Gore Team Assembles? Imus Lawyers Up! Skakel Tries For a New Trial With RFK Jr's Help. Movies Shooting in Stamford.

It was front page for 12 whole hours on Huffpo and Chris Matthews mentioned it, so it must be true....Apparently someone in the UK press, Washington Bureau, has gotten wind of some secret assemblage of Gore advisers and workers in advance of a probable run. Gore has reportedly not asked the to do this, but he, tellingly, has not told them NOT to either....and the sleuthing American press can only watch his weight!...hmmmm...
I am an Edwards gal myself, but I cant say that I wouldn't love to see an Gore-Edwards ticket for 8 years with a smooth transition to an Edwards-Obama ticket for another 8 years, segueing into another 8 years and so on and so forth....It seems to me that the first 4 years post Bush is gonna consist of environment, diplomacy, and bringing the security system home where it belongs. Its going to be so much cleanup that its hard to imagine that much else will get done. Gore is the right guy for the job, for sure, but I will remain hesitant about him until I hear what his hindsight feelings are on NAFTA, welfare reform of the Clinton era, and how much of a hawk he really is. Its easy to project alot onto him, but its a different world now than it was in 2000, and we have to be very careful who we throw in with.


Ok...maybe its not really as fun as I think it sounds...but CBS is apparently gonna have to do some negotiating with the old cowboy before this is all said and done....
Looks like a 50 mil payout is to be expected if the fine print wasn't fine enough...dont they call it "moral turpitude?" or something like that?
This should be interesting:

Imus Hires a Legal Heavyweight

The former CBS radio talk-show host has retained a high-powered lawyer. Is a lawsuit pending?

by Jon Fine

Don Imus, the most famous former radio DJ in America, has hired renowned attorney Martin Garbus.

Garbus, a partner in the Manhattan law firm Davis & Gilbert, confirmed to BusinessWeek on Apr. 20 that the deposed radio host has retained his services, but he declined to discuss why. Garbus also declined to discuss whether Imus was plotting any legal action against his former employers at CBS (CBS) and MSNBC (MSFT, GE). A brief sentence on Garbus' personal blog, late Friday afternoon, noted that Garbus "represents Don Imus in a dispute with CBS"—a sentence that was later removed from the blog.

A ferocious litigator who has received numerous media citations as one of America's leading trial lawyers, Garbus has represented clients as diverse as the comic Lenny Bruce, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Nancy Reagan, and pioneering rap group Public Enemy.

Imus, 66, could not be reached for comment.

A CBS spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter. But Imus recently signed a five-year deal with CBS, which was set to pay him just shy of $10 million annually. The company's abrupt dismissal of its high-profile star also has led to speculation in the press about what his departure will mean to the company. A spokesman for MSNBC also declined to comment.....

Imus' disgusting pig of a producer was finally fired and I sure hope that the rest of his vile crew go too. I actually think that Bernard and Charles are more disgusting than Imus.
Why does anyone care for Imus? My Mom was just going on about how she thinks that Imus should be reinstated....huh? This is my hippie, women's movement, bohemian Mom?
All I can say is that I was very happy to not have him on the air this week. It made my mornings so much better to be able to watch MSNBC, which is my news channel of choice for background noise, Here is a little article by a guy who actually likes Imus and says that the liking Imus thing involves desensitization. In that case, I'm even more glad that he is off the air. The disgusting things that these guys have been saying should be sensitive issues for anyone, anywhere. Im not saying that he doesnt have the right to say whatever he wants to, but I wouldn't watch him, and I expect that the slow awareness of the sponsors was bound to stop him sooner or later. There is a big difference between free speech that cuts to the quick of society and free speech that expresses real ideas that need to be talked about. These guys who think its OK to misuse their rights and then scream about their rights are doing the whole system a big disservice...because its beyond rights...its about feeling real empathy for other people and being aware of who is around you (kids with cancer, a national audience, his own friends and family...did I mention kids with cancer?)

