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This is a good way to finish off our Thanksgiving Fest. I'm a big fan of Jack Benny, and have been since a kid. Perhaps I got it from my Grandma Rose who loved The Jack Benny Program, and I remember watching his TV show with her when little. Later, when I was at a senior at Northwestern I finally had built up enough contacts to figure out how to get access to their great radio archive -- it was like entering a wonderful, wall-to-wall recordings of old radio programs, and I was able to tape record a bunch of old Benny shows for my collection, which I still have. They're gems. It turns out that my friend and reader of these pages, Eric Boardman -- an all-around talented fellow and Second City alum -- is quite the fan, as well. He sent me the following several months back, about the Jack Benny Show's Thanksgiving special on November 30, 1952 -- "It's no secret, I am obsessed with the Jack Benny radio show. Each night I listen to an episode on my phone as I fall asleep. (Do you conk out with a smile on your kisser?) "Yes, I know Thanksgiving is long over, but this particular program will bring joy to any season. Today's sitcom staffers should study the construction. And everybody else should howl with laughter---and marvel at the gags radio encourages. Benny's writers are constantly surprising us with 'visual" images' And Mr. Benny generously shares the jokes with his crackerjack cast. (Thanks always to the Sportsman Quartet for making cigarette commercials satisfying.) 'The Lucky Strike Program with Jack Benny' is high art, maybe the highest of the genre. "Happy listening!"
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Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse are known for their two stage musicals, Stop the World I Want to Get Off, and The Roar of the Greasepaint the Smell of the Crowd. Together, they also wrote the scores to several movies, most notably Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Bricusse alone wrote the scores to several movie musicals (including Doctor Doolittle, Goodbye Mr. Chips, and the aforementioned Scrooge, which I posted from this morning), as well as collaborating on some other stage musicals -- like the lyrics for the beloved Pickwick.
But less known is that Newley and Bricusse actually wrote a third stage musical together, after the first two, The Good Old Bad Old Days. It played in London in 1974, but never came to Broadway. As in their other shows, in addition to the score they also wrote the book, and Newley directed, as well as starred. The score has a few very good things in it, most notably the terrific title song (which Jimmy Durante, of all people, recorded, and did a wonderful job with) and "It's a Musical World," that had a bit of a life thanks to Newly performing it outside the show. A few others are pretty nice, though it's not a particularly memorable score. I've posted some of them in the past. This song today (sung by Julia Sutton and chorus) isn't especially distinguished, but it's quite nice -- and most thoroughly appropriate. That's because its title is..."Thanksgiving Day." As we continue our Thanksgiving Fest, here's a wonderful scene from an episode of The West Wing. In fact, we're going to have a bunch of The West Wing videos below, because Aaron Sorkin seemed to love doing Thanksgiving shows, and they were great. To start with, this here is the classic Butterball Hotline scene -- Also from the same episode, this is when a turkey was dropped off to press secretary C.J. Cregg so that it could be pardoned. And we have two more wonderful moments from The West Wing with their Thanksgiving episodes. The first here is when press secretary C.J. Cregg comes to President Bartlet's office to explain he has to pardon a turkey. And finally, this is perhaps my favorite last scene from a West Wing Thanksgiving Day episode. One of the plots, that this scene refers to, is when a group of Chinese asylum seekers have stowed away to escape religious oppression, and when China demands they be returned, the White House has to figure out what to do with them. It's that time o' year, and I think it's near-impossible on Thanksgiving to not celebrate with this classic by Stan Freberg, from his great Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America. And so let's start the day off with his version of how Thanksgiving actually came about. It begins with the local mayor decided a bit of self-promotion would help him if he threw a big gala and invited some Indians to show what a great guy he was. Which leads to a Freberg gem, "Take an Indian to Lunch." And once the holiday event was decided upon, things didn't go as smoothly as plans would hope.
