Sunday, October 27, 2013

Truest statement of the week

I dwell on this because the drone program in its conduct takes on the character of a rogue operation at the highest levels of government. Secrecy is the touchstone for ascertaining illegality, usurpation, moral turpitude in its fullest political sense: the absolute negation of human feeling toward others, justifying, in the depths of nihilism, annihilation-on-the-spot. CIA, JSOC, Blackwater (whatever its new corporate name), may be target-hunting in country, but the trigger releasing the drone missile is 8,000 miles away, a guy seated in plush surroundings probably munching a sandwich. 
 The process of dealing death is so completely segmented that none involved has to feel pangs of conscience, assuming conscience to begin with, a big assumption when State-sponsored murder is an exercise in routinization under the banner of Protecting the Homeland.

-- Norman Pollack, "Serialization of Political Murder" (CounterPunch).

A note to our readers

Hey --

Another Sunday.


Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.

And what did we come up with?

Only one truest this week?  Well at least Norman Pollack was deserving.  Why only one? We got distracted.  As we were publishing, we noted the error.  At which point, Ava hollered, "Oh, hell no!  We're not spending 30 minutes debating who gets the other truest."  So we didn't.
There was a section of this editorial that I (Jim)  really liked but we cut.  I was for the cut.  But I brought in the film St. Elmo's Fire, specifically when Judd Nelson is getting a blow torch and Andrew McCarthy says, "Do not give that man a blow torch!"   I liked it but it took the editorial in another direction.

They were pissed about the roundtable.  Ava and C.I. had written this and wanted to go straight into their TV piece.  They were tired and felt they didn't have a lot of  time to waste.  (Before they'd be too tired to write well.)  This is an outstanding piece on Linda Ronstadt's new book.  See the roundtable for more on this but it's not what they thought they were going to write about the book.  They really do debate and explore as they write.

I happen to like this piece by Ava and C.I.  They hate it.  'But they hate everything they write!'  You are correct.  And I pointed that out to them which caused them to reply, "We hate this one more than anything else we've ever written here."  Okay then.  For others, I think they'll enjoy Ava and C.I.'s look at Dracula and Charlie Rose.  
After the roundtable, I demanded we all immediately work on this piece before it went stale.  Ty and Jess fact checked the piece (thank you).  We think it's an important piece and we hope you like it.  We doubt many others -- if anyone -- has written about the assassination the way we do here. 
In the roundtable, Jess mentioned we were hoping to do a film article.  Didn't happen.  Couldn't pull it together.  We saw the Google and quickly thought this could sub for the missing article.

The roundtable.  Again, Ava and C.I. wanted to write their TV piece.  The up there is, when they're pissed, they apparently don't care about not speaking too much.  I'm not saying, "They spoke too much!"  But they've never spoken this much, have they?  They didn't want to take part and they just didn't care.  But that actually makes for a more informative roundtable.

Glenn Greenwald.
Can a kiss cause that much trouble?
We test a candy which was suggested by reader Paige.  Thank you, Paige.
Senator Patty Murray press release.
Senator Charles Schumer press release.

Repost from Great Britain's Socialist Worker.
C.I. repost.  And we're missing something so we need to stop the note and look.  Okay, a Workers World repost is not here.  We don't know what happened.  We had copied and pasted one.  Who knows.  We'll include them next week.  But this piece by Teresa Gutierrez is what we had planned to include this edition.


That's it for this week.



Editorial: Do Not Give That Man A Drone!

I see Ba'athists



Nouri is a failure.





She pleaded ignorance.

He wants drones.





She sang so much, she wrote so little (Ava and C.I.)

Linda Ronstadt's is know for being the voice of seventies radio in a way that few other men or women came close.  In a better world, aspiring singers would have emulated her and not the vocal gymnastics of plastic soul.  Simple Dreams, her new autobiography, charts the cost it takes to earn that voice as well as how quickly you can lose a voice worth listening to -- even in the book you write yourself.


Looking back on her career, Ronstadt's most important imparted lesson is you can't grow stagnant.

She grew up in a family with musical diversity at a time when even top forty radio offered a bit of diversity.  Performing live led her to California and folk rock gave Ronstadt her first hit ("Different Drum").  She could have stayed with the same formula but didn't.

She sought out songs that really spoke to her.  Anna McGarrigle's "Heart Like A Wheel" was one such song but it was difficult to get support for recording it.  (Producer Peter Asher would hear her performing it live and the song would go on to be the title track of her first chart topping album.)   Finding the material that moved her was not step two and meanings, not beats, were part of that important search.

Surroundings also shaped her sound.   She acknowledges that the popularity that propelled her from club performances to arenas impacted the music because so much was getting lost in the shift. Her number one hit, "You're No Good," also resulted from the demands of performing.  She needed an uptempo song to close with and this Betty Everett 60s classic suited that need.  A major reworking of the song resulted in Linda's biggest hit.

Before the seventies were over, she was exploring three-part-harmony with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.  This would eventually lead to an eighties country chart topping album (Trio) and a 1999 sequel that went top ten on the country charts (Trio II).  The eighties would find her performing live in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Pirates of Penzance in Central Park and then on Broadway (big change, Patricia Routledge was replaced with Estelle Parsons on Broadway in the role of Ruth) and then in the film (Angela Lansbury took over the role of Ruth).  She'd follow that succeess (Tony and Golden Globe nominations) with the far less successful performance in La boheme.

But by then, she'd found a new recording passion: torch songs. 1983's What's New would be a breakout success.  The follow up, Lush Life, less so.  By the time For Sentimental Reasons was released (1986), she was trying her fan's patience.  That's not noted.  It should be.

Pursuing your muse is important.  And Linda learned much from the three albums of torch songs and the mariachi Canciones de Mi Padre and the country and western Trio that followed.  But five albums of doing everything but what your fans want?

