Recently in Obituaries Category
I am not one of these people that thinks that all deaths leave the world a poorer place. While I am against the death penalty, I am not above taking a little pleasure in the death of particularly vile people and today is no different. Sometimes I feel a little guilty about such pleasure taking, but not today. Today marks the death of someone who cause such misery in his life that his passing is cause for a massive exhale of relief.
Jesse Helmes was a dark-hearted bastard who was almost a caricature of the stereotypical pre-Civil Rights era Southerner. I say "almost" a caricature because he indeed was racist, homophobic, anti-art, Red-baiting, anti-choice...anti-everything all-purpose bigot. He led the fight against establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a national holiday, blocked ratification of the Test Ban Treat and Kyoto Protocol (not to mention Salt II) and campaigned against womens rights, gay rights and overaLl civil rights for decades in the US Senate.
In recent years Helms was approached by Bono to help the singer in his quest to reduce 3rd world debt and the suffering it causes and like many older staunch conservatives, he worked to repair his image, becoming more "compassionate" in his dotage. Late life reversals not withstanding, the man was a vile human being and like the Reverend Jerry Falwell, the world is a better place without him.
Legendary comedian George Carlin has died at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, according to Reuters and other sources. The first ever host of Saturday Night Live, Carlin was set to receive the Mark Twain Prize from the Kennedy Center, a lifetime achievement award presented to an outstanding comedian.
Carlin has long been my favorite political and social satirist and his voice, forever honest, will be missed. Today the world is short one of its most strident and unflinching observers. With the country in a seemingly unending war (two of them, actually), a growing gas crisis and almost constant government corruption, we need his unflinching honesty, clearness of vision and common sense now, more than ever.
Rest In Peace, George Carlin.
Over the next few days I hope to post a few of my favorite Carlin clips. And remember:
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits!
NBC News' Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert died of an apparent heart attack this afternoon after collapsing at work in Washington DC. This is for sure a great loss, as Russert was a straightforward and well-respected journalist and the longest-serving host of NBC's Meet the Press, itself the longest-running US television program in history, having been on the air since November 6th, 1947.
Russert was a consummate newsman (and attorney) and his voice will be greatly missed during this most critical of election years. NBC anchors Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams are telling some great stories about Russert on MSNBC right now.
One of the great ones came from Williams who mentioned that facade of the Newseum in Washington D.C. is inscribed with the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Whose idea was that? Tim Russert.
In this time of a flaccid White House press corps and dwindling ethics and excellence in news, Tim Russert will be sorely missed.
Links about the story at Mahalo.
You are invited to join me, my family and friends as we celebrate and remember the life of my "unrepentant leftist" father, Victor Rabinowitz (July 2, 1911 - November 16, 2007) on Saturday, January 12th, 4pm at the NYU Law School, Tischman Auditorium, 40 Washington Square South, between Macdougal and Sullivan Streets.
On Friday night, November 16th my father, Victor Rabinowitz, passed away quietly at home. He was 96 and to say he had lived a full life would be a vast understatement. He was a truly great man of integrity who taught me appreciation for many things including politics, baseball, gardening, photography, chess, Shakespeare and classical music, among others. It was also because of him and my mother that I was able to travel at an early age and develop a love for other countries and cultures.
Despite my early (and continued) support for the dominant New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys, I was taught that in most situations, the underdog was to be supported and that those less fortunate deserved respect and wherever possible, a leg up. Among those items in the above list, "politics" is probably his lasting legacy to me, because it was through leftist politics that I learned an appreciation for all those things in which any good progressive believes.
Social programs designed to help the poor and infirm; the need for universal healthcare; the right of citizens in a so-called free society to speak out against the government when necessary (and even when not...it's one of those rights that works both ways); that people should be paid a fair living wage for a day's work and anything less than this is exploitation, regardless of the country in which it occurs; that the US is not the boss of the world and it is not our business to poke our nose in where it's not wanted simply to make a few rich, white Americans even richer (they can't get any whiter, trust me).
We spent endless hours discussing the miracle that is baseball. We both had an unending curiosity and appreciation for the sport and could watch it and talk about it for hours. His was such a long life that he once saw Ty Cobb steal home at Fenway Park and went to the 1928 World Series. I can only imagine what it must have been like. He also drove a Model-T Ford at summer camp (it was actually an old car at the time) and rode a trolley past dairy farms in Brooklyn to visit his grandfather in the early 1900's. I can't really imagine any of that, either. When he was born there were no commercial airplane flights and a short 58 years later (and 3 days after my birth) a man walked on the Moon. He saw both the rise and fall of the Soviet Union but missed the last Cubs World Series win by only 3 years. During his life there have been 17 presidents, from Taft to "W" and I dare say dad made some trouble for a few of them and they deserved it, too.
During the past few years of his life, his eyesight and hearing were in pretty bad shape, so much so that he could follow almost nothing on TV. As a result he was limited to C-Span, CNN and baseball games. Victor was such a principled and caring man and it's a real shame that aside from the midterm elections of 2006, recent years held little succor for a man of his politics and temperament. Despite huge gains in said election, the senate continues to be soft and tame under the flaccid "leadership" of Harry Reid and the lunatic, often racist ramblings of Lou Dobbs on CNN drove him batty. Even the Mets failed him this year, performing the worst collapse in baseball history.
He was ready to go, I think. None of us were ready for him to leave, of course, but you never are, really. I never got to show my dad my "chops," professionally, at least not in full. He was many things, but a man of the Information Age was not one of them. 11 years ago he published his memoirs and wrote them out longhand, on a yellow legal pad. This was not a man to whom it was easy to explain blogs or even indieWIRE, really. He was concerned about my ability to take care of myself financially, of course but I think he was most concerned and eventually pleased and proud, that I, along with my brother and sister, had grown up as a "good person." I like to think I have a good moral compass, positive personal values and goals and a healthy and appropriately concerned outlook on the world. It's to his and my mother's credit that they really never gave me anything to rebel against and as a result, the apple couldn't have fallen closer to the tree.
