Factoids I've Learned While Reading

 I'm a voracious reader.  One year I read eighty-one books, most of which were over three hundred pages.  I usually read non-fiction, but I do mix in a classic fiction book now and then.  Mostly, I read non-fiction because there was so much I missed out on in college, having CLEP'd my way out of two years of history courses.  If it wasn't related to Spain or Philosophy, I probably didn't learn it.  

As for fiction, I've read a lot of the classics -- War and Peace, Don Quijote, The House of the Seven Gables -- but I found that my reading lists were woefully deficient.  I only read Moby Dick last year; in ninth grade, when were given the choices of 1984, Animal Farm, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, I chose Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country, about apartheid in South Africa.  Right now I'm working my way through Gulliver's Travels...and three other books.

Along the way, I've learned some curious things.  Things that, at best, might help me win a drink at a bar or a game of Trivial Pursuits.  I thought I'd list them just so I don't forget them, first, but also to show what weird little factoids can be found in books.

-- Walter Cronkite's mother dated Douglas MacArthur's father, meaning that instead of being Walter Cronkite, he could have been Douglas MacArthur.

--  Jimmy Stewart allegedly lost his virginity to Marlene Dietrich.

--  George S. Patton wrote an article detailing how the Japanese might attack Pearl Harbor six years before they did...and he was thoroughly accurate.

--  Scaphism is a horrible way to die.  Look it up.

--  Thomas Paine never earned a dime from Common Sense.  He donated all the royalties from his book to the Continental Congress.

-- The symbol for paragraph is called a pilcrow.

-- Brent Musberger wasn't particularly well-liked by his colleagues because he would take their stories and pass them off as their own right before they would appear on camera with him.

--  The meter came about due to an error in measurement, but people decided to leave it as it was.

--  Porcelain was a well-guarded secret because the process was considered to be so valuable economically.

--  It is exceedingly difficult to know whether a bottle marked as extra virgin olive oil is, in fact, EVOO, because so many corners are cut.  EVOO, when it is pure, is ridiculously expensive.

--  Avuncular and paternal Charles Schulz, the creator of the comic strip Peanuts, had an affair.

--  Not all African athletes excel in sprinting.  Studies have shown that while western African athletes have fast-twitch muscles making them ideal for sprinting, eastern African athletes have slow-twitch muscles, making them ideal for stamina events like long-distance running.

--  In Nazi Germany during World War II, there was actually an orchestra comprised of Jews who were allowed to live and play within the German populace and were not imprisoned in concentration camps.

--  Some of the sinkings of Japanese aircraft carriers were the result of near-misses by aerial bombs that loosened the rivets on the hulls of the ships, thereby making them less seaworthy and more susceptible to internal pressures that arose from direct hits.

-- Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon and an Ohio native, attended Purdue University.

-- Henry Nicholas John Gunter, an American, was likely the last person killed in the Great War.  He was killed at 10.59a, or one minute before the Armistice was to go into effect.

-- But for a delayed phone call, John Wooden would have been the head coach at the University of Minnesota and not UCLA.

-- One of the Price Is Right models was married to a CIA operative who was killed in the line of duty.

(c) 2020 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Justice Amy Coney Barrett

 Justice Amy Coney Barrett is the fifth woman to don a robe in the Supreme Court of the United States.  In any other year, her confirmation would have been a very simple matter.  But since 2016, nothing about SCOTUS justice nominations has been simple.

Really, this goes back to the nomination of Robert Bork.  The Democrats decided that if they couldn't get rid of a nominee because he or she was unqualified, they'd defame him.  What was done to judge Bork was wrong.  He was eminently qualified, but the ultra-hypocrite Ted Kennedy distorted the judge's record so badly that public opinion was swayed enough to make confirmation of the judge untenable.  Judge Clarence Thomas's nomination survived allegations of improprieties he committed against Anita Hill.

But those fights pale in comparison to what was done to Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  A judge with impeccable credentials, he was subjected to a character assassination that judges Bork and Thomas are thankful to have avoided.  Unsubstantiated allegations of gang rape and other sordid behavior created a firestorm of protest beyond legal circles.  Women's groups insisted that the nomination be withdrawn by the POTUS; others threatened to impeach him once his nomination was confirmed by the Senate.  Dire warnings were predicted about his future judicial rulings -- none of which have come to pass -- that only served to increase the fervor of the groups opposed to Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation.

When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- the darling of the Left -- died in September, the Left's propaganda machine revved up, beseeching the POTUS and Republicans to not nominate or confirm a candidate so close to the election.  But these requests came with a twist:  There weren't the usual smear tactics, but a plea to reason.

