'Best of TBH Politoons'
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Dave Lindorff: Beating the Boomers: Why Bush and Co. are racing to cut Social Security (In These Times)
Froma Harrop's Latest Column
Marc Savlov: Movie Review: Paper Clips (Austin Chronicle)
David Bruce: Wise Up: Charity (The Athens News)
Arianna Huffington: Not All Charity Is Created Equal (beliefnet.com)
Test Your Poverty IQ (beliefnet.com)
Bill Maher talks About The White House's Ties To Gay Prostitution
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
More rain. Moved up from the 5th rainiest winter (ever) to the 3rd. May be the 2nd by morning.
Was greatly disappointed that KCET (PBS for Los Angeles) wimped out & aired the censored version of 'Frontline'. 2nd largest broadcast market in the nation & they weaseled out. Shame on them.
For a little historical perspective, way back in 1973, PBS aired
Steambath, with
Bill Bixby,
Herb Edelman,
Kenneth Mars,
Art Metrano, and
Valerie Perrine.
And TV history was made when Valerie Perrine
became the first woman to display (on purpose) her nipples on American network television during the May 4, 1973 broadcast of this movie on Hollywood Television Theater (PBS). Valerie Perrine was seen taking a shower from all sides.
So, bad words & nipples debuted on PBS in 1973. 32 years later, they're afraid to allow 13 expletives uttered by soldiers in combat.
13 words that my 12-year old hears on the playground daily - hell, he hears a LOT worse.
Remember when PBS had integrity (and no Tucker Carlson)?
This should have been real 'reality' TV at it's best. Instead we were given a 'sanitized-for-our-protection' version, made safe for our gentle sensibilites and christian morés.
Clarifies Oscars' Comment
Chris Rock
Chris Rock wants to clarify what he meant when he said straight men don't watch the Oscars. "I did not say that. I said only gay people watch the Tonys," he joked Monday during an appearance on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."
But later he stuck to his guns. "I really don't know any straight men who aren't in show business that have ever watched the Oscars," he said.
"The awards don't really affect anybody's lives in the crowd," Rock said. "Meanwhile, the Nobel Peace Prize, there's no one there. Nobody cares what the scientists are wearing. What are you wearing Professor Allen? 'Pants!'"
And he had some advice for acceptance speeches.
"Don't thank God," Rock said. "God's busy working on the tsunami, so leave him alone."
Chris Rock
Boyhood Home to Be Turned Into Memorial
Johnny Carson
The new owner of Johnny Carson's childhood home is a private real estate company that wants to turn it into a memorial.
Historic Properties Inc., based in Norcross, Ga., bought the five-bedroom house for an undisclosed price in a deal sealed Friday, said company spokesman Cal Oren. The late talk show host lived in the home from ages 8 to 18. He died Jan. 23 at age 79.
Jim Pruett of Brandon, S.D., and Rick Runge of Sioux Falls, S.D., bought the home in March 2003 for $150,000 and spent about $20,000 renovating it in hopes of selling it at a profit. Runge said Pruett took over ownership more than a year ago.
The men had listed the house on the Internet auction site eBay and with a local real estate company. They also asked the city to buy the house and use it as a tourist attraction. There were no takers until after Carson's death and Historic Properties made an offer.
Johnny Carson
Posthumous Honor
F.X. Toole
Late author F.X. Toole and screenwriter Paul Haggis were honored with the University of Southern California's Scripter Award Sunday for their roles in bringing to life the characters in the Clint Eastwood film "Million Dollar Baby."
The Scripter, handed out for the past 17 years, is the only award that honors both the author and screenwriter for a film adaptation. Toole and Haggis were last month announced as the winners in a field that also included the writers of "Sideways," "The Door in the Floor," "The Bourne Supremacy" and "Friday Night Lights."
Toole -- the pen name of Jerry Boyd, who died in 2002 -- wrote the short story collection "Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner," and Haggis adapted one of the stories, "Million Dollar Baby," into the screenplay of the same name.
Toole's daughter, Erin Patricia Boyd, tearfully recounted the struggles he faced as a writer -- years of rejection slips, two failed marriages -- before having his first book "Rope Burns" published at age 70. He died at age 72.