In 1989, Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind found her returning to modern pop and it was a hard sale.  Radio would have to create hits before the album really started selling.  It would have been nice if Linda could have reflected on that.

How do you go from a string of number one albums, being crowned the singer of the decade, selling out arenas and stadiums, to left without an audience?  And how does that feel?

Maybe it felt great.

Maybe it felt freeing.

Linda, for example, has as much a tortured relationship with the press over their calling her a country singer (in fairness, she raked up 7 top twenty country hits in the 70s) as she has with them focusing on her love life.

So maybe the 80s muse she followed -- operetta, opera, big band, Spanish-language mariachi and country and western -- was a liberating grenade that took out all expectations?

But by the 90s, there's a tone, a slight trace, of what happened.  It's never fully formulated or outright stated.  It's just there in the same way her long love of animals is just there. (See the passage where she refers to sneaking her favorite ballads onto the albums -- she's making a comparison to when she'd sneak in medicine to her dog.  But she doesn't mention the dog and readers may be left confused.)

If you're going to write about how you kept growing artistically, you also need to note how much the growth cost.  Joni Mitchell, for example, has never shied from explaining how fame turns on you.

Linda never shies from Joni and mentions her in passing several times in the book.

Not noted in the book?

Carly Simon.

It's a glaring omission.

For a number of reasons including that 1981 found Carly Simon performing a collection of jazz standards (plus Simon's "From The Heart") on the album Torch.  Stephen Holden would review the album for Rolling Stone (which gave it four stars) and he'd note, "Until now, the only rock singer who's really embraced this genre has been Harry Nilsson."

Linda's three torch albums followed Carly's 1981 release.  Linda wouldn't be the last to copy Carly.  But in a book of grace and praise, Ronstadt's failure to credit Carly stands out.  We know why it happened.

Linda didn't want to make waves.

Ever since James Taylor's crazy mother Gertrude went ballistic over a photo of Carly and James singing live on Martha's Vineyard -- a photo that revealed just how old and ugly James was -- he's really demanded that friends not mention Carly.  (For the record, James Taylor's Mommy issues rival those of Norman Bates.)

Linda didn't want to make waves.

Too bad.  It hurts her book.

To her credit, Linda doesn't foam at the mouth with school girl lust over Taylor the way Carole King did (see  "Carole King's Conditioned Role and Desire (Ava and C.I.").  But her failure to even acknowledge Carly will be seen as bitchy by many.

That's because the two aren't just peers, they're often tossed up against each other in fan discussions (such as here).  This would have been a great time for Linda to have made clear there was no rivalry.  The press was trying to create one just last year in coverage over the two women being signed to write their autobiographies.

But they are peers.

And it's time women stopped playing so stupid.

Linda will get into The Rock &; Roll Hall of Fame (she's on the list of nominees) and will become one of the few women to do so.  Would she have (finally) made the list were it not for her revealing she had Parkinson's in August?  Maybe not.  There's been no push for Linda until now.

But the reason so few women are in The Hall?

Sexism.  That includes women playing into it.

As long as some women vie for the token role in a male defined world, women will be under-represented in all walks of life including artistic recognition.

Women need to start linking with their peers when they write books.  They need to create a team.  That's what the guys and their fan boys have done.

Women could and should do the same.

And a sense that they have each other's back would go a long way towards helping all women.

Linda should know that.  When she was doing her torch song albums, Rickie Lee Jones publicly mocked her and what Rickie saw as Linda's failed attempts at singing jazz.  As a result of a number of other issues -- including Linda performing in South Africa during apartheid -- people were lining up behind Rickie.  The only thing that really sent the villagers home with their torches was Joni Mitchell speaking up.

It's not in the book, so much isn't.  But it happened and Linda knows it did and Linda was grateful for Joni's support.

Unlike Linda, Joni Mitchell can, and will, speak of Carly Simon.  It goes to strength and confidence.

Carly?  There's not a more generous person when it comes to crediting her female peers.  She's also extremely generous when it comes to crediting women who came before (such as Odetta and Judy Collins).

And that's why it's really starting to piss a lot of people off that so many are basically taking sides in a marriage which dissolved in 1983.  It's why a number of us are starting to point out how sick and disgusting James Taylor is.

One of our favorite Carly songs is about how James tries to ban her name and her presence.  From the opening verse of 1995's "Halfway 'Round The World."

Thank you for informing me
That I was banned from Canada
It comes as no surprise to me
Last month it was Africa
Since you’ve been ambassador
There's trouble at the border
La la la la la la la
Halfway 'round the world

In the bridge, Carly observes:

For whatever reason
You would keep me
Halfway 'round the world
I believe it's like a kind of compliment
I must be quite a girl
Quite a girl
La la la la la la la
Halfway 'round the world

Ir's an obsession on James' part.

Peers in the music industry are not sycophants like the late Timothy White, they don't need to behave like him.  (For really bad biography, see White's book on Taylor and grasp how hard  White worked -- at Taylor's request -- to render Carly and her ten year marriage to James invisible.)

Those who are choosing to tell their own stories and omitting Carly?

They look petty.

And they harm women in the process, all woman.

But to those who don't know what's going on, they just look petty.

And that's a shame because Linda's got praise for Emmylou and Dolly, and for Nicolette Larson and Kate and Anna McGarrigle (Loudon Wainwright III issued no gag order over his ex-wife Kate) and Maria Muldaur and Chrissie Hynde.  She even shares a brief conversation she once had with Janis Joplin.  But she can't even mention Carly's name.  Which led a man who once played guitar for Linda to tell us we were falling for the trap, "She's not gracious.  She's only praising women who aren't her peers.

And that's how some will read the book.  As Linda herself writes, she wasn't very gracious to others during the seventies when she was crowned The/A Queen of Rock.

The omission of Carly damages the way Linda's seen.  It also begs readers to wonder about other omissions.

