1443 Brian, We Hardly Knew Ya

When it comes to telling a good story, it’s hard to beat Brian Williams, anchor of the NBC Nightly News.

Unfortunately, sometimes the good stories are too good.  

Such was the case when he kept telling us over the last couple of years that when embedded with the troops in one or another of our random, pop-up wars, the helicopter in which he was riding took enemy fire. It didn’t.

The major network newscasts run 30 minutes, of which about 22 is actual content.  Williams took almost a minute of that time last Wednesday to explain and apologize when reporters for the Stars And Stripes and others called him on the latest telling.

Fifty seconds on the evening news is almost a lifetime.  Most “tell” stories -- news items without video -- take about 20 seconds.

The apology amounted to “it was tough to remember all the details 12 years after the fact… I made an honest mistake.”

Sure.

Earth to Brian:  You’re in an aircraft that takes fire, you don’t forget in 12 years or ever.  If you’re in an aircraft is trailing an aircraft that takes fire by almost an hour, you might have talked yourself into believing something different.

So, were you addled or just lying?

Williams is a pretty normal guy, or at least he was back in the day.  He had and still has excellent credentials, a fine background including a stint as White House correspondent.  

He’s a funny guy.  He’s good company. He was a volunteer fireman.  Like many of his age and older, he never finished college, but went on to go directly into the news business.  

Don’t pooh pooh that.  Neither Peter Jennings nor Walter Cronkite were college graduates. Brokaw took plenty of time off between starting and finishing college.  (And so did I.)

But when something like Brian On The Helicopter comes up, you have to wonder … okay, was this an isolated incident?  Or are there things we don’t know about.

Who is defending Williams?  Dan Rather, the single most overrated news anchor in the history of television.  Speaking from exile at AXS TV, the Ryan Seacrest-owned, scarcely watched cable channel, Rather told Politico Williams is an “honest decent man, an excellent reporter and anchor -- and a brave one.”

Well, that’s what we all thought. And when it comes to the question about isolated incident vs. something more, Williams is the kind of guy that makes us easy to hope for the first.

There are no sinister motives.  Banish that thought. But the anchor of one of the three major PM newscasts has one and only one asset: credibility.

And right now, that’s in question.

Shrapnel:

--NBC has new owners, Comcast, which appears to be completely clueless about how to run a network or its news division.  We said the same about GE when it bought NBC as part of RCA in 1985. GE learned a thing or two in its years of ownership, but whether Comcast will is in doubt.

--The Williams issue and the Comcast issue are not directly related.  But what the latter does about the former will be telling.  Do they ride this out or make changes on Nightly News, and if so… what will they be?

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1442 Gluten Free Kale

Wessays™ is clinically proven to work as promised.

Allergy Alert: This blog post was written in a facility that processes soybeans, wheat flour and nuts of the two-legged and no-legged kind.  

Actually, all kale is gluten free.  So is all broccoli.

Phew. For a moment it looked like we were going to make a phony claim like “Kale tastes awful and so does broccoli.”  Perish forbid. Or kale will cure impotence, incontinence, plantar warts, impetigo, bunions and memory loss and when combined with broccoli will improve digestion, increase circulation and obliterate acne.

No, for those problems, you arrive at a fork in the road.  One branch leads to an actual doctor.  The other leads to the supplement aisle at MegaMart or Bullseye Stores or your local health food market’s homeopathic potions counter.

Uh, oh.  There’s a roadblock on that potions fork.  The New York Times reports the New York State Attorney General has demanded those retailers and GNC remove some supplements from their shelves forthwith.

Why?  Because they’re filled with junk but not with what the labels say is in them.  According to the AG’s complaint, every one of them has to go because every one of them is filled with mostly filler: garlic, rice, radish, wheat and other stuff.  The other stuff is harmless.  

But when there’s no Ginkgo Biloba in the ginkgo biloba capsule, some people might be misled into believing there is.  Especially if the nutrition facts chart says there is.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone.  What is surprising that anyone buys this stuff in the first place.

These lotions and potions are big business.  And for the most part, they don’t do anything.  Even though they all cite “clinical studies.”

No layman is sure about what a clinical study really is.

So here’s how some of them work:

1. You bring a bottle of EnerGize into the clinic. You ask the clinician “what is this?”
2. The clinician answers “it appears to be a bottle of EnerGize. Yes, that’s exactly what it is!”
3. You ask “does this stuff work?”
4. The clinician answers “How would I know.”
5. You give the clinician a copy of the small print leaflet and he or she reads it.
6. The clinician says “if all this is in these capsules there’s a good chance you’ll get a small short term energy boost.”
7. You put out an ad that says “Clinically proven to boost energy!!!!” Or “Clinical tests show this stuff works!!!!”

