Saturday, January 31, 2015
Dateline segment "Obsession", supposedly role-model student responsible for death of fellow musician Jessie Blodgett in WI
Friday, Jan. 30, NBC Datelines presented the story of the
murder of Jessie Blodgett, 19, and accomplished songwriter and musician, in her
own parents’ home in Hartford WI by strangulation on July 15, 2013, in an episode
titled “Obsession”, with Lester Holt and Andrea Canning. The full episode is
here. She had starred in a production of "Fiddler on the Roof".
The perpetrator would be Daniel Bartelt, a classmate and
fellow musician, as with this news story about his conviction. What seems so shocking is that Daniel was a
good student and seemed to be an achiever, perhaps role model. So his sociopathy is very hard to explain and
very unusual. Police investigated his Internet searches and found them to be morbid, to say the least. I remember many good
students from working as a substitute teacher.
A story like this would be akin to learning than one of them had done something
like this, very unlikely in my experience. He was sentenced to life without parole.
Bartelt was also accused of an unrelated attack on a female
on a jogging path; the victim gave evidence that helped police find him and
that provided plenty of DNA forensic evidence for his conviction.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
"Medical Tourism": Inside Man (literally) Morgan Spurlock sacrifices his bod again for art
Tonight, our “Inside Man” Morgan Spurlock risked his own
43-year-old bod, again, for “Medical Tourism”. The main link is here.
Let’s cut to the chase.
I spent probably $65,000 of “estate money” on dental implants. I wonder if this could have been done for a
lot less than this in Thailand or Panama, even allowing air fare and
hotel. I didn’t want the
disruption. But I guess I could have
taken ample laptops with me. I could
have seen the world.
Not only that, but Spurlock thinks that eventually private insurance
companies in the US will eventually come around to encouraging it in some
circumstances, as with retiree health insurance.
The episode starts as Spurlock visits his own physician to
look at a rotator cuff shoulder injury.
He starts getting confusing quotes on what an MRI costs, and wonders
what happens when someone doesn’t have insurance. Soon he looks into the idea of a complete
medical checkup at Bumrungrad Hospital im Bangkok, Thailand.
The hospital is like a luxury hotel, and very efficient,
since it depends on self-paying patients. It has a glorious beach view from
some suites. Warning: Bangkok is at low elevation and prone to floods and typhoons.
In two days, Morgan gets a consultation, various heart
tests, and a colonoscopy, where he swallows a camera. He really becomes “inside man”. Oh, sorry, just as in an earlier episode (April
22, 2014), Morgan’s chest hair is wiped back into boyhood.
There is one patient, whom the UK National Health system had
left quadriplegic, who learns to walk again with very intensive physical therapy.
The illustration is "BI-Buildings" by Teesal
(talk) - self-made. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikipedia.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
CNN's Wolf Bitzer hosts documentary "Voices of Auschwitz"
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer hosted “Voices of Auschwitz” on CNN on Wednesday,
January 28, 2015, one day after the 70th anniversary of the
liberation of Auschwitz on Saturday, January 27, 1945 at 4:30 PM. The main link is here.
Blitzer found out about his ancestors’ capture during WWII
during a CNN ancestry project. But Wikipedia says his parents were Holocaust
survivors from Poland.
Eva Kor, one of two twin sisters at age 10, as one of the
first freed. She had survived horrific
experiments conducted by Joseph Mengele. She also says she forgives her
captors.
Anita Laske-Walfisch actually played the cello at Auschwitz,
and became part of the English Chamber Orchestra. She had been an accomplished
artist before capture, but her situation at home had become desperate after
Nazi invasion. Not all prisoners were
taken at once during invasions.
Martin Greenfield, a tailor, survived on discarded Gestapo
garments in which he kept warm.
Renee Firestone explained how gradually the crisis came, and
shocked everyone was when the Nazis showed up and gave them one hour to pack
up, before three days on the boxcar trains.
She said she had a happy childhood and had no sense of anti-Semitism as growing up until she started
overhearing Hitler’s speeches on the radio. She did some design drawings and
got a “job” making dresses in the camp. After
freedom, she found her brother in Budapest and started a parachute business in
France.