There's her love life.  Linda has every right to close the door on that and has many times.  But if you're going to write about your affair -- and she does -- with Jerry Brown (California's perennial governor), you've opened that door and people have every right to wonder why you're not writing of others (for example, George Lucas -- which was a much more serious affair than the one with Brown).

There's her breaking the United Nations cultural boycott so she could go to South Africa.  She wasn't the only artist to do so in the eighties. Tina Turner did.  Tina Turner was flat broke and took on all the debt from the cancelled tour when she walked out on the abusive Ike Turner.  Tina had no recording contract but she had the IRS at every concert grabbing their take of the house.  By contrast, Linda was the most successful female singer in the US in terms of money.  The year before had brought not only another chart hit, another hit album but also big money from the tour including big money from NBC to broadcast a concert live on their radio stations.  So her decision to go to South Africa is not the same as others.

Equally true, Tina talked about it in real time, talked about it in her book I, Tina and has never shied from the topic.

Linda doesn't talk about her trip these days.  And she doesn't write about it in the book. But Aaron Latham (Rolling Stone) covered the 1983 South Africa concert tour:

Linda Ronstadt is special, and yet she went to South Africa. She is special, and yet she chose to perform in a reviled racist country. She is special, and yet she gave six concerts in the cradle of apartheid. She is special, and yet she lent her talents to an especially mean place. She is special, and yet she allowed her very specialness to be exploited by an outlaw nation in search of legitimacy. Her special price: $500,000. 
[. . .]

 "The last place for a boycott is in the arts. I don't like being told I can't go somewhere. Like when they told Jane Fonda she couldn't go to North Vietnam. Of course she should have gone to North Vietnam."
But, of course, Jane Fonda was not paid a half-million dollars to visit Hanoi. 

That may seem like ancient history to some but, if that's the case, so is the career that resulted in eleven Grammy wins for Linda.  And while she stays silent, her fans try to grapple with her decision to break the boycott and perform in South Africa.  When she appeared last month on Lenoard Lopate's WYNC show, a third of the listener comments were about her 1983 performances in South Africa.  More commented on that than did on her Parkinson's.

Again, it didn't have to be this way.

But what a person doesn't say can be as important as what they do say and when you're omissions are notable, one leads to another.

The omissions, and there are many more, overshadow this slim but often charming book.  Careful readers will not only notice the omissions, they'll notice that the singer really wanted to be an actress.  For example, the book features 16 pages of photos -- far too many of her in The Pirates of Penzance -- and she writes at length about taping an episode of The Muppets' TV show -- writes at great length about that, far more space than she gives to recording any of her number one albums.

TV: It bites?

Friday, NBC's Dracula debuted Friday night on NBC and the reactions have been humorous.  A lot of critics miss the point of the series and a lot of whiners make clear they need blood, blood, blood.  We're left with the impression that the actual vampires aren't in fiction but off screen in real life.


Yes, we're talking about Charlie Rose The Week (PBS) but we're really not talking about Robert Redford.  He is the undead, agreed, and, in high def, you couldn't miss all the cracks.  Parts of his face were like a smooth cake but the bulk was all these cracks and fissures.  And, of course, that awful wig.

But, again, we're not talking about the man whose biggest grossing film is the backlash film Indecent Proposal -- where he pays a million dollars to sleep with Demi Moore -- what a proud moment that must be for 'liberal' Redford.

We're talking about creepy Mike Allen (POLITICO) who managed to be weird from the start with his strange delivery of "Charlie, thanks for having me here."

We should probably mention that The Week brings a 'new' Charlie Rose.  He often stands at a pub table (gone is the large dining table) with a guest.  He did with Mike Allen and all that did was allow Allen to jump up and down while speaking (such as when he says "to vent").  If there's anything worse than talking heads, it's jumping beans.

As he babbled on, he did note at one point that "there are a lot of questions."  But he provided no answers, none that mattered.  Except maybe that a post-middle age man mincing on television is even more uncomfortable in high def (especially noticeable after Charlie Rose wrongly calls US Senator Patty Murray "Patty Mary").

We're not the first to notice Mike Allen's bizarre self-presentation.  For instance, in This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking! - in America's Gilded Capital, Mark Leibovich writes:

Every time Allen starts to speak -- in person or on the air -- his eyes bulge for an instant as if he has just seen a light go on.  His mannerisms resemble an almost childlike mimicry of a politician -- the incessant thanking, the deference, the greetings, the smiles with teeth clenched, and the ability to project belief in the purity of his own voice and motivations. 

"Your money would be on status quo," Allen says at last to Charlie Rose regarding the 2014 elections.

And that's all he offered, handicapping.

This wasn't news.  It wasn't news about ObamaCare, it wasn't news about the ended shutdown.

It was garbage.

It's been called gossip and we can see that argument but we think it's even worse.  Watching Allen perform on Charlie Rose's 'public affairs' and 'news' program, we wondered when Diana Christensen took over PBS programming?  Faye Dunaway won an Academy Award for playing TV exec  Christensen in the film Network and among Diana's 'fixes' was adding Sybil the Soothsayer to The Network News Hour.

Mike Allen ignored facts and events to peer into the future -- into the 2014 election and so much more.

Charlie Rose embarrassed himself and his program.

Last week, a House Ways and Means Subcommittee held a hearing on child trafficking in the United States.  That was actual news.  The news industry responded by looking the other way and acting as though the hearing did not take place.  (Nicki Rossoll wrote a blog post on the hearing for ABC News and Nick Swartsell wrote a blog post on the hearing for The Dallas Morning News.)

Nicholas Kristof and his Coven of Sex Slaves, who are so quick to use the topic in other countries to argue for war, stayed silent.  Apparently human trafficking only matters when it can be used to embarrass a foreign country.

