Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

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Obit watch: September 18, 2019.

Wednesday, September 18th, 2019

Betty Corwin. I hadn’t heard of her until I read the NYT obit, but it seems like she was one of nature’s noblewomen.

Ms. Corwin founded the New York Public Library Theater on Film and Tape Archive.

The still-growing archive — which at last count held 8,127 recordings, including artist interviews and theater-related films and television programs — has long been a rich resource for artists, students and researchers.
When Audra McDonald was preparing to perform in “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” on Broadway this summer, she went to the library to watch the archive’s 1988 recording of the original Manhattan Theater Club production, starring Kathy Bates. The week that Mike Nichols died in 2014, he had an appointment to look at “Master Class,” a version of which he was planning to direct for HBO.

…

The collection includes every play in August Wilson’s 20th-century cycle, starting with “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” in 1985; the 1978 New York Shakespeare Festival production of “The Taming of the Shrew,” starring Meryl Streep and Raul Julia; the original Broadway production of “Angels in America,” recorded in 1994; and the 1988 Lincoln Center Theater production of “Waiting for Godot,” starring Robin Williams and Steve Martin.

Sander Vanocur, noted TV journalist.

Mr. Vanocur, along with John Chancellor, Frank McGee and Edwin Newman, was one of NBC’s “four horsemen” — correspondents who prowled the floor of national conventions in the 1960s in search of news developments and tantalizing tidbits to report. (He was also the last surviving of those four.)

Cokie Roberts. NYT. NPR.

Posted in Media, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 26, 2019.

Monday, August 26th, 2019

Gerard O’Neill, investigative reporter for the Boston Globe.

Mr. O’Neill, who spent 35 years at The Globe, was one of three original reporters on the paper’s Spotlight Team, the full-time investigative strike force that was modeled after the Insight Team of The Sunday Times of London.
Two years after its founding in 1970, Spotlight — with the 29-year-old Mr. O’Neill on the team — won a Pulitzer Prize for its first major investigation, which uncovered rampant corruption in Somerville, a Boston suburb.
Later, as chief of the unit, Mr. O’Neill would help report, write and edit investigations that swept numerous awards, landed multiple Massachusetts officials in jail and led to reforms.

One of his (and the team’s) major accomplishments was breaking the story that Whitey Bulger was a FBI informant, and that the FBI had been letting him get away with major crimes (including murder) in return for informing.

Mr. O’Neill and Mr. Lehr would go on to write three books together, including two about Mr. Bulger: “Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal” (2000), which was made into a 2015 movie starring Johnny Depp as Bulger, and “Whitey: The Life of America’s Most Notorious Mob Boss” (2013).

Black Mass, while dated, is one of the two books on Bulger that I recommend (the other being The Brothers Bulger). Black Mass also won the best fact crime Edgar Award in 2001.

I was less enthusiastic about Whitey, which kind of felt like a quickly written update and attempt to cash in on Bulger’s capture.

Posted in Law, Media, Obits | Comments Closed

Layers and layers of fact checkers.

Tuesday, August 6th, 2019

I noticed this over the weekend and pointed it out to a few people, but it’s still going on:

Posted in Media, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 1, 2019.

Thursday, August 1st, 2019

The paper of record has updated their Hal Prince, “Giant of Broadway and Reaper of Tonys” obit in place.

They’ve also added three corrections. So far.

I do like this a lot:

As both a producer and a director, Mr. Prince was a nurturer of unproved talent. Tom Bosley, for instance, later known as Howard Cunningham on the nostalgic television sitcom “Happy Days,” won a Tony in his first starring role in 1959 as the titular mayor of New York, La Guardia, in “Fiorello!” Liza Minnelli made her first Broadway appearance — and won a Tony — as the title character in “Flora, the Red Menace,” a 1965 politically-inflected musical set in 1935 about a spunky fashion designer who falls for a Communist. Produced by Mr. Prince and directed by George Abbott, “Flora” also featured the first Broadway score by the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, who later wrote “Chicago” and two shows produced and directed by Mr. Prince: “Zorba” and “Cabaret.”
A featured actor in “Cabaret,” Joel Grey, was a largely unknown nightclub performer with few theater credits when Mr. Prince hired him in 1966 for what turned out to be a career-defining role: the arch, leering M.C. of the bawdy Kit Kat Club in Weimar-era Berlin.

