Somebody like Oprah needs to be voice of reason
I nominate Oprah Winfrey. I thought of others. Jimmy Kimmel, Whoopi Goldberg, and James Corden came to mind. So did Barbara Walters and Tom Brokaw.
Oprah is the one who I decided has the respect, moxie, personality, and courage to get the job I have in mind done.
It’s no less than to play the Edward R. Murrow role and call for, if not an end, some perspective and wasy to measure true villainy from occasional happenstance as more and more people — men — are caught in the McCarthyistic denouncement of alleged, or even admitted, abusers and offenders that seems to be in vogue. I know. I know. I keep harping. It’s only because I think a voice, from somewhere, needs to remind people that what is going on is out of proportion and to wonder out loud what actually happened in the myriad cases being strewn throughout social media, and picked up by mainstream media, about behind-thescenes misbehavior in the entertainment industry.
It seems to me that one undefined incident is enough to ruin careers that went along fine, and earned laurels, years after said incidents took place.
I worry that decades of hard work that led to genuine achievement are tossed aside over what could have been a peccadillo.
I understand the danger of preferring to see Kevin Spacey and Charlie Rose continue their fine work for time to come. I don’t understand why someone must suddenly be blackballed and find it absurd that a movie company, on the brink of releasing a major feature co-starring Spacey as J. Paul Getty, pulled the movie from November screens, reshot all of Spacey’s scenes with Christopher Plummer, 30-year-older Christopher Plummer — and delayed the release under next year.
Was all of that expense and fuss necessary?
I’d have gone to see the movie with Spacey in it. I’d watch “CBS This Morning” with Charlie Rose.
Rose was the latest to have his head land in the guillotine basket because women came forward to say he offended them at some point.
I don’t want to beat up on the women or victimize the victims, as many might say I’m doing by letting Spacey and Rose proceed with the work that has made them stars and delighted millions.
I want an adult world where the realization is justice is the opposite of retribution.
Retribution is a mean, calculated, retaliatory action. Laws and courts exist to keeps its scarier aspects at bay, Justice involves study and a hearing. It involves knowing all available facts and deciding if there’s blame and if that blame warrants penalty.
That is missing from the spate of revelations and dismissals so rampant today.
My voice is too small to speak up and demand that 100 percent of a person’s life, and his or her talent, is considered before he or she is sacrificed to a gossip mill or Puritan fashion.
That’s why I nominate Oprah. Or Jimmy or Whoopi or James.
They’re people who are famous their reasonableness and have enough reputation behind them to speak up without worry they will be the next on the chopping block.
Seth McFarlane, Matt Groening, Trey Parker, and Matt Stone, who do such a brilliant job lampooning current culture on the cartoon shows they write could do the job too. But they’re known as wags and cage rattlers. They may not be taken as seriously as Oprah could be,
Somewhere, before the work of the world in consigned to prudish second-raters, someone can to ask how long this Inquisition will last and who it will affect next. Heaven forfend the McCarthyists move from the entertainment industry to sports. We’ll be left with flag football and the Little League World Series.
I thought long before I took this third go at a subject I know I’ve talked about.
It’s too important to speak up then to rest on what I’ve aaid.
Oprah, I nominate you. Please take over.
Comcast brings voters to ‘The Voice’
NBC’s “The Voice,” in its 13th season, has finished its elimination rounds and narrowed the competition to 11 performers, three each from Teams Jennifer, Blake, and Miley and two from Team Adam.
Comcast, always looking for ways to make its X-1 box more useful to customers who subscribe to that option, now allows X-1 users to vote for their “Voice” favorites in real time directly from the television on which they’re watching the show.
Viewers using X-1 have access to a voting option. They can bring up their on-screen ballot by saying “Vote for the Voice” or pushing a button on their remote. A panel on the right side of the screen will appear and categorize the contestants by team — e.g. Noah from Team Jennifer or Janice from Team Miley — giving the voter a chance to quickly see and scroll to his or her choice and cast a vote then or for one hour after the end of that evening’s broadcast. Only one cote can be cast per program, which airs locally on 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday on Channel 10.
Increased and advanced interaction is the purpose of X-1. Daniel Spinosa, vice president of entertainment services for Comcast Cable, says the new voting feature “amplifies the excitement level of live shows by giving fans” (in this case, of “The Voice”) a convenient way to participate.
The streaming continues...
Thanks to the streaming channels, new series emerge constantly. Netflix seems almost to offer a new program a day.
On my current “to be streamed” list are the network’s “Godless,” a Western about a town governed by woman and asked to give a man refuge, and Spike Lee’s television series of the movie that brought him to notice, “She’s Gotta Have It.” They became available last week.
This week, it’s Amazon that garners my attention with a new series, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” debuting Wednesday. Set in 1958, the show, from “The Gilmore Girls’s” Amy Sherman-Palladino, is about a woman, played by Rachel Brosnahan, who has to find a way to support her children when her husband leaves her suddenly single by running off with another woman. She chooses stand-up comedy, a profession in which pioneers like Phyllis Diller, Totie Fields, and Joan Rivers would begin to make inroads until the next decade. Maybe Elaine May, working with Mike Nichols, was the only one besides blue comics, such as Sophie Tucker, who incorporated jokes in her singing act, doing one-liners in a female voice at that time.
‘Toy Fest’ back for 29th year
Twenty-nine years of good work deserves a fanfare of sorts, and the Philly POPS Festival Brass will be on tonight’s 5 p.m. installment of Channel 3’s “Eyewitness News” to usher in a third decade of the “Toy Fest” that provides holiday presents for children who might otherwise go without Christmas gifts.
Known as “The Joy of Giving” for most of its incarnation, “Toy Fest” involves people dropping off unwrapped toys, games, etc. at various locations throughout the region. These gifts will be distributed by the Salvation Army, the USO, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Camden County to the needy.
“Toy Fest” was generated at Channel 3 but is embraced by all of the local stations in the CBS fold — WPHT (1210 AM), WIP (94.1 FM), WOGL (98.1 FM), KYW Newsradio (1060 AM), WXTU (92.5 FM), and Today’s 96.5.
Among places where toys will be collected are tomorrow’s tree lighting in Philadelphia where lead meteorologist Kate Bilo will be present; Thursday’s tree lighting on Passyunk Avenue in South Philadelphia where Chelsea Ingram will appear; and Sunday’s South Street Christmas Parade where 96.5 Bex will be on site.
Allen taking over planphilly. com
WHYY (90.9 FM) online programs that focus on political and practical issues concerning Philadelphia and Pennsylvania have new leaders.
“PlanPhilly.com,” a site that examines what’s happening within the neighborhoods that compose the Delaware Valley’s urban center, welcome Ariella Cohen as Managing Editor Jan. 2.
Cohen comes to “PlanPhilly” from “Next City” where she was editor-in-chief of the country’s leading independent online policy website.
A site that deals with stories around Pennsylvania, “Keystone Crossroads” is now edited by Kevin McCorry, the site’s former senior education reporter. One of his research projects involved studying schools in Ontario and Berlin to see if ideas in practice there would be of benefit to Pennsylvania’s educational system.