Back in 2016, then-President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to replace the recently departed Justice Antonin Scalia some ten months before the general election.  Republicans, hopeful Hilary Clinton would not be elected, held off holding hearings so that a Republican president could nominate someone more to their liking.  For my money, Judge Garland was eminently qualified and not the least bit objectionable.  As a judge sitting on the District of Columbia Circuit Court, he'd authored an opinion striking down one of then-President Obama's pet projects.  The Republican move was nothing more than naked, political power, because the Republicans were in the majority in the Senate.  I thought at the time this move would be one the Republicans would regret.

The attack on Justice Kavanaugh was way out of proportion to what the Republicans did to Merrick Garland's nomination.  There was a backlash when it was discovered that there was no evidence supporting the allegations against him.  The Democrats in the Senate and their supporters got a well-deserved black eye publicly.  But with Justice Ginsburg's death, they were on the horns of a dilemma.

Should the POTUS be successful in nominating and then having confirmed a judge to replace Justice Ginsburg, that would give the POTUS three appointments to the SCOTUS, a third of the bench.  Given how the Democrats attacked Justice Kavanaugh, they couldn't afford a repeat of that debacle.  What happened next only compounded their problem.

The POTUS nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit to replace Justice Ginsburg.  Not only was she diametrically opposite to Justice Ginsburg when it came to applying the Constitution, she had been attacked by the Senate during her confirmation hearings to the Circuit Court.  Notoriously, Senator Dianne Feinberg made the judge's religion, Catholicism, an issue, contrary to Article VI that holds that no religious test for public office be given.  So to attack Judge Barrett would require another tack.

During her confirmation hearings, Justice Barrett was subjected to repeated questions about Roe v. Wade, Obamacare and sundry other topics despite the fact that she adopted, ironically, Justice Ginsburg's position that she would not comment on precedent or how she would rule.  The Democratic senators brought in blown-up photographs of people who had either suffered due to a lack of health insurance or who had benefitted from Obamacare, which led one pundit to refer to the hearings as the Milk Carton Hearings, an allusion to the practice of putting the pictures of missing children on milk cartons.  

Democrats, not without reason, also appealed to the fact that the Republicans had withheld Judge Garland's nomination from consideration despite the fact it was made ten months, not two months, before the general election.  The problem with that argument is that, again ironically, Justice Ginsburg noted that a president was elected for a four year term, not a three year and ten months term.  Dirty pool or not, the POTUS was within his rights to nominate Judge Barrett, and the Senate, controlled by the Republicans, could fast track the confirmation process to get Judge Barrett confirmed before the election.

Calls for the judge to recuse herself in the event there are problems with election results were voiced, but they fell on deaf ears.  Recusal standards do not contemplate such an eventuality.  But that didn't stop the Left.  

Justice Barrett is an eminently qualified jurist.  She doesn't have an extensive record as an attorney, but neither did Justice Kagan, and that didn't bother anyone.  The politics of SCOTUS nominations is ratcheting up, and it doesn't look to settle down any time soon.  The judicial branch is supposed to be the one non-political branch of government.  Now it's being used as a pawn.  Talk of admitting Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states, packing the court or changing how judges sit, eliminating the filibuster and other machinations is all the rage.  

I fret for our judiciary.

(c) 2020 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

QDEP Carlos Ruiz Zafon

On June 19, 2020, a literary giant died, and hardly anyone outside of Spain noticed.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon, the author of La sombra del viento, know in English as The Shadow of the Wind, died of colo-rectal cancer at the age of 55.  His death barely registered on the international consciousness.  Of course, in Spain it was probably big news, given the fact that his La sombra del viento is the second most successful Spanish novel after Cervantes' Don Quijote de la Mancha.  It spawned a series of books, including El juego del angel, El prisionero del cielo and El laberinto de los espiritus.  And the New York Times noted it in its obituaries, probably one of the few good things the NYT has done in recent memory.  His La sombra del viento has been translated into dozen of languages.

Ruiz Zafon was born in Barcelona but moved to Los Angeles to be closer to the Hollywood for which he developed a passion.  While there, according to the NYT, he visited a book warehouse, which inspired him to write his master opus.  According to Richard Eder (whoever he is), Mr. Ruiz Zafon's work could have been publicized as "Gabriel Garcia Marquez meets Umberto Eco meets Jorge Luis Borges for a sprawling magic show, exasperatingly tricky and mostly wonderful."  Being familiar with all three of those authors, I can agree wholeheartedly with that description.

Ruiz Zafon's masterwork begins with eight-year-old Daniel Sempere being at this father's post-war Barcelona bookshop.  Daniel's mother had