I think that’s one of the nicest things you can say about anybody in an obit: they were good at spotting and developing unknown talents.

But Mr. Rich was writing on the heels of one of Mr. Prince’s most calamitous failures, “A Doll’s Life,” a musical sequel to “A Doll’s House,” Henrik Ibsen’s domestic drama of a woman’s revolt against the stultifying expectations of womanhood. With book and lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden and a score by Larry Grossman, huge sets and grandiose sound amplification, it closed after five performances, a victim of its outsize self-importance.

Five performances. I thought the original production of “Carrie” ran for eight performances, but no: it only ran for five as well.

Also among the dead: Nick Buoniconti, linebacker for the Miami Dolphins in the 1970s (yes, he was one of the players on the 1972 team).

For many years Buoniconti was an intelligent, articulate and tough player for the Boston Patriots (now the New England Patriots) and the Dolphins, winning All-Pro honors five times in a 14-year pro football career. A former All-American at the University of Notre Dame, he anchored the Dolphins’ vaunted “No-Name Defense” under Coach Don Shula.

Mr. Buoniconti’s son, Marc, was paralyzed in a football accident in 1985. Mr. Buoniconti founded the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis:

For more than 30 years afterward, Buoniconti helped raise nearly $500 million for spinal cord and brain research carried out by the organization. He also played a critical role in directing the research and was a charismatic motivator of scientists and researchers.
Dr. Barth Green, a neurosurgeon and longtime chairman of the Miami Project, said in a phone interview: “People are walking now because of cellular transplants and the latest neuroengineering and bioengineering that has been applied to humans with disability. Nick was a stimulating force in that area, from bench to bedside. And this is someone who probably never took a science course.”

Posted in Media, Music, NFL, Obits, Sports, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Pop quiz, hotshot.

Monday, July 22nd, 2019

Is this headline from The Babylon Bee or the New York Times?

How ‘The Lion King’ Gets Real-Life Lion Family Dynamics Wrong

Answer after the jump. No fair playing if you already know the answer…

(more…)

Posted in Mammals, Media, Movies, Sarcasm | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#57 in a series)

Monday, July 8th, 2019

There’s an interesting article in today’s NYT about Jenna Garland, the former press secretary for Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed.

Ms. Garland is currently under indictment. She’s charged with two misdemeanors. But, unlike the usual run of tax-fattened hyenas, the charges against Ms. Garland involve…

…violations of the Georgia open records law.

One of the charges against Ms. Garland accuses her of attempting to frustrate a reporter’s 2017 request for billing documents from the city water department by telling a subordinate, in text messages, to “drag this out as long as possible” and “provide information in the most confusing format available.”

…

In one text message that later came to light, Ms. Garland advised a water department spokesperson to be “as unhelpful as possible.” In another, she told the spokesperson to “hold all” requested documents pertaining to certain members of the City Council until the reporter “asks for an update.”

There are two interesting things about this.

1. Criminal charges against public officials for open records act violations are “extremely uncommon”, as the paper of record describes it.

Open-records or “sunshine” laws in a number of other states include no criminal sanctions for noncompliance, although a number of them call for civil penalties or the payment of attorneys’ fees and court costs if a news organization or a member of the public successfully sues a government agency for documents.
In Colorado, lawmakers removed criminal penalties for violating the state’s open-records law two years ago because almost no one was ever charged.

2. “The case is perhaps the most notable fallout from an epic, extended public battle between Mr. Reed, a forceful personality and one of the most important African-American politicians in the South, and two titans of the Atlanta media scene: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV, the local ABC affiliate. The paper and TV station are owned by the same parent company and often team up for coverage.”

And something that’s feeding into this: even though Kasim Reed left office last year, his administration is still under federal investigation.

Federal agents have been scrutinizing construction contracts issued during Mr. Reed’s tenure, the use of city-issued credit cards, and concessions at the city’s international airport, among other matters. The federal investigation has resulted in numerous indictments.