As the garbage from The Week never ended, we were left with the reality that there was far more value in NBC's Dracula.

Some critics have whined that the show fails to reinterpret (or 'reimagine') the classic story.


Did they watch?

Do they have head injuries?

In 1896 England, Dracula is posing as an American claiming to have created a wireless form of electricity.  This is part of his effort to bring down the oil cartel (The Order of the Dragon), "No money, no power, no Order."

How do you miss that?

This is the Dracula of the 99%.

And he's played by 100% sexy Jonathan Rhys Meyers.   He's been acting up a storm and smoldering in everything from Match Point and The Tudors to From Paris With Love.  In the series, Dracula is brought back to life by a new partner, Van Helsing (Thomas Kretschmann).  Van Helsing is out to bring down the oil cartel as well (for murdering his family).  Rounding out the strong cast are Jessica De Gouw (Mina), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Jonathan Harker -- who is now a reporter), Katie McGrath (Lucy) and Victoria Smurfit (Lady Jayne Wetherby).

Dracula, the blood sucker, delivers a a lusty, zesty, passionate and mysterious show.  Charlie Rose and The Week and his guests?  It's just more of the undead taking up space.

November 23, 1963 questions and hypocrisies


When the Dallas police entered The Texas Theater and arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, the film playing was War Is Hell starring Audie Murphy.  Then and over the next few days in Dallas, people could see Bob Hope and Doris Day in a number of films -- Hope (with Lucille Ball in the first two) Fancy Pants, Critic's Choice and Road To Hong Kong) and Day (Jumbo and The Thrill of It All).  In local theaters and at drive-ins, Dallas area residents could also go see Sandra Dee (in Gidget, Tammy Tell Me True,  or with Jimmy Stewart in Take Her, She's Mine), Jack Lemmon in Under The Yum Yum Tree, Jayne Mansfield in the "uncut, uncensored European version of" Promises, Promises (playing at the Lone Star with Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman . . . ),  Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor with Richard Burton in The VIPs, Paul Newman and Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth, Dean Martin and Geraldine Page in Toys In The Attic, Frank Sinatra in Come Blow Your Horn, Jimmy Srewart in The FBI Story, Elvis in It Happened At World's Fair and Love Me Tender, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in A New Kind of Love, Steve McQueen in Honeymoon Machine (at the Delman where children under twelve got in  "FREE With Parent"), Lana Turner in By Love Possessed, assorted horror films (Blood Of Dracula, The Undead, How To Make a Monster), westerns (Cattle King, Alan Ladd's One Foot In Hell, McLintock, etc.), war films (the aforementioned War Is Hell, Van Heflin and Rita Moreno in Cry of Battle, etc) and much more including Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.  and Fantasia.

In all, on Saturday and Sunday, there were over 65 different films playing. Those choosing to stay at home in those pre-home video days (and pre-cable) were out of luck as Dallas, like the rest of the nation, imposed an entertainment blackout.  The three network affiliates (there was only ABC, NBC and CBS then) were not featuring entertainment programs (or commercials) would carry news specials on JFK from the networks but should the networks not offer those  or, worse, go back to entertainment programming (they didn't), local news specials or "religious music" would go out over the TV airwaves.  Radio?  Only KNOK planned to offer music (KVIL planned to offer brefitting music  -- we have no idea either -- and KLIF planned to offer what they defined as "soft music").

What happened?  Apparently America decided they had to compete with the BBC which, as UPI noted, had stopped "regular broadcasting for several moments and played funeral music by Brahms" upon broadcasting the news of President John F. Kennedy's death.  We would argue it then became a competition to see who could outdo themselves.  National mourning?  That doesn't need to be imposed.  Fortunately, networks were losing millions in advertising so, after the Monday funeral, the airwave 'grieving' ended.

All of the movie, TV and radio programming noted above and more is featured in the November 23, 1963 issue of The Dallas Morning News.  Not only are they currently doing a JFK50 online series, they've also brought back the November 23, 1963 issue in full (you can purchase it here online).


Backstory, Ty is an Ebay junkie and noted all these copies of this issue of The Dallas Morning News on Ebay, with prices as high as $125.  What was going on?  The 50th anniversary was causing people to clean out their attics?  And, if so, why weren't they also selling that day's edition of The Dallas Times Herald?  That's when our own Dallas explained that people on E-bay were lying.  They were selling reprints. He bought one himself, a slice of pizza and a Coke at a 7-11 in Denton a few weeks ago.  The bill came to three bucks and change.  He asked, "Are you sure?"  The clerk was.  Dallas walked to the car with the dollar slice of pizza, the $1.69 Coke and the $3,95 paper (at the link we provided earlier, it's $4.95) and was still trying to figure it out.  Driving away, it hit him, the clerk charged him a nickle for the paper.  The paper's wrapped in plastic and, on the back, there's an insert noting the price is $3.95 but the front, where the clerk looked, has no insert and says "PRICE 5 CENTS" -- which is what Dallas got charged.

So, first off, readers beware of pricey Ebay items.

Second, those with questions about the assassination may find the edition of interest.  And, certainly, all the stories about Oswald in the edition are rather amazing.  Kent Biffle, for instance, knew just how and from where ("a dusty corner") JFK had been shot.  His article presents it as fact even though the claim had not been established in court and Kent Biffle is supposed to be reporting, not opining.  Oswald was arrested Friday afternoon but they had a wealth of stories when they went to print after midnight.  Section 1, page 5, for example, includes not just John Mashek (reporting from DC) offering "Oswald Asked Aid To Return to U.S." (about his Soviet Union exile period), but also Hugh Aynesworth's "Oswald Rented Room Under Alias," John Geddie's anonymous sourced "Oswald Said Opposed to Authority"  in which an unnamed police officer who allegedly attended 5th through 11th grades with Oswald in Fort Worth dishes.

