FREE WHITEWATER

Comment Forum

Friday Open Comments Forum: Top 10 TV Events

by  • 

Here’s the Friday open comments post.

Today’s suggested topic is a list of “10 all-time favorite TV events, any category (series, special, sporting event, whatever.)”

Longtime reader of FREE WHITEWATER, The Phantom Stranger, emailed his list (thanks!), based on his suggested topic from last week, and here it is, to kick off the forum:


Here we go, in no particular order…

1) Assassination of JFK, Nov 22, 1963, Walter Cronkite, CBS News coverage, the whole traumatic weekend through the funeral

2) Man on the Moon, July 21, 1969, “That’s one small step…” made for riveting viewing on a summer’s Sunday night.

3) Nixon Resigns August 9, 1974: our Long National Nightmare was finally over…

4) September 11, 2001 coverage: first heard it on WTMJ Radio (John Belmont who went back to AP Radio in NY, eventually); saw live coverage underway on NBC’s “Today Show,” initially.

5) “The Adventures of Superman,” episode “Panic in the Sky,” 1954. There’s an asteroid heading for Metropolis; Superman flies out into space to deflect it. Consequently, he falls back to Earth, with amnesia! Amnesiac Clark Kent/Superman almost reveals the big red “S” under his dress shirt to Jimmy Olsen!!! And the asteroid’s STILL headed back toward Metropolis! Truly, A Job for Superman!!! Oh, the drama, as this little 5 year old boy in Milwaukee watches!!!

6) The last episode of “The Fugitive,” “The Judgment,” Part 2, aired Tuesday night, 9 p.m. ABC, August 29, 1967. What a spectacular ending atop the amusement park tower, as David Janssen finally catches The One Armed Man. Vindication after 4 years of running and hounding by Lt. Phillip Gerard.

7) Last episode of the original series, “The Prisoner,” “Fall Out,” late summer 1968, CBS, 7:30 p.m. Saturday nights: a brilliant conclusion to a brilliant series. Thanks, Patrick McGoohan, RIP, Number 6.

8) Final Episode of M*A*S*H, Feb 28, 1983: another Wow!!!

9) Guilty Pleasure: “Who Pooped the Bed” episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” last season, FX Network, love this outrageously funny series

10) “Batman,” 1966, First 13 episodes, 1966, and Second Season, 1966-’67, while the show still literally had the Pop! Biff!! Zap!!! of cleverness, and tongue-in-cheek. Wish Warners Bros./20th Century Fox would get over their legal ownership wrangling and free The Dynamic Duo to Blu Ray DVD!!!!

I’ll use the comments to add my own list.

The use of pseudonyms and anonymous postings are, of course, fine.

Although the comments template has a space for a name, email address, and website, those who want to leave a field blank can do so. Comments will be moderated, against profanity or trolls. Otherwise, have at it.

I’ll keep the post open through Sunday afternoon. Enjoy.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 7-30-10

by  • 

Good morning,

Today’s forecast for Whitewater calls for a chance of showers with a high temperature of seventy-nine degrees.

On this day in 1863, Henry Ford was born. The New York Times recalled his accomplishments, following his death in 1947:

Henry Ford was the founder of modern American industrial mass production methods, built on the assembly line and the belt conveyor system, which no less an authority than Marshal Josef Stalin testified were the indispensable foundation for an Allied military victory in the Second World War.

Mr. Ford had many other distinctions. As the founder and unchallenged master of an industrial empire with assets of more than a billion dollars, he was one of the richest men in the world. He was the apostle of an economic philosophy of high wages and short hours that had immense repercussions on American thinking. He was a patron of American folkways and in later years acquired a reputation as a shrewd, kindly sage. But these were all relatively minor compared with the revolutionary importance of his contribution to modern productive processes.

Laws/Regulations, Liberty

Raw Milk: The Wonder Tonic?

by  • 

I don’t know if raw milk’s a wonder tonic, but people in a dairy state should be able to buy it and enjoy natural, unpasteurized milk.

A study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison examined the reasons people want to drink raw milk, and the backgrounds of those who want to drink it:

New research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Community and Environmental Sociology may offer some answers. Researchers surveyed twelve consumers who had purchased raw milk and 13 farmers who sold raw milk.

Eleven of the surveyed consumers started drinking raw milk within the last five years. Their reasons for buying raw milk included improving their health, cultivating relationships with family farmers, good flavor and supporting “local, sustainable farms”.

Ten of the 12 consumer respondents were health-conscious, urban professionals with college degrees….

That’s a description of knowledgeable adults who are able to decide for themselves. Many of these people chose raw milk as part of an organic food diet, sometimes following illnesses that prompted them to consider natural foods. Portraying those who want to drink raw milk as unsophisticated hicks is false. They’re likely as capable as the bureaucrats who do Big Dairy’s bidding by keeping natural, unpasteurized milk away from consumers.