It kind of sounds like the charges against Ms. Garland are more fallout from the ongoing investigation of Mr. Reed. I’d be tempted to suggest that they’re trying to flip her: but that seems unlikely with misdemeanor charges.

Scott R. Grubman, an Atlanta-based lawyer experienced in white-collar crime matters who is not involved in the Garland case, read Ms. Garland’s text messages the same way. He said he thought the government’s case against her was “flimsy” and an overreaction, given that civil penalties could be levied instead.
In Georgia, both state agencies and local governments “regularly engage in delay tactics” in response to open-records requests, Mr. Grubman said in an email. “By bringing a criminal prosecution against Ms. Garland without having ever criminally prosecuted any other violation in the past, the A.G.’s office appears to be unfairly targeting Ms. Garland and opening up a can of worms that will be difficult to close.”

I actually kind of agree with Mr. Grubman’s position, at least in part. This does seem like selective prosecution. But: I only agree with him in part because I think more public officials should face criminal charges for open records act violations. The heck with “civil penalties”, which are probably going to be paid by the taxpayers anyway: let’s hold these people personally responsible for violating the law. And if that means some of them wind up in jail…fiat justitia ruat caelum.

Posted in Law, Media, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 26, 2019.

Wednesday, June 26th, 2019

Steve Dunleavy, noted tabloid journalist.

Mr. Dunleavy exposed Elvis Presley’s addiction to prescription drugs in Star and in a best-selling book that rankled Presley fans; scored exclusive interviews with the mother of Sirhan Sirhan, Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin, and Albert DeSalvo, the confessed Boston Strangler; and championed police officers, smokers and gun owners, among others.
During his run on “A Current Affair,” from 1986 to 1995, he wrestled a bear in one segment and, in another, was bitten by a witness in a rape case when he confronted her with nude photographs of her.

That book, by the way, was: Elvis: What Happened?.

His columns in Star typically echoed the company’s conservative line, so much so that they earned him the “American of the Year” award from the right-wing John Birch Society — even though he was not a United States citizen and never became one.

…

Pete Hamill, who worked for both The Post and The News, was impressed by his drive. “I always thought he was writing his columns like he was double-parked,” Mr. Hamill said.

Rod Dreher has a tribute up as well, in which he quotes Hamill (after Dunleavy’s foot was run over by a snowplow):

“I hope it wasn’t his writing foot.”

NY Post.

By way of Lawrence: Herbert Meyer.

It was Meyer who, in a famous memo to Reagan in November 1983 when things were very tense with our intermediate-range missile deployments in Europe, wrote: “if present trends continue, we are going to win the Cold War.” Over eight vivid and tightly argued pages, Herb laid out the reasons that subsequently came to pass over the next decade.

Also by way of Lawrence: Desmond Amofah, YouTuber (under the handle “Etika”). He was 29.

His belongings were found on Manhattan Bridge on Monday. He had uploaded an eight-minute YouTube video in which he talked about suicide.
Etika was popular for playing and discussing Nintendo games on YouTube and the streaming platform Twitch.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a surprisingly good page of additional resources.

Not quite an obit, but:

The head of the Massachusetts motor vehicle division has resigned after her agency failed to terminate the commercial driving license of a man whose collision with a group of motorcyclists on a rural New Hampshire road left seven bikers dead.

Posted in Books, Elvis, Media, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 29, 2019.

Wednesday, May 29th, 2019

Tony Horwitz, prominent journalist and best-selling author. (Confederates in the Attic, Blue Latitudes)

His wife, Geraldine Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, said he had collapsed while walking in Chevy Chase, Md., and was declared dead at George Washington University Hospital. The cause has not yet been determined, she said.

He was only 60.

