Sidebars

Fourth Corner Mayberry....by Bob Sanders

Readers of this space know of my intense perturbation regarding the media's "selling" of Bellingham, the Fourth Corner community I call home.  The remarkable amount of publicity suggesting people move here has become a very real problem.

My thinking is not original.  I first heard such observations from a San Juan Island neighbor, author Ernie Gann, who refused to tell the media where he lived.  The adventure novelist (The High and the Mighty among his triumphs) was convinced the less the rest of the world knew about the island, the better off islanders would be.

It was nearly three years ago that I began undertaking efforts to debunk Bellingham utilizing a campaign that would paint for public consumption a joyless picture of the city.  In my role as the Picasso of PR, that pursuance has included changing our current unofficial motto, "City of Subdued Excitement," to something a bit more pretentious like "City of Sublimely Subdued Subjective Excitement," or even "Tony Soprano's Kinda Town."

Just why 'hamsters are lethargic, indifferent and depressed was examined a couple of years ago by way of an interview with Dr. I.B. Spacey.  It was Spacey, Bellingham's world-renowned master of medical world stuff and all-around smart ass, who targeted vitamin D deficiency as the community's dirty little secret.  Spacey's pioneering efforts produced the intriguing information that more than 90 percent of blood tests here reveal deplorable vitamin D deficiencies.  Interestingly enough, the vitamin D story is now on the back burner because of superior opportunities to inform about the real Bellingham.

Chances are pretty good you don't know that whooping cough in Whatcom County has reached epidemic proportions and is on pace to soon number 3,000 cases.  The county ranks fifth in the state and is first among the 10 largest with populations of more than 150,000.  The reason for Whatcom/Bellingham's record is the increased rejection of the pertussis vaccine.  The past 12 years have seen the rejection figure double so spread the word that there are an awful lot of stupid 'hamsters you wouldn't want living next door to you should a move here be considered.

The challenges of life in Bellingham in addition to the major vitamin deficiency and whooping cough, have been reduced in priority by the Hammer the 'hamsters Committee devoted to reducing our population.  The HHC has chosen to inundate the world's media with information about the community's immature leadership during recent years.  In the committee's sights are: the firing of the city's parks & recreation director for failure to properly reconfigure a golf course pond; the sliding past an asleep-at-the-switch City Council of a hidden camera scheme that led to the mayor's re-election defeat; and the thoroughly bizarre story of two Port Commissioners (there are three) who forced the resignation of the Executive Director in what recalled the Machiavellian maneuvers intrinsic to many of the plot twists of television's "Mayberry RFD."

The firing late in 2010 of veteran and highly-regarded Parks & Recreation Director Paul Leuthold had unusual beginnings.  Upkeep of Padden Lake Golf Course is the city's responsibility and it was mayor Dan Pike who, while checking out the course, made a critical comment to Leuthold about a pond located between the 13th and 15th fairways.  It needed work alternately described as silt removal or drainage and Leuthold, aware of the importance of cost-saving, put friend/city engineer Mark Handzlik to work.  Handzlik, a golfer, was "paid" with free golf.  It was win win for the city.  According to Handzlik, both his boss and the city manager knew of the arrangement.

Suddenly, everything went Mayberry and got either Gooberized or Gomerized to death depending upon one's point of view.  Charges of conflict of interest, violating policies on moonlighting, using city computers, and being on the city's clock while working on the project were bruited about.  The mayor, normally placid (some say right out of "Murder She Wrote") turned nasty levying a sentence that hardly fit the "crime." Result: Leuthold and Handzlik were fired.  As things turned out, the firings were a factor leading to Pike's re-election failure last November.

Another factor was the hidden cameras fiasco, additional proof that you simply stay away from Bellingham unless you want to experience fools gladly as they attempt to myopically claim Subdued City as the Santa Barbara of the North.

It was mayor Pike who signed a contract with something called ATS that would have placed red-light cameras at four intersections in addition to speed snappers in two school zones.  The signing followed a Council closed-to-the-public 6-1 vote that approved the deal.  Earlier, the Council had voted unanimously to encourage public expression.  Subdued City rose up in a wrath most righteous, got an initiative on last November's ballot and there went the traffic cameras.  Pike was defeated, but wait a minute.  The state Supreme Court ruled the initiative against the cameras was invalid.

There was, of course, money involved and Bellingham's plan was to write at least two traffic tickets per location per day to equal a yearly cost of  $28,500 per camera.  Those tickets were to cost $124 at the intersections and $250 at the school zones.  This was in stark contrast to Mukilteo's approach to matters.  Mukilteo, for the geographically-deprived, is halfway to Seattle and set costs at $20 while enabling the public to vote.

The slumbering City Council in March of this year voted to pay ATS $100,000 by June 1 to end all the foolishness.  There is a chilling history of money spent here on surveys, advanced planning documents and architectural renderings plus the disheartening waste of time offered in the name of public good by committees and public commentary.

Another story to pass along to friends and relatives considering a move to Subdued City is a real classic involving the Port of Bellingham whose inability to get things done is legendary.  Turf warfare is what a lot of it is all about and savage infighting has characterized the Port Commission's inability to work with the City Council whose shortcomings are hardly breaking news.

For something like 18 months, Charlie Sheldon worked effectively as Port of Bellingham Executive Director having been hired by Commissioners who couldn't come up with a choice during a first round of interviews.  Sheldon, with an excellent record in a similar position in Seattle, eventually was chosen and did work that pleased everyone including Commissioner Scott Walker who eventually changed his mind.  Meanwhile, former Commissioners, ex-mayors and others of political bent came to believe Sheldon was the real deal.  That is everyone but Walker.

On March 30, the three port commissioners held an executive meeting.  It was closed to the public with only invited staff and counsel also in attendance to discuss "personnel."  The discussion was about Sheldon with Walker unable to convince fellow commissioner Jim Jorgensen to ask for Sheldon's resignation.  According to witnesses, Walker would not elaborate on his disappointment with Sheldon.

It was at this point that an illegal weekend meeting between Walker and Jorgensen was held.  Jorgensen eventually caved and Sheldon was forced to resign.  Walker and Jorgensen had engaged in a "serial meeting" in which two commissioners talked through an intermediary from the Port staff.  It was a violation of the Open Meetings Act of Washington State.

In one of those journalistic embarrassments underlining the Bellingham Herald's lack of responsibility to its readers, the reporter who normally covers the Port for the paper was out of town.  No one stepped in for him and the paper was beaten for two days by John Servais who publishes the on-line Northwest Citizen.  Originally from Green Bay, Wisconsin, Servais was the principal force behind The Independent, now defunct.  Servais, highly sensitive about such matters as inept leadership and lazy journalism, has called for a public response.  One option is to recall Walker and elect a replacement this fall.  The other is to expand the commission to five members, a move that would produce better Port decisions and lessen the possibility of further outrages.  An open to the public Port meeting, at which a problem-solving expansion can be accomplished, will be held Monday (May 14).  No one is holding their breath.

One month after Sheldon left office, Walker's indignation was finally explained by something called the Pacific Maritime Online.  Sheldon had taken a busines trip to the Caribbean and Walker was miffed for his not informing the board.  According to many, Walker's idea of travel exotica might involve a visit to nearby Marietta whose resemblance to Dismal Seepage of "Vic & Sade" is striking.

At this writing, 'hamsters can affix their names to a petition calling for an expansion of Port commissioners from three to five.  Needed are 6,915 valid signatures, a number that amounts to 10 percent of last November's voters.

No way do you want to move to Bellingham.  No way, that is, unless you yearn for a real life version of "Mayberry RFD."

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Last Laughs....by Bob Sanders

 

I see my regular physician something like four times a year.  The other day, I got the good news that, in his opinion, there are no apparent reasons why my life span should not run another five years.  His words were entirely volunteered and not the result of any prompting on my part.  Assuming he's correct, I will make it at least into my 90s.

His words prompted my thinking about the enormously serendipitous aspects of living a life that appreciates improvisation in a world decidedly inclined to schedule just about everything.  I got to thinking about some of the delightful surprises I've experienced  over the years; with such thoughts come hope there are more down the road.

 

It was early on while working for TV Guide magazine that I found myself in Oklahoma City on the way to the airport to pick up Barbara Nichols, an actress whose charms produced deep conviction by some that she made Marilyn Monroe look by comparison like a boy.  Nichols, who made it into many dignified forms of show business by way of men's magazines, had flown in to bring some added attention to the new Oklahoma Edition of the publication.  It was while driving her to the Skirvin Hotel that I learned she was hungry.

We stopped at a very nice Italian restaurant where the food was good and the conversation sprightly.  Quite suddenly, the actress exclaimed: "Oh, my goodness, there I am," and pointed to a brick wall with an oddly mottled look.  With that, she pulled me out of my chair for a closer inspection.  Our examination revealed a great variety of the more interesting pieces of female anatomy that had been cut from magazines, pasted on the wall, then shellacked.

"Look, there's one of my boobs," she exclaimed, her voice trumpeting a manic sense of pride.  Who would know other than the possessor of it or them or, maybe, Hugh Hefner with magnifying glass in hand?  Later on, she found her derriere although she didn't call it that.

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The Chase-Park Plaza Hotel in St. Louis probably is still going strong and I suspect that public relations there continue to be done by a Mary Chase.  Just as there has been over the course of nearly a century something like 18 Rin Rin Tins, so it has been with the hotel and the myriad Mary Chases.

I met the very attractive Mary in 1956 at a party honoring Nat "King" Cole, the jazz great who had shucked his trio, become a pop singer, and had just acquired a TV show that would be rejected by a number of southern stations because he touched singer Peggy Lee.  More about that one at some future date.  

During a john break at the party, I chatted with pal/disc jockey/newsman Bruce Hayward who informed me that Mary, whom I had promised a resumption of our conversation, was very interested in me.  Married for seven years and alert to the "itch factor," I fled the hotel.  A TV Guide transfer to Atlanta occurred a week later.

