Heather Ann Thompson - “Fear and Fury” & How the Bernie Goetz Story Echoes Today | The Daily Show

What this episode is about

Heather Ann Thompson's discussion on the Bernie Goetz case highlights the 1984 subway shooting incident, where Goetz shot four young Black men, and examines its lingering implications on contemporary views of violence and vigilantism in urban society. The conversation draws parallels between Goetz's actions and today's climate of legal violence, reflecting on societal perceptions and nostalgia for perceived safety amidst chaos.

Key takeaways

• In the chaos of 1980s NYC, nostalgia intertwines with trauma; Bernie Getz becomes a vigilante hero, yet a villain.
• Context is lost in the frenzy of judgment; unforgettable moments shape narratives that aren’t always universally agreed upon.
• Bernie Getz's shooting spree reflects deeper frustrations in a lawless city—bullets became symbols for societal rage, not just acts.
• Eyewitnesses in crisis create unreliable accounts; with none capturing the nuance, truth blurs in the fog of urban despair.
• Reagan’s austerity stifled NYC’s economy, yet scapegoats like Getz’s victims served to misdirect anger from systemic failures.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Heather Ann Thompson (Host) · 12 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Bernie Getts
2. 3:00 – 6:00: Bernie Getts
3. 6:00 – 9:00: Central Park Five, Rudy Giuliani, Fear and Fury, Rupert Murdoch
4. 9:00 – 12:00: Trayvon Martin
5. 15:00 – 17:09: Fear and Fury

Notable quotes from "Heather Ann Thompson - “Fear and Fury” & How the Bernie Goetz Story Echoes Today | The Daily Show"

• Explain Bernie gets this 1984. He shoots four young black males on a subway train.

  about Bernie Getts · at 0:49

• The echoes of today. it's not even that they're echoes. It's the same people. The guy running the media machine that lionized Bernie Gets was Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. That's They're all I've heard of that guy.

  about Rupert Murdoch · at 6:39

• Right. And Giuliani's New York, the New York that's going to come out of this.

  about Rudy Giuliani · at 8:02

• Rage and then saying it's perfectly legal? Okay, we begin to see why do we get a Trayvon Martin situation, right? Why is George Zimmerman allowed to do what he's traces all the way back?

  about Trayvon Martin · at 9:37

• Have to say like it just it's such a time and place that I remember so well as a young man and you captured it remarkably and beautifully in all of its contradictions and and…

  about Fear and Fury · at 16:29

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Bernie Getts — Person · Central referenced figure / case subject · 4 mentions · first at 0:49
  His 1984 NYC subway shooting and subsequent media/political lionization is the core historical case used to explain modern vigilante politics and racialized media narratives.
• Rudy Giuliani — Person · Referenced political/legal figure (linking actor) · 2 mentions · first at 7:08
  Positioned as a connective figure between tabloid media narratives and the later political style associated with Trump; framed as shaping ‘Giuliani’s New York’ emerging from that era.
• Rupert Murdoch — Person · Referenced media mogul (media amplification driver) · 1 mention · first at 6:49
  Cited as the owner behind the New York Post’s coverage that ‘lionized’ Getts, framed as an early template for later Fox News-style outrage politics.
• Donald Trump — Person · Referenced political figure (contextual parallel) · 1 mention · first at 7:25
  Discussed as part of the NYC media/political ecosystem that learned from and later leveraged similar ‘law-and-order’ outrage dynamics; contrasted with his later Central Park Five involvement.
  And it's what's going to pave the way for Fox News. And it's not just him, right? It's Giuliani's on the scene here and Trump is on the scene here. So all these guys and yet…
• Trayvon Martin — Person · Referenced victim (modern parallel example) · 1 mention · first at 9:41
  Invoked as a downstream consequence/example of the legal-cultural normalization of vigilante violence; used to connect the Getts era to later self-defense/vigilantism controversies.

Books & papers

• Fear and Fury — Book · Primary recommendation · 2 mentions · first at 6:28
  The book is discussed as a gripping read that provides deep insight into the Bernie Goetz case and its implications for modern racial and social issues.

Places & events

• Central Park Five — Event · Referenced work · 2 mentions · first at 7:25
  Mentioned in the context of Donald Trump's involvement and the media's portrayal of racial and social issues, drawing parallels to the Bernie Goetz case.
  Me when he didn't really did he jump in on the Bernie get I know that he jumped in on what was so called the Central Park Five.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 man. By the way, fabulous uh read the book. Fabulous reads uh uh gripping, suspenseful. Uh explain, you know, this is my my wheelhouse. I I'm in my 60s. This is when I moved to the city during the Bernie Gets era. Uh so I felt it like with with a nostalgia. But explain, you know, I was in the office with kids and they were like, "Who's Bernie Get?" And I was like, "What?"

