Mary Jo Kopechne died forty years ago this weekend. Nobody seems to be noting this. Yes, I know there are other things going on -- health care, Cronkite, Apollo 11.
Ted Kennedy is no longer a pro-life U.S. Senator, but he is still in office.
Sexual harassment is still a problem.
We just never get around to looking at all the stories.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite is dead.
I have to agree that his passing does have to mark something. I recollect seeing him on the television when I was a kid. We usually were eating when the CBS evening news was on and not watching the sin box, but when we did watch a network newscast, his was the one we saw.
All the major media are playing the story, CBS the most. But if I hear the “most trusted man in America” again I think I might reel. Cronkite was good, but I don’t know that he was that especially trustworthy.
And in the middle of all this, we need to remember that even CBS was not always supportive of Cronkite. In 1964 they had him anchor the Republican convention in Daly City, California, but dumped him from the booth for the Democratic convention in Atlantic City the next month. [I remember hearing a rumor that summer that CBS was going to make Cronkite the president of another venture they were acquiring, the New York Yankees. I never heard more of that. That was before the internet made all rumors truth and if not eternal truth, perpetual truth of some kind.]
I overheard it in a store last night that Cronkite had gone on to get an interview with a certain well-known pedophile who recently died. But as much coverage as his passage is getting, it will never catch up with what that guy got.
I have to agree that his passing does have to mark something. I recollect seeing him on the television when I was a kid. We usually were eating when the CBS evening news was on and not watching the sin box, but when we did watch a network newscast, his was the one we saw.
All the major media are playing the story, CBS the most. But if I hear the “most trusted man in America” again I think I might reel. Cronkite was good, but I don’t know that he was that especially trustworthy.
And in the middle of all this, we need to remember that even CBS was not always supportive of Cronkite. In 1964 they had him anchor the Republican convention in Daly City, California, but dumped him from the booth for the Democratic convention in Atlantic City the next month. [I remember hearing a rumor that summer that CBS was going to make Cronkite the president of another venture they were acquiring, the New York Yankees. I never heard more of that. That was before the internet made all rumors truth and if not eternal truth, perpetual truth of some kind.]
I overheard it in a store last night that Cronkite had gone on to get an interview with a certain well-known pedophile who recently died. But as much coverage as his passage is getting, it will never catch up with what that guy got.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
ferrous faucets
Farrah ‘Fawcett died a few days ago. It was bad timing for her that just as the news of her passing was starting to get national circulation that a pedophile who was more famous, it seems, died whose death eclipsed hers.
But I did start to remember some of what I had known of Ms. Fawcett from her heyday of three decades ago.
And I remember seeing a picture in a newspaper of an old guy holding some plumbing fixtures that he was selling as “ferrous faucets.” Some were labeled “cold.” Others were labeled “hot.” It seemed that Ms. Fawcett [or her attorneys] wanted him to quit selling them since they felt that he was infringing upon
I don’t remember that I ever heard he disposition of the case, but I remember thinking that if Ms. Fawcett prevailed that a former Detroit Tiger outfielder should have a good time taking on the battery companies for their “alkaline” batteries.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Media values -- RIP division
A noted pedophile died Wednesday. He would probably want his name mentioned.
I’m not sure that anybody else who never held public office whose passing has been given more hoopla by the various medis since Mother Teresa.
And to make that comparison seems almost sacrilegious.
Now what will be written when that film director/ clarinetist who married his girlfriend's daughter goes?
I’m not sure that anybody else who never held public office whose passing has been given more hoopla by the various medis since Mother Teresa.
And to make that comparison seems almost sacrilegious.
Now what will be written when that film director/ clarinetist who married his girlfriend's daughter goes?
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Forgive us our debts, but you pay yours
A Monticello debt-collection agency is facing a federal law suit because it sends out notices with a “WWJD” header.
And every Sunday we say “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
Story
And every Sunday we say “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
Story
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Advertising in our era
I guess I will never understand the world of marketing.
We hear it said that a good salesperson could sell refrigerators to Eskimos or carburetors to Amish. After all, sometimes you have to create the demand before you can sell it.