During the next three years, I was moved four times eventually landing in Kansas City where my responsibilities included St. Louis.  One evening, I entered the Chase Hotel and there, standing precisely and impressively where I had left her, was Mary Chase whom I had stood up three years earlier.  

"What took you so long?" she asked.

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Tom O'Brien, a retired broadcaster who used t live on Orcas Island, left the party a couple of years ago and I recall his good cheer if only because of a story about musician Boyd Raeburn.

Tom was doing dance band remotes back in the early 40s from such places as the Glen Island Casino and Frank Daley's Meadowbrook.  One evening, O'Brien, then making $25.50 a week, was scheduled to do a remote at Ben Marden's Riviera.  It involved the Boyd Raeburn Orchestra, so progressive it made most other big bands sound funky.

O'Brien was approached immediately before airtime by Raeburn whose name was often mangled by announcers.  "Son, don't mess my name up.  It's Raeburn, Boyd Raeburn, Boyd Raeburn.  That's Boyd Raeburn."

"Yes, sir," replied O'Brien.

The engineer then threw the signal, the trumpet section sounded, O'Brien cupped an ear and intoned: "From coast-to-coast on NBC, it's Roy Boidbrain and his orchestra."

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It was on a lengthy tour of Spain and nearby countries that wife Jan and I checked into The Bajandillo in Torremolinas.  Not far from Gibralter, we quickly gave the hotel the not terribly sober sobriquet: The Banjo Dildo.  The hotel's architecture, U-Shaped, provides water views from all rooms and our second floor location was above a central lobby with the hotel wings angled from us.

Halfway into our 10-day stay, we discovered a laundry problem on a Saturday--bad timing in most countries.  Since our room had a balcony, we washed some clothes and hung them out to dry before setting out for a late lunch.

Returning, we noticed that most of our clothes had fallen to the lobby roof so we put retrieval procedures into motion.  To a wire coat hanger's shoulder was attached a clothesline which I lowered to a position above some underwear, then hooked a pair of shorts.  After a few feet of success, the underwear fell off and I resumed fishing for laundry.  This time I extended the middle of the hanger's base to form a V above the hook.  Although I had never attended an engineering school (a thoroughly laughable notion), I figured an engineer would improve the balance of the coat hanger by doing what I did.  Jan, of course, spelled me during what probably was 20 minutes of mostly frustration.  We finally hauled up the last of the laundry.

It was at that moment that a startling burst of rather deafening applause greeted us from the adjoining wings of The Banjo Dildo.  People, gathered on a great many of the hotel's balconies, either were demonstrating their appreciation of American ingenuity or recognizing our Chaplinesque low comedy.  We treated it as a La Scala moment and bowed graciously from our stage.

During the rest of our stay in Torremolinas, the guests of The Banjo Dildo greeted us with applause and more than one drink was sent our way.  The moral of the story is that loopdy Americans are much more appreciated on foreign shores than ugly ones.

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Living 14 years in Friday Harbor, Washington included a number of reminders that made it clear I was living in a small town.

One of them occurred when Lloyd Benedict and I met over lunch at Fords, a Bar & Grill.  Benedict, a retired insurance executive, had been given the assignment of talking me into becoming president of the San Juan Community Theatre's board of trustees.  We began lunch with straight up Beefeater martinis, then settled back to talk about rutabagas and kings, then matters theatrical.  With drinks reduced to the width of one's small finger, we ordered another round after which our waitress did a silent, awkward, table-side hover.

"Is there anything wrong?" asked Lloyd.

"Well, sir," she responded.  "Those are our only straight-up martini glasses and I guess I'll have to wait for you to finish your first drinks."

The story doesn't end there.  About a year after turning Lloyd down (he took on the trustee presidency himself much as Dick Cheney the George W. Bush administration's vice-presidency), we met once more at Fords where we again ordered martinis and laughed about our prior experience there.  A different waitress this time but the result the same: there were still just two straight-ups in the bar.

Figuring a third questioning would surely be the charm to produce proof of more glasses, I asked the obvious of a co-owner of the re-named Fords--still called Haley's Bait Shop.  A diligent search followed amid much laughter.  That was in 2002, eight years after the first incident.  Four months later, I was assured "we now have six or eight more" although no physical proof was offered.  I think it's time for another martini in Friday Harbor.

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Harry Chan was one of my favorite people and remains so because of memories.  A six-foot third-generation Chinese, he fathered film actresses Meg and Jennifer Tilly while married to a Caucasion.  Harry and I became related by marriage when, after a 15-year courtship, he married my second wife's sister, Susan Christenson.

The marriage took place during a very hot summer in Grand Island, Nebraska and was followed by a reception at a country club.  During the celebration, a quite puzzled little old lady toddled over to Harry.  Commenting about what a good time she was having, the quite elderly woman conveyed her puzzlement.

"Mr. Chan," she began, "I have noticed the mosquitoes are out in full force and they are biting everyone but you.  I don't understand."

"Well, mam," replied Harry.  "Those mosquitoes know that if they bite Harry Chan, they are going to be hungry in 20 minutes."

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Bonhomie Bob Cromie....by Bob Sanders

It was while taking the #15 WTA bus to downtown Bellingham the other day that I began thinking about my good fortune to have known Bob Cromie.  Perhaps it was the book I was reading during the ride that reminded me of him.  A classic among journalists, Robert J. Casey's Such  Interesting People is a highly perceptive look at Chicago reporters, writers and editors who, among other things, inspired Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur to write The Front Page.

Cromie, who left us at 90 with six months and change left before the Millennium, was a carry-over from Casey's era.  His book, published in 1943, did not goose me into the field of journalism; rather, it was reportorial efforts on The Heun Gazette, a for-laughs-only publication passed around study halls by restless students at Lakewood High School located in a suburb immediately west of Cleveland, Ohio.  More later about The Gazette, editor Dick Heun and our decidedly bizarre approach to journalism as we created our versions of the first pages of history.

Cromie may be recalled as the host of a nationally syndicated radio show about books plus two TV programs, "Cromie Circle" on Chicago's WGN and "Book Beat," home based at WTTW, the city's public TV channel that fed the shows to PBS stations.  His broadcast triumphs were an adjunct to four decades of reportorial excellence.  He loved words and the people who used them--particularly those who called attention to social injustice, an attitude that characterized every aspect of his work and life.

Successful journalists owe their reputations to many things.  Some dig deeper for stories than their counterparts.  Others, not as persevering, may place greater emphasis on originality while some make effective use of contacts calling upon rolodexes both real and of the mind.  Cromie is the only journalist I ever met who was thoroughly noble and it showed in the way people responded to him.  I never heard him swear and that includes time on the golf course where people are very inclined to do so.

In a business where excessive drinking, more than any other shortcoming, has probably ended more careers, Cromie (to my knowledge) never took a drink.  Whether this was a lifelong consistency or a resolve preceded by a battle with demon rum I know not.  He often sat at John Fischetti's First Amendment celebratory table at Riccardo, joining in and providing hilarity while not imbibing.  Fischetti, a Pulitzer winner for editorial cartooning, was my best friend first at the  Chicago Daily News, then at Sun-Times after the Daily News was folded by Marshall Field V.

Like many outstanding journalists, Cromie was a messy desk person although he was on the neat side compared to sports writer/columnist Bill Gleason of the Sun-Times.  I once made reference to something he had written nine years earlier prompting Gleason to dive into a filing system everyone called Mt. Gleason.  Groping for a moment or two with Herman Cain-like proficiency, he extracted a published piece plus paper-clipped notes and proclaimed: "You mean this?"   

The messy desk possibly continues to be a matter of pride to some contemporary journalists.  I once took wife Janet on a tour of the Chicago Tribune editorial floor during which she met such print paragons as columnist Eric Zorn, critic Gene Siskal (then thumbs-upping it at the movies with TV co-host Roger Ebert) and cartoonist Jeff MacNelly, a three-time Pulitzer winner.  It was in the newsroom that we came upon a remarkable example of clutter whose magnitude suggested it had to have been detritus of an Oklahoma tornado decidedly off course.

"Whose office is this?" asked Jan.

"It's Casey Bukro's,"  I replied knowing what was coming next.

"What does he do?" was the anticipated question.

"Why, he's the Environmental Editor" I giggled in return.  Bukro, responsible for environmental entries, nearly won a Pulitzer for his "Save Our Lake" series.

Born in Detroit and educated at Oberlin College, Cromie joined the Tribunein 1936 and was the newspaper's war correspondent for four years.  Wherever World War II battles raged, whether in Europe or the Pacific, Cromie was there to report--often with a local angle.  His modus operandi nearly always was kicked off by asking if there were any soldiers or Marines from Chicago or Illinois.  Tribune readers had the war "personalized" for them and Cromie was masterful.

Cromie was with the Marines when Guadalcanal was invaded and he put in a lot of miles traveling with Gen. George Patten including coverage of the Battle of the Bulge.  Like Ernie Pyle, he wrote stories about average guys turned into everyday heroes.  Typical of his work was an October 12, 1943 report telling of a raid on Rabaul located, as the dateline proclaimed, SOMEWHERE IN NEW GUINEA.  The writing is rich, spare and aimed at a readership whose heightened interest in the war is in direct contrast to today's indifference.

