Shortly after his mother’s death six years ago, journeyman political reporter and host of NY1’s Inside City Hall Dominic Carter did what journalists do: He requested the documents. Her 620-page medical report detailed to him the extent of her lifelong struggle with paranoid schizophrenia, which he hadn’t known about. Putting it all together, he decided to write a book, No Momma’s Boy, which he’s self-publishing in early May. He spoke to Mary Burke.
What was it like to read your mother’s records?
It was almost like I got hit with a double-barrel shotgun. I really had no idea. I was embarrassed when I saw in plain black and white that my mother tried to choke me to death and that she thought about throwing me out a window. That she sexually abused me. I had hid all of this stuff in the back of my mind, and I was only fooling myself.
You confronted her once, without knowing her history of mental illness. Were you upset she didn’t apologize?
I think she didn’t apologize because she was so embarrassed. I think she knew deep in her heart that it happened. What do you say to your child who’s now a grown man, a success, the first one in your family to go to college? What do you say? Maybe I shouldn’t have confronted her, but I had finally had it with my wife and mother-in-law trying to push a relationship. They didn’t understand. I think my wife almost didn’t believe me. It’s so disgusting, you know, I think my wife, she didn’t believe me.
Why did you self-publish?
I tried HarperCollins and I can’t remember the other one—and they said no.
What did they want?
Well, I don’t want to go into that, but there were suggestions of how to sensationalize it more, and I wasn’t really interested in that.
What do you think of Anderson Cooper’s reported $50 million five-year contract?
[Laughs] I wish him well, but I know I’m a better journalist.
You had a very contentious relationship with Mayor Giuliani. Do you think Rudy can make it to the White House?
Don’t ever underestimate Rudy Giuliani. Ever. Truth be told, I like him on a personal level. He’s got a set of balls, and so do I. Man to man, I can respect that and appreciate that.
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