Problem with that dish?  Oswald attended 7th grade in New York and eighth, ninth and tenth grade in New Orleans.

Page six has another Kent Biffle article, lengthy, and Biffle's just all over the place.  He even speaks with Mrs. Howard Green, married to a state legislator.  She, he explains, taught Oswald in fifth grade at Ridglea Elementary School.

Did she really say that?

If so, her memory was awful.  The school's name was Ridglea West Elementary School -- it was not the only Ridglea in Fort Worth (for example,  Ridglea Hills Elementary School was around back then and is still around today).

Was it her mistake or Biffle's?

Seems that's a pretty key detail.  And if she can remember, just as she hears the news that Oswald has been arrested, that he was in her fifth grade class -- in 1950, thirteen years prior -- and he was this "bookish" "loner" and more?

Well, she's just amazing.

But thing is, she didn't testify to the Warren Commission.  They have a host of people who gave them the background on Oswald's early life, but she's not one of them.

Yet the day Kennedy was assassinated, she was a little chatterbox to Kent Biffle.

Maybe what she said was true?

Maybe it was all a performance?

Acting runs in the family.  Ethan Hawke's her grandson.

He's written of his grandfather, Howard Green, but avoided the topic of his grandmother.

Strange, granddaddy was an insignificant state legislator in Texas -- who kept having problems in his own party -- but grandmommy taught Oswald.

Which is the more interesting grandparent?

Page six has more, including an Associated Press report about Oswald's mother "Suspect's Mother Says 'Backs Turned On Me'" about how the woman phoned The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, upon learning of her son's arrest, and asked that someone drive her to Dallas.  On the journey, she related her friends turned their backs on her when Oswald defected (or 'defected') to the Soviet Union and she was sure the same would happen now.  One of the two reporters taking her to Dallas?  Bob Scieffer who you know today from CBS' Face The Nation and who, on today's Face The Nation, spoke with Philip Shenon about Shenon's new book A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination.

Third, it's a moment in history.  The edition is filled with stories about reactions of various officials (including Winston Churchill), various recounting of the events, a two-page overview of JFK's presidency by the Associated Press, and more.

And there are other historical moments.  There's an AP report from Baghdad about new president Abdel Salam Aref claiming he wants "all-Arab unity" and close ties with Syria, India sent up a rocket and more.  In Dallas? Roger R. Clark was found innocent of a "smut charge" for selling Girls of Club Sappho at Newsland Bookstore while a hung jury deadlocked on hairdresser John William Baden who was accused of selling pot to police officer D.A. Green at a Lemmon Avenue beauty shop.  Baden was said to have taken the pot out of tin cans and put it in a fruit jar with the advisory to Green that he "throw the fruit jar out of my care if I saw any squad car trailing me."  The jury all felt Baden was guilty but "one juror insisted on a lower penalty than the others were willing to asses."  That penalty that the prosecution was seeking?  At least 25 years behind bars.

Some will take exception to our opening.

We don't believe in enforced 'grieving.'

We also don't like hypocrisy, in case you haven't noticed.

While The Dallas Morning News is treating the ban on commercials (on radio and TV) as something great, they've got ads on every page but the front page.  They've also got 13 pages of classifieds.  And they run the funnies.  Not just the ones on pages two and three of section four.  In the news section, page seven, you get a two-panel (bad) Dennis The Menace comic by Hank Ketcham where Dennis looks in a fish bowl in panel one and then, in panel two, says to his mother in the kitchen, "Boy! When you said we were having fish for dinner . . ."

So JFK's assassination required broadcast outlets to cease regular programming for days and to drop commericals (how they make money) but newspapers continued to run comics, classifieds, ads and 'reports' like Carol Channing causing waves by dropping out of a play to do a new musical (Hello Dolly), or about the chimpanzee appearing in Shirley MacLaine's What A Way To Go or about changes on the long running TV show Lassie or about Danny Thomas' announcement that he'll be making six color TV broadcasts in the near future?

Honestly, we enjoyed all those entertainment stories.  We're sure they provided relief and comfort to Dallas readers on November 23, 1963 as well.  But they should have been able to sample something similar on TV and radio.  People mourn in a variety of ways and, as Americans, no one even has to mourn at all if they don't want to (either because they don't care or they don't handle/cope with mourning).  9-11?  On September 12th, there was massive coverage of the 9-11 attacks.  There were also other choices. In prime time, the WB broadcast 7th Heaven and Gilmore Girls while UPN offered Star Trek: Voyager and Special Units.  By Saturday the 15th,  the big four networks had returned to offering entertainment during prime time.  ABC was airing Hope Floats, CBS went with two episodes of Touched by an Angel and one of The District, NBC offered Growing Up Brady (movie about the TV show The Brady Bunch) and Fox offered America's Most Wanted.

Edith gets a Google

Katharine Hepburn won four Academy Awards.  Edith Head won twice that many.

edith head

Head, who just got a Google doodle, was a costume designer whose work won her acclaim and 35 Academy Award nominations (8 wins).  Her wins, in reverse order, were for The Sting, The Facts of Life (Lucille Ball's wardrobe), Roman Holiday, A Place in the Sun, All About Eve, Samson and Delilah and The Heiress.  

The black dress Bette Davis wears in All About Eve that gathers around her shoulders?  A mistake.  The neckline was was too large and Bette came up with the idea of pulling it down around her shoulders.

Bette Davis was among the women she clothed in film -- a long list which also includes Audrey Hepburn, Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway, Doris Day, Ann-Margret,  Julie Andrews, Marlene Dietrich, Kim Novak, Shirley MacLaine, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Rita Hayworth, Sophia Loren, Jane Wyman, Valerie Perrine, Tippi Hedren, Hedy Lamarr, Gloria Swanson, Joan Fonataine, Jaqueline Bisset, Carmen Miranda, Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck, Veronica Lake, Mary Tyler Moore, Ginger Rogers, Frances Farmer, Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour, Judy Garland  and Mae West.  She was responsible for designing Natalie Wood's wardrobe seven films: Love with the Proper Stranger, Sex and the Single Girl, Inside Daisy Clover, The Great Race, Penelope, This Property Is Condemned and The Last Married Couple in America.