"As we taxied on the runway," continued Cromie, "I moved into the bomb bay and stood between rows of 1,000 pound bombs.  We had plenty of respect for the 1,000 pounders--Staff Sgt. Fred C. Whitney, 22, Independence, Mo., Staff Sgt. John G. Shaffer of Logan, W. VA, and I.  We didn't return to our comfortable posts in the waist until Bond (Lt. John E. Bond 24 of Scarsdale, N.Y.) had plenty of time to get his plane on an even keel.  Other heavy bombers were all around us.  I could count more than 50 at one time.  We gradually got into formation and headed for Rabaul, soon running into heavy fog which hid the wingtips and sent tiny drops of water running on the windows.  Then into the sun once more.  The morning was all blue and gold and blinding white.  I went forward and stood behind the pilot's seat.  Tech Sgt. H. V. Milarski of 3800 Diversey boulevard, Chicago, was working on the radio.  As he smoked a cigarette he looked as bored as if riding down State street in a street car.  Tech Sgt. Joseph A. Gosseaux, 23, of Grindstone, Pa., the engineer, was busy writing down the names of the personnel.  He did this with ease from long practice, even to putting down each man's serial number from memory--some numbers containing eight digits." 

Cromie's war journalism is something we don't get today because of the military's control explicit in embedding reporters resulting in spoon fed versions far short of what we should be getting.  For that we can thank President George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney (then Defense Secretary) and other members of the administration who conducted an assault on constitutional freedoms during Operation Desert Storm.  Without question, a strangely passive press also was at fault.

I have two particularly fond memories of Cromie.  One involved attending services for Fischetti who died two weeks after I left Field Enterprises (owner of the Sun-Times).  There were people critical of my leaving for the Tribune but Fischetti was highly supportive during two months of my maneuverings with the marketing and editorial departments of the Boul Mich monolith.

Cromie's eulogy for Fischetti was perfect.  In the company of all who loved the guy, Cromie offered a parting line that recalled a legion of mid-day fun: "I think it's entirely possible that John Fischetti invented the long lunch."

My other indelible memory of the journalist was the result of a question I asked him following a taping of "The Cromie Circle" at WGN.  Of all the authors he had interviewed, with which one would he prefer to spend a lot of time?  Cromie mentioned several but the stickout he decided was Ernest K. Gann.  Gann's many lives were spent as a theatrical manager, film director, painter, writer, pilot and seaman.  Both he and Cromie were man's men for whom laughter was an important ingredient of living.  "He is truly one hell of a guy," was the way he put it.

"'ll tell you something interesting about Gann," observed Cromie.  "His was the only interview I ever conducted in which the subject would not tell me where he lived.  I asked him why and Gann replied: "If I tell you, you'll ask me what it's like and I'll tell you how wonderful it is.  Members of your audience will then get interested in the place and they'll buy property and build homes and the place won't be the same.  That's why."

Our conversation took place in 1985 shortly before Cromie retired.  When more than four years later Jan and I moved to San Juan Island in the Pacific Northwest, we discovered that one of its better-know residents was Gann, author of 25 novels about aviation and the sea.  Among the best known: Fate is the Hunter, The High and the Mighty and Blaze of Noon. 

We met Ernie and spunky wife Dodie (an inductee into the National Ski Hall of Fame, she captained the 1948 Olympics team) at a party a couple of weeks after our January, 1990 arrival in Friday Harbor.  He recalled the conversation with Cromie and thought our meeting indicative of pronounced prescience on Cromie's part.  Among the many joys of our island life were the sensational views offered from our home including the Olympic and Cascade Mountains, the waters of Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca and much of Ernie and Dodie's 760-acre Red Mill Farm in the San Juan Valley below.

The farm and its assured future gave further evidence of Ganns' staunch attitude regarding the heaven on earth he had referenced in his conversation with Cromie.  Shortly after donating a conservation easement to the San Juan Preservation Trust thus denying development, Gann told me: "We have to do something to save this land, not only for our children but for ourselves.  People need to stop thinking of money all the time, or the land won't be here." 

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Frank: The Voice....A review by Bob Sanders

 

I finally caught up with James Kaplan's ring-a-dingdingally good Frank: The Voice and, once again, became intrigued by the two Sinatras; one, a singer of remarkable sensitivity able to communicate in thoroughly entrancing fashion, the other an often highly immature, nasty, selfish oaf who fraternized with hoodlums in an apparent attempt to further a reputation for being tough. 

The book, of more than 700 pages,  while largely a re-write of many of the tomes about the entertainer, is a penetratingly good one comprehensively researched.  Like Gary Giddons' examination of Bing Crosby (A Pocketfull of Dreams), it takes the reader up to the break-through moment in the life of a musical sensation.  The Crosby book ended with his entry into films having concentrated on his development as an artist in addition to stories of palship with such notables as Hoagy Carmichael, Bix Beiderbecke, the Rhythm Boys and other members of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra who enjoyed a drink or ten.  Unlike, Sinatra, Crosby was regarded favorably by the public thanks to astute public relations and The Groaner's ability to confine his shortcomings largely to the home.  He was, by nearly all accounts, a complete antithesis of the merry, nice guy next-door screen presence.  Kaplan devotes considerable space in the Sinatra book to Crosby and for good reason.  It was Sinatra's worship of Crosby that inspired a career built on a lot of talent buoyed by intense determination.

Kaplan takes a warts and all approach to the finger-snapping singer from Hoboken, NJ in a kind of hip, semi-wise guy fashion--particularly when telling of gangster connections, piggish behavior and insensitive endings of relationships with women including Ava Gardner.  Yes, Ava is there along with Lana Turner, Marilyn Maxwell and women of less notoriety.  Actually, Ava, according to Kaplan, drove Sinatra up a lot of walls including one time in Palm Springs when the two of them had serious spat #187 (or whatever) with Sinatra taking off for the desert community presumably to resume a relationship with Turner.  Gardner, a good friend of Turner, beat Sinatra to Palm Springs as another Hollywood tale unfolded.  Good reporter Kaplan takes us through a number of versions of that overly-reported story including Kitty Kelley's His Way.  A bibliography of 127 suggests how much digging the author did to come up with what is, above all, a fair look at a most complicated performer.

Many of the musicians who played roles in Sinatra's early days as a band singer are there.  Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers, Jack Leonard (he preceded The Voice as the boy singer in Tommy Dorsey's band), Harry James & The Music Makers, song writer Jimmy Van Heusen (worth a book himself), Dick Haymes, Alec Wilder (the vastly underrated, eccentric, self-taught composer) and drummer Buddy Rich, a Sinatra nemesis whether it was women or tempos.  Anecdotes of musicians and their lives on the road are particularly effective while providing enormous insight.  The reader gets a vivid sense of what the Rustic Cabin was like when Sinatra waited on tables in the New Jersey joint and sang for his supper while learning his craft before discovery by James. 

One of the book's delights involves the circumstances of some of the 1,300 songs recorded by Sinatra.  Kaplan is particularly adroit at analyzing Sinatra's style revealing small but significant differences between the live and recorded singer.  "Four nights later, on an NBC radio broadcast from the Astor Roof, Sinatra sang 'I'll Never Smile Again' to another houseful of upper-crusters.  The air check of the number reveals a small but striking difference from the recording: on the radio version's out chorus (the last words sung in the song) as Sinatra sings 'Within my heart, I know I will never start/To smile again, until I smile at you,' he uses the vocal trick he'd discovered back at the Rustic Cabin, a breathy little catch in his voice, in this case before the initial h of 'heart.'  It's a small thing, a showman-like touch that would have made no sense on a recording but all the sense in the world before a live crowd--a naked play for the hearts of the rich girls in the audience.  Calculated, and thoroughly effective."

A fan of the Pied Pipers, I once sat next to Jo Stafford on the dais of a Kansas City Advertising Club luncheon where Stafford was a special guest, not the main speaker she should have been.  What a delight.  She was funny, a great teller of stories, totally engaging and the best lead singer of vocal groups I ever heard.  We spoke of Sinatra and her comments about him were almost word-for-word what Kaplan got from her some 50 years later.  "When you sing with a group, it takes a certain amount of discipline, and Frank was excellent at it," Stafford said.  "You can't wander off into your own phrasing.  You've got to do exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.  Very few solo singers can do that.  He could.  When he sang with us, he was a Piper, and he liked it, and did it well.  I don't know any other solo singer, solo male singer especially, that can do that."

Some of Sinatra's not so supporting players come off worse than others.  Hardly surprising, Louis B. Mayer is his usual suspicious, small and vindictive self while being critical of his MGM singer/actor property during a period when Mayor's mistress was former Kay Kyser singer, Ginny Simms.  Simms, vivacious and appealing, was something less than beautiful and some thought her a bit horse faced.  Sinatra had fun with that one.  Seated one day in the MGM commissary, someone threw him a provocative line: "Hey, did you hear about L.B.'s accident?"  Not missing a beat, Sinatra replied: "Yeah, I hear he fell off of Ginny Simms."  The incident immediately preceded the actor's leaving the studio.

Earl Wilson, whose Sinatra: An Unauthorized Biography gets heavy usage by Kaplan, comes off as a guy desperately wanting to be considered a Sinatra intimate.  His column items reflecting various stages of the singer's career--particularly the seemingly never-ending series of Gardner/Sinatra fights--suggests he asked a lot of dumb and self-serving questions.

A typical Wilson/Gardner scene occurred shortly before the actress filmed "Mogambo."   She and the columnist met "in a large eatery run by a large eater" (probably Toots Shor's) and the column item suggests an editor had complainted about Wilson plugs for "eateries."  Continue Wilson, "I happened to mention her Herculean husband whom she considers has negleted her, which--if it's true--makes him this century's man of iron."  Wilson then asks if he can be an intermediary and the onslaught of drivel continues.  

There has always been an understandable disconnect between segments of the public and artists whose personal lives are less than exemplary.  There's the Charlie Chaplin of all his cinematic triumphs and The Tramp's suggested but never proven communist sympathies.  The right's disenchantment with Hollywood goes back to Chaplin.  He was the first movieland "enemy" and it wasn't long before McCarthyism began doing damage to a bunch of people who didn't deserve it.  Kaplan's telling of the Sinatra saga includes the singer's early liberalism but, because the book ends with the career-changing Best Supporting Oscar for his role in From Here to Eternity (1954), we don't learn of his switch to conservatism because of what he felt was a social slight by John F. Kennedy.

