I love the series on CNBC, The Profit, with entrepreneur businessman Marcus Lemonis. Normally, the show consists of him investing in some company in trouble and trying to help it turnaround. This week’s special episode was totally different – nothing to do with the usual.
Instead, the show was a documentary of his three trips to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, traveling the island to look at the aftermath. And it was absolutely wonderful. The Profit in Puerto Rico: An American Crisis. In fact, it’s probably the best “news” coverage of the devastation there of anything I’ve seen, even long pieces done by news organizations. Not only did it cover the disaster there better than anything, but it was done in a human and “entertaining” way. (Not “entertaining” as in fun, but as in watchable.) All of which made the show eminently watchable. I wish every member of Congress would watch it. I don't say that I wish Trump would watch it because I doubt anything would make a difference there. But the crushing reality of what has pummeled the island and the massive hurdles still left to deal with is profound. And the undercurrent running through everything is that this is an American territory and that the people living there are all American citizens. It would hard for most elected officials with even half an open mind to think that All is Well there and well on the road to recovery after watching this broadcast, which appears to have been completed only within the past month. Marcus Lemonis is not a journalist. He's a businessman. But his conversations with rescue workers, local residents, emergency doctors, elected officials, FEMA aides, local business owners, people moving from the island, those stranded and more, as he joins workers heading into the most at-risk areas, is as pointed and involving as any reporter. Many sequences stand out, like the woman cut off from the rest of the island because a bridge was destroyed, and she's too afraid of heights to climb down the long make-shift ladder and then cross cross the river. Or a passage when Lemonis, in his understated but compassionate way discusses the limited reconstruction efforts of just a few trucks ("If this was on the mainland, you know this road would be filled with trucks...") with a FEMA worker doing his best to put on his positive face with few resources given him. The worker explains what they're doing. Lemonis politely replies, "But they need more." The worker notes the improvements that have been made. Lemonis responds politely, "But they need more." The worker talks about what they expect. Lemonis quietly says, "But they need more." At one point, being a businessman, he makes an intriguing business observation. Visiting a moving company for people leaving the island, he notes that all the cars are high-end, which means the people leaving are the highest wage earners, creating an even bigger problem for Puerto Rico's recovery and future. If you were unaware of the show, or missed the broadcast or didn’t record it, it’s probably available On Demand, or you can get it online here. (The CNBC online viewer requires that your system have Adobe Flash installed, but if it's not, they offer links to do so. Here's the promo --
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The quite-wonderful folks at Bad Lip Reading have a new video out, and it's just in time for the holidays before the New Year kicks in, their seasonal gift to everyone. As always, it's a hoot -- though this one is quite a bit different from all the others. (Indeed, it doesn't rely on direct lip reading as some of the others, I shall say no more...) And that makes it all the more loopy. Happy Holidays. From their house to our house to yours... I got a note yesterday from my friend Eric Boardman who sent me the unfortunate news that Dick Orkin passed away the other day, at the age of 84. Many of you may know of Dick Orkin without knowing it, but he was wildly popular in Chicago for decades. It began in the late-60s/early-70s when he created (and did most of the voices for) the often-hilarious parody Chickenman for WCFL radio. The radio series, with 3-4 minute episodes, later branched out on its own and was syndicated on 326 radio stations in six countries. It told the misadventures of an oddball shoe salesman named Benton Harbor who lived with his mother, but freelanced when it was convenient as the Wonderful White-Winged Warrior to help Midland City, but usually screwed things up. Later, Orkin and his partner Bert Berdis created wildly successful and wonderfully radio ads that were heard through the country, but Chicago was their centerpiece. They were so fun (sort of in the Stan Freberg mode, but with their own unique twists) that my folks -- especially my mother -- who were generally annoyed at having to listen to ads would actually hope to hear one of their commercials, notable for Orkin's recognizable voice, when listening to the WBBM All News station, and would often tell me about the latest one. My mother's favorites were for the First American Bank, but she loved them all. (Eventually Orkin and Berdis went their separate ways, but Orkin had his own ad agency that continues to work today. His daughter Lisa is carrying the company on, and Orkin was still working having recorded a new one only a couple weeks ago.) Side note: Eric Boardman worked with Orkin and Berdis for several years. Here's a nice obituary on Dick Orkin in the Chicago Tribune. In case you've never heard the show, here's an episode of Chickenman. No explanation is necessary, it should all be pretty clear. The only thing to note is that the Commissioner's secretary was this world-weary the whole time. She was voiced by Jane Roberts (later Runyon), and the show's narrator was her subsequent husband, Jim Runyon, both who worked at WCFL. (Trivia note: their daughter Jennifer has had a fairly successful career as an actress, mainly on television, such as the soap opera Another World for a few years, but also some film work, including a small role in Ghostbusters. In fact, has a film credit as recently as last year.) And though I couldn't find a radio spot for First American Bank (yet -- I'll keep looking), this is a typical Orkin-Berdis radio ad for K-Mart. Orkin plays the manager. As the Trump administration, and its surrogates the election officials of the Republican, continue on their parade to try and smear anyone on the opposite side, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has become their latest (or, more accurately, I suppose, one of their latest) target. And in doing so, I was intrigued by two particular claims against him about impartiality. The first is that McCabe has a supposed conflict-of-interest and can't investigate fairly because his wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, had been a candidate for the Virginia state