That last one, the Natalie Wood comedy, would be Head's second to last film.  She'd finish Steve Martin's Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid just before she passed away.  That 1982 film notes in the credits:

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid was Edith Head's final film.  To her, and to all the brilliant technical and creative people who worked on the films of the 1940s and 1950s, this motion picture is affectionately dedicated.




Jim (Con't):  Grant wants more book coverage.  Ava and C.I. just covered Linda Ronstadt's new book Simple Dreams -- I mean they just finished writing that piece.  I read it out loud to everyone and we were thrilled and ready for a roundtable.  They objected.  Ava, why?

Ava: We still have to write our TV piece.  If we are going to do a roundtable, C.I. and I would prefer to do it after we're done with our TV piece.

Jim: C.I., you know Linda and that's one reason you didn't want to cover the book.

C.I.: Correct.  She has Parkinson's, as she announced in August.  I like Linda but after that announcement wasn't sure about the book because I was afraid that I'd censor myself as a result.

Jim: But you didn't and what's interesting to me is you and Ava enjoyed the book and thought you would be writing a rave review.  That didn't happen.

Ava: We like the book in many ways.  But we don't go into a piece with the idea that we know where it's going.  We explore.  C.I. will note something to me that I missed, I'll do the same with her.  We were half-way into the piece when we realized we were going to use a quote from a man who used to play with Linda and that we were going to call out the book's omissions.  

Jim: And you two have talked about that before and, honestly, I really have never taken it seriously.  I always just assume that's what you say.  But we were on the phone Friday evening discussing your upcoming book piece and I mean, it spun around completely when you sat down to write it.  I mention that because reader Sally says she really feels, when she reads your TV pieces, like a conversation is taking place and Brandon says there's so much life in the writing you two do.

Ava: We're two people who respect each other's opinions and trust each other enough to fly by the seat of our pants.  We don't know what we're doing until we do it.  Suddenly, a phone call or a conversation takes new meaning and we use it in what we're writing.  We don't come in with fixed notions.  And that's why we'd prefer to do the roundtable after we do our TV piece.

Jim: Last week's "TV: NBC provides the glee" was huge.  I noted in my note that edition that you two were doing reporting and that I wish you'd do that more often.  Sharon, Jeremy, Lloyd, Rory, Jason, Diane and Jeff e-mailed to say they agreed with me on that.  To clarify for anyone not familiar, Ava and C.I. cover TV for this site and do a great job.  Often, they just offer analysis.  Sometimes, they'll mix in some reporting.  Every now and then, the piece is just reporting, like 2011's "TV: Why bad TV happens to good viewers."  Now reader Bill has a complaint.  He thinks it was cruel of you to make fun of a child's acting abilities?

Ava: I don't know he's talking about.  We've never -- what is he talking about?

Jim: He just e-mailed that he thought it was cruel.

Ava: I have no idea.  

C.I.: He's not talking about our writing.  In -- what was it, in "TV: The sewer that is NBC" there's a comment, that's what he's talking about.  

Jim: Okay, I got it up.  Hold on.  What am I looking for?

C.I.: Somewhere around Sean Saves The World, we note we don't cover child actors.

Jim: Got it.  "Don't bring up the child actor.  We've been on the beat forever and, in 2005, once covered a child's acting abilities.  A friend then called us on that.  We've never reviewed child actors since."  That's what he's talking about?

C.I.: If he's talking about our writing, yes.  For some reason, he felt the need to judge Ava and myself and used that line to insist we had been cruel to children.  Try reading, Bill.  The show was Hope & Faith, it was April 2005.  We praised two child actors in it and we noted the bad writing of two children characters -- stressing it was the bad writing.  We would not insult a child actor, that's pretty stupid to do.  But, a friend who was a child actor and had to struggle to become accepted as an adult actress, called us regarding the praise.  She pointed out that if she were ten and came across us praising a child, if it was her, the expectations would be heavy.  If she was in the show or another show we had just written about and she hadn't been praised -- even though she hadn't been trashed -- she'd be convinced she was a failure.  So that's why we don't mess with children in our reviews.  Even praise could cause problems.  So we don't cover children.  We never did a hit piece on child actors, Bill misinterpreted the statement and wanted to gripe about us so he invented something that never happened.

Ava: Okay, that makes sense.  I was wondering because we don't say bad things about children and, after that one time, we don't even say good things.  That's why we never reviewed Malcolm In The Middle and one of the reasons that we've still yet to weigh in on Modern Family.  

Dona: On books, Jim's pointing to me, in addition to Ava and C.I.'s book pieces, we did two this summer "Rock Chick: Book discussion" and "Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Resistance."  Ava, C.I. and Betty are actually batting around an idea that we're supportive of which would increase book coverage here.  But we are covering books.  We also cover comic books regularly as well.

Ty: Jim's pointing at me.  One of the most popular pieces is The TESR Test Kitchen series.  Every week, for example, at least 30 e-mails come in asking us to taste this food or drink.  If people stopped e-mailing suggestions tomorrow, I'm sure what we already have would be enough to last a year or two.  The TESR series is an attempt to have a little fun and to try a new product.  Some readers have proposed lengthy articles.  No.  This was a one-off.  We weren't planning on it but we needed something -- and needed something quick -- to fill holes in our planned edition.  So this came up as a short feature.