In today’s world it’s unlikely you’re going to convince our free market government types to inspect, test and regulate this junk.  So you have to be your own FDA.  And the only action you can take legally is to leave these things on the store shelf.

If you have a physical problem, maybe you should take the other tine in that fork.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.  Wessays™ is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.  Consult your mental health care professional before using.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1441 Bank in Training

1441 Bank in Training

You hear this often:  “When I grow up, I want to be a…” (insert occupation.)

Well, it’s not only true of little kids who want to be a cop or a firefighter or a doctor or a lawyer or a pilot. It’s true of companies, too.

One in particular, The Mini-Megabank down the street. Basically a small bank of the kind you’d find on Victorian era streets of London or in the middle of an Iowa cornfield or in a suburban strip mall.

Mini-Mega is practicing to be Chase.  But they have yet to complete the degree program at Megabank University.  So they’re only doing some of the bad stuff.  Guessing they haven’t gotten to the “good” part yet.

They know about mortgage bundling, peddling non-bank financial products, peddling auto and home equity loans to the three customers who have credit ratings above 740, overpaying executives and underpaying branch managers and tellers.

But they haven’t gotten the customer service right yet.

You have an account at Chase or Wells Fargo or Bank of America or Citi, and you can reach real people at any hour of the day or night.  In English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Transylvanian-accented Esperanto, and TTY.

You can reach them by phone, by fax, by email, by Internet, by smoke signals, telegram, semaphore and sometimes by seance.

Mini-Mega just chugs along singing the national anthem of customer service “Your call is very important to us.” Or the national anthem of the e-bank: “Website is down for maintenance until 4/23/2017. Sorry for the inconvenience. Please visit the nearest branch any Monday through Friday between 9 am and 3 pm.

Of course, 9 really means “ninish” and 3 pm really means 2:45.

Mini doesn’t update its website on weekends.  Its 17-thousand word “privacy policy” can be summarized by three words, “we have none.”  The interest it pays can’t be seen without an electron microscope.

And if your direct deposit paycheck is scheduled to arrive on a Saturday or Sunday, it ain’t gonna be there until the next business day.  Unless the next business day is a holiday.

Holidays include New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President’s (presidents’ presidents) Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day.

Also, JP Morgan’s birthday, the Feast of St. Barnabas, Lunar New Year, Groundhog Day (PA,) Pioneer Day (UT,) Rosh Hashanah (Lower East Side,)  Al Capone Day (Chicago and Brooklyn,) Miley Cyrus Day (TN,) Skin Cancer Day (FL, AZ,) Babe Ruth Day (Bronx,) Suge Sharpton Day (57th - 140th St.,) Elvis Day (MS, TN.)

Customer service on a Sunday?  Forget about it.  But if you owe them money and it’s due on a Sunday and you haven’t paid, you better believe they’ll be at you with notices and fees.  Instantly.

For that, they work holidays.

Shrapnel:

--Okay, Stuporbowl is over and we can all go back to sleep now, those few who managed to waken to begin with.  The game got faintly interesting, briefly,  because all of the balls were properly inflated and the team from Foxborough MA came from behind to win, which was almost as exciting as Katy Perry’s new tattoo.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1440 Take Me Out of the Bowl Game

Sunday upcoming is the best travel day of the year. The highways will be empty and all will be quiet.  It also is the best shopping day of the year.  You will have the place to yourself, whatever the place.

Stuporbowl Sunday.

Yes, once again it’s time for Madison Avenue to show the latest stunning commercials about which you’ll remember everything except the name of the advertised product or service.

And it’s time to surround those commercials with the world’s longest hour, all 300 minutes of it.  

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, glorification of the lowest of the low i.q. sports.  A choreographed street brawl with a lot of time- outs.  Big men running around a football field the size of a football field occasionally kicking and throwing a blimp-shaped bladder covered in pigskin but mostly just bashing the daylights -- such as there are of them -- out of each other.

And this year it’s in that great mecca of professional sports, Glendale, Arizona, a tiny city on the verge of bankruptcy and which fires municipal workers and raises taxes so it can attract major sporting events that it subsidizes.  This game is the World Series or World Cup of football.  But, mercifully, it lasts for only that 300 minute hour instead of dragging on for weeks.

Pro Football is different from college football. First, the athletes are better paid. Much better paid.  And not under the table.

With the pros, you can’t bring your own food into the stadium, something that’s tougher to do at college games than it used to be.  

With the pros, injuries are better hidden but more severe.  Young college players are more resilient and recover faster than the creaky oldsters in the NFL.