senate when she received a large contribution from a political action committee that was associated with then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe who (sorry, don't stop yet, we have to connect all the dots...) is friends and a one-time associate of Hillary Clinton. There are many arguments that one could make to address this twisted tale, not the least of which is that it's not not against FBI rules, nor even inappropriate for FBI agents to have outside political interests, let alone that their spouses have outside interest and personal lives, and that the requirement of their FBI job is that they do their professional work fairly and objectively. And there is zero evidence presented or even intimated that Andrew McCabe has been anything but exemplary and impeccable. But that isn't the argument that leaped out to me, but something else entirely. It was the memory of when it came to light in 20111 that the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Virginia Thomas, was the founder and chief lobbyist of a conservative Tea Party firm, Liberty Consulting. And Republicans in Congress found absolutely no conflict-of-interest problem with this. Never mind that Mrs. Thomas was, in fact, directly earning current, active income for the Thomas household from lobbying issues that her Supreme Court Justice husband was directly deciding the Law of the Land on. No, no, that was absolutely fine to Republicans. Not a problem. No conflict. Nothing to see here, move along, sonny. I was going to say that it seems like Republicans should make up their mind -- except it's clear they already have. They made up their mind six years ago when they said that there was zero conflict of interest for a Supreme Court Justice whose wife earns income for the family household when lobbying on issues he's actively deciding. So, since by any standard that's overwhelmingly more a potential conflict than "a friend of an associate who's connected to an organization that once helped the wife of an investigator two years earlier," it seems pretty clear that Republicans are not-shockingly being abundantly hypocritical and should shut up about their whining already. The other Republican claim about Andrew McCabe's supposed-inability to do his job is that the Deputy Director is himself such a deep partisan for Democrats that he is much too impartial to do his job fairly. Again, never mind that there's been absolutely no evidence presented to show that Andrew McCabe is in the slightest impartial in his FBI work, but what leaps out to me is again something else. It's that all the Republican officials who are making this particular charge (one of the most vocal being Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-TX) are themselves so deeply outraged in their profound, stomach-churning hatred of Democrats -- not just about Andrew McCabe, or Robert Mueller (who is a Republican, but never mind, don't muddy the water with reality), but virtually All Things Democratic, for years, Mr. Gohmert especially being a professional partisan of such intensity that he famously got so worked up when questioning then-Attorney General Eric Holder at a House committee hearing that he couldn't speak straight and spewed out his hatred that the Attorney General "was casting aspersions at my asparagus" -- that by their own argument every one of these Republicans should be required to recuse themselves on deciding anything in Congress, including any possible, upcoming impeachment vote, that has to do with Democrats or Republicans because of their clear, overwhelming partisanship. Hey, it's their standard. And unlike with Andrew McCabe, there actually is evidence -- years of evidence, on the record, on video -- of their ongoing partisanship and visceral hatred of Democrats, most notably Barack Obama, So, well, maybe they should just shut up about that, too. And by the way, just to close -- lest anyone think that I was being hyperbolic about Louie Gohmert being flummoxed by his anger at Eric Holder and that he really only said something that sort of, maybe, kind of sounded like "casting aspersions on my asparagus," no, that's exactly what he said. Let's go to the tape. To which Attorney General Eric Holder -- given a chance to respond with time having run out -- famously replied simply, "Good luck to your asparagus." A couple of days ago, I was talking with a friend back in Chicago -- the northern suburbs, to be more accurate. Buffalo Grove, to be most accurate -- and she said it had been -8 degrees that morning. And 20 below with the wind chill factor. So, I figure that's as good a time as any for this. It's a reunion of sorts from 2010 of the two surviving members of The Weavers -- Fred Hellerman at age 83 and Pete Seeger at 91 -- singing the tall tale, "The Frozen Logger." This took place at the Woody Guthrie Legacy Concert in New York. I swear this is true. This is not from The Onion. This is not a parody, comedy piece. This is not a long-lost story by James Thurber. It is not some supposedly-real material that is floating around the Internet that people insist is real. This was sent to me the other day by a good friend who received it as a dead-serious email from his apartment building's manager. He's told me about his manager in the past, so this fits all those tales to a T, just more so. When I called him up getting after this, he was still laughing about it and telling me the backstory to all the details in it. (In fact, he sent me a follow-up from the manager a couple days ago. It was funny, but nothing compared to this masterpiece.) In the annals of notes from an apartment building's manager, this is Shakespearean. Not that I want to oversell it, mind you. But it's that fun. And I want to impress upon you that it's actually worth it to keep reading. I'm sure not everyone will appreciate it as I did. But I feel confident that most people will at least thoroughly enjoy the ride. When I received the note, it clearly was a bit long so I didn't plan on reading the whole thing, but just figured I would read the first point, and then skim the rest quickly. That first point was whimsical but fairly straightforward, so I started to skim. But what I found was so entertaining that I went back to point #2 to see what I had missed and started again from scratch. As I kept kept reading and then laughing more as it went on, I ultimately got pulled along to the end. Which is what you want from any fine literature. This is exactly as I received it. Mistakes and all. The only things I've changed were any names. Everything else is the same. And it is all true.
Dear Tenants; Happy Holidays to all and wish you a great season & year full of joy & happiness. Kindly note the following: SECURITY GUARDS:
Sincere regards, R.G. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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