And it helps sometimes when you know where and to whom you are advertising. Several years ago a commercial for feminine hygiene product somehow got slipped into [I believe] a Cubs game on WGN. I wondered whether they knew something about who watches ball games that I didn’t. But since I never saw that repeated I assumed that it was some kind of aberration.
But this has been happening repeatedly. Have you noticed the commercials lately for genuine
These commercials are being aired in
Fifty years ago Charles Starkweather was executed
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the execution of Charles Starkweather. Together with his girlfriend [as I remember there was some dispute between about how much each of them did] they killed eleven people, including her parents and baby sister.
I remember seeing a picture of him and his girlfriend on television during the brief period between when they were identified and fled Omaha and when they were apprehended in Wyoming. The announcement was very curt, something like, ”If you see these people, get away from them and call the police. They’re killers.” There seemed to be a special emphasis on that last word.
[When I first heard on the radio that they had been caught, I remember thinking it was Wyoming, Iowa, but it was the state of Wyoming.]
I remember reading an article attributed to him in a Sunday paper sometime between his sentencing and execution, in the Parade magazine I think. He said he had been picked on all of his life, that other kids had belittled his red hair, calling him “red-headed woodpecker.” He also indicated that he had come to Jesus since his arrest.
I don’t know if these statements were intended to get him some clemency, but it wasn’t about to come. Capital punishment seemed to be more accepted back then, even if it was not always advocated and even if somehow Nebraska could overlook the severity and the ruthlessness of what he had done, Wyoming would also have had an opportunity to get him.
Starkweather’s feats and his fate were the things which kept boys my age talking back in those days. Nebraska took his life with an electric chair and we would joke about his “hot seat” and watching where we sat for what seems like several weeks after that.
Starkweather’s crimes were especially cruel and grizzly and were stretched out over several weeks and I don’t know that we appreciated the utter evil of what he did, the utter cold-bloodedness of it all as we laughed about it.
In my adult life I have come to oppose capital punishment for more than one reason, but you do have to wonder just what could have ever been done with a boy like this. And I cannot help but notice how much more quickly sentence was carried out than it ever could be carried out these days.
Additional note: His girlfriend got off with a life sentence and was paroled several years ago.
More can be found at
http://www.crimezzz.net/serialkillers/S/STARKWEATHER_charles_FUGATE.php
I remember seeing a picture of him and his girlfriend on television during the brief period between when they were identified and fled Omaha and when they were apprehended in Wyoming. The announcement was very curt, something like, ”If you see these people, get away from them and call the police. They’re killers.” There seemed to be a special emphasis on that last word.
[When I first heard on the radio that they had been caught, I remember thinking it was Wyoming, Iowa, but it was the state of Wyoming.]
I remember reading an article attributed to him in a Sunday paper sometime between his sentencing and execution, in the Parade magazine I think. He said he had been picked on all of his life, that other kids had belittled his red hair, calling him “red-headed woodpecker.” He also indicated that he had come to Jesus since his arrest.
I don’t know if these statements were intended to get him some clemency, but it wasn’t about to come. Capital punishment seemed to be more accepted back then, even if it was not always advocated and even if somehow Nebraska could overlook the severity and the ruthlessness of what he had done, Wyoming would also have had an opportunity to get him.
Starkweather’s feats and his fate were the things which kept boys my age talking back in those days. Nebraska took his life with an electric chair and we would joke about his “hot seat” and watching where we sat for what seems like several weeks after that.
Starkweather’s crimes were especially cruel and grizzly and were stretched out over several weeks and I don’t know that we appreciated the utter evil of what he did, the utter cold-bloodedness of it all as we laughed about it.
In my adult life I have come to oppose capital punishment for more than one reason, but you do have to wonder just what could have ever been done with a boy like this. And I cannot help but notice how much more quickly sentence was carried out than it ever could be carried out these days.
Additional note: His girlfriend got off with a life sentence and was paroled several years ago.
More can be found at
http://www.crimezzz.net/serialkillers/S/STARKWEATHER_charles_FUGATE.php
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