The program concludes with an appearance by Stephen
Spielberg (“Schindler’s List”, 1993, which I saw at the Avalon in Washington DC). An article in the Daily Mail reports that
Spielberg warns of anti-Semitism resurgence, link here. The number of survivors is dwindling.
I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau for a day in May, 1999. I had
arrived on the train from Berlin that morning and took a taxi for a day from
Krakow, which was inexpensive. I then
took the train next day to Warsaw and was surprised to see people farming with
primitive tools from the train. So far,
former East Germany and Poland are the only two former Communist countries I
have visited.
Wikipedia attribution link for picture of barracks ruins at
Birkenau. I think I remember seeing
these, Wiki author is “WeEzE”.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
PBS: "Edison's Miracle of Light"
Tuesday night, January 27, 2015, PBS American Experience presented “Edison’s
Miracle of Light”, a 2-hour biography of inventor Thomas Edison (1847-1931),
who probably has more patented inventions than any other person who has ever
lived. The link is here.
Edison noticed hearing loss as a boy, which actually helped
him focus on work, as he was employed in telegraph offices as a teenager. He always wanted to “be” an inventor.
The idea of recording sounds (eventually leading to the modern
vinyl phonograph record) or images (leading to photography and motion
pictures), making sensory experience permanent, was one of his most important
concepts.
But of course the best known part of his biography was his
introduction of electricity to lower Manhattan, although his direct current
infrastructure would be replaced by alternating current as developed by
Westinghouse.
Edison built homes and later factories in northern New
Jersey, and married twice, having lost his first wife after childbirth.
Monday, January 26, 2015
"The Tragedy of Broken Trust": paid program on the treatment of Oklahoma native tribes
NBC Washington aired a paid program half hour documentary
Sunday January 26, “The Tragedy of Broken Trust”, link here.
The documentary gave a history of relations between native
American nations and the US government throughout US history as an independent
nation. The emphasis was on the Chocktaw
and Chickasaw Nations. There was
particular emphasis on Oklahoma, and how it became a state.
There was a lot of attention on schemes by
bureaucrats to rob native American tribes of land or water or mineral resources
belonging to them.
In more recent decades, casinos have become a source of
income and wealth for some tribal members but everyone.
The visuals in the film focused on Oklahoma, in the Ozarks
and Ouchita areas. The areas looked
quite green and even more rugged than I recall from driving through the area
when I lived in Dallas (mostly the 1980s).
Picture: Arbuckles, OK, Nov. 2011 (my trip)
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Morgan Spurlock find that robots let him talk to himself
Morgan Spurlock opened his 2015 winter season (3) of “Inside
Man” with “Robots” link ) Saturday night (premiered Thursday, Jan. 22).
He started with a visit to Dennis Hong’s toy, RoMeLa., in Seattle.
Spurlock eventually got to play with his own robots, one of
which wrote an autobiographical essay about Morgan in Morgan’s own style
(starting with his rearing in West Virginia).
It said that Morgan has spent his life “playing himself”, which is true –
he may have more roles as “himself” in IMDB than any other filmmaker. He then gets to meet a very realistic female
robot. He says that talking to a robot
is like talking to himself. Later his
older brother confirms that.
The show also examined the question as to whether artificial
intelligence could develop free will and become our enemy, as in some science
fiction movies. I don’t think so.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
"The Unusual Suspect" on NBC Dateline: an account of the horrific Maryland crime spree by Jason Thomas Scott, and there may be more important cases
Friday, January 23, 2015, NBC Dateline aired one of its most
frightening crime stories ever, called “The Unusual Suspect”, a negation of the
classic suspense movie title “The Usual Suspects” (by Bryan Singer with Kevin
Spacey) from the 1990s.
Jason Thomas Scott and two accomplices committed a string of
home invasions in Prince Georges County, MD, east of Washington DC, in
2009. In the course of the crimes, he
murdered a mother and daughter, Delores and Ebony Dewitt, for which he was
tried and convicted. According to news
reports, the first (state) trial ended in a mistrial on a legal technicality (here) . But he would eventually be sentenced to over 100 years on federal charges alone. He had already been sentenced to 100
years in federal prison on various charges. Another mother and daughter, the
Lofton’s, apparently were also victims but Maryland prosecutors had a stronger
case with the DeWitt's.