Mitch Miller, who produced Sinatra's largely disappointing recordings at Columbia Records, comes off better than expected.  It was Miller who tangled with the singer over such fare as "Mama Will Bark."  The recording, possibly the worst of Sinatra's career, was done at the depths of his career.  The "Mama" on the record was Dagmar (her straight name was Virginia Ruth Egnor) whose description as a "tall, eye-poppingly buxom West Virginia blonde" is not nearly sufficient.  According to Kaplan, Sinatra did not squawk when Miller broached the tune.  The author also reveals that Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Stafford and others had to pay for their own recording sessions.

If there's a hero in the book, it's George Evans, a brilliant PR guy who guided Sinatra's career through nearly all the time covered in the book.  Evans was enormously creative, far seeing, loyal, and of tremendous energy.  It was Evans who gave Sinatra the tag that never left him: The Voice.  Evans invented the bobby sox hysteria that provided the singer such overwhelming attention which, nevertheless, brought a great deal of grief to the publicist; Sinatra was not an easy going employer.  Evans, more than a savvy PR practitioner, somehow worked his success in a quaint era where such a thing as bad publicity actually existed; he painted the singer as mostly a family man in spite of reality's red flags.  No one thus far has been named the inventor of spin, but George Evans' name has to be right up there should such a determination be pursued.

While there is little new in Sinatra: The Voice, the writing is crisp and the research exhausting.  James Kaplan has succeeded in giving us a much better understanding of an American icon who dramatically changed popular culture.   

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Polls Raise Cain....by Bob Sanders

 

Excuse me, but have we once again become distracted?

The reference is to the Herman Cain contretemps that started out as another one of those "revelations" planted with an online media outlet.  Knowledgeable observers remain of a mind that one of Cain's rivals in the race to represent the Republican Party in the 2012 Presidential election did the planting.  Suggestions that the Democrats are responsible make no sense.  The race is for Mitt Romney to lose and the Dems would much rather be confronted by Cain in the finals for all the obvious reasons.  Cain, meanwhile, is in impressive denial with the specter of at least four women pooling their experiences on TV chilling in terms of a Cain survival.

It was an odd week of peculiar verbalizing by the rag tag collection of those seeking the GOP nomination aided and abetted by not always helpful associates.  Michelle Bachmann suggested Mount Rushmore recognition for James Garfield who barely had time to check out the rose garden during six months in office.  Then, there was money decider Karl Rove, further distancing himself from the Tea Party by suggesting that celebrity attorney Gloria Allred (Sharon Bialek's mouthpiece) "lends credibility" to sexual harassment accusations leveled at Cain.  Let us not forget big-hearted Rick Santorum who became a rare early bird to not call for Penn State's Joe Paterno's resignation just hours before the old coach was told to clean out his locker.  We certainly can't pass over Ron Paul who once again suggested scuttling the minimum wage nor can we forget a quote, actually a resurrection of a quote, about Newt Gingrich that was first reported a year ago.  We have word from ex-wife Marianne Gingrich who quoted "Newtie" staffers as saying: "He's a sociopath, but he's our sociopath."

Perhaps the biggest gaffe of the campaign was made Wednesday night when Rick Perry, straight from a highly animated appearance in New Hampshire where he gave further evidence that he does a magnificent impression of George W. Bush, couldn't come up with a third department he would eliminate should he make it to the White House.  This guy is so goofy "Saturday Night Live" has zeroed in on his stumbling.

Somehow, and hardly a surprise, the far right wing commentators (identifications are hardly necessary these days), responded to the Cain matter by blaming it all on the "liberal press."  Were Machiavelli around today, he would not be impressed by the lack of subtlety.

Lost in all the ululation was the Cain story's most important factor.  Given 10 days advance warning by Politico.com, Cain handled things with such withering dithering that his guilt or innocence regarding old sexual harassment complaints simply don't matter.  Cain bungled a series of challenges while changing his stories to meet the developing charges finally implying race is at the root of it all when pointed in that direction by the usual hate radio suspects.  The bottom line is that Cain has proved what most people had already figured during his inept campaign; he is not capable of the Presidency although better than most of the candidates.  It seems logical that had Bill Clinton been given 10 days to come up with a superior legalistic use of words, we would have heard something more impressive than a parsing of the word "is."

Cain's run for the Republican nomination has underlined how stunningly short of leadership we are in this country.  The message is clear when a candidate like Cain can gain significant traction with Republican Party primary voters by running as a Beltway outsider who once ran a pizza company and the National Restaurant Association.  His undeniable connection is based upon the well-earned eight percent approval rating currently accorded the 535 clowns who represent us in Washington.  How in the world has there not been a call for Joe, the Plumber to haul us out of this mess?

What we have been getting out of Cain has advanced from puzzlement over the words "settlement" and "agreement" to what sounds strangely like lines from old "Amos & Andy" radio shows with Cain doing a very effective George "Kingfish" Stevens including the kind of upscale speech expected from a representative of the business world.  Those of sufficient memory may recall the Kingfish as a fraudulent observer whose misadventures often involved "The Knights of the Mystic Sea."  Kingish nemesis was Madam Queen and we seem to be gathering a burgeoning cast of featured females more than capable of raising Cain's hackles.  Who knows where the road will lead us but I have the damnable feeling that we're going to hear more about the inner-workings of the hospitality-prone National Restaurant Association than we really deserve.  We may yet see those women on "The View" with the go-getting Barbara Walters, a highly proficient getter of the "get," in fine feminine fettle.

This action distraction in politics, characterized by a deadly seriousness and determined reluctance during shallow TV debates to discuss a lot of highly important subjects, wasn't always so.  Back in the days when Richard Nixon was running for Congress against Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, the future President was done in for the first time by prankster Dick Tuck, then a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  It was an absent-minded professor who made possible Tuck's stunt by asking him to promote a campus appearance by Nixon whose campaign against Douglas remains one of the dirtiest ever.  As advance man, Tuck rented a big auditorium, invited very few people, then gave a long-winded speech to introduce Nixon.  As Nixon moved to the microphone, Tuck asked him to speak about the International Monetary Fund.  When Nixon finished, the candidate asked Tuck his name, then told him: "Dick Tuck, you've made your last advance."  It wasn't.

Tuck quickly became Nixon's avenger with his famous prank, "the Chinatown Caper," a particular winner.  Running for Governor of California in 1962, Nixon pulled into Los Angeles Chinatown where a backdrop of children held "welcome" signs in English and Chinese.  When Nixon spoke, a community elder whispered that one of the signs in Chinese said: "What about the Hughes loan?"  The reference was to an unsecured $205,000 loan that Howard Hughes provided Nixon's brother, Donald.  On camera, Nixon grabbed a sign and ripped it up.  Later, Tuck learned that the Chinese characters actually spelled out: "What about the huge loan?" 

So distinctive was Tuck's mischief-making that arch-conservative William F. Buckley singled him out as a master political prankster.  "You see," wrote Buckley, "Dick Tuck has been an employee of Democrats for many years, and his running assignment is to embarrass Republicans by any means.  He specializes in glorious improvisations which are no doubt more damaging to Republicans than any conversation the Watergaters might have tapped from the telephone of Lawrence O'Brien."

Humor always characterized Tuck's pranks and there was never any suggestion of meanness to what became legendary efforts.  In 1868, Nixon was defeated by Pat Brown in a race best known for his "you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" comments to reporters.  Nixon's state of mind that day was believed by many to have been irrational and unbalanced; his behavior was partially attributed to Tuck having tricked Nixon twice during the campaign.  Included was the premature departure of a train from which Nixon was speaking.  Tuck modestly denies the event and such is the snow-balling effect of fame where undeserved credits are sometimes awarded.  To connoisseurs of dirty tricks, Tuck's were to politics what Frank Sinatra was to beautiful women.

One of the most fascinating moments of Tuck's career occurred in the White House during a give and take between Nixon and H.R. Haldeman.  On tape, a perplexed President makes references to disclosures by staffer Donald Segretti whose Watergate dirty tricks were deemed inferior to those of Tuck's everyday efforts.  That was in October, 1972 and there is admiration in Nixon's voice in recounting Tuck's triumphs.  "Dick Tuck did that to me," says the President.  "Let's get out what Dick Tuck did!"

It's easy to understand how a lot of people credit Tuck with an inspirational role in Watergate.  Segretti was hired by Dwight Chapin who reported directly to Haldeman.  It was during the Watergate hearings that Tuck ran into Haldeman, asked to resign the month before along with John Ehrlichman.

"You started all of this," said the former White House chief of staff.

Replied Tuck: "Yeah, but you guys ran it into the ground."

No one ever accused the Nixon White House of having a sense of humor and I think it fair to believe that Nixon and his staff didn't understand that Tuck was almost exclusively a merry prankster and a decided contrast to most of those who surrounded the President.  I was twice interviewed in 1967 by Haldeman and Ron Ziegler, both employed at the time by J. Walter Thompson Advertising in Los Angeles.  They were looking for a Ziegler replacement on the Disney account and my two sessions with them were enormously serious.  I didn't know it at the time but they had been tapped by Nixon for future White House work with Ziegler taking on a job for which he was disastrously ill-prepared: press secretary.

Tuck ran for office once and it was a failure.  That was in 1966 and his race for a newly-created California State Senate seat happened when he was late for a meeting with fellow Democrats.  By the time he arrived, his pals had chosen him.  He lost big time but his concession speech lives on: "The people have spoken...the bastards."

Two years later he joined the Robert Kennedy campaign following his candidacy announced in March, 1968.  Tuck did press relations and occasionally walked Kennedy's dog, Freckles.  Kidded by journalist friends, Tuck observed: "To you, this is just a dog, but to me it's an ambassadorship."  Tuck was walking behind Kennedy when the candidate, celebrating his California primary victory, was shot by Sirhan Sirhan.  Tuck tended to the fallen Kennedy and rode with police to the hospital where the candidate died.