F.X. Toole
Fogerty, Hayes Among Inductees
Songwriters Hall of Fame
John Fogerty, Steve Cropper, Isaac Hayes and David Porter, Richard and Robert Sherman, and Bill Withers will be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame this year. The 36th annual induction is set for June 9 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York.
As the leader of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fogerty penned such classics as "Proud Mary," "Bad Moon Rising" and "Who'll Stop the Rain." After going solo in 1972, he scored hits with "Old Man Down the Road," "Centerfield" and others.
Cropper, a founding member of Booker T & the MG's, was involved in nearly every record issued by Stax from 1961 to 1970. His songwriting credits include "(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay" (with Otis Redding), "Knock on Wood" (with Eddie Floyd), and "In the Midnight Hour" (with Wilson Pickett).
Hayes and Porter, songwriting partners in the '60s, wrote such Stax hits as "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby" and "Soul Man" (for Sam & Dave), "B-A-B-Y" (Carla Thomas) and "I Got To Love Somebody's Baby" (Johnnie Taylor). Hayes went on to win an Oscar for best original song for "Theme from Shaft."
The Sherman brothers wrote music heard in "Mary Poppins," "The Jungle Book" and many other children's films. Their Oscar-winning songs include "Chim Chim Cheree," "I Wan'na Be Like You (The Monkey Song)," "It's a Small World" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."
Withers' classic soul compositions include "Ain't No Sunshine," "Lean on Me," "Lovely Day" and "Just the Two of Us."
Songwriters Hall of Fame
Humane Society Honors Films, TV Shows
Genesis Awards
The tiger film "Two Brothers" and the anti-business documentary "The Corporation" are the respective honorees in the feature and documentary film categories at the 19th annual Genesis Awards.
The awards, presented by the Hollywood office of the Humane Society of the United States, honor all forms of media for covering animal issues.
ABC's family sitcom "8 Simple Rules" is set to receive the Sid Caesar Comedy Award, and Showtime's rookie shrink series "Huff" will be recognized in the dramatic series category.
The Genesis Awards will be held March 19 at the Beverly Hilton. The show will be taped and edited for a two-hour primetime special that Animal Planet will air May 14.
Genesis Awards
Receiving NAACP Vanguard Award
Prince
Prince may be a man of many names, but the NAACP likes his image regardless. The "Purple Rain" singer will be honored with the 2005 NAACP Vanguard Award in a Los Angeles ceremony. The presentation will take place during the 36th Annual NAACP Image Awards on March 19, and broadcast on Fox television on March 25.
Previously presented to only two others, the award is given to those who have worked to increase awareness of racial and social issues. Film director Steven Spielberg and movie producer Stanley Kramer are the award's previous honorees.
Prince
Being Put To Sleep After 12 Years
'NYPD Blue'
Sure, the nudity was startling. But the proof that "NYPD Blue" would be a bold and unsettling new force on TV was police Detective Andy Sipowicz's snarled insult.
"Ipso this, you pissy little -----," he told an attorney spouting legalisms atold an attorney spouting legalisms at him in the 1993 debut episode, emphasizing the b-word with a crotch-grabbing gesture.
"NYPD Blue" - which ends its 12-year run 10 p.m. EST March 1 - had no intention of being polite. Building on creator Steven Bochco's "Hill Street Blues," it was an in-your-face saga of cops whose lives were as troubled as the streets they protected.
'NYPD Blue'
Censored In LA
'Frontline'
Almost 50 of the nearly 350 Public Broadcasting Service stations plan to air a documentary on Tuesday night about U.S. troops in Iraq that includes extensive profanity, despite warnings the coarse language could land them in trouble with federal regulators.
PBS has offered its affiliates two versions of the 90-minute "Frontline" production titled "A Company of Soldiers" -- one uncensored and one that bleeped out 13 expletives uttered by U.S. troops in the film.
PBS said Boston-based station WGBH, which produces the "Frontline" investigative series, warned sister stations that if they chose to carry the unedited version, they did so at their own risk.
The extra caution was the latest example of heightened restraint paranoia exercised by broadcasters since pop singer Janet Jackson's breast-baring Super Bowl telecast last year prompted the Federal Communications Commission to step up its enforcement of indecency rules.
'Frontline'
Alleged Bully
Sean Connery
A downstairs neighbor of debonaire James Bond actor Sean Connery has filed a $30 million lawsuit alleging he's a bully who's trying to force the family out of the townhouse they share.