.
Scott had worked for UPS and apparently used his database and
educational background to target victims.
He was well educated, and the motive for his sociopathic behavior (or
psychopathic) was beyond explanation. The
pattern shares a lot in common with serial killers of women. Some news reports claim he said he had
struggled with “homosexuality”, but most of his victims (and peeping interest)
appear to have been female. On the other hand, some of his behavior suggests "radicalization". The NBC
Dateline report explained how police promised him a kind of “fake immunity”
after he confessed to the home invasions.
Police could still use evidence other than his “confession” for
prosecution, but the legal technicalities were tickly, as the first mistrial
showed.
The details of the crime spree are indeed convoluted and
graphic. It’s easier to get a sense of
their scope from news reports, like here on abcnews here. Murderpedia has a particularly detailed
account here. There are
some accounts of his likely connection with another case in Bowie, MD in 2008
(Washington Post, here it seems as thought the WP accidentally inverted the middle and last names).
Unlike most Dateline crime episodes, this one does not end
in a summary of the courtroom trial. It
focuses just on the investigation and bizarre nature of the crimes, which were
rather like domestic terrorism. The major break came over an federal ATF bust after his "purchase" of weapons in Charles County, MD.
NBC Dateline would be well to examine the late 2008 murders
of Kanika Powell and Sean Green, both workers with sensitive classified information,
both crimes also in Prince Georges County, in Laurel and Oxon Hill, respectively. There could be a connection to
Scott, as shown by the Reddit posting (here on Nov. 21, 2014), leading to other links. Apparently, this case is still cold or
unsolved, or authorities are unwilling to discuss it. NBC Dateline should consider reviewing all
the facts on these cases with its own journalistic investigation to see if
there is a connection to the case in this show. I suppose ABC's 20-20 unit could also take a crack at this case, as could CNN Films.
These Dateline shows are stronger than a lot of
investigatory documentary movies. Maybe
some of them could be packaged for arthouse theatrical release through
Universal Focus or Rogue pictures.
I have some connection to NBC. I worked for the network as a computer
programmer in New York City Rockefeller Center 1974-1977 in an earlier era of
technology. It is an experience I still
remember well.
Update: April 25, 2016
NBC aired the episode again Sunday night. I noticed that the "Spooky House" looks a lot like the country park museum across a similar field from Contee Drive in Laurel. Despite a good eductation, Thomas showed signs of character disorder and psychopathy as a pre-teen.
A Baltimore television station has an up-to-date story here. The Inquisitr has a detailed story by Tracy Reyes April 24 here. It's not clear if NBC has updated the report.
Update: April 25, 2016
NBC aired the episode again Sunday night. I noticed that the "Spooky House" looks a lot like the country park museum across a similar field from Contee Drive in Laurel. Despite a good eductation, Thomas showed signs of character disorder and psychopathy as a pre-teen.
A Baltimore television station has an up-to-date story here. The Inquisitr has a detailed story by Tracy Reyes April 24 here. It's not clear if NBC has updated the report.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
President breaks grounds on LGBT equality in SOTU speech; "Everybody matters"
On his State of the Union Message tonight, President Obama
started out by saying “The shadow of crisis has passed”. The transcript is
here.
A lot of attention had been paid in advance to his plans for
increase in capital gains tax rates for the wealthy. The president told a story of a young couple
in Minnesota, with kids, who had been hurt when the housing bubble burst –
although that’s something anyone should have foreseen. He then described how the family had worked
its way back.
The president talked about the need for mandatory paid sick
leave, including for child care, and mentioned paid maternity leave once. He didn’t say paternity leave, but he then
came out for equal pay by gender. While
European countries do reasonably well with paid family leave, those with fewer
responsibilities must subsidize it.
The president expressed great confidence in “the rule of law”
and that we could stop foreign enemies from invading the privacy, property, or security
or ordinary Americans, an idea that has gotten more traction since the middle
of last summer with ISIS. He did not
talk in any detail about the recent terror attacks and arrests in Europe. But he did indicate he could ask for more authority to conduct operations against ISIS, even on the ground.
