An email from Poppa Goldberg (The “NANA” he mentions refers to the North American Newspaper Alliance, which he used to run):

You got Pete Hamill just right. When he started out at the New York Post (then extremely liberal – Dorothy Schiff owned it, James Wechsler edited it), NANA syndicated him. He was totally hung up on the Vietnam War (as was nearly all the press), and the quintessential column was the one he wrote the night of the Black & White Ball, which, thrown by Truman Capote on November 28, 1966, at the Plaza, was the social event of the decade, the closest thing to a “do” at Versailles. Five hundred of the optimates were there – Kay Graham, Cecil Beaton, Wlliam F. Buckley, Jr., Lee Radziwill, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Everyone was expected to wear only black & white – can you imagine anything more fun? (You can?) It was pointless, except to Capote, who spent the entire summer pruining his invitation list from 1,500 down to 500, but so what if it was pointless. Hamill wrote a column in which one paragraph depicted the party goers bantering with one another, imbibing, and fawning over the supercelebrities, followed by a paragraph such as (paraphrasing the gist of it) “Meantime, Cpl. Johnny Garanga had the left side of his face blown off by a sniper in Vietnam.” And so forth throughout the column. The message was: “How dare anyone enjoy himself while our guys are dying in Vietnam?” It was bathos of the purest kind, designed to make everyone, except perhaps Pete Hamill, feel guilty. How can you go grocery shopping and buy some Twinkies while the deaths are piling up in Vietnam? Hamill’s politics used to be more leftist than they are today, but throughout his career he has not been able to resist the temptation to pull out all the stops for some squishy cause. I’ve always said that it’s unfortunate that Pete Hamill is such a good writer.