Phil Reisman: Dirge for a gadfly

Clay Tiffany was a gadfly squared.

He was the kind of guy who sorely tested one's faith in the sanctity of the First Amendment, which gadflies will do from time to time.

But no one should mistake Tiffany for the average crank. He was in another league.

Tiffany was always talking his way into lawsuits on claims he was being screwed out of his right of free speech. You might say he had a persecution complex, a crippling personality trait and a tragedy. This acute sense of victimhood was memorably reinforced by a Briarcliff Manor cop who 16 years ago allegedly beat the daylights out of him.

Tiffany sued the village and the cop, Nicholas Tartaglione, and when it was all settled and added up it was like Tiffany had bought a winning scratch-off lottery ticket. In other words, he did well.

ARRESTED: Ex-Briarcliff Manor cop Nicholas Tartaglione charged in 4 killings

At this point it should be obvious that I speak of Tiffany in the past tense because he is no more.

On the night of March 26, Ossining police were called to his home and found him dead. The Westchester County medical examiner said he died of natural causes.

Evidently he died alone, and street talk has it that he may have been dead for a week or two. Somebody apparently cared enough about him to request that the police make a "wellness check," and if it hadn't been for that one concerned person he might still be lying on the floor. Tiffany was 69 or 70 years of age.

He had no family in the area, though it is believed he is survived by a sister who lives somewhere in Massachusetts.

Tiffany was a self-styled crusader, the type who, empowered by public-access cable TV, could incite fear and loathing. His show, "Dirge for the Charlatans," was a platform on which he mercilessly attacked the local police, village officials, landlords and anyone else he considered worthy of his special brand of ire.

For many years he was fixated on the Board of Education. He ran for trustee at least seven times and never won. One year, he got 39 votes out of 498 votes cast.

But he was a force, and he had a habit of getting under people's skin — people like Jerry Smith, a chapter president of the Ossining NAACP, who in 2004 was so angered by Tiffany that he was convicted of second-degree harassment and briefly jailed after he allegedly "manhandled" him and threatened to beat him up.

Tiffany was tall and had a thick, clown-like halo of red, curly hair. He liked to stalk his targets with tape recorders, egging them on to say something he could use against them. Some people might have thought he was righteous in pursuing his "activist" causes, but a lot of people also thought he was weird and even unhinged.

Thomas Ferguson, who for two years served as Briarcliff Manor's village manager, told The Journal News back in 2001 that Tiffany's antics were a factor in his resignation.

"While he was not the primary reason — family and opportunity — Clay Tiffany did play a role in my wanting to leave," Ferguson said. He added that when he drafted a press release about his leaving, he deliberately left out where he was going "because of him."

Tiffany constantly badgered reporters and editors to take his side. In one bizarre episode on a Sunday morning, he showed up unannounced at my home in Yonkers. When he opened the storm door, my dog went berserk and chased him away.

Twice, he publicly heckled Jeanine Pirro, the Westchester district attorney. The first time was in 1999 at Temple Israel in New Rochelle where she gave a talk on the night before her husband Al's arraignment on federal tax evasion and conspiracy charges.

The audience gave Pirro a warm reception, but at the end of the event Tiffany shouted out, "How's your husband?"

Four years later, he popped up with a bunch of protestors at a Pirro book signing at Barnes & Noble in Yonkers. He assailed her for not prosecuting the aforementioned Briarcliff cop and for arresting him four times.

Tiffany yelled, "What's the matter, Jeanine, did you have a bad face lift?"

He was kicked out of the store, but didn't leave quietly.

"I have a Barnes & Noble card!" he shouted in spittle-laced protest. "This is called fascism!"

I was there, so I know this is true.

Tiffany told the truth as he saw it. Even crazy people can be right sometimes, but Tiffany's problem was that it all got lost in the paranoid noise.

It's been said that he was an English major at Colgate University. He had no discernible career, except as a cab driver, and he didn't talk about it.

As unlovable as he seemed, somebody must have loved him once. His was a sad life.

Email: preisman@lohud.com Twitter: @philreisman