But the president did mention all components of the LGBT
community, maybe the first time ever in a State of the Union speech. He said that national security actually
depends on protecting every group of people that some people don’t like, which
includes LGBT for some, and, ironically. Muslims on another hand. His remark may have been motivated in some
respects by a horrific specific atrocity earlier this week reported by the
press in Britain and widely discussed in social media (especially among LGBT
people in Europe).
He also indicated that same-sex marriage (and implicitly,
freedom from discrimination in other areas) was now a civil right. 70% of Americans live in states that now have
to recognize same-sex marriage.
The warned that climate change is the greatest long term
danger we face.
He also closed by saying that “everybody matters” (not in
the original transcript), after saying “we are our brother’s keepers, our
sister’s keepers” and then seemed to imply that this fact provides some deeper
personal obligations on everyone, to include others.
The Republican Response was by Joni Ernst, senator from
Iowa. She mentioned “Red Oak”, a place
in the Star Reporter board game of the 1950s.
It was pretty high level and not confrontational. She hinted at bipartisan agreement on tax
reform. Fix the Debt offers this immediate reaction, here.
Monday, January 19, 2015
CNN twin special reports: "Inside the Paris Attacks" and "The War Within Islam"
Monday night, CNN aired two special half-hour reports, “Inside
the Paris Attacks” and “The War Within Islam”.
The first of these emphasized the connections between the
shootings at Charlie Hebdo’s, the two police shootings, and the attack on the
kosher supermarket in Paris, and gave some background on all three dead
suspects, as well as the female at large.
The second half hour had Chris Cuomo hosting several
panelists on the discussions of extremism within Islam. The guests included Maajid Nawaz, Ruda
Jebreal, and Ahmed Shihab-Elden.
One important point was whether the Quaran endorses the
violent “avenging” of Allah. The answer
was no, but there is one verse, in Quran 9:5, that gets taken out of context.
The point about images of the prophet where said to be derivative of the Ten
Commandments, in which Jehovah forbad all idol worship of any kind (as well
illustrated by “The Golden Calf”) The
Quran does not specifically probit blasphemy, but some of the hadith letters
do.
There was also discussion of the support by Saudi Arabia for
terrorism. The US should use the leverage of its much lower dependence on Mid
East oil than in the past even though Europe and China depend on it (although
not so much – Russia is a big supplier, and being hurt the most by Saudi
overproduction).
There was also mention that the Quran, while allowing
conflict, specifically protects non-combatants and honors the general rules of
war.
CNN’s own TV schedule online is often non up to date with
the specials it actually aired – a problem.
Picture: A sunset in southern New Jersey; the unusual high cirrus clouds make it look like a fireball.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Bourdain gets cooking lessons on a farm near Lyon, France
Tonight, CNN’s “Parts Unknown” visited Lyon, France, and
especially the farm, home and restaurant of Daniel Boulud, who returned to his
hometown to learn to cook. He never even
saw processed foods until an adult, which gives a clue as to why the French are
healthier than Americans despite rich food,
The dishes include almost raw fish on sauce, and
particularly a smoked hare, which almost looks like a cartoon character when
served. There is also a gigantic stuffed
pumpkin. (Kindergarten: “Pumplins are
orange”. On this show, brown.)
The link for the episode is here.
They also go on an auto tour in a tiny critoen of the
Provence countryside, and the car breaks down.
They also go on a hunting trip.
The broadcast is fortuitous, given the tragedy and tension
France the past two weeks.
Wikipedia attribution link for Lyon. Toulouse is as close as I’ve gotten (in
2001), including the space museum.
Friday, January 16, 2015
NBC Dateline's "Deadly Betrayal" shows the dangers of raising foster children
NBC Dateline, on Friday night, in an episode called “Deadly
Betrayal”, covered a bizarre case where a foster girl (Sabrina Zunich) murdered
her foster mother (Lisa Knoefel) in Lake County, NE of Cleveland, Ohio, and
where Sabrina, 18, maintained a romantic relationship with the husband Kevin,
who would be prosecuted for arranging the murder. The Cleveland Plain Dealer has the summary of
the story here.