In local goings on, Mt Kisco's own Bobby Kennedy Jr. has been testifying downtown at Stamford Superior Court, on behalf of his cousin Michael Skakel. For what its worth, Bobby doesn't feel like the evidence was strong enough beyond a reasonable doubt for conviction, and I agree...but also now there is the issue of new evidence from someone who came forward after the trial that sheds further doubt on the already shaky outcome. I find it chilling that someone can be sent to jail for life on the kind of indirect and very old evidence that they showed. I'm not a lawyer, but I trust Bobby's opinion of this because I know that he is a smart and stand up guy....and logically, even if Skakel did do it, the direct evidence just wasn't there beyond a reasonable doubt, as far as I've seen in following this thing.
So, we've had a line of news trucks and even a huge Court TV van parked outside. I think that Bobby is done, but it might be worth it to try to get a seat if they have any public seats available. Not so fantastic criminal attorney, Mickey Sherman, has also been testifying...and is apparently under investigation himself for tax evasion, (as his partner, and a great guy who happens to be a neighbor of mine, has already pled guilty to the same.) Mickey has lost so many cases lately that its almost like he is just stuck on a streak...Its hard not to be fond of these guys though because they are local boys who grew up together and they know everyone....The amount that Rechihi pled guilty on is 1.8 million, which is really chump change around here. Anyway, I hope that he does easy time because he is not a danger and actually is someone who cares alot about conservation of the land up here and the community. He has helped me out quite a bit...and I'm sorry that he made this mistake.

Spring also brings lotsa movie shoots to Stamford, and next week we're going to have Sean Penn, Bruce Willis, and Bobby Deniro shooting on Tresser Blvd, in an office building (closed set, I hear.) And also apparently Steven Segal (who I cant even believe can work anymore, he is so god-awful) shooting and action film called Marker, here and in Bridgeport. I guess that the film business is hopping here because there is some deal that the film companies get a 30% tax credits, and there are more and more SAG actors here. They've been working on it for a very long time and its paying off...Anette Benning has a movie in the works to be shot in Norwalk, and Hillary Swank has begun a movie that is scheduled to shoot here and Norwalk, I believe.

I like Sean Penn...he sure puts his money where his mouth is, though he can sometimes seem to take himself too seriously, and go overboard. He showed a little of his funnier side on Colbert this past week, which was very nice.....I've got to get some tickets and go to one of Colbert's tapings....he is still my hero.

Its a regular lil' Hollywood ....and traffic, traffic, traffic...But I like the smell of the equipment and prop trucks, just as surely as I'm oh so glad not to be in that business anymore....

Happy Earth Day everyone...dont forget the bees...

Social Discourse: Imus Fired; So Long Sammy; Lionel Who? Marc Maron, Janeane Garafolo and Henry Rollins Appear at the Gramercy Theater.Email-gate!!

Now that the world is safe from Don Imus and we've at long last got a 99.99% certainty that Larry Birkhead is Danilynne Smith Stern Birkhead's real daddy, I suppose that we can move on to the last day of Sam Seder's fabulous show which is dying even as thousands scream for its reprieve.... and then what to do with the driving round time until he is back on Sundays to add another 2 hours (minus commercials, of course) to my podcast lineup that includes Ring of Fire and Diggnation, along with assorted NY Times audio op-eds....? What to do?

Imus:
I've long felt like Imus' voice was one of negativity in a sea of disgusting white guy sewage brought to us by the major networks...but I dont discount the good work that Imus has done and continues to do for kids, and that he did swing with the changing tide when it became popular to talk about what dangerous asses Bush and co. were/are. But, I never saw much depth there, and it infuriated me how he cozied up to Joe Lieberman with no real idea of what old Joe was doing to our system...same thing with Santorum and a host of others. The old boy network seems to need one or two talking points to keep them happy and endorsing eachother, leaving the rest of us sputtering, but, but, but....