Tuck also had the last laugh on Nixon when he helped give the public a better understanding of Watergate.  While the unedited transcripts were made available in August, 1980, no tape excerpts had been played on national media.  The National Archives would not allow any public access to the tapes other than being able to hear them at the Archive building.  Acquiring tapes from an undisclosed source, Tuck called an October 21 press conference in the Aspen (Colorado) Hotel's Jerome Bar.  He played excerpts for an hour, the media recorded the material, and the public acquired a better understanding of how venal and paranoid was our 37th President.

Dicktuck.com has a wealth of information about the prankster who lives in Tucson, Arizona.  Now 87 with a birthday coming up in January, Tuck has much to look back upon.  He had a lot of laughs and so have those of us who know how devastating humor can be in the political arena.  Nixon was almost forever a stranger to fun and breathed his last believing that a 1968 "Sock it to Me" appearance on "Laugh In" got him elected President.  My best guess is that he never really understood the why of it.

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Breaks of the Game....by Bob Sanders

 

In writing recently about some strange adventures involved in a Chicago Tribune public relations program suddenly dumped in my lap as the 1980s were winding down, I promised additional commentary about the guy who played dumper to my dumpee.

Dickey was one of three executives brought to theTribune in 1984 from the Orlando Sentinel, a sister publication where highly favorable marketing conditions made it almost impossible to do anything other than succeed.  Suddenly, publisher Charles Brumbach, editor-in-chief Jim Squires and Dickey were calling the shots.

It was shortly after my wife, Mickey, began chemotherapy treatments that I became aware my employment at the Trib was on shaky ground.  In retrospect, it still seems bizarre that my bosses could criticize my not coming to work for three days after Mickey's funeral services.  True, I had achieved bad paper status by leaving work at 2 p.m. each Thursday to take her home following treatments.  On the other hand, I always made up the time.  My work at the Trib was probably the best of my career and I won a number of major national awards including one for the White Sox send-up detailed earlier in "Pale Hose Humbuggery."

Because of my editorial background and news sense, I enjoyed excellent working relations with reporters and editors.  They trusted me thanks to word first put out by managing editor Bill Jones and others.  I doubt that any marketing employee at a major newspaper in this country at that time had my accessibility.  It was highly unusual and, in truth, I took a great deal of pride in being more a part of the editorial department than marketing.  Such a setup can invite problems.

A clue to my uneasy employment occurred about the time I won a national award from the American Newspaper Marketing Association for effectively positioning the Tribune in the White Sox craziness that included a threatened team move to Tampa-St. Petersburg.  I bailed Dickey out of a mess by giving focus and structure to his germ of a badly mounted idea.  Ironically, the project was deemed good enough for second prize in a monthly Tribune marketing department competition run by Dickey.  I had just turned 62, an event that prompted the usual birthday cake and singing of "Happy Birthday" followed by Dickey's comment that I was the oldest person in the department and almost 20 years senior to his marketing eminence.  His comment was a textbook lesson in how not to handle what might be proved as age discrimination.

In all honesty, I probably committed one of the biggest no no's of the workplace: killing the job.  Brought aboard to, among other things, give prominence to Tribune reporters and editors, I had booked a total of 1,500 broadcast appearances the first year eventually hitting 5,000 the last years of a highly effective run.  Obviously, I didn't have time to make all those bookings; rather, a snowball effect evolved with the paper gaining a tremendous lead over the Sun-Times whose circulation was concentrated in the city.  The Trib had become an even more significant regional newspaper with stories and editorial personnel appearing on those radio and TV stations whose signals helped enlarge the paper's circulation area.  Bureaus were created in the hinterlands, a sharp contrast to today's continuing pullback.  Like my work at Playboy whose circulation peaked during my tenure, so it was at theTribune during, as today's developments suggest, what was arguably the last golden yeaers of print journalism.   

Giving a lot of thought to hiring a lawyer and suing the paper for age discrimination, I decided I didn't want to go through 10 or 15 years of legal hell that dominates such pursuit, then took retirement in January, 1989.  Having married elegant and fun-loving Jan Quinn the prior year, we had discovered the San Juan Islands during a four-week look at some of this country's national parks.  The Pacific Northwest move would not have been possible had I been working for the Tribune.  Jan and I took up residence on the island in Washington State where we moved in January, 1990 having bought a home in a very elevated spot with glorious views of water plus the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges.  Being corporate toast, however, rankled.  Something very wrong had happened and I knew a second shoe had to drop; when it did, I was astonished at what a thud it made in addition to a lot of sense.

Six months after moving to the island, the mail started bringing us clippings about Dickey.  The stories told of his being charged with bilking the Tribune out of about $890,000 over the course of three years.  Early published pieces, obviously controlled by the Tribune, about the executive's scam were somewhat lacking in detail although one report did mention his having been arrested in 1986 for stealing fishing lures from a shop in suburban Skokie.  Dickey pleaded he was a kleptomaniac, a problem described by his attorney as "diminished mental capacity."  One theory about the fishing lure theft suggested he had created an excuse in the event he was caught at his much grander larceny.  Cooperating with the newspaper, Dickey made restitution of $720,000--some of it realized from the sale of a home in swanky Kenilworth.   

In its June 22, 1991 issue, Advertising Age reported Dickey's biggest misappropriation was a false billing for a total of $748,352 in American Eagle gold coins.  Federal prosecutors said Dickey altered several of the invoices for the coins so that the "AE" appearing on the bill from a "Waukegan, Illlinois coin dealer suggested references to a Tribune employee rewards program know as "Advertising Excellence."  Dickey later sold the coins for cash and there is no record of any marketing department staffers (or anyone else, for that matter) winning the gold.  Perhaps one of those coins was "earmarked" for your faithful scribe's contest excellence although my second place finish probably wouldn't have qualified me.

Those American Eagle coins, hawked enthusiastically on Fox News and Fox Financial Channels, must remind Dickey of what might have been--particularly considering the price of gold ($1,765.50) as this is written.  Averaging around $400 an ounce during those halcyon years of thievery, Dickey's take would now be worth more than $3 million.  Had he not been caught, Dickey would likely be a fervent follower of Glenn Beck whose messages of fear helped drive the price of gold up to a record $1,917.90 early in August.  

During Dickey's profligate pilfering, he had the authority to approve payment of any promotional expense up to $50,000, according to charges.  About $140,000 in fraudulent goods and services invoices enabled him to convert to his personal use.  Included was $31,493 for landscaping, $7,844 for carpentry work and $2,071 for painting at his home.  Hey, living the good life isn't cheap.  Another payment went to a furniture business indicating the purchases would be used on the USS Chicago anchored at Navy Pier.

Whatever budgetary linkage there was between the purchase of coins and the costs of my work, salary and expenses (a yearly total of around $225,000 including staff appearances at $35 a pop) is anyone's guess.  I was not replaced.  Ah, irreplaceable me.

A rather odd series of visits to San Juan Island by Tribune staffers occurred during those early years of my retirement.  Two were by editorial department personnel and one from marketing.  Only one of the three, foreign news editor Michael McGuire, was anyone I had spent any time with while the other two hardly qualified as pals with the marketing department emloyee someone I had spoken to less than a half dozen times during about five years of her employment.  I'm certain all three took back stories that I was happy in my retirement and fully aware of how the Dickey drama had played out.  

The greatest satirical writers could not possibly come up with what happened to Tribune Company during the past four years.  The highly toxic Zell, who bought the firm in 2007, has done what corporate monsters do so effectively: mess up a good thing by not understanding, in this case the communications industry, and by making stupid decisions.  Among them: turning the firm over to Randy Michaels, a former shock jock (think Howard Stern) whose only media experience was with radio giant Clear Channel Communications.  Possessing no knowledge of print journalism, he was in vivid contrast to Col. Robert R. McCormick, the highly conservative and controversial editor/publisher who ran his fiefdom (1910-1955) much as an army battalion.  In a very short time, Michaels turned Tribune Tower into what one observer called a "sexist frat house atmosphere" where sexual behavior after hours became commonplace.  Some of the shenanigans took place in McCormick's old office.  In a deep financial hole, Michaels and his playmates managed to give themselves $57.3 million in bonuses while slashing 4,200 jobs in a wicked display of American greed.

Tribune Company is so screwed up that a guy I knew when he was working on the Trib's sports desk, Owen Youngman, is being sued for $328,049.  The money, received in the form of a check, was stock-based compensation he had accululated during 37 years at the newspapee.  Now a professor at Northwest University's Medill School of Journalism, he is one of 200 former excutives who find themselves targets of legal action in a Delaware bankruptcy court dealing with the company' s disastrous leveraged buyout.  Youngman didn't even work directly for Tribune Company.  All his 37 years were with Chicago Tribune, a fact being dismissed by a committee of unsecured creditors who want to claw back about $180 million in compensation.

I took a satisfactory chunk of money with me upon retirement in 1989 thanks to the then soaring value of company stock I accumulated and matched by the  newspaper.  My selling of the stock couldn't have been better timed.

Sometimes, while meandering down life's not always merry yellow brick road, we incur problems suggesting unfortunate consequences.  Thoes situations often turn out to be lucky breaks, but we don't know it at the time.  Every once in a while, Jan and I hoist a toast to Bob Dickey, 44, at the time of his arrest and a year older when releasd from prison.  We never would have wound up in the Fourth Corner for what has been nearly 22 terrific years had it not been for the thievery of Bob Dickey.

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"Prohibition"....by Bob Sanders

 

Fourth Corner TV viewers fortunate enough to have seen Ken Burns' absorbing documentary, "Prohibition," probably are unaware there's a second shoe that, understandably, never dropped during the fascinating look at Roy Olmstead, a featured bootlegger in part two of the three-part PBS series.  First a cop, then Seattle's biggest mover of booze, Olmstead received a lot of attention from Burns.