0:28 Yeah. I you say to them like 30 years from now people will be saying to you like who's Diddy and you're like what?

0:36 Yeah. No, I remember it as well. I remember it coming up to New York in the 80s. This event happens and you know it was kind of took us all back then but I've been thinking about it again and I thought we need to know who this guy is.

0:49 Explain Bernie gets this 1984. He shoots four uh young black males on a subway train.

0:56 That's right. In in Manhattan. Yeah. and it's close quarters and he's on there for like five minutes and within those five minutes he's decided he doesn't like the gleam in one of their eyes the kid asks him for $5 panhandling as we remember big thing in New York in the 80s and he turns pulls out a 38 Wesson and just Smith and Wesson just just takes him out one in the chest his friend in the back who's trying to get away the next kid trying to get away in the arm goes through his lungs and And then the fourth kid, he misses. But then he goes over to him and he, you know, quaking in fear, waiting, hoping the guy's going to go away and he says, "You look all right. Here's another." And he shoots him point blank range, severing his spinal cord and paralyzing him. But then he becomes a hero to all New Yorkers, except for not quite all New Yorkers. The New Yorkers who thought, "Yeah, we need a Charles

1:56 Bronson. we need a dirty hairy in the city to take care of business. And I kind of felt like that moment had a lot to tell us about the moment we're in where violence is

2:06 uh again unleashed legally okay. Uh where a guy in Minneapolis can right can literally be shot in the head. And we are told that up is down, down is up. We didn't see what we thought we saw. I think this is a beginning story to that. And and by the way, the description that you're making of of of what happened, that's not even your interpretation. That's his interpretation. That's Bernie Getts

2:34 exactly to the Concord police and to to other people saying, "And I went up to the kid, the fourth kid, and went, "You seem okay." And I shot like that's his description of it. Not

2:46 and this is in the time, so you have to set the scene. There's no iPhones. That's right.

2:50 There's no anything. It really is the unreliability of eyewitness accounts in uh uh a kind of frenetic moment.

3:00 But the thing is people had already decided he was a hero. And that's kind of what I wanted to get into. Right? He goes on the lamb. He disappears into the subway tunnels. People don't even know who he is, right?

3:11 And he's already on the front page, right? He was known as a subway vigilante. When he turns himself in, he gives this twohour detailed confession. Robbery had nothing to do with it.

3:23 That's right. Previously being mugged had nothing to do with it. And it's not going to matter. It's not going to matter when he goes to trial.

3:30 It's not going to matter to so many New Yorkers. And and I think it's we got to look at that moment because today we're kind of there again, right? We see it. We see a videotape. But yet we're like we're told

3:43 it almost it it actually felt it's hard to underestimate how popular Bernie gets was.

3:49 That's right. In that moment. And I remember you know we all remember the city back then was um super fun.

3:57 Yeah. Like I was young. It was completely lawless. I lived uh on the Canal Street stop. So one stop before he he shot him around Chamber Street, I guess. Mhm.

4:08 Um, and it was I used to come home from work my restaurant job 2 in the morning on the subways and like luckily I looked pathetic enough nobody bothered me. But like it was it was a hustle back then.

4:22 Oh, it was a lot of drugs. Yeah. Bad news. I mean it's 84, right? And it's the height of the Reagan 80s.

4:29 Everything's getting stripped. Public resources are getting stripped. Trash is piling up. People are turning to the illegal economy of drugs.

4:36 That's right. But here's the thing. They are being told that the problem is not the change in the economy that Reagan had really implemented. The problem was, you know, people worse off than them. So again, that playbook is really getting cemented right then.

4:51 No, once again, they're being told it's not uh any systemic failures. It's people like these four kids. Those four kids,

4:58 right, were a standin. And by the way, like they were there to rob, just not people. They were going to pop pinball machines. That's right. for coins.

5:07 They were on their way to a video arcade to jimmy them open, get quarters. Yes.

5:12 Because again, they're from the South Bronx and that area has also been completely stripped of resources. Jobs are gone and they need some money. But that context, right, is what gets lost. Context stops stops mattering. Basically,

5:27 they his bullets were a standin for the frustration that people felt for what they thought was an unmanageable city. And it wasn't just RA. I mean, New York City

5:38 and I can remember, you know, my grandfather drove a cab in Brooklyn. My other grandfather ran a dry cleaner in Washington Heights. Like they were very familiar with uh property crime and and all those things. But New York City from the 60s and 70s after the oil shock, I mean, New York City was broke in 75 like it was fraying at the seams.