Clearly, there are so many of us who never utter the kind of words that Imus said, but we all have them in the layers of brain formed as we grow ...its maybe just a matter of the tone and delivery...and I dont know if its fair to say, as Sam Seder did yesterday, that this is probably how all those old guys talk to eachother off the air....and at first I didn't really think that its fair to completely cut Imus down and take his career away for just saying more of the same...or to make him the fall guy for Rush, O'Reilly, Stern, and other shock jock liars out there who probably do less for children and the environment than Imus does. He is also a small "L" liberal who sometimes finds his center....and is probably less putrid than alot of other crap out there.
So, why is he the one taking the fall?

You could easily comb through the transcripts of even, say, the Lionel show on WOR, and find where he called Rachel Maddow a thick necked dyke, or...well, I don't think I have to get started on the Limbaugh/Fox/Coulter/Malkin statements that have gotten by with hardly a peep from anyone....even as protestors are carted off to jail for wearing the wrong T-shirt outside of the White House, or not walking fast enough past while protesting. But now that its done, maybe its worthwhile to say that language of that sort is not acceptable in any company. Its not acceptable from black person to black person, from Rapper to Ho, in any sort of a joke, or even in the living room while drunk with close friends....Ive thrown people out of my house for saying the N-word...in Montana where it was, at the time, a normal part of shooting the shit...
I see how hurt inner city kids are...how easily they can go either way...how hard they work to get anywhere (much less to Rutgers) and as much as I dont knwo the backgrounds of the women that he was talking about, I can see that this kind of statement by the man on the man's network, hurts these kids...the girls especially.

The use of the "Ho" image is not only racist but its sexist...coming from a bunch of pasty white guys it is just disgusting, considering that it might be the rappers who fancy themselves the pimps, but its the pasty white guys who really are secretly (or not so secretly) interested in how much of the "ho" folklore is true...And Imus' crew is pretty disgusting, taunting the fat guy for being fat, wearing the fedex envelope to be the pope and the old, old, old Brian Wilson/Bill Clinton "comedy"...going on into the endless commercial for the cleaning products which may be a service to children and the world, but just become tiring....
But what makes this THE worst thing ever...? What spin of the wheel of fortune chose Imus over Limbaugh? From now on, every time I hear any sort of trash talk I'm gonna call networks and sponsors. I guess that got Spocko in alot of trouble, but I think that if Imus is gonna be held accountable for this statement that Malkin etc... should also answer to the powers that be and the sponsors.

I just think that it would have been a better outcome if they let Imus come back and make his show different. Instead, its swept away after a day or two of NOT focusing on the bombing in the green zone of Baghdad and the emails and Gonzo....
And, lets not even hope that they will tap Sam Seder and/or Marc Maron as a fillin, which would be the smart thing to do...no, they will have alot of David Gregory and then some plastic talking head on MSNBC, and who knows who else on CBS....
I dont care...I usually dont look at MSNBC till after 9AM because Imus is there, so I wont miss much. I also think that Imus will be picked up pretty quickly by satellite or whatever, just like everyone else is. It just feels to me like a certain amount of discourse or maybe possible discourse has been shut down.
Speaking of which:


What I will really miss from my day to day life is Sam Seder, Joe Conazin, Christy Harvey, Marc Maron (even just on Fridays,) Atrios, Marcos, and whoever else I'm forgetting. I always miss Dan Pashman (the show-killer,) Brendan PW McDonald and am happy to see them pop up here and there, though I wish it was on shows that I can stand ...and I will now also miss Lauren and Joel....But what is wrong here is that the loss that we are seeing unfold on Air America is one of the loss of the hope and possibility, and that edgy, intelligent and thoughtful commentary that seemed too good to be true...and was....
Why was the urgent and necessary life of this network entrusted to these jokers? Who made the decision to sell this thing to them rather than the French's or the Drobnys? Who lives in who's pocket in the NYC court system?...and who does it serve that AAR be dumbed down?
Its not about profit or corporate feasibility...or even being able to answer to stockholders....no, its about direction and message. Who is served by this "new" (aka meet the new boss same as the old boss) direction?
Message to Danny Goldberg: So, how did that 'advice from Imus' thing work out for you?...happy now?...are we having fun yet?
Message to the Green twins: See above and learn from the past. Can't wait till Lionel lets loose with one of his zingers on your air...I hope your FCC fines are at least as much, of not more than the monies owed to all talent and crew that got screwed in your deal....oh well....