He was and remains, my hero. I miss him, greatly.
Here are a few obituaries that have been running over the past few days:
New York Times
International Herald Tribune
East Hampton Star
Time Magazine
Marjorie Cohn: The Huffington Post
Photo, L to R: Victor Rabinowitz, Dr. Benjamin Spock and Leonard Boudin © The Associated Press
The film blogosphere is abuzz today with the news that legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman has passed away at the age of 89 and rightly so. I have to admit that I don't have much to add. I am hardly an expert on the man and his work, though I do tend to use him as proof that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a much cooler show than some people give it credit, to wit: In an episode where Buffy was going up against a monster that might possibly be Death itself, her friend Xander remarks: "And if he asks you to play chess, don't. The guy's, like, a whiz." Get it?
No, I'd rather post a little bit about Tom Snyder who passed away on Sunday at the age of 71, due to complications from Leukemia. A newsman and raconteur, Snyder loved the broadcast business and was a news anchor, correspondent and most famously, a talk show host on both NBC and later, CBS. From 1972-1983 he was the host of Tomorrow, which aired after The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. This was a legendary show in which the unapologetically un-hip Snyder interviewed everyone from Muhammad Ali to Howard Cosell to Charles Manson to, in one excruciating interview, a petulant John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten). U2's first appearance on American TV was on Tomorrow, as was John Lennon's last TV interview. Constantly surrounded by cigarette smoke and reveling in his deep-throated laugh, Tom was unlike anyone else on the tube.
Here's a great tribute segment with clips from Elton John, Cosell, Ali and others.
A brief bit of history regarding my feelings for Christopher Hitchens:
Brilliant drunk--->Crackpot drunken hawk--->Partially redeemed brilliant drunk
There you have it. Why the redemption? How about this clip, for starters:
(BTW, I do not use the word "drunk" pejoratively. I adore some drunks and have myself been one, on occasion.)
You might have varied negative opinions about Hitchens, including his extremely pig-headed and wholly incorrect position on the war in Iraq (he's for it...still) and his arrogant posturing indicating that he is certain that he is the smartest person in any room.
That all said, he is very smart and, some might say to a fault, honest.
Another video after the jump, this time from the Fox "News" show Hannity & Colmes:
We lost a great soul on Wednesday, as Kurt Vonnegut passed away in Manhattan. In its obituary, the New York Times refers to him as "a dark comic talent and urgent moral vision," and likens him to Mark Twain. I feel slightly ashamed that I had not realized how apt a comparison that was, until now. I could waste time, mine and yours, waxing poetic about how brilliant and thoughtful and funny he was as both writer and man, but I think I'll simply say, Kurt Vonnegut is who inspired me to be a writer and for that I will forever praise, and as many a writer will do their inspiration, occasionally damn him.
I know our country and world are still in the deepest of holes, dear scribe, but I hope that you and your dear friend Joe Heller are up (or down!) there, having a drink and living it up.
So it goes.
As I am sure many of you know, this past Tuesday was Fat Tuesday, the last blow out before Lent and the end of Carnivale. February 20th also marked another special day, the anniversary of the birth of Robert Altman. Thus, a memorial service was held in New York City's Majestic Theater for the great filmmaker who lost a long battle with cancer late last year.
I was lucky enough to have attended and it was truly an inspiring event. As an auteur and as a human being, Robert Altman was a force to be reckoned with, something the speakers and guests at his memorial made sure to point out. A true iconoclast, Altman "never met a status quo he didn't hate," according to speaker Bob Balaban, Altman's producer and story collaborator on Gosford Park.
The independent film world, along with free-thinking people everywhere will mourn the tragic, untimely death on Thursday of 37 year-old filmmaker Garrett Scott, director of the Spirt Award-nominated documentary, Occupation: Dreamland. Along with the film's other director Ian Olds, Scott risked his life in Fallujah to document the lives of the US Army's 82nd Airborne ony to have his life cut short by an accident in Southern California two days before the Spirit Awards ceremony, according to a story just posted on indieWIRE.com.
The film community is invited to share memories of Garrett and his work in the comments section of the indieWIRE story.
Don Adams, the Emmy-winning comic actor made famous by playing Maxwell Smart, aka Agent 86 in the hit 1960's spy spoof Get Smart created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry died late Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to the Associated Press. The cause was a lung infection, according to his friend and former agent Bruce Tufeld.
Adams was known by millions of children in recent years as the voice of the animated bumbling detective, Inspector Gadget.
Gilligan's Bob Denver passed away on Friday at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital in North Carolina, according to agent Mike Eisenstadt. He was 70.
We loved him as the bearded beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on TV's The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and of course, Gilligan.
I guess he finally got off the island. Rest in peace, little buddy!
Four months after announcing on air that he had lung cancer, Peter Jennings anchor of ABC News' World News Tonight died sunday at his home in New York City at the age of 67. Jennings was the anchor and senior editor of WNT from 1983 until his death. A broadcasting professional since the age of 9 when he hosted "Peter's People," a Saturday morning children's show in Canada in 1947, Jennings has been described as potentially the last of the great news anchors.
In the Creepy Coincedence Department:
On Friday, June 24th, veteran ventriloquist and cartoon voice Paul Winchell died in his sleep in Los Angles at the age of 82.
On Saturday, June 25th, Film, TV, stage and voice actor John Fiedler died in New York City. He was 80 years old.
Why is that creepy, you ask?
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