The Dateline episode preview follows.
What is remarkable is that Lisa had taken in the foster
child out of kindness. Sabrina wanted to
be a member of the family with the two siblings, but originally was believed to
be jealous and to believe she was being forced out. Gradually the story of the relationship with
Kevin developed (it was six months before Sabrina mentioned it), and it sounds
a little surprising that the jury bought it.
This makes the heterosexual world of family values sound, oh, so
dangerous.
Picture: Cleveland (mine, Aug., 2012), near Euclid and Public Square
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
"Putin's Way" on PBS Frontline
On Jan. 13, PBS Frontline aired “Putin’s Way”, a documentary
of how Vladimir Putin, a bureaucrat in St. Petersburg before the collapse of
the Soviet Union, rose within Boris Yeltsin’s establishment and then rose to
power himself, and is now in position to remain “president” of the Russian
Federation until 2024, after briefly switching positions with another leader. The link is here. Much of the commentary comes from Gllian
Findlay.
Much of the material for the documentary comes from Karen
Dawisha’s book “Putin’s Kleptocracy”, a title that implies thievery and
corruption. Russia is not a failed new
democracy but a successful authoritarian state.
It’s interesting that Putin was raised as an only child,
after his parents lost the first two children, and became used to “getting his
own way”, as in this article.
One of the key events in Putin’s history was the bombing of
several apartment buildings around Moscow in 1999, called “Russia’s 9/11”. But in one building, evidence was found that
it may have been planted by the Russian government itself, for an excuse to
attack in Chechnya.
Russia appeared to have a veneer of prosperity when oil
prices were high, but that has weakened.
The documentary pointed out the death or demise of some of Putin’s
enemies, including Khodorkovsky (Movie reviews, Feb. 26, 2014)) and Litvinenko
(“Poisoned by Polonium”, Jan. 21, 2014 on Movies blog).
The documentary doesn’t mention the anti-gay propaganda law
passed in 2013, which seems like a convenient cover for Russia’s floundering
economy. So are Putin’s ventures in
Crimea and the Ukraine, which are supposed to protect an abstract loyalty to
Russian nationalism. The median wealth
for an individual Russian now is $871, less than that of India. About 100
people own 35% of Russia’s wealth.
The documentary can be rented on YouTube for $1.99.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
CNN's "The O.J. Trial: Drama of the Century"
On Tuesday night, CNN aired “The O.J. Trial”, a retrospect
of the trail of O.J. Simpson throughout most if the year 1995, resulting in his
acquittal. The broadcast has also been
called “Drama of the Century”.
CNN has a very simple main page for the entire history,
including transcripts, here.
Much of the broadcast involved interviewing one of the
jurors, who believed the defense theory that the police framed OJ. The jury was sequestered for nine months. If that happened to me today, that would
destroy my online life. Was the verdict really "about race", like the recent protests against police?
The documentary also presented some of Kato Kaehlin’s
testimony, and also interviewed him now, 20 years older, after he tried to set
up a business of fashions for “slackers”.
The Goldman family was also interviewed.
I even recall radio talk show host Victoria Jones (“the
British Lady”) polling people on OJ. I
had expected a conviction, as I thought of the stuff about Mark Fuhrman as sideshow. It seemed like the physical evidence was
overwhelming.
Toobin thinks that Chris Darden blew the case by asking OJ to try on the glove. Marcia Clark (the book "Without a Doubt") also appears.
There is also the issue of Simpson's being taped at an exercise studio two weeks before and bragging about "wife beating".
I heard the jury verdict live on a broadcast TV at work in
October 1995.
Note: There are notes about TLC’s “My Husband’s Not Gay” on
the GLBT blog on Jan. 12; I did not know
about the broadcast in time to see it and review it myself.
Update: January 24
CNN aired a prequel, "O.J.'s Wild Ride: 20 Years Later", covering the low-speed chase of OJ's Bronco by the LAPD. I remember watching some of that live.