Tomorrow is visiting day at Will's school. I love Will and I love his school, but I did my time in school. The fact that Fridays are usually half days there, and each class is only 20 minutes long, doesn't make it any easier for me to get up, get out with him on time, and run from class to class while trying to read my Treo (as I spent my childhood reading the NY Post during class before it was a conservative rag,) and balance a coffee. Like Will, I was a smarter student than I was a good student....I did great and knew all the answers in a second, but resented the hell out of being there at all. I still hate school...grade, middle, high, and freshman year of college. But apparently, this is what we do at this particular school....and then we will come home and get ready and head down to NYC to see Marc Maron, Janeane Garafolo, and Henry Rollins at the Gramercy theater.

I'm so sad this week due to a myriad of things and I'm feeling overwhelmed with it all...capped off by a good flooding rain that has left the basement wet and the clocks all screwed up.
Im hustling to get my taxes done so my saint of a tax guy doesn't hate me too much...and I still cant get into the nest box to see if my hen has laid her eggs yet.
I'm happy to report though that I got a great but old book on conure breeding, and this hen, Rosie, is doing everything exactly by the book. I just need something to look forward to; something bright and new....11 days till my birthday and I want a little something....

My new focus is going to be on the Bush Administration's growing email-gate, which is shaping up to be quite fantastic with the Bushies having separate laptops for their separate emails that were run through the RNC server, so that they wouldn't be traceable.
So here is the fun part: first of all, the act of setting up separate laptops and using a different server ( a stupidly obvious server,) they were planning to do wrong...Is that malice aforethought??
Secondly, and here is where I do my happy dance, because they are not part of the presidential papers (which is against the law in itself if it is work product of this administration,) it is not going to fall under privilege!!!
Lets watch this, along with the Gonzo death watch which we will have to take over till Sammy resurfaces with his way-too-short Sunday show.

I will report on the Maron et al show...maybe even direct from the venue depending on how friendly it all is and how much fun I'm having....
I have a new sub-notebook which is just smokin' and I outfitted it with a Verizon wireless high speed card, so I can conceivably do anything online anywhere that I have a Verizon signal (which lets out my HOME, but oh well....)

See ya round Don...See ya soon Sammy...See ya tomorrow Marc....Jill and Mr Brill too!!
See ya sooner Accountant (who has not enough time to read blogs right now anyway!!!)

I don't believe that Don Skeletor Imus is a racist anymore than any of these guys are. Maybe thats not saying much...I do believe that he is a dinosaur, disgusting, and pretty anti-woman and sexist....but he is not a racist, as far as Ive ever heard. The problem with these neocons in disguise, like old Don, is that he is a little too in touch with the reptilian layers of his brain...and for old farts like him, that racial slur is in there just waiting to come out. You see it alot in old folks. Some of them are the most liberal and empathetic people, but somehow as they age, a little of what they heard growing up, before they decided how to live their lives, is in there just waiting to pop.
Here is the crazy part: Imus has been putting down just about everyone in a disgusting way for years and years....He hosts the supposed top journalists in the world and somehow they are cowed into his simplistic, blunted, format, as he and "Charles" chuckle and joke about one thing or another, and never really seem to say much of anything....And Imus chooses who he supports depending on who scratches HIS back: case in point is the horrible Rick Santorum who bought Imus' support by putting through a bill on autism. So Imus went on and on about what a great person Santorum is, with no reason except that he was supportive of this bill. It was the same thing with Joementum Lieberman. Imus liked him because he just "made some sense" and he showed up on the show. He had no idea what Lieberman was doing or the details of Bush's butt boy and his psychotic support of the Iraq war, except that he just "liked" him. He didnt know nothing about that stranger Lamonte, and he felt no need to find out.
So, I don't like Imus (even though I grew up in a house where he was on the radio all the time,) because I think that he supports the basest of the very human ability to turn a deaf ear to what is clear and right in front of you. Why does this guy have such a big platform to say...um... not so much? And, by the way, Mark Green and David Bernstein, in case you're reading this, Imus is NOT funny...this show is not comedy!!