And by the time a professional gets to the big time, he’s already pre-injured what passes for his brain, his knees and his hips to the point that additional scarring and swelling will settle in and feel right at home.

Superbowling is a fine way to keep undesirables off the street for a Sunday afternoon or evening. And it gives the rest of us a chance to travel at the speed limit.

Shrapnel:

--Glendale’s in big financial trouble.  But here’s an idea: bundle its bonds, get the rating agencies to give the bundles a top rating.  Then soak the suckers who want a piece of the inaction.

--Subprime auto loans are going the same way as the subprime mortgage finagling that caused most of the ‘08 depression.  Bundling. No credit, no problem!

Grapeshot:

-Question for the minimum wage earner who just bought a Lexus: do you think you actually can pay back that $40-thousand loan with an interest rate of 25%?

-Question for the loan sharks: How did you let the credit bundlers outmaneuver you on your own territory?

Personal Stuff: I note with profound sadness the passing of Carlo Greco, guitar builder extraordinaire.  Carlo was a friend of many decades, the creator of a marvelous classical guitar of which I am the proud owner and whose artistry and skill helped establish the original Guild instrument company as a major player.  He was a beloved and respected figure in the world of his craft, a friend to players and wannabe players and one of the great musical instrument artisans of the late 20th and early 21st century.  

CA 2012.Source unknown

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1439 You Can't Avoid the Middle Man

Save time, thought and energy! Have your GPS talk directly to Facebook and Twitter. Completely hands off.  You have to do … absolutely nothing.  It’s all automatic.

Here’s a typical Facebook auto- post:

Janie Glotz is at Fabu Fitness Gym, 5:45am.

Followed by

--Janie is in Fabu Fitness Shower, 6:30am.

--Janie is in her 2011 Honda Accord, 7am.

--Janie is at Dunkin’ Donuts 7:10am.

Think of the typing Janie is going to save and still let all her social media followers know her every move.

--Tommy Winters is bar fighting at the Dew Drop Inn, 11:45pm.

--Tommy has been discharged from Hollow Point Memorial Medical Center prison ward, 12 noon Saturday.

Sometimes, this can be embarrassing.

--Ming Kim Park (with Anna Forbush) drove through a red light at Queens Blvd and 40th St., 9:35 pm.

--Ming Kim Park (with Anna Forbush and Patrolman Arnie Frangapani) at curbside, Queens Blvd and 43rd St., 9:36 pm.

Or…

Donald J. Feinstein (with “Brandi”) at the Good Night Hotel (New Rochelle, NY) 10:30 pm.

So, your GPS reports directly to your Facebook page.  Avoids the middleman: you.

But our lives are crowded with middlemen.  That dress or suit you just bought? It went through countless middle stages from cotton or wool to something you can actually wear. The process never happens under just one roof.  The thread, the fabric, the dye, the cutting, the sewing, the finishing are all pass along jobs usually handled by different middlemen.

Same with raw foods, whether meat or vegetable.

The average grocery store runs on a margin of between two and three percent.  Profits to farmers -- even some factory farmers -- range from “negative” to “slim.”  And yet you’re paying a ton of money for a pound of hamburger meat.

The “supply chain” adds cost every step of the way.

Where does the money go?  Who gets how much for what?  Sorry. Trade secrets.

Middlemen could teach the NSA about secrets.  If they report at all, they report with such ferocious obfuscation no ordinary mortal can figure it out.

When H&R Block or Jackson-Hewitt get a call to do taxes for All-American-Facilitators, they call a forensic middleman tax preparer.

Your health insurance is the middleman between you and your doctor.

Some government departments are made of nothing BUT middlemen.

And it’s not just about material goods and services.  What do you think clergymen and women are?

Oh, back to those auto-posts on Facebook: Wes Richards is at the Wessays™ Secret Minimountain Laboratory 6am 1/26/15.

Shrapnel:

--Most places didn’t get the huge snowstorm forecast for the beginning of the week. But a lot of moving and shaking went on in preparation.  Consider it a practice drill for when the icecap melts and the eastern seaboard decides to move to Indiana.

--On 60 minutes the other day, they asked McConnell and Boehner who hate Obamacare for their alternative. No answer.  So let’s ask again:  So just what do you propose and when will we see the legislation now that y’all are running Congress.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1439 Joe Franklin (1926-2015)

There are endless quotes. But this probably was his best: “You want to know the secret of success in show business?  Easy. Sincerity.  Once you’ve learned to fake that, you’ve got it made.”

Joe was sincere. It wasn’t fake. Neither was that Broadway Character persona.  He could have walked out of the pages of Damon Runyan.