Jess:  Thomas wants more movie coverage.  We have a regular feature, Film Classics of the 20th Century.  I don't believe we've done that since August.  We're trying to do one this edition.  Stan covers movies at his site.  Betty sometimes does a movie review at her site and Ann and Stan look at the year in DVDs each new year.  I know the week night bloggers are planning another movie theme post where they're all going to be blogging about a movie topic on the same night.  Like when they all did their Bette Davis movie posts earlier this month: "Old Acquaintance," "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?," "The Letter," "beyond the forest," "Dark Victory," "All About Eve," "Jezebel," "Dead Ringer," "Now, Voyager," "The Little Foxes" and "Working It For BP (Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte)."  But in terms of films on the big screen?  We can repost but we're not really covering those.  It goes against our purpose as we outlined it eight years ago.  We're happy to cover home video.

Jim: Reader Bailey wants more coverage of spying and notes that Kat's "The illegal spying" and Marcia's "The illegal spying" went up within minutes of each other and had the same title but were different posts.

Marcia: I was embarrassed.  I was just grabbing a title.  When I saw it was also Kat's, I was embarrassed because she wrote a lot more on the topic than I did and I thought, "Please don't let people skip her post thinking they've already read it at my site."

Kat: Don't give it a second thought.  And my readers want more music coverage from me.  Not just reviews.  They know there probably won't be another for a bit.  But they want music blog posts.  I do those sometimes but sometimes I have to cover what's going on.  Like Bailey, I think the illegal spying by the US government is a big issue.  That's why I wrote about it, that's why Marcia did.  It has been covered here at Third repeatedly.

Trina: And it's on every week's list.  Sometimes our attempt at an article on the topic fails and we're able to grab something on the topic for a Truest or a Tweet of the week.  But we have covered it here and people need to realize that in our weekly writing session, we try a lot of topics that we're unable to pull off.  So you need to check the truest statements of the week and other features to see if we're ignoring a topic or not.  

Jim: Good point, Trina.  Thank you for that.  Each week, we have four to five articles which fail to make the cut.  We had a tech article we tried a few weeks back that Ruth and Mike were leaders on.  Mike?

Mike: I got a Samsung tablet.  I don't hate it.  But I bought it mainly because I was bored and we were in airport -- Elaine, our child and me -- and my iPad was in my suitcase.  And there has been so much confusion for me with regard to this tablet.  Ruth got one as well and she read the instructions in full and still had problems.  Ruth?

Ruth: Let me impart our big knowledge.  To charge, plug it into your laptop with the cord that goes under "SAMSUNG."  You can also plug that into an electrical outlet . . . If you have a power cord!  They enclose this piece that I could not figure out forever.  The same end that you plug into your laptop?  You can plug that into this piece.  You then put this piece on a power cord.  But Samsung didn't feel the need to provide you with one and how do you know it's not going to be too much power and overcharge it.

Isaiah: Which is my problem or I caused the problem.  I dropped my laptop and it shattered.  This was like back in June.  And I go to Office Max -- because that's right next to the house.  I get a brand new laptop for less than 300 and I plug it in to charge.  And it never charges, after several hours.  I take it back and the guy looks at it and says it's fried and gives me a new one.  I take it home and am about to plug it in when I realize that I used the wrong cord last time.  I used the cord from the laptop I dropped.  Both were HPs but the one I dropped was huge and this one is much smaller.  I share that story with Ruth and freak her out about her tablet.

Mike: And that's why we wanted to write about the tablet.  It's really a good tablet.  I actually prefer it to my iPad but it's features are not explained well.

Ruth: There are computer people.  C.I.'s one.  Give her five minute with any cell or tablet or laptop or whatever and she will be able to show you what it can do.  But I am not so inclined.  

Rebecca: I want to get back to what gets written.  First off, it's not easy to produce craft.  I'm not trying to be insulting.  But every week we do, for example, Iraq.  Sometimes, it's just not there.  Not because we don't care but because of some other reason.  For example, at my site last week?  I didn't do a theme post, I nixed us doing one.  I was too tired the whole week.  I was about to fall asleep the night I wrote "lee majors was just eye candy" -- about to fall asleep at the computer.  And my plan was to write about Guantanamo but I was just falling asleep.  I shook myself awake and thought of Lee Majors, I'd watched The Six Million Dollar Man that day, and ended up with this ridiculously hugely viewed post.  I'm embarrassed.  There were like 89,000 views of it by Friday and it was a nothing post that I don't even remember because I was that tired.

Elaine: And your point, Rebecca?

Rebecca: Yeah, my point.  Sorry.  The important topics do need covering.  But some times, you're just not up to it.

Elaine: I agree and I disagree.  If I do one half-way decent post on a serious topic in a week, I'm okay with that.  But I have to have at least one.

Stan: I feel lazy because I spent the whole summer on TV and movies at my site and they still take up 3 posts a week.

Elaine: No, don't.  Your "The Good Wife part two" was about the divisions in this country and I thought a rather inspired take.  More importantly, arts coverage is important.  Art can be a metaphor, it can be so much.  Equally true, as a society we seem to forever be losing our abilities to address art -- let alone analyze.  So art critiques -- like so many of you do at your own sites -- can actually spark thoughts and discussions.  

Cedric: I agree with Elaine.  For me, the problem is those people who just write talking points at their sites.  You know idiots like --

Wally: Joan Walsh?

Cedric: Great example.  She's tearing into Ezra Klein last week for telling the truth about signing up for ObamaCare.  The truth, Joan explains, must not be told because then the right will run with it and the media will cover it and blah blah.  She's an idiot.  She's just admitted she'll lie in her own column for partisan reasons.  She really should have been fired by Salon long ago.

Wally: The day she is, that's the day Chris Matthews stops bringing her on his lousy program.

Cedric: In that case, let me start a petition to hasten her disappearance from TV.