That second shoe involves what happened after Olmstead, a Robin Hood-like character, was finally done in by a series of events during the last four months of 1924.  It was in September of that year that a trusted Olmstead lieutenant turned informant revealing intimate details of Olmstead's operation.  A series of raids by federal agents, aided by wiretaps and surveillance on Olmstead's home, was followed by the bootlegger's arrest November 17 of that year.  Arrested with him: a wife and 15 guests.

Because of time constraints involved in packing a sprawling and complicated story into five and one-half hours, Burns was understandably unable to expand upon Olmstead's remarkable tale by including material likely of interest only to people of the Pacific Northwest.

Let's back up a bit while adding details.  Olmstead had joined the Seattle police force in 1907 rising through the ranks to be named its youngest lieutenant in 1917.  That was one year after the State of Washington became one of 23 states to enforce "dry laws" that produced Prohibition.  It was while making bootlegging arrests that Olmstead noticed a lack of "professionalism" among the criminals and decided he could do a better job.  Soon, as the Burns film indicates, he was making more in a week than he could as a cop in 20 years.  His entrepreneurial spirit was reminiscent of Willie Sutton who targeted banks because "that's where the money is."

Olmstead's rum-running success, whose key factor was proximity to Canadian liquor where there were no prohibitive laws, lasted nearly four years.  Early on, his criminal activities were discovered and his police career was over.  His only charge was a $500 fine; the experience strengthened a belief that bootlegging offered more advantages than police work.

Olmstead also changed wives marrying Elise Caroline Parch, something of a dazzler whom he met in the summer of 1924.  They wed August 5 of that whirlwind year.  Friends observed Elise as quite an improvement over former wife, Viola, and it was the young and vivacious Englishwoman (they met in Vancouver, B.C.) who maneuvered Olmstead into purchasing a knockout of a mansion in the Mt. Baker area.

Possessor of an agile mind, Olmstead had become interested in the possibilities offered by new-fangled radio broadcasting and a logical progression of thought produced an exciting use of extra space in his home.  Whether Burns chose to ignore Olmstead's creation of a radio station in his mansion (a matter of record) or because, as Seattle author Emmett Watson learned, all of the bootlegger's police records were destroyed, is anybody's guess.

Evidence does exist that Olmstead's radio station, KFQX, was Seattle's first; further, the station's broadcasts were from what had been a bedroom in the home the two often referred to as their "snow white palace."  The good times rolled in Olmstead's Gatsby-like existence with old-timers insisting that wife Elise's dulcet English voice was employed to signal rum-running boats in Puget Sound through codes sprinkled among Mother Goose rhymes and Hans Christian Andersen stories.

Alise's broadcast persona was as "Aunt Vivian" who read to "children" of the Puget Sound as twilight approached for the daytime-only station.  Those possessed of a sense of humor wondered if more appropriate station call letters might be KRUM?  It is now the venerable and all-news KOMO.

Since those were the days before radio newspaper columns and awards shows, there are no records indicating the quality of the programs originating in the Tara of Radio.  The only audience that really mattered: crews of rum-running boats.  In retrospect, it appears radio neophyte Olmstead was stumbling around in what would become the hallowed halls of broadcast narrowcasting.

During all of this, Olmstead was a popular member of a Seattle society aware that more than half of the city's police force was in on the game.  Although rum-running was hardly a walk in the park, Olmstead's employees were prohibited from carrying firearms.  He was often quoted as saying he would rather lose a shipment of booze than a life.

Not to stray too far from the core of this story, but the online Encyclopedia of Washington State History insists Alfred M. Hubbard, a young inventor, built the radio station in a spare bedroom of the Olmstead mansion.  Highly mysterious, Hubbard has various online accreditations including being called "the Johnny Appleseed of LSD."  Apparently, he also worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) later called the CIA.  It was Hubbard who informed on Olmstead in the fall of 1924, a career move for the young man who swapped life in the mansion to become a prohibition agent that led to the CIA gig.

Thanks to Hubbard, the booze balloon burst on Thanksgiving Day, 1924 when the mansion was invaded by gendarmes including Federal Agent William Whitney, long an Olmstead nemesis.  The November 27 date was big in New York as the first Macy's Parade and even bigger in Seattle with a scene that would have worked in The Untouchables.  Whitney arrested the Olmsteads and, perhaps inspired by the show business setting, began making phone calls to area bootleggers urging them to come to a party ("don't forget to bring some booze") by doing a voice impression of the rum-runner/broadcaster.  The heavily attended party saw 48 revelers charged with breaking the laws of Prohibition.  Details of the rollicking party and Olmstead's remarkable life are told in Watson's book, Once Upon a Time in Seattle.  

Olmstead was sentenced to four years in the McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary and fined $8,000.  With his bootlegging empire in disarray, Olmstead dispatched an underling with orders to re-locate Station KFQX.  He chose Aberdeen, a particularly quiet community in the southwest corner of the state.  Enter Rogan Jones, a businessman and owner of the building chosen by the Olmstead lieutenant to house the station.  Within a few weeks, the station was closed down by the Feds and Jones, whose knowledge of radio equaled an ability to write Sanskrit, eventually inherited KFQX because no one wanted it.  He had become a broadcaster in the strangest of ways.

That was in 1928 and he quickly achieved success although Aberdeen had its limitations.  Looking about, Jones learned that Bellingham, 20 miles south of the Canadian border, had a dormant station available. 

Like Roy Olmstead, Louis Kessler had established a Seattle station in his home.  With call letters KVOS (Voice of Seattle), he began broadcasting in 1926 from an apartment on tony Queen Anne Hill.  A bit overwhelmed by the big city, Kessler moved the station to Bellingham where it folded.

Jones became a huge success in Bellingham.  The future member of the Broadcast Hall of Fame was a natural in his new-found career.  The public appreciated his approach to broadcasting--particularly his battle with the wire services.  While so much of broadcast news today builds its stories around published reports (the New York Times is the most utilized), it wasn't always so.  Back in Jones' time, the wire services refused to sell stories to radio stations.  Jones told his news staff to rewrite newspaper copy and in 1936 the Supreme Court backed him up in a landmark decision.  He then created KVOS-TV largely because the Vancouver area had but one station.  That was in 1953 and much of the advertising placed on the channel was Canadian.  A signal tower atop Orcas Island's Mt. Constitution (elevation 2,400 ft.) did not hurt.

Jones had become the recipient of what critics caustically called "a license to steal" but he became a much-loved and respected broadcaster because of his sense of public service.

The old KVOS radio is now KGMI, a station whose far right programming (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, et al.) is in stark contrast to its origins.  Burns would enjoy the abundant ironies as would Jones, an outspoken liberal, and Olmstead whose life took new direction even before his release from prison in 1935.  Franklin D. Roosevelt granted a full presidential pardon with the $8,000 fine and $2,288 court costs returned.  It would be nice to report that wife Alice of the dulcet voice continued her broadcast career and became "The Singing Lady" or some other significant performer but such was not the case.  She filed for divorce in 1943 claiming Olmstead "deserted her without just cause."

Olmstead wasn't finished with his already highly interesting life.  Having converted to the Christian Science faith while in prison, he spent a great deal of time visiting jails and working with prisoners while castigating demon rum.  Headquartering his ministry in an obscure downtown Seattle office, Olmstead lived an exemplary life his remaining 35 years.  He became everything he wasn't during the first 44.  

The twists and turns of the story are complex but certain conclusions are rather easy.  If Roy Olmstead had not switched careers and become a bootlegger, it's extremely doubtful that Rogan Jones would have become a broadcast pioneer.  Further, had Louis Kessler not failed as a Bellingham broadcaster, the city's FCC license would not have been available to Jones.  Taking another look backwards, the Aberdeen station location, hurriedly switched from Seattle, would not have become a reality had an Olmstead aide not turned informer sending the cop turned bootlegger to prison.

One wonders how our own lives might have been affected had those of greatest impact on us taken different turns in the road? 

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Too Many Nickels....by Bob Sanders

 

Wrestling with a coin operated newspaper dispenser is an odd way to begin a Sunday, but there I was shoving, pounding and cursing a Seattle Times circulation department beauty at 6:45 a.m.  It was the culmination of a month of searches for the Sunday paper.

My Sunday mornings normally include a swim at the Bellingham Athletic Club's Meridian St. location (there's another downtown) and the purchase of the Seattle Times.  Although a Bellingham newspaper exists, anyone who has experienced big city efforts over the years cannot accept the Herald.  It is simply inadequate and let's let it go at that.

I arrived four weeks ago at Walgreen's at Meridian & Bakerview to pick up my paper.  Timing was the usual 8:45 a.m. and I entered the store, a stop light away from the swimming pool.  There were no copies of the Times.  "It's the coupons," reported the employee at the front door checkout.  "People are buying three and four copies.  "It's the coupons."

Racing to a Starbucks on West Bakerview, I found the last copy in an outdoor machine at a place that used to sell copies inside.  Unaware of whatever maneuvering subtleties have been taking place between the local business community and the newspaper located 100 miles south, I reflected upon what has become evident during the past three years or so.  The "foreign" newspaper has been kicked around by the locals, led, in all likelihood, by the Herald.  Circulation departments of newspapers have always been highly aggressive; we're talking violence to compare with the Sunday afternoon variety practiced by NFL teams.  Those circulation wars were preceded by a period in which it was relatively common practice for editors to carry guns.

Aware of a vending machine close to my Cordata home, I found a copy at Madrona Medical the next Sunday and fed it eight quarters my wife had placed in a jar.  Other than a few pennies, I had no coins of my own in this credit card society; indeed, the penny has become such a non-entity that rumors, like elimination of Saturday delivery of the mail, persist that its years are numbered.