“Last week I saw my cardiologist,” Mr. Horwitz wrote in The Times last month. “He told me I drink too much.”
Mr. Horwitz acknowledged his occupational hazard, but made a case for what he called bar-stool democracy. His sojourn in the South, he said, had him discarding stereotypes and seeing blue-collar conservatives as “the three-dimensional individuals I drank and debated with in factory towns, Gulf Coast oil fields and distressed rural crossroads.”
He expressed the hope that they would remember him not as “one of those ‘coastal elites’ dripping with contempt and condescension toward Middle America,” he wrote, but “rather, as that guy from ‘up north’ who appeared on the next bar stool one Friday after work, asked about their job and life and hopes for the future, and thought what they said was important enough to write down.”

Posted in Books, Media, Obits | Comments Closed

Random notes: May 13, 2019.

Monday, May 13th, 2019

I’ve avoided discussing the recent NRA issues because, frankly, I don’t trust anybody to cover them fairly and objectively. If you want to read a take on what’s going on, though, Lawrence put up a post last week on his blog: if you’re not a regular reader there, you might want to check it out.

Also brought up by Lawrence, though this was just a quick hit in the Linkswarm: the New Orleans Times-Picayune was bought out by The Advocate, and the entire Times Picayune staff was laid off. The NYT has a considerably more detailed story on what happened and why, if you care about New Orleans newspaper wars. Personally, I pretty much relied on nola.com for anything involving the city, so I’ll be interested in seeing what changes.

(Also, good to know that there are still places where you can get Baked Alaska.)

Posted in Food, Guns, Media, Politics | Comments Closed

Headline of the day.

Wednesday, April 24th, 2019

From the HouChron:

A giant bird killed its owner. Now it could be yours.

Bonus: Florida man!

Double bonus:

Bill Grotjahn, who investigated the death for the Medical Examiner’s Office, said Hajos had died from trauma inflicted by the bird. He called it “such an unusual situation.”
“I’ve been doing this for 18 years and I’ve never had a thing like this,” he said. “I’ve had them killed by alligators and snakes but never by a bird like that. I know ostriches and emus have their moments, but cassowaries are an extremely, extremely dangerous bird. You don’t want to fool around with them. They have no sense of humor.”

“…this doesn’t look like any ostrich attack that I’ve ever seen.”

(Yes, yes, I know: cassowaries are not ostriches or emus. But unless I’m badly misreading Wikipedia, they are in the same family.)

Posted in Angry, Birds, Media | 2 Comments »

Totally random stuff: March 6, 2019.

Wednesday, March 6th, 2019

I’ve been getting more and more depressed by what seems to be the constant stream of obit watches, so I decided it was time to do another variety post. (Not to be confused with variety meats, although that’s an easy mistake to make.)

Obit watch: King Kong Bundy, pro wrestler.

In one memorable match at the first WrestleMania, in 1985 at Madison Square Garden, Bundy snatched Special Delivery Jones in a bear hug, slammed him into the turnbuckle, hit him with an avalanche and then finished him with a splash, pinning him in a matter of seconds.

Legal update #1: sentences in the basketball bribery case.

James Gatto, the former head of global basketball marketing at Adidas, was sentenced to nine months by U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Merl Code Jr., another former Adidas employee, and Christian Dawkins, an aspiring agent, were given six months each. Code and Dawkins, who are also defendants in next month’s trial, were ordered to pay restitution of a little more than $28,000 each, with Gatto’s amount of restitution still to be determined.

(Previously.)

Legal update #2: no, the government can’t seize the trademark of the Mongols motorcycle club. Again.

Denying Mongol members the ability to display the logo on their leather riding jackets and elsewhere would overstep the right to free expression embedded in the 1st Amendment, as well as the 8th Amendment’s ban on excessive penalties, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter found.

(Previously. I actually saw this over the weekend, but have been waiting for a better link: the LAT has become increasingly obnoxious.)

Posted in Law, Media, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 23, 2019.

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2019

Russell Baker, Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the NYT.

Kaye Ballard, noted actress.

I apologize for giving these short shrift, but Ms. Ballard was before my time.

I also want to call out this one, not out of any malice or ill will, but because when you read the details in the obit, it’s kind of disturbing: Brandon Truaxe, “the founder of the disruptive Canadian cosmetics company Deciem”.

If you need help, please don’t be ashamed to ask for it. Anyone who would shame you for needing help…well, their opinions don’t matter.

Posted in Media, Planes, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

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