Update: January 24
CNN aired a prequel, "O.J.'s Wild Ride: 20 Years Later", covering the low-speed chase of OJ's Bronco by the LAPD. I remember watching some of that live.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
ABC 20-20 crime story reports on a not-guilty verdict in NC, a change of pace from what Dateline usually does
ABC 20-20 on Saturday night covered the case of the murder
of Lucy Johnson in Gaston County, NC. In 2008.
The episode was called “The Burning Bed”, and (in 2008) the victim was
already dead when her house burned. The
link for the episode is here. The
show was originally aired in June 2014. Johnson had worked as a nurse and was pregnant
at the time.
The report from the main ABC news magazine is different from
most in NBC Dateline crime documentaries in that the prime suspect (a man who
had been dating her and apparently whose child she had carried) would be
acquitted at trial in 2011, so the case is still technically unsolved.
The Charlotte Observer has a report on the trial here.
A newspaper in Gastonia describes the broadcast here. There
had been conflict with a former husband over custody, visitation, and the like.
Most of these broadcast mysteries deal with nasty domestic
situations and local business conflicts.
The “real world” for a lot of people seems to breed a lot of these kinds
of jealousies
Picture: Light rail in Charlotte, 2011. Gaston County is just west of Charlotte, maybe 20 miles away, where the mountain foothills start.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Dateline: "Secrets of the Snake River" remakes Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train"
“Secrets of the Snake River”, a one hour true life mystery, narrated by Dennis Murphy (who conducts most of the interviews) 'aired on NBC Dateline Friday night, with a double murder plot resembling the
Hitchcock 1951 classic “Strangers on a Train” (of which a small excerpt was shown). Station KHQ has a detailed summary here.
That is, each husband contracts to murder the other’s
wife.
It starts with the disappearance of Rachel Anderson, in Moscow,
Idaho. Eventually Charles Capone would
be convicted of her murder, despite not being able to find a body (Charley
Project link) Anderson had been
followed and stalked and gotten threatening disguised calls apparently from her
estranged former husband, Capone. The
other partner, David Stone, would be convicted of lesser charges. It seems like a "weapons charge" is very convenient for law enforcement when they can't prove anything else. I say on a jury convicting someone of a similar weapons charge in Dallas myself in 1982 (even in Texas!) The "weapons charge" technique has been very useful against Charles Severance in Alexandria, VA (first, Loudoun County) -- that will get on Dateline eventually.
Wikipedia attribution link for map showing Yellowstone “hot
spots” in area over time. I was last in the area in July 1990.
Friday, January 09, 2015
NBC "Parenthood" approaches close, puts on troubling medical and crime situations
I haven’t followed NBC’s “Parenthood”, although the network
is making a lot of the fact that this is the final season and that it’s down to
the last four episodes.
Thursday night’s episode “How Did We Get Here?” presented a
couple of personal challenges that certain demonstrate the values of the
show. Zeke Braverman (Craig T. Nelson)
has another heart attack in bed, and is rushed to the hospital. The family gathers, and is kept on edge by
the ambiguity of the doctors’ answers from the emergency department. It’s even going to take a couple hours to get
a room in the ICU. (It usually doesn’t
in my experience here at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington VA with my
own mother a few years back; the ICU looked like a regular private hospital
room, even with TV and phone if you paid for it, but with extra
monitoring). Later, Zeke is confronted
with a choice. He can do nothing, remain
an invalid needing care of others and probably only a few months to a year to
live with cardiomyopathy. Or he might
try a second valve replacement operation, very risky. (Barbara Walters had surgery like that at age
81, was out of commission for a summer, but came through just fine.) My own
mother had a choice like that in 1999, electing coronary bypass surgery at age
85, at a time when it was unusual at that age.
She would live 11 more years, all but the last four quite productively. So modern invasive surgery, even in the
elderly, does work.
While the family is out, a coffee shop belonging to a couple
of family members is burglarized and ransacked to shreds. The insurance company
pays out enough that the owners can settle their debts, lay off the employees
with a little severance, and keep a little.
It all sounds a little seedy, something insurers don’t like to see
depicted. It also shows that a single
crime can bring the end of a small business, again a sobering lesson.
The show seems to be set in the Bay Area, around Berkeley, CA.