5:59 75 for many years. Well, the fiscal crisis was devastating. The thing is that crisis begins to rebound in other places,

6:07 other places on the globe. It it was a global crisis. Yes. But what happens is Reagan gets elected and he sort of doubles down on the austerity, right? Rather than rebounding, but meanwhile, the rich are getting richer, richer, richer. But the eye isn't on that ball. The eye is on the misery and whose fault is it. And the thing is, I think the book I hope really kind of lays bare. It's curated. You've got this media that's curating this outrage, this racial outrage, particularly

6:39 uh the the echoes of today. I mean, it's not even that they're echoes. It's the same people. The guy running the media machine that lionized Bernie Gets was

6:49 Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. That's They're all like, I've heard of that guy.

6:55 I don't like what he does at all. That's right. Uh that was when he made his bones.

7:00 That's right. That's what allows him to really make his mark in New York City and it's what's going to pave the way for Fox News. And it's not just him, right? It's Giuliani's on the scene here and Trump is on the scene here. So all these guys and yet sort of mirror each other in that both raised and both have frustrations with uh the thing. Both have the same antagonism towards what they consider to be the underclass that doesn't belong there.

7:25 Yeah. But Trump is watching this case. He is watching what happens when someone does something like this. What's the response? And the response becomes his base. The response becomes that's what I need to take the White House and he's going to it's a kind of an extra I have to say it's a story that even surprised me when

7:45 he didn't really did he jump in on the Bernie get I know that he jumped in on what was so called the uh uh Central Park Five.

7:51 That's right. So he waits. He doesn't jump in on this case, but he's very much central to that coverage of the time, the New York Post coverage, and Giuliani is the real link between them there. Right. And and Giuliani's New York, the New York that's going to come out of this.

8:07 And the same way they set the hyperbolic tone for today with uh immigrants. Yes. They set with people from I mean, you would have thought I lived here, man. Like

8:16 it was it was actually like really fun. It was a little more dangerous than probably it is today, but like not crazily so. And uh but they made it out to be like I remember the headlines were Time magazine super predators,

8:30 young black kids that are there are super soldiers that will kill you. Well, uh, Wilding was the big,

8:36 you know, that would be considered like a social media thing back then, but like that was

8:41 and people really took out their frustration on these kids who weren't perfect victims, but they certainly weren't the masterminds and and evildoers that they were made out of,

8:53 but they're made into the victims. That's I mean, I'm sorry, into the villains, not the victims overnight, right? These are kids that have racked up a lot of misdemeanor offenses. you know, jump in the subway, turn styles. The minute they get shot, all of a sudden, judges are turning those misdemeanor citations into warrants for their arrest.

9:10 Yeah. The hate mail that's pouring into their apartments, to the hospital, and their lives are destroyed by this, but at the end of the day, they never get grace. They never get to be the victims. And so, we didn't even know who they were. We didn't know their names. So for me in the book, it was really important to to kind of lay bare what are the costs of all this violence? What are the costs of unleashing this kind of rage and then saying it's perfectly legal? Okay,

9:41 we begin to see why do we get a Trayvon Martin situation, right? Why is George Zimmerman allowed to do what he's traces all the way back?

9:50 It just keeps going. I was actually heartened uh at the racism, the the uh the letters to the editor. She puts in letters to the editor that people wrote to the post and to the Daily News. You know, I go on Twitter sometimes and I'm like horrified in the comment section. Like, oh my god, how can people be this horrifying? But at least there they go by like cuckboy 101. Like these are letters, letters to the editor that are like these animals and using the nword and saying like horrible things about them. You know, yours truly, Lewis Viterelli. like they didn't put their name on it and they like and back in the day like you couldn't just tweet like you had to buy a stamp. You had to walk that thing to a post office box.

10:34 That's commitment. Yeah. And and the thing is not just letters coming to the to the editors in New York

10:40 coming to them and coming to the boys coming to New York Post from Colorado, from California, from I mean this is this becomes a national phenomenon because it because it touched a moment that was really shifting uh you know rebirth of white rage always you know white rage is ubiquitous in American history but this is a moment when it gets unleashed like it hadn't been since the 19th century and legally okay like it hadn't been.

11:11 And by the way, so Bernie gets not convicted of right uh attempted murder or any of those things. They got him on

11:19 carrying an illegal weapon, right? Yeah. And this is a fascinating This is another dichotomy that I think is really interesting because so much of the conditions that those young men grew up in were so difficult. If you look at the life of Bernie Gets and those kids, they're somewhat parallel, but the difference is grace. The difference is margin of error. So Bernie Gets his dad is arrested for suspicion of I guess child molestate like it real serious stuff. He plea bargains down to uh disturbing the PE like misdemeanor, some kind of a thing

11:55 and continues and is wealthy and sends Bernie to like a prep school in Switzerland. uh the kid who got shot and paralyzed. His dad's a truck driver who's killed.

