catholic to run for president on a national ticket in 1928—Schwarzman said Smith was able to reconcile the two competing narratives that run through the nation’s history: rugged individualism and collective action.
Smith, he said, was a rugged individualist who dropped out of school and worked at the Fulton Fish Market as a young boy to help support his family. But in politics Smith “became the strongest voice for collective action on behalf of all the families he grew up with on the Lower East Side.”
“I believe this is the spirit that needs to be recaptured in the United States,” Schwarzman said.
The Al Smith Dinner, as it is known, raises money for Catholic programs that assist children in need in the archdiocese. This year’s event, the 66th annual dinner, was a glittering affair held Oct. 20 at the Waldorf-Astoria. It raised $2.2 million. The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation underwrote the entire cost of this year’s event.
Archbishop Dolan, in closing remarks at the dinner, said, “This is a big evening—big in elegance, prestige and tradition; big in attendance, laughter and renewed friendship, with people in attendance who are big in generosity.”
Thanking the guests for their support, the archbishop said that the “big” evening is nevertheless “all about the little people—the babies, the children, the young people, and their moms who are hurting, suffering and struggling.”
Alfred E. Smith IV, great-grandson of the late governor, was master of ceremonies of the dinner, welcoming 800 guests that included Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York’s Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and former Mayor Edward I. Koch.
Also attending was former Deputy Mayor John E. Zuccotti, who is now U.S. chairman of Brookfield Properties, which owns the property on which Zuccotti Park is located in lower Manhattan. The small park became famous in recent weeks as the site of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
“I used to have the most common name here,” quipped Alfred E. Smith, referring to his last name, “but now it’s Zuccotti.”
Schwarzman, chairman and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, described himself as a Jewish Republican. He and his wife, a Catholic, support some 200 students in Catholic schools through the archdiocesan Inner-City Scholarship Fund.
Schwarzman opened his remarks with a joke about a lavish and much-chronicled birthday party he gave for himself a few years ago. He said that as he looks out “at hundreds of New York’s most influential people, dressed to the nines and all in one room,” he thinks to himself, “is it my birthday again already?”
He also said he agreed to speak at a Catholic dinner because “you never know when you’re hedged enough.”
Schwarzman also poked fun at fellow businessman and dais guest Brian Moynihan, president and chief executive officer of Bank of America. Noting that Moynihan’s brother Patrick operates a Catholic boarding school for disadvantaged youth in Haiti, Schwarzman joked, “Your parents must be so proud to see each of their boys running an underfunded nonprofit organization.”
When his remarks turned serious, however, Schwarzman said, “What we are experiencing in this country is no joke.”
He said there are “people taking advantage of people who are suffering…individuals in this country facing conditions unprecedented in their lifetime (such as) high unemployment, collapsing housing prices.”
Also, he cited general feelings of alienation as well as heightened partisanship and political paralysis.
“We’re in very real danger that the American dream is slipping from the grasp of the next generation,” Schwarzman said.
“These are issues that not only must be addressed, they must be successfully resolved,” he said, and “it can’t be done by the few; it has to be done by all of us.”