Thursday, January 08, 2015
Piers Morgan appears on Meredit Vieira; talk about Cosby, Keisha, Dershowitz
Meredith Vieira today, on her own syndicated show,
interviewed Piers Morgan, who is now the lead editor(or “Editor-at-Large”) of
the UK Daily Mail (story). I want to say that I’m glad to see
Piers “working” again, and miss him on CNN, even though I do like the more
conservative Smerconish.
Morgan talked about the Bill Cosby situation, with “most of
the women of the world” now accusing him of abuse. “Innocent until proven guilty” doesn’t apply
to big celebrity contracts.
They talked about Keisha Knight Pulliam’s “firing” from
Celebrity Apprentice and then her defense of Cosby.
Tuesday, January 06, 2015
"Gunned Down: The Power of the NRA" on PBS Frontline
Tuesday night, PBD Frontline offered the one hour film “Gunned
Down: The Power of the NRA”, with a major link here.
The documentary traced the influence of the gun lobby on the
2000 general election, after Gore had talked about stricter gun registration
and background checks. George W. Bush
even carried Gore’s own state of Tennessee.
Under Bush and a GOP Congress, the NRA (located on US 66 at Route 50,
near Fairfax VA) was able to sunset the Clinton assault weapons ban. The NRA hired La Pierre and others not for
their knowledge of weapons but as political operatives. The documentary covered the "gun show" loophole extensively.
The documentary had opened with Columbine and then with a
review of the shooting of Gabby Giffords in Arizona on Jan. 8. 2011, but
focused particularly on Sandy Hook in Connecticut on Dec. 14, 2012 toward the
end, playing back the 911 calls from the school.
LaPierre (“the only defense to a bad guy with a gun is a
good guy with a gun”) declined to be interviewed for the documentary.
Monday, January 05, 2015
"CNN Tonight": Don Lemon presents Alan Dershowitz with his vigorous denials
On “CNN Tonight”, Don Lemon interviewed Alan Dershowitz, who
explained his denial of the slurs against him in legal action about Virginia
Roberts (and even implicating a British prince).
The most recent CNN link where Dershowitz responds to the
allegations is here. It is important that Dershowitz is not named
as a defendant but believes the legal papers are libelous and constitute “made
up stories” by other lawyers. He plans
to sue the attorneys in several jurisdictions, probably London, New York State
and Florida, everywhere papers were filed. He is confident enough to force the issue even
though the statue of limitations has passed and he didn’t have to do anything.
He says he has never heard of a case where lawyers involved
in negotiating a previous case were turned around and accused of sexual
misconduct with principals in the case just as a publicity stunt.
Gloria Allred and Mike Geragos also appeared on “CNN Tonight”
to discuss Dershowitz’s response.
The case shows how in some cases people will make up charges
of sexual relations with minors out of thin air. In 2005, as I have noted before, I wound up
stopping substitute teaching after people became aware of a fictitious
screenplay that I had posted that appeared to make an elderly male sub resembling
me vulnerable to approaches by precocious minors. In retrospect, it would appear that the “fear”
o the principal at the affected high school was that the posting invited the
possibility of stories being made up “out of thin air” but being difficult to
parry. I was not willing to accept the “real
world” of teachers in social media.
Sunday, January 04, 2015
Shocking death of Daniel seems to predict an end for ABC's "Revenge"
So Daniel (David Bowman) is murdered on the mid-season
finale of Revenge (Dec 7, re-aired tonight), after, according to critics, the
character had learned to be a “responsible human being”, even if rich and a bit
of a parasite. In the end, he was able to sacrifice himself to save Emily, at
the end of an episode called “Atonement”. The Hollywood Life story is here.
The death is recreated at the beginning of
Jan. 4, “Epitaph”.
British actor Josh Bowman is said to have supported the
death of his character, but will return in a couple flashbacks. But it would seem as this overloaded plot
(which was quite convincing in the first season) will come to an end.
Nolan (Gabriel Mann), for all his quirkiness, seems like the
most normal and only really stable character in the show – in a 21st
Century world. (Leonardo da Vinci did
all right in the 15th Century, and Alan Turing simply won the
war.) Maybe that’s political correctness
now. If you’re slender, you can look
twenty years younger.