Every day, a wild squirrel comes to visit a woman to just chill out or perhaps eat, and when the spirit moves her, to come inside and relax. For whatever reason, I don't think embedding this video works, but if not, then just click on this link here, and it will take you to the video on YouTube. As readers of these pages know (and know extremely well…), I write about Trump having early dementia (which is dementia, but where the person is still able to function). I’ll often get replies from people who disagree, which is fine and understandable – I’m not even remotely a doctor. However, what I always say is that when I say Trump has dementia, it’s not my opinion, but I’m passing along with many psychologists say and write. And not just write articles, but even a book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, published during Trump’s first term when 37 psychologists and psychologists wrote articles on cognitive issues that showed symptoms of early dementia.  One of those 37 was Dr. John Gartner -- a psychologist, psychotherapist, and former assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School – who’s been among the most outspoken in his field, including as founder of the “Duty to Warn” podcast, who I’ve quoted at length here. There are two important, general points that Dr. Gartner makes. The first is that unlike other fields of medicine where doctors make their diagnoses based on direct consultation with their patients, when psychologist diagnose dementia, it’s often (if not usually) done from afar. That’s because, as he explains, dementia patients are often very effective in telling stories that are pure fiction when asked, but which (because of their condition) they fully believe, making a close-up diagnosis more challenging. This is why they will instead look at a distance for signs that are common in dementia patients. And the second is that psychologists who are experts in the field of dementia see things in a person that are those signs of dementia which, to laymen, seem perfectly normal. The way a person stands, their facial expressions, how sentences are placed in conversation, for instance. Or when stumbling over a word and instead making up a new one in its place – to most people, that’s just a glitch, but to a psychologists, it’s paraphasia, which is a sign of dementia. I mention all this because last Sunday on his podcast, RawStory reported about how Dr. Gartner addressed recent signs that – to an expert – suggested that Trump may be showing a "serious cognitive problem." When Trump snapped at a reporter to “Be quiet, piggy,” it was covered by the press and in public as being incredibly rude and sexist. But to Dr. Gartner, the behavior was more questionable and overlapped with concerns of Trump’s cognitive health. That’s because in the same exchange on Air Force One, Trump acknowledged not only taking multiple cognitive tests, but also an MRI. And while to most people in the public those examinations returned to jokes about Trump’s past simplistic tests where he had to remember the words “Person Woman Man Camera TV” in order and identify animals, and so two examinations appear unrelated – they aren’t unrelated at all to a psychologist and speak to Trump’s mental state and a larger problem. "They said they did advanced imaging," Dr. Gartner explained. "Okay, well, Trump said not once, not twice, but three times that he had taken cognitive tests. Plural. Okay, so not just a screening exam...They gave him multiple tests. We do not give people multiple cognitive tests unless we suspect there's a serious cognitive problem." "We also never, ever...give someone an MRI unless we suspect or need to rule out a serious problem," he continued. "So, we know his doctors gave him multiple cognitive tests and an MRI. They didn't say explicitly because of the brain, but we can certainly be sure they scanned his brain. If they're giving him a neuropsychological battery, they're scanning his brain." None of this got reported in the press when discussing Trump’s exchange with the press on Air Force One, including him snapping “Quiet, piggy” to a female reporter. It didn’t get reported because journalists are not expert psychologists who know these things and are able to make connections that those in the public can’t. "If Donald Trump were just an ordinary patient and you saw these kinds of serious signs of dementia,” Dr. Gartner added, “a responsible doctor would give him both a neuropsychological battery and an MRI. Of course, they're not telling us why they gave those tests. They're not telling us the results.” This is just one example of a great many that are the reason why, when I say that I believe Trump has dementia, it’s because of what expert psychologists say. Not because it’s just my unqualified opinion. Professionals see and know and understand details of their field. Details that the rest of see look at as normal. But if there’s one thing most everyone knows at this point about him, what Trump does is not normal. |
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. 
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