NOT KISSIN’ COUSINS

Readers of liberal cartoonist Jules Feiffer are in for a surprise. Feiffer’s cartoon (page 99 of Calendar) reveals that he’s a cousin of Joe McCarthy headhunter Roy Cohn.

“He never came out of the closet, but I have (in telling about their family tie),” Feiffer said, with a nod to Cohn’s denial, prior to his Aug. 2 death, that he had AIDS.

The two men met only once. Feiffer contacted Cohn in the mid-’70s when he was researching a screenplay on urban politics. “I went to his New York City office and asked him about the power brokers he was friends with,” Feiffer recalled. “He said he could call his friends for me and I could tell them we were relatives. I decided it wasn’t worth the effort.”

Feiffer said he’s thought about writing a script based on Cohn’s life. “I could see Al Pacino playing Cohn, like he did Michael Corleone in ‘Godfather II.’ He had that hidden, sleek, dangerous look which Roy had.

“Roy was one of the great villains of American politics. The more I think about it, he’d make a perfect picture of American greed.”