Dr. Burton Sultan, an ophthalmologist, lives with his wife and daughters on the lower four floors of a six-story Tudor townhouse, built in 1869, on Manhattan's East Side. Connery and his wife live on the top two floors.
Court papers claims the Connerys' renovations, which began in September 2001, are a source of constant noise, foul fumes, water leaks and a rat infestation. The lawsuit claims damage to the Sultans' home extended to their collection of Victorian and early 20th century wicker furniture.
The lawsuit includes a letter, purportedly from the Connerys' lawyer, Robert P. Lynn Jr., stating: "I think if we tie him up in several lawsuits, hopefully this will either permanently subdue him or drive him out of the building."
Sean Connery
A Real Big Bully
Ahnold
Could Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Holds 2 Passports) have another "woman problem" on his hands? Schwarzenegger made headlines in recent months by deriding political opponents as "girlie men" and ridiculing a group of nurses at a women's conference. Now, an effort to paint the state's teachers as little more than a balky special interest group has angered many critics, who have begun to question why constituencies dominated by women have been subjected to such tough talk.
"He behaves like an arrogant patriarch with respect to women's occupations," said Rose Ann De Moro, executive director of the California Nurses Association. "Nurses, teachers, home health workers - it's vulgar how he's run roughshod over them. He's arrogant, and he's a bully."
As a candidate, Schwarzenegger was dogged by allegations that he had groped and humiliated women on movie sets. Since then, he has won over many skeptics by appointing women to key staff positions and relying on his wife, journalist and Democrat Maria Shriver, as his closest adviser.
But recently, as he has pressed for budget cuts and a broad package of government reform proposals, some of his turbocharged rhetoric has opened him to charges that his views on women are demeaning and macho.
The California Teachers Association and the California Nurses Association recently showed a willingness to take on the governor, staging protests and buying ads critical of his policies and proposals.
Ahnold
The Good People Of Brussels
Belgian Novelty
Alpine Iceman Reveals Stone Age Secrets
Oetzi
Some 5,300 years after his violent death, a Stone Age man found frozen in the Alps is slowly revealing his secrets to a global team of scientists.
But despite more than a decade of high-tech efforts by geneticists, botanists and engineers many questions about his life and death remain unsolved.
And rumors of a deadly curse on those who found him continue to swirl.
For the rest, Oetzi
In Memory
Gene Scott
Gene Scott, the shaggy-haired, cigar-smoking televangelist whose eccentric religious broadcasts were beamed around the world, has died, a family spokesman said. He was 75.
Scott died Monday after having a stroke, said the spokesman, Robert Emmers.
The longtime pastor of Los Angeles University Cathedral began hosting a nightly television broadcast of Bible teaching in the mid-1970s. His University Network eventually aired a nightly talk show and Sunday morning church services on radio and television stations in about 180 countries.
Scott's church, a Protestant congregation of more than 15,000 members, raised millions of dollars through round-the-clock Internet and satellite TV broadcasts, where he would demand of viewers: "Get on the telephone!" to donate.
In some of his speeches, Scott would deliver complex lectures on Biblical languages to make points about the meaning of faith. But he also spoke on current events, sometimes lacing his sermons with profanity.
Recognizable by his mane of white hair and scruffy beard, Scott never stuck to a conventional format in his talk show. He sometimes smoked on the show and once wore glasses with eyes pasted on them.
Unlike other televangelists, Scott's sermons did not condemn homosexuality, abortion or other hot-topic sexual issues. He argued such issues were a personal choice.
Scott, the son of a travelling preacher, had a lavish lifestyle that included a chauffeured limousine, contact with political bigwigs and, he claimed, 300 horses.
But he also spent lavishly on charity. After a fire badly damaged the Los Angeles Central Library, he organized a telethon that raised $2 million US. In 2002, Scott gave $20,000 to save the Museum in Black from eviction. The museum has some 5,000 items from the slave and civil rights eras.
Scott came under scrutiny by authorities on several occasions, including by the state attorney general's office in 1977, which suspected him of fraud. The investigation was dropped, however, after the Legislature passed a law barring prosecution of civil fraud against tax-exempt religious organizations.
Gene Scott