My pursuit, begun an hour earlier the following Sunday, found me shut out at Madrona and Starbucks machines, but I got lucky at Walgreen's.  Being blanked at Madrona at 7:45 a.m. was a bit maddening but I figured the Times machine probably had no more than three or four papers for Cordatans to fight over.  There was, however, a clue to the Cordata scramble for the Sunday paper: usually driving sans traffic at such an early hour, I noticed more and more of the enemy furtively prowling Bellingham streets in search of newspapers and coupons whose monetary value can vastly exceed cost of the publication.

This past Sunday at 6:45 a.m., I approached the Madrona machine with pockets jingling and hope peaking.  I had found a jar of wife Jan's nickels which, coupled with my quarter and four dimes, would enable me to purchase a paper.  With fingers flying in joyful anticipation of another victory over the forces that wanted to deny me Seattle's journalistic efforts, I neared the end of my transaction.  Suddenly, the coins were being rejected by the machine whose antipathy toward my efforts was pronounced.  The machine was on overload and I was being denied the opportunity to buy a newspaper whose suppliers were unable to properly manage the ingestion of x number of nickels rather than y number of quarters.

Furious that I was unable to come up with a conspiracy theory, I did manage sympathy and understanding for others out there possibly loaded with nickels and facing similar torments.  Was this, perhaps, a reflection not so much of America's economic foundering, but, rather, an inability to determine just when nickel-loaded machines need emptying.  Has our ineptitude reached such an inglorious point?  Then, there's the Nickel Jar Factor.  How many husbands are raiding the nickel jars of wives having ravished quarter jars to buy lottery tickets?

It was as though the machine, like one of those hot dog contestants--unable to swallow one more--had suddenly coughed up a couple of nickels and I grasped the dispenser and shook it--largely in anger.  Soon, I was rocking the reluctant beast of some 150 lbs. back and forth, then side to side, but to no avail.  Racing off to Walgreen's at such an early hour, I was pleased to find many copies of the Times--doubtless representing an increased order due to the coupon demand.

Subsequent study of the coupon phenomenon reveals Bellingham is most mannerly when it comes to what is now being called "extreme couponing."  Newspapers have reported some people are resorting to thefts of papers from outside racks and recycling centers.  From New Jersey, a state that seems to have unique approaches to just about everything involving so-called reality including TV shows, come reports of dumpster divers attempting to find returned newspaper copies.  Four women were recently observed dumpster diving in Asbury Park, the kind of community that challenges writers of Chamber of Commerce copy.

Then, there are the notorious double-stuffers who take coupon sections from one paper and put them in another as well as sometimes snatching more than one paper while paying for only one.  Bellingham, the City of Subdued Excitement, thus far has resisted such criminality.  

Extreme couponing, goosed by a struggling economy, has become so popular that tales of remarkable success have become folklore.  One woman reportedly scored $555.44 worth of food for $5.97.  Such success may very well be the shopping equivalent of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, a baseball record very unlikely to be broken.

So popular is couponing that The Learning Channel (TLC) is currently offering a weekly show whose stories are not entirely ones of greed.  Nathan Engels, described as a "genial Kentucky cartographer & clipping celeb," recently bought 1,000 boxes of cereal for $150.  The clipping celeb donated all of it to a food bank.   

"Krazy Coupon Ladies" is a TogiNet radio program presided over by KCLers Heather Wheeler and Joanie Demer.  Their success followed appearances on "Today," "The Early Show," "Nate Berkus," and "Fox & Friends," to name a few.  Recent TogiNet outings find them teaching the audience how to: earn money shopping; avoid coupon fraud; get things for free; organize coupons; plus such basics as how to choose the best stores, and where to find superior printable coupons.

My extreme pursuit of extreme couponers came up with J'Aime Kirlew whose webpage indicates she is some sort of agent for Denny's Restaurants.  Kirlew offers something called Denny's Bobo Coupon as part of the organization's promotion Tour of America with State of Washington residents eligible for a free menu item good August 3-8.  Guess I'm too late.

According to at least one marketing survey, 94 percent of consumers used at least one coupon last year with $2 billion in sales rung up so far in 2011.  That percentage increase is up 14.7 from pre-recession levels.

There are those who believe that the kind of couponing that can produce a "purchase" of 93 bottles of hot sauce is particularly appealing to hoarders and those who seek the thrill of the chase.  As couponers buy such items as 10 years worth of toilet paper while the American home decreases in size, one can see the storage industry becoming a darling of Wall Street.

Newspaper sales, having plunged during recent years, are  getting partial resuscitation albeit from a method of severe contrast to the golden days of journalism.  Back then, before TV, cable, the internet, and all the rest, a sales bump occurred when a new investigative series was begun, a doctor murdered his wife or a new war declared.      

Actually, it's a mixed bag for the newspaper business.  The Bellingham approach to couponing means additional sales for the Fourth Estate.  Asbury Park, where papers are stolen and dumpsters eyeballed, is quite different.  It appears that songwriter Cole Porter was on the money with a question about the New Jersey city when he wrote "At Long Last Love" that included the line: "Is it Granada I see, or merely Asbury Park?"

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Vox Pocks....by Bob Sanders

Florence Foster Jenkins was one of those decidedly strange people who get more than their 15 minutes worth of fame and, with their notoriety, beg a lot of questions.  Born Narcissa Florence Foster in 1868 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, she received an early musical education, then told her parents she wanted to go to Europe for further study.  Her wealthy father refused, thereby proving to be one of the few honest people in the Jenkins saga.

Charles Dorence Foster's decision proved he had an ear for what doesn't make musical sense.  Daughter Florence dropped the Narcissa when she married Frank Thornton Jenkins, a doctor.  That was in 1885 and the marriage lasted 17 years.  Gigs as a teacher and pianist were followed by her invitation to an actor, whose sonorous name was St. Clair Bayfield, to move in with her.  Florence Foster Jenkins led a relatively dreary life until it turned eventful in 1909.

That was when her keen-eared father died leaving Jenkins a very large sum of money.  He also carried some musical knowledge to his grave; he knew something his daughter either couldn't or wouldn't admit.  She was sensationally un-musical.

If only she had stayed at the piano, Jenkins would not have become one of this country's most unusual celebrities.  Unwilling to accept the opinion of her father and an ex-husband, she bought her way into the musical life of first Philadelphia, then New York.  Philadelphia is a town tough on talent as anyone can attest who has observed Phillies' left fielders in their extremely shaky relationships with bleacher inhabitants.

While there are no known instances of Jenkins singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," her repertoire was heavy on Mozart, Verdi and Johann Strauss.  As misplaced as Danny DeVito playing Rhett Butler, Jenkins offered such encore as Valverde's "Clavelitos" ("Little Carnations") and songs either composed by her or her accompanist, the stunningly named Mr. Cosme' McMoon who made faces at Jenkins while she lurched musically as audiences both squirmed and laughed.  Costuming was a key factor in her performances; gowns often were designed by her, and a Jenkins touch increasingly found her throwing flowers into the audience.  Following each performance, the ever-loyal Cosme' McMoon collected the flowers for the next opportunity to offend an audience.

One of the great Jenkins stories involved a 1943 taxicab crash that she swore produced "a higher F than ever before."  The taxicab escaped a lawsuit and Jenkins sent the driver a box of very expensive cigars.  Apparently so bad she was good, Jenkins recorded much of her material including an unforgettable album titled "Murder on the High C's" complete with audiences giggling in the background.  She died in 1944, one month after a sell-out performance at Carnegie Hall.  Jenkins never gave a single indication that she was anything other than a legitimate diva.

It's natural to presume that all singers vocalize around the house and one has to wonder about those 36 years St. Clair Bayfield lived with the diva.  If not deaf, it's likely he spent most of his time at home hiding in a bathroom.

While Jenkins stands alone in the annals of the singing voice in terms of what can be accomplished with a bad one, there are women on radio and television these days who cause impressive numbers of listeners and viewers to reach for what in the old days my father used to call "the knob of oblivion."  The old man, a close approximation of Darren McGavin's portrayal of Old Man Parker in The Christmas Story, had his own listening quirks including a fondness for Father Coughlin, the Rush Limbaugh of the '30s.  As Joe E. Brown once observed, "Well, nobody's perfect."

Today's mistresses of malice have achieved their stature in spite of having rather good voices.  It is their anger, often directed in error-prone fashion, that does them in.  Perhaps the most aggressive is Ann Coulter, author of eight books full of inaccuracies and a particular darling of the right wing.  It was Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi who once blogged: "When you read Ann Coulter, you know you're reading someone who would fuck a hippopotamus if she thought it would boost her Q rating."

Goofy author Coulter comes off as even more ridiculous during TV appearances where her crazed appearance (eyes reminiscent of the recent Michell Bachmann Newsweek cover) strongly suggests the woman needs some psychiatric attention.  She is one nasty number although there is something oddly phony about her loony performance art.  This is a woman who delights in being angry and it may be that she spends too much time with hippopotami.

Another bizarre one is Michelle Malkin who early on attached herself to the teabaggers.  Whenever Malkin appears on TV, I think of "Terry and the Pirates" and The Dragon Lady, the famous female Chinese pirate of the comic strip.  Malkin, a Filipino, is a thoroughly noxious ninny complete with a voice layered with resentment, petulance and churlish bitchiness.   

Then, we have Laura Ingraham who has matured since her days as editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth Review where she wrote of her extreme anti-homosexual views that inspired avoidance of a local restaurant where she feared the waiters were homosexual and might touch her silverware or spit on her food, exposing her to AIDS.  She later recanted her views after witnessing "the dignity, fidelity and courage" with which her gay brother and his late companion coped with AIDS."  Often a guest on FOX, particularly Bill O'Reilly's show, she is the official guest host of The Factor.  Among her jobs of the relatively distant past was clerking for the question-less U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.  Another voice to avoid, Ingaham is more snide than anything else while being far more accurate than Malkin and Coulter.

