Leonard Bernstein spent his life in music refusing boundaries and labels, whether of genre, profession, or style. One of the labels that stuck, however, has been the most impenetrable: “radical chic.” When Tom Wolfe coined the term in the June 8, 1970, issue of New York Magazine, he implied that for the Bernsteins and their circle, politics was stylish and nothing more. The term “radical chic” has long since been absorbed into the American (and even international) lexicon of journalism, often retaining its skeptical tone, but serving primarily as an aesthetic rather than political critique. Viewing the inception of “radical chic” alongside the coverage of the Black Panther Party, however, diff erentiates Wolfe's understanding from other journalists and clarifies the sinister nature of his neologism and the significance of applying it first to Leonard Bernstein.

On January 14, 1970, Felicia Montealegre Bernstein hosted a reception for the benefit of the Panther 21 Legal Defense Fund, one of several such coalitions that saw a challenge to civil liberties in recent policing of the Panther Party. The official charge against the Panthers was conspiracy, but the primary concern of the fund was the way in which the legal process was unfolding. According to Michael Staub, newspaper coverage of Panther activities and their encounters with law enforcement had been fairly evenhanded, especially in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 and the following civil unrest. Both mainstream and black papers, such as Chicago's Defender and the New York Amsterdam News, trod the line between recognizing the injustices the Panthers were resisting, and critiquing either their lawlessness or their lack of a clear platform. The former critique was more likely in mainstream reportage and the latter more common in opinion pieces by black writers. In contrast, the New Journalism of writers like Wolfe, and specifically his interpretation of the Bernsteins’ actions, shifted the journalistic and public perception of black nationalists and of whites who affiliated with them. Whatever Felicia's intentions were, she and her husband, as celebrities, were caught in the middle.