See, Raw Milk: The Wonder Tonic?.

Economy, Government Spending, Politics

Walworth County Sunday on “Time to Open the Roadmap”

by  • 

From Walworth County Sunday, an endorsement of U.S. Representative Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future:

Poll after poll suggests the profligate president and his party are vulnerable to a smart, clearly articulated alternative that does not further elevate the ravenous federal leviathan. But GOP leaders, from national strategists to congressional heavyweights, have been either unwilling or unable to rally around a message – one of intellectual substance as well as tea party style – that offers a clear response to the Democrats’ reflexive Keynesian expansion of government….

Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future, first introduced in 2008, is a daring, comprehensive proposal that reforms ballooning entitlements, addresses the debt crisis, cuts taxes, puts health care decisions in the hands of consumers and promises to once again jumpstart the American economic engine….

Inexplicably, most Republicans see this [smears and distortions against the plan] and remain bashful about publicly embracing Ryan’s Roadmap, even as it gains traction in the debate over the nation’s percolating debt crisis. They seem content to shamble about in the tall weeds, hoping that an ineffectual president alone will ensure their political survival. Given the stakes and the opportunity before them, this is almost laughably gutless.

Well said.

The Ryan’s Roadmap is a way out of encroaching government and oppressive debt. There are few politicians in all America more contemptible than those glutinous Republicans who have embraced big government so that they can keep a place for themselves at the federal, state, or local trough. They sold out the principles of their party, and in doing so, greased the path for an even more profligate federal administration to follow their own.

I’m not a Republican, but I look at that party, and the damage some big-spending Republicans have done to the GOP, and I think that those incumbents must be among the most selfish men one could ever meet.

Ryan’s Roadmap offers a better way for America.

City, Economy, Government Spending

Bloomberg: Jobless Claims in US Declined by 11,000 to 457,000

by  • 

It’s less than we need.

The story reports that a collection of local government associations estimated that, nationally, local governments may cut almost 500,000 jobs through 2011 (or 8.6% of their total workforces).

These are only estimates, and they say nothing about how any particular community will fare.

In any event, sacrifices should always begin at the top, as meaningful reductions in municipal compensation costs.

See, Bloomberg: Jobless Claims in US Declined by 11,000 to 457,000

City

Record All Public Meetings

by  • 

I wrote earlier this week about the agenda of a Whitewater Community Development Authority meeting. The agenda seemed oddly vague, and some portions of it were so obscure that it provided no reasonable information about a subject’s contents. See, Daily Bread for Whitewater, Wisconsin: 7-26-10.

The agenda’s not a minor task; it’s a public announcement, and should be the responsibility of the person who runs the organization. Public officials should review announcements themselves, as should citizen leaders of boards or commissions for their own areas of responsibility. In Whitewater, for the CDA, that leader would be Kevin Brunner, Whitewater’s city manager. (That’s so much for the idea of an independent CDA with only limited participation of current officeholders.)

When one sees a sketchy agenda, and mentions it, I’m sure some officials feel the criticism is an unfair burden, as though it’s an imposition on their (visionary) work. That’s not true, and it’s self-flattering of officials to see it that way.

A vague agenda keeps the public in the dark about a meeting, and serves only insiders who want to keep matters quiet, although they’re on public boards considering public matters under Wisconsin law.

Even if officials won’t produce clear agendas as the law requires, they can still make accurate and through recordings of the meetings they conduct. Minutes may be sketchy, too, but there’s a may around that deficiency.

We have a community television station, and it offers the best and most honest way to learn the contents of a meeting. In all Whitewater, no record is more honest and complete than the video recordings of Whitewater’s public meetings. In a town of dodgy officials, Whitewater Community Television stands out for its accuracy and true public spirit. They record some of Whitewater’s leading boards and commissions, as often as they can.

They can’t be everywhere at once, but for those times they can’t, there’s a solution:

That’s it. A simple camera from an American company, available for less than 200 dollars, would allow Whitewater’s boards and commissions to record meetings where Whitewater’s Community Television would not be present. These videos wouldn’t look as sharp, but they would be more accurate than any agenda anyone in the city has ever typed as a meeting’s summary. Words, pictures, tone, and atmosphere: the camera would show all that.

It wouldn’t be as sharp as a professionally recorded video, but it would be better than no video. For those concerned that the video wouldn’t look right, a small introduction could appear before each video posted on the Community Television website:

This video, recorded using a simple camera, represents the City of Whitewater,Wisconsin’s commitment to open government, for each and every public meeting in the city. What it lacks in visual quality, it makes up in dedication to the public good.

We’re foolish to make the better the enemy of the good.

A citizen has the right to record any public portion of a public meeting in this way, and I’m sure that will start happening soon enough. It would be responsible if Whitewater took this step on its own.

Whitewater’s politicians and city manager should support recording all meetings, as a commitment to a more open politics.