Well, David Gregory, in for Chris Matthews on Hardball tonight, fielded a lineup with the likes of ...ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS (he of the local NYC Air America Mornings lineup, and the secret paid shill of Bush's No Child Left Behind program, acting as if he was "reporting" on it when he was a White House employee...uh-huh,) who was saying over and over that MSNBC is the white man's station with no Latino or black hosts...to which Gregory kept trying to drive home that Allison Stewart is on staff (and a woman to boot!)...but I think that he was more after an actual HOST job, and not a fluffy newscaster with a day slot and fill-in work. You tell 'em Army!

Breaking News!!! MSNBC suspends Imus' simulcast for 2 whole weeks!!!!! As if soldiers aren't dying in Iraq and Bush and Cheney aren't criminals, THIS is the big news of the day.
Well hell...tomorrow we will also find out who the real father Of Anna Nicole Smith's baby is....and THIS is what they are gonna spend an entire hardball on? This is what makes the media look at itself? What a joke!
Imus is a sexist, neocon, who has some sort of good streak that allows him to straddle the fence on enviornment and sick kids, but he has done the country and the children who will live till tomorrow no favors in his complicity in this administration's disinformation program...and his cowed "friends" in the media are "dismayed" as Gregory said, because it is so troublesome to think that they might be associated with that sort of language...huh? Lets discuss how to change Imus' show...lets discuss whats wrong with Imus....I'm bored....

Into the middle of this walks Lionel....well, nevermind...LTR again has the lingo down so well. "...slides into Sam's spot" eh?...pretty seamless, all this shuffling round, huh? Some people have an interest in this thing because what is LTR without LTR? Im afraid to even say it, but it may very well be over. Time to change that LTR to NPR-ish Nightmare.....maybe they can give Imus a slot when Sharpton marches on CBS radio and forces them to fire him. Oh the uppity disbelief that the radio station has not yet removed him... yet....just give the Rev a day or so to assemble the troops and you never know...maybe old Don will be available yet. And I know who can afford him too!
Oh, and to the person in the comments on LTR who compares this to "not quite as bad as Danny Gold-schmuck," I must say that I find it worse, because they have the hindsight of those mistakes and the damage that followed an egotistical pseudo-bottom-line choice that didn't listen to the fans, and now they are doing the same thing over again.

Its like the haunted look in John McCain's eyes...the empty stare of realization that maybe everything that your house of cards is built on is just so much shit, sliding away through the Gaza.... Trying to salvage his political career, McCain was heard to say that so much did he believe in his own belief that Baghdad is safe, that he would be willing to walk solo through the market anytime.
Maybe he could ask Mitt Romney to come along with his "varmint" rifle....
But really, I hear McCain also say that he can fly...somewhere around when he was last seen with the angel dust dealer round the side of the rug stand. Fly Johnny, fly.....I hear Sanjaya is gonna join the campaign as official singer just as soon as he wins American Idol....

If everything runs in some sort of cycle, I suppose it may be time to start the run of Air America Radio from its inception and hope for better days sometime in the next 2 years (and I have just the archive to do it)....or maybe the angel dust thing is something to consider. Maron and Garafolo are playing NYC for a week, beginning tomorrow night, and I feel like going every night...with the angel dust and maybe some drinking thrown in! Too bad I have no tolerance for chemicals or drink anymore...too bad....


Meantime, just watching the nestbox...my father is back in the hospital in Cape Cod, after one night at his hotel, and trying to get home to LA somehow...maybe figure out what the problem is...and the rest is just complicated....very complicated....