Ann: I agree with Rebecca and Elaine's points as well as Cedric's.  I'm the last one who started a website in this group so let me talk as someone who read this site long before I participated in the writing here.  Ava and C.I. are the site's calling card.  Their TV coverage is the reason I kept coming back -- and even the reason I remembered the site.  They were covering some stupid show and were doing it in a fictional way where they interjected themselves as characters and they managed to bring war resistance into that piece.  I loved it.

Jim: C.I.?  Ava? 

Ava and C.I.: Hidden Palms.

Jim: I can't even picture that show in my head right now.  Anyway, Ann?

Ann: And that's what kept bringing  me back.  I'd read the other pieces but the TV is what brought me back.  You are a once a week site and sometimes that wasn't enough so I'd use the archives and find older TV pieces that Ava and C.I. had written before I started reading this site in the summer of 2007.

Dona: I agree, Ann.  It's the first thing that registers about this site, it's the focus of the bulk of the e-mails and it is the strongest writing here. I've always said that if I could save anything from this site it would be Ava and C.I.'s TV pieces and a few of our editorials.

Betty: Agreed.  And it's also true that, here, we're always trying to find new features.  That's what Ava, C.I. and I are working on right now, that Jim was talking about.  A way to up book coverage.  Every week, Ava and C.I. cover TV.  We do an editorial and we do a series of other articles.  It's a mix.  And I think that's why the site works and why we're still all able to stand each other.  Seriously, when we're trying to write a serious article and it's not working -- after several attempts and drafts -- if we weren't able to say, "Okay, let's do something else," we would be at each others' throats.

Mike: That's an important point.  You really have to accept that sometimes an idea -- no matter how important -- is just not going to work.  That's probably been the biggest lesson I've learned here.  

Jim: Alright, we'll wrap it up with that.  Again, this is a rush transcript.

Tweet of the week

  • I know this is terribly radical, but 1) the privacy rights of Americans matter, and 2) the privacy rights of non-Americans do, too.
  • Photo of the week


    From Carly Simon's "Safe and Sound:" (written by Carly and Jacob Brackman, first appears on her Hotcakes album):

    If through all the madness
    We can stick together
    We're safe and sound
    The world's just inside out and upside down

    The kiss in the third photo above created controversy.

    BBC News notes, "Kurdish photographer Kamaran Najm posted Facebook photos of himself and his Dutch girlfriend on the pedestal where the statue stood in Azadi Park, in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah. The artwork, created by local artist Zahir Sidiq in 2009, had been set alight days earlier." Who's having a ridiculous fit over this?   Ahlul Bayt News Agency reports:

    The two Kurdish Islamic parties; Kurdistan Islamic Group (KIG) and Kurdistan Islamic Movement (KIM) denounced the couple’s actions and said their deeds were against Islamic traditions.
    “We are against anything that may be offensive, and we recommend that the love statue be replaced with one of executed Kurdish youths,” said KIM spokesperson Shwan Qaradaghi.
    [. . .]

    Meanwhile, Human and women rights activists have taken to social media to criticize the Kurdish Islamists.
    “In my country kissing is forbidden, but braking graves and statues and blowing yourself up is OK,” wrote women’s rights activist Avin Ibrahim on her Facebook page.

    From The TESR Test Kitchen

    ready for your act
    Don't hold back!

    And Scooby Doo if you come through
    You're going to have yourself a Scooby

    Let's hope it's not Scooby-Doo! LOLLIPOP with POPPING CANDY.

    scooby doo

    The candy is "Imported and Distributed Excluviely by World Confections, Inc" in South Orange, New Jersey.

    The are three packages -- each contains "popping candy" and a lollypop.  Each packet has a flavor: Blue Raspberry, Strawberry and Sour Apple.  All are "artificially flavored."  One envelope of popping candy is 20 calories while one lollypop is 40 calories.  The ingredients?  Sugar and lots of sugar.

    There's also Carbon Dioxide in the popping candy -- it's listed in the ingredients and it's what makes it pop.  It's like briefly having the milky way on your tongue or a shooting star going off in your mouth.  Despite all the sugar, it doesn't produce a really strong taste.

    That may be a good thing.  The lollypop rarely tastes like the billed flavor.  For example, who knew "Blue Raspberry" was code for "watermelon."  The Blue Raspberry tastes exactly like a watermelon flavored Now Or Later.

    The popping candy is worth trying at least once -- it's a different experience than Pop Rocks, for example.  The lollypop can be skipped and, after sampling, that's probably true of the popping candy as well.

    Senator Murray calls out discriminatory hiring practices

    Patty Murray

    Senator Patty Murray (above)  chairs the Senate Budget Committee.  Prior to that, she chaired the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.  She continues to serve on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.  Her office notes:

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                       CONTACT: Murray Press Office
    Thursday, October 24, 2013                                                              (202) 224-2834
    Senator Murray's Statement on Efforts to Correct Discriminatory Hiring Practices for Veterans at BPA
    (Washington D.C.) – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, a senior member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Inspector General report on unlawful hiring practices at Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and the corrective actions being taken by the Department of Energy and BPA.

    “Since they were released earlier this month, I have been extremely disappointed by the findings in the Inspector General’s report on unlawful and discriminatory hiring practices impacting veterans and others at BPA.  As a longtime advocate for servicemembers and veterans, I know well the incredible value that veterans bring to the workplace, and the unacceptable practices described in this report must be fixed as soon as possible.

    “I am encouraged that BPA and DOE are each taking these issues seriously, and as they work together to address these problems, I will continue monitoring the situation closely while working to ensure that BPA maintains the flexibility it needs to provide reliable, low-cost power to the Pacific Northwest. I have spoken with Deputy Secretary Poneman several times since the IG report was released, and he has assured me that while hiring and personnel practices are being addressed, DOE will respect BPA’s authority to set policies that support the Pacific Northwest and its ratepayers.”
    Sean Coit
    Press Secretary
    Office of U.S. Senator Patty Murray

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