The king of show biz nostalgia. The designer and builder of Memory Lane.  The man who knew everyone who was anyone and also knew the rest of us nobodies, hangers on, co-workers, and guys on the street.  Who lived in a world where the sun was always shining.  Who saw at least some good in everyone, even those who weren’t.

Everyone took his calls.  Didn’t matter if you were the head of a studio, an A-list star or the dry cleaner down the block.

You can’t count the careers he helped launch… or relaunch.

And he never missed a gig or even a cue.  Until recently when he didn’t report for duty at Bloomberg.

And the stories.  The young Marilyn Monroe, the old vaudevillians or early radio stars: Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Burns and Allen.  The same with Broadway and film and television… and with authors and health gurus.  And dry cleaners.

He was in striking distance of his 89th birthday when he died this weekend of prostate cancer.  

He and I were ships passing in the night at WOR Radio. But later, we were co-anchors at Bloomberg. He would wander in before he had to… a brisk wander. Carried an attache case that had long outlived its usefulness and its shape. Schmoozed with his colleagues… made a friend or five each week on his trip from the company coffee bar to the radio studio one floor down.

A small man with a huge heart.

And an office that would be the envy of the Collier Brothers.

When he was forced to move that office from one Times Square building to another, all that stuff went with him.

Rumors that his original building was condemned because of his clutter are untrue.  But it helped.

A self-admitted slob… No. That’s wrong. A self-proclaimed slob, he said among his greatest joys was stumbling over something that he thought he had lost decades ago.  It was a feeling, he said, that neat people could never experience.

His radio and TV shows never made the networks. It was always New York local. But he played the part of himself in a movie or two. His name came up on “The Simpsons,” and he’s in the Guinness Book for having the longest running TV talk show in history. That record stands.

Showbiz to the core: Just a few weeks ago, he told me “don’t tell people I’m sick. I’m not sick.”  But he was.  

And now as the obituaries and the tributes cascade in, there’ll be five hundred people saying he and Joe were best friends.

They’re not exaggerating.  That’s the way he made everyone feel.  Everyone.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1437 Tarnished Silver

First, free advertising.  If you have whiplash, mesothelioma, got damaged by Xorelto, an artificial hip or any other bodily insult, there are many cheap lawyers advertising on TV. Forget them and try Weitz and Luxenburg.  They get oodles of boodle for … well … lots of people.

Plus they have celebrity endorsers like, oh, say, Sheldon Silver.  You remember Shelly, don’t you?  The speaker of the New York State Assembly?  More powerful than a locomotive?  Able to leap tall buildings and other obstacles in a single bound?

Oh, wait.  Maybe the TV lawyers aren’t too happy with their “of counsel” legal consultant.  You remember Shelly, right?  The guy in handcuffs, accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks over 20 years?

photo: The Yeshivaworld

The locomotive hit a brick wall and the brick wall won. He made bail --$200 thousand dollars -- without 

breaking a sweat which should be no surprise. And before his moment in court told reporters he hopes to be vindicated.

Sure.  At least he didn’t spout the standard line “I’m innocent of all charges and welcome to opportunity to prove that in a court of law” which is right there in the Good Government Handbook under “What to say when they slap the cuffs on.”

Every state, every municipality has its share of grafters and other crooks. Silver is a Democrat, but every party has its shining bad examples.

Silver isn’t the kind of electee with constituents who throw rose petals in his path when he walks down lower Second Avenue. No one recognizes him, other than as an old man and a throwback to when everyone in the ‘hood spoke English with a Yiddish accent.

They’re tossing around all kinds of figures, which means they’re uncertain of the exact amount Silver is thought to have stolen.  But it’s in the multi-millions.

As for the Weitz connection:  Silver apparently did no actual legal work for them, but received more than $5 million in salary and referral fees.

Though it probably wasn’t an attempt at humor, the New York Times has a pretty funny headline atop a story about the legislature:  “‘Chaos’ Predicted in Albany After Arrest.”  Think anyone will notice a difference?

Shrapnel:

--While the Silver business was going on, Nassau County Legislator David Denenberg (D-Merrick) was getting ready to do time. He pleaded guilty to bilking a law client of $2.3 million. That’s chickenfeed compared to Shelly, but still would feed a lot of chickens.

--Yemen, long an incubator for terrorists, is without a president.  He resigned while held prisoner in his own house by “rebels” said to have ties with Iran.  And there’s concern the country will break apart into tribal-run splinters.

Grapeshot:

-Think kind thoughts and beam them at Joe Franklin, who is ailing.

And with the usual apologies to Jimmy Cannon, Wish I’d Said That:

“I watched the President being interviewed by three YouTube program hosts. There haven't been that many softballs since the last Patriots game.” --Charlie Kaye, broadcast news executive.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015