12:06 Yeah. Trying to defend his truck from a would-be thief. And and those two moments really typify

12:14 Yeah. what Grace does to the trajectory of a person's life. And the ultimate irony is these kids first introduction to the criminal justice system is for misdemeanor

12:26 Yeah. Jumping a turn style, smoking some dope. Bernie gets is a dope smoker with illegal guns who's bargaining down. I mean,

12:35 he's got marijuana in his apartment when he's arrested and no one blinks an eye. This is at a time period in New York City when if you get arrested for marijuana, you're you're off to Attica. You are you are off to one of New York's building prisons,

12:47 right? And so I I guess it's it's always curious to me that people don't draw the parallel of of what margin of error means to the future of a person. And what's he you know today is he repentant in any way? Do you know?

13:03 No, he's he's not repentant or you don't know. No, he's not repentant. I mean, when Kyle Writtenhouse goes and and shoots people, he is weighing in and supports him. When Daniel Penny chokes out someone on a subway in the modern iteration of this, he is uh you know, he's supportive. So, so no. Uh but again, you know, that's the grace, right? He is we he's asked the question, what do you think about this? And he gets to weigh in and then meanwhile the the wreckage of his act gets completely erased from the from the memory.

13:39 How many of these young boys are still alive? Only two. Only two. Two of them. One one committed suicide.

13:44 Yep. And the other one of them ends up in prison. He was battling a drug addiction after this. He ends up locked up and of course prison will slowly kill you. So he comes home and dies shortly thereafter. So two were left and the one

13:58 the real I think that the center of the story that I try to tell uh was not just paralyzed but then uh suffered pretty severe brain damage from going into a coma after his injury. So all of these young teenagers are fighting for their life, but the media is celebrating uh the vigilante and and that that again that up and down that up is down down is that moment um I think we have to reckon with

14:28 absolutely and if you want to get yourselves uh nice and boiled up and angry uh read about how the media goes. So there's a ton of lawsuits. I mean, this gets case dominated New York for years and years and then there were civil lawsuits and all kinds of other things, but read about how and I can't remember if it was a reporter for the Post or the the Daily News. They go to was it Daryl Cab was it uh when he was at the

14:51 Jimmy Brereslin goes to his hospital room? Goes to his hospital room and interviews him when he's like knocked out.

14:58 But then another guy goes and secretly records him. Oh, this is Bernie gets hires this parallegal investigator, right? who essentially goes and calls up Daryl, who is in a rehab center, poses as a doctor

15:12 to try to get him to admit basically that he's not suffered any brain damage, and then goes to the rehab facility, posing as someone who's just trying to get their brother in

15:23 and films him uh in this. But, you know, that was when Daryl KB's mother, who is a true heroine in this story, she refuses to let this go. She doesn't want her son forgotten. Mhm.

15:35 And so she files the civil suit on his behalf. So there is a civil trial and it is a kind of extraordinary story where they're not giving up, but Bernie gets to defend himself per se. So he gets to depose the young man that he shot and his mother. So it's this extraordinary, you know. Yeah. It it's

15:59 and that's where revelations come out in the trial that didn't come out in the criminal trial where people go like, "Oh, I think we might have this up where the all the revelations about his own words and all that." And ultimately, he does lose the civil suit. Yes,

16:11 he does. He gets a $43 million judgment against him uh thanks to a Bronx jury, but he doesn't pay a dime.

16:20 So, all in all, it's quite a happy tale. Don't tell me how it ends. Uh it's it's a remarkable and I and I have to say like it just it's such a time and place that I remember so well as as a young man and uh you captured it remarkably and beautifully in all of its contradictions and and and and cleavages and the city was torn apart in those in those days. So uh really nicely nicely nicely done. So thank you.

16:52 Thank you for being here. Uh it's called Fear and Fury. It's available now. Now, Heather Thompson

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Heather Ann Thompson - “Fear and Fury” & How the Bernie Goetz Story Echoes Today | The Daily Show"?

Heather Ann Thompson (Host).

What is "Heather Ann Thompson - “Fear and Fury” & How the Bernie Goetz Story Echoes Today | The Daily Show" about?

Heather Ann Thompson's discussion on the Bernie Goetz case highlights the 1984 subway shooting incident, where Goetz shot four young Black men, and examines its lingering implications on contemporary views of violence and vigilantism in urban society. The conversation draws parallels between Goetz's actions and today's climate of legal violence, reflecting on societal perceptions and nostalgia…

What is mentioned in this The Daily Show episode?

7 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Bernie Getts, Fear and Fury, Rudy Giuliani, Central Park Five, Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Heather Ann Thompson - “Fear and Fury” & How the Bernie Goetz Story Echoes Today | The Daily Show"?

The episode runs 17 min; the transcript is about 3,144 words in 69 timestamped sections.

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