Bellingham, where I have lived the past seven years, is often called "The City of Subdued Excitement," but there is nothing subdued about Patti Brooks who co-hosts "The Joe & Patti Show" on KGMI radio.  Brooks has a peculiar kind of voice problem.  There is nothing wrong with it except when she gets agitated and you have never heard such agitation made on, fortunately for her, friendly turf.  Of conservative stripes, KGMI offers the usual: Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin and Limbaugh.  The latter immediately follows Joe & Patti.  Featuring phone-ins, it's safe to say Joe & Patty are the warm-up for the man who, more than anyone else, is responsible for hate radio.

Brooks' voice is quite pleasant in her normal register--particularly while greeting Joe with an, apparently, set in stone, "hey, Joe, it's a happy (fill in the day of the week)."  You could even call her chops "dulcet."  That momentary sweetness ends when she recalls an outrage--usually perpetrated by the government, people who fall short of her definition of personal responsibility, or left wing destruction of all things held near and dear by the narrow of mind.  Yes, the Constitution and misinterpretations of it are part of Patti's shtick.  While the late Peruvian singer Yma Sumac had more than a four octave range and the contemporary Mariah Carey reportedly able to go a notch higher, my money would be on an angry Patti Brooks were a competition possible.

Brooks' wild vocal gyrations, often coming on the heels of the words "but wait, but, wait, but wait," are reminiscent of tornadoes that begin as tiny swirls in the Oklahoma panhandle, then gain swift momentum building to vast destruction as they bounce, roughly eastward.  Brooks' largely unchecked anger acquires herky-jerky manifestations with one syllable words like "brain," as in "that's how my pea brain works," somehow winding up with three.

Through it all, co-host Joe Teehan manages to keep his composure in spite of boorishness by Patti whose debate arsenal is heavy with gratuitous remarks.  We recently learned, as a result of a discussion about tobacco companies filing a lawsuit against a government that wants to reduce consumption through graphic labels, "half of Hollywood smokes."  Another favorite Patti line, good for just about any occasion, is "watch the taxes go up."  In the entire annals of broadcasting, Joe Teehan, the house liberal, has to be one of the most long-suffering voices in a business rife with such pairings.  Having worked with Brooks but three years, Teehan may very well believe he got lucky when Brooks replaced her predecessor of greater years (Debby Somebody) about whom many of the knowledgeable continue to believe was even worse than Brooks except for the unprecedented screech to end all screeches.

With pop music in such awful creative shape, maybe there's a future for Brooks as the lead talker in a verbal a capella group that would tell us about all those areas of human endeavor in need of conservative crap.  Various rhythms could be developed with something jazzy, reminiscent of FreddieGreen's guitar work for Count Basie, utilized in racial rants uttered in Karl Rovian code.

A music-less choral approach to bigotry.  Let's call them The Anger Mismanagements.

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Gigs for Glenn....by Bob Sanders

He has been called "Satan's mentally challenged younger brother" (Stephen King), "a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking" (Jon Stewart), and a fellow with "Nazi Tourette's (Lewis Black).  Glenn Beck, as announced the other day by Fox News, has joined the ranks of this country's un-employed, but let's not hold a fund-raiser for him.  Instead, let's find him work.

Internet references to Beck generally identify him as a radio/TV talk show host but that's something like calling Ted Bundy a criminal.  One of the most seen and listened to blatherers currently on the scene, the messianic delusionist (I'm of the Sarah Palin School of Word Creation) made $32 million last year through various ventures including authorship of books.  According to Forbes magazine, but $2 million came from Fox.

It came as no surprise when Fox told him he had ranted enough on the channel that's "fair and balanced" and where undetermined minds can be told what to think.  Fox made the call after weighing the pros and cons of Beck's presence.  Aware that there is nothing more embarrassing in broadcasting than seeing a former employee succeed somewhere else, Fox made it clear that they have first dibs on Beck's next venture.  Beck is partnered with a former Fox employee in an unannounced current project.

There is something rather off putting about Beck's ability to be more persuasive on radio than television.  Maybe it's the strange distractions--chalk boards, an often frantic staggering around his stage, sudden bursts of crying, and the facial tics and leers that reduce his effectiveness.  Try the TV blindfold test sometime.  Keep your eyes averted for five minutes while attempting to make some sense of his "message."  While you probably won't run into the backyard and begin digging a bomb shelter, you will likely better understand Beck's appeal.

This column, always cognizant of public sensitivities and mindful that people like Beck and Palin are among the improbable leaders of thought in this country, also realizes that their efforts on a good day effectively reach a right wing hard core of about 20 percent of voters.  Throw into the mix Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and presidential hopefuls including Mike Huckabee, Michelle Bachmann and Donald Trump and their collective appeal shows little expansion.  The possible exception is Trump whose bizarre birther shouts from the stump have more than a touch of the evangelical.  The Donald apparently feels anyone who can sell a hotel room can pull all God's children into the GOP tent.  

All this leaves the Republican Party in difficult straits.  Will it deny the recently announced Mitt Romney the nomination on the basis of his being a Mormon and an ex-governor of a state whose highly successful handling of a health care plan is the basis for what critics call "ObamaCare."  Then, there's his past support of abortion rights.

Perhaps Beck, momentarily shut out of TV, will throw his hat in the presidential ring currently containing what looks suspiciously like the funny fedoras of the Keystone Kops.  In these particularly tumultuous political seas, running for office is such an uncertain oyster that Beck would be wise to clam up and allow the more politically adroit to duel for the White House.

That leaves broadcasting where Beck is a seminal figure capable of drawing people together who have difficulty trying to figure what it's all about.  Infamous Beck quotes suggest series possibilities built around them.  As an example, he should give serious thought to a show to be called "Scumbags Re-visited."  Who can forget Beck's Katrina observations including: "The only (Katrina victims) we're seeing on television are the scumbags."  With enough money to start his own cable network, Beck could create Bigot Broadcasting, do a pilot show set in New Orleans and kick malevolence into high gear.  Beck could then move on to other cities like dreary Detroit and let's not forget Madison, Wisconsin and those wealthy union scumbag teachers.  By taking the show on the road, Beck could very well bring back memories of Charles Kurault whose splendid work was a bit of CBS brilliance not since equalled.

Then, there's the Andy Solution.  Andy Rooney of CBS' "60 Minutes" has been off camera a lot recently and, at 92, is successful at convincing viewers that crankiness is loveable.  If CBS has the stomach, it's easy to picture Glenn Beck doing "end of show" segments picking up where Rooney has tilled so much ground: homosexuals, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Kurt Cobain.  Maybe, just maybe, it's time for Andy's old office to be rearranged.  Throw out the books, memorabilia and awards and make ready for a lot of blackboards full of misspelled words reminding viewers of past glories.

Speaking of books, Rooney has written 15 of them proving that he and Beck have something in common.  The Prince of Persecution's paranoia-based works also number 15 although, to be perfectly accurate, his total includes a comic book.

Films are another possibility.  Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne also is showing some wear these days and now is aided by guest hosts.  How about Glenn Beck introducing films with paranoia as the major theme?  How about such classics as Psycho, Blow Up, Klute, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Catch 22 (picture Beck explaining Youssarian), and Parallax View?  All are splendid dramas about attempts to curb the disturbed and let's not forget to give "Glenn Beck's Paranoia Corner" opportunity for a few laughs with High Anxiety.  Mel Brooks will love it.

Even more fun might be a series titled "America, the Ugly" or "Apocalypse How?" in which Beck defames Father Damien, the Saint Damien of Molokai, and all-around leprosy expert.  Right down the Proselytizer of Prevarications alley would be his warning the world of the devastating spread of leprosy whose only cure is joining the Tea Party.  This will give Dana Millbank an opportunity to count the number of times the word "leprosy" is used in Beck-hosted programs.  Millbank's Tears of a Clown details Beck claims made during the first 14 months of his Fox show regarding fascist influences in America.  According to the Washington Post  columnist, host Beck and guests made 172 references to fascism, 134 to Nazis, 115 to Hitler, and 58 to the Holocaust while Joseph Goebbels was acknowledged eight times.  Can leprosy be far behind with so many colonies located in China, Egypt, Nepal, Somalia, Liberia and India where there are 1,000.

Beck's inclination to cry produced a revealing comment on November 6, 2006 when he came up with: "You know, we all have our inner demons.  I, for one--I can't speak for you, but I'm on the verge of moral collapse at any time.  It can happen by the end of the show."  What we have here is "Crying Fame" in which Beck searches for people who cry profusely under real-life circumstances, including divorce, that test our ordinary lives.  Such losers as those having altar falters of at least five times, lottery millionaires who lost it all, and Cubs fans who would compete in various categories.  The latter would determine who can cry the loudest with the finals held in Wrigley Field's right field bleachers.  Beck, the self-professed "rodeo clown," would look great in a Cubs home uniform.

Beck's moral compass was a bit skewed on September 9, 2005 when he took issue with victims of this country's worst catastrophe, singling out those impacted by 9/11.  "When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh, shut up.'  I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining."  "The Complainers" is a decent working title but there are sensitivity issues that, while challenging, could be dealt with in Beck's own inimitable fashion on a particularly good day by the Professor of Psychosis.

Another possibility for Beck might again get him into the heady atmosphere of architecture by way of Rockefeller Plaza's exterior design.  It was Beck's chronic douchebaggery about Rock Center (NBC headquarters) that endeared him to those who see sinister connections between communism and hammers and sickles depicted on the building's facade.  Let's not tell Beck that the hammer and sickle was a symbol of agriculture and labor long before the communists picked up on the idea.  Such frightening symbols probably exist elsewhere in labor-intensive and down-ized Ohio communities including Youngstown, Toledo, Cleveland and Warren.  The problem with those places is there isn't much that's labor intensive anymore.

Maybe Beck could search for libraries featuring terrifying fascist facades whose origins go back to good old GOP administrations of Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover?

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