Friday, January 02, 2015
Dateline's "The Man Who Wasn't There": true life domestic crime plot follows a Coen Brothers film
On January 2, 2015, NBC Dateline aired “The Man Who Wasn’t
There”, a bizarre case in southern California where a man, Magdi Girgis, 51 in
2004, would be tried and convicted for hiring hit men to come into their gated
community and murder his wife Ariel, to eliminate a messy divorce. Girgis had been a respiratory therapist and
could lose his license over domestic violence convictions as well as most of
his assets. The hit men tied up the
teenage son Ryan to put on a show. An Orange County Register version of the story is here.
Undercover police helped break the case by acting as “middlemen”
to collect supposed debts, and trap Girgis into giving away evidence. The defense tried to implicate a son’s
supposed drug activity. It's also interesting that initially police thought it odd that Ryan left the house and called 911 without checking on his mother first. Is this an example of prejudicial "family values"?
The title of the episode is curious, as a Coen Brothers
black and white film in 2001 (from Good Machine) was called that.
In that film, with Billy Bob Thornton and Frances McDormand. In that black
comedy film a barber blackmails his wife’s boss and lover to start a dry
cleaning business. It’s set in Santa
Rosa, CA in 1949 and there’s a bizarre sequence with an alien UFO, and,
according to imdb, leg-shaving, Tailhook style.
I do recall seeing it in Minneapolis in the Uptown Theater. I guess the plot roughly follows this “true
story” on Dateline tonight.
The episode re-aired on April 9, 2016.
The episode re-aired on April 9, 2016.
Thursday, January 01, 2015
A cold Tournament of Roses, and an outdoor NHL game dominate New Year's Day
Network programming was dominated by two events New Year’s
Day.
ABC and NBC both covered the Tournament of Roses Parade in
Pasadena, CA, from 8-10 AM PST, but at least in Washington DC, ABC started on
time and covered the entire event. The
temperature was in the middle 30s, and there was snow on some of the hills around
LA, and the eucalyptus trees along Colorado Blvd looked withered, despite
recent monsoons.
Different marching bands played some classical music,
including a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody, and the last movement of Ippolatov-Ivanov’s
“Caucasian Sketches”, a favorite of a friend of mine in high school. It brings back memories of early 1961, when
we played our records on vinyl and had to watch worn styli and heavy tracking. (“A chipped stylus could ruin your entire
collection” – I still remember that scary sentence in a High Fidelity
magazine.)
There was a Rose Queen, who had to be female, and was
actually just 17, and had been selected out of 700 girls. It sounded like the “Miss America” pageants
of the past (with Bert Parks).
There was a float for the City of Hope hospital, and there
was mention of a 7-month old with leukemia, who was cured by a stem-cell
transplant at age 5. St. Jude’s in
Memphis comes to mind. There was also some discussion of the culture of
transplantation, and openness to it is starting to become a cultural
expectation. There was also attention to
the Special Olympics.
I had a friend at William and Mary (in 1961) from Pasadena,
a classical musician who liked “the culture of the East”. I went out and visited him in Pasadena over
Thanksgiving break in 1967, by Trailways bus from Lawrence, Kansas, where I was
then in graduate school. I remember a
reception at his parents’ home, and the mother was so impressed that I might
some day try for a Ph D in math. (I didn’t.) I remember talking to John about the Vietnam
war as he drove me through the 2nd Street Tunnel in LA, and he said,
“We should be there”. Later, in December
1969, as I was getting out of the Army, I would have a job interview with Rand
in Santa Monica, and then with Blue Cross in Woodland Hills in 1978 (where I
had a good friend through the organization “Understanding”). So a few times, I’ve had scrapes with almost
living there. Don’t believe the song “It
never rains in southern California”. I
still remember how the area looked in “Dragnet” and in the “I Love Lucy” shows.
The other big event New Year’s Day was the NHL hockey game
in Nationals Park in Washington DC (at the other end of the US) between the
Chicago Blackhawks and the Washington Capitals.
Washington won, 3-2, with a last second goal, which was like winning by
that score in the bottom of the ninth in baseball. It was carried on NBC.
Wikipedia attribution link for LA tunnel here.
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