[Illustration by ALEX FINE] DAILY NEWS: IT WAS a joke. It had to be a joke. That was the only thought that entered Officer Richard “Butch” Riddick’s mind last week when he was told by the Daily News that he was the winner of the 25th annual George Fencl Award. MORE DAILY NEWS: George Fencl died in January, 1985. At the time he was chief of security for the Philadelphia School District, having retired from the Police Department with the rank of chief inspector in 1983, after 33 years on the force. Soon after his death, Chuck Stone, then senior […]
THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE: Man Drops Off Family At Casino, Sets Car On Fire, Disappears
INQUIRER: On Friday night, Martin Caballero, 47, of North Bergen, drove to the seaside resort Friday night with his wife and two adult daughters. He pulled his 2009 white Lincoln MKS up to the Porte cochere of the Trump Taj Mahal and let his family out, police said. Police said the women entered the casino. Ten minutes later they returned to where they last saw Caballero but could not find him. They assumed he had gone into the casino, said Sgt. Monica McMenamin, a spokeswoman for the Atlantic City police. Four hours later, one of the daughters received a call […]
BOOKS: Mark Twain Will Have His Revenge
THE INDEPENDENT: Exactly a century after rumours of his death turned out to be entirely accurate, one of Mark Twain’s dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published. The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century. […]
WORTH REPEATING: What Did Jesus Do?
NEW YORKER: Belief remains a bounce, faith a leap. Still, the appetite for historical study of the New Testament remains a publishing constant and a popular craze. Book after book—this year, ten in one month alone—appears, seeking the Truth. Paul Johnson has a sound believer’s life, “Jesus: A Biography from a Believer,” while Paul Verhoeven, the director of “Basic Instinct,” has a new skeptical-scholar’s book, “Jesus of Nazareth” (Seven Stories; $23.95). Verhoeven turns out to be a member of the Jesus Seminar, a collection mostly of scholars devoted to reconstructing the historical Jesus, and much of what he has to […]
ZEITGEIST: The New Paleolithic Age
NEW YORK TIMES: Paul is a libertarian, certainly, but more importantly he’s a particular kind of a libertarian. He’s culturally conservative (opposing both abortion and illegal immigration), radically noninterventionist (he’s against the Iraq war and the United Nations), and so stringently constitutionalist that he views nearly everything today’s federal government does as a violation of the founding fathers’ vision. This worldview goes by many names, including “paleoconservatism,” “the old right” and “paleolibertarianism.” But its adherents — Paul and his father, Ron, included — view themselves as America’s only true conservatives, arguing that the modern conservative movement has sold out to […]
Beloved Broadcaster Wee Willie Webber Dead At 80
PHAWKER: Wee Willie Webber turned us onto Ultraman when we were, like, seven — and we remain eternally grateful. Goodnight Mr. Webber, wherever you are. INQUIRER: William W. Webber, 80, a fixture on Philadelphia radio and TV for more than 50 years, died Sunday of a heart attack at Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia while awaiting heart surgery there later this week, his son, William W. Jr., said. He lived on Rittenhouse Square. Known as Wee Willie at 6 feet, 5 inches, Mr. Webber was a workhorse, a host of children’s TV shows and a radio disc jockey, often on […]
FBI: Walter Cronkite Aided Vietnam War Protesters
YAHOO NEWS: Legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite allegedly collaborated with anti-Vietnam War activists in the 1960s, going so far as to offer advice on how to raise the public profile of protests and even pledging CBS News resources to help pull off events, according to FBI documents obtained by Yahoo! News. The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show that in November 1969, Cronkite encouraged students at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., to invite Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie to address a protest they were planning near Cape Kennedy (now known as Cape Canaveral). Cronkite told […]
MEDIA: Tom Waits Guest Edits 200th Issue Of Mojo
DEPT. 56: Iconoclast TOM WAITS takes a turn as Guest Editor for Mojo’s 200th edition on stands now. “I don’t know how they talked me into doing this. All I really wanted to do was drive the forklift,” Tom Waits In this legendary issue, Waits discusses the following with Hank Williams III: reconciling musical personalities; how to create “a death metal hillbilly invasion;” meeting Minnie Pearl; haunted houses; and why Hank Sr. must be reinstated as a member of The Grand Ole Opry. Elsewhere, Joe Henry interviews Harry Belafonte, one of Tom’s lifelong heroes, while artist Kellesimone Waits, Tom’s daughter, […]
ATLAS MUGGED: Rand Paul’s Foot-In-Mouth Disease
RAND PAUL: “What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.’ I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.” THE NEWS ROOM: The editorial board of Louisville’s Courier-Journal didn’t mince words following its sit-down with Rand Paul last month. Much of what […]
CINEMA: Weasels Ripped My Flesh
CASINO JACK & THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY (2010, directed by Alex Gibney, 118 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC One thing that is agreed upon across the political spectrum — from the Tea Partiers to the Progressive Left — is that our government is rife with corruption and that it favors corporations over the individual. If you want to nurture that cynicism with some cold hard facts, there are few more concise blueprints detailing the way money corrodes democracy than the latest film from Academy Award-winning documentarian Alex (Taxi To The Dark Side) Gibney, Casino Jack & The […]
MUST SEE TV: The Greatest Political Ad Ever Sold
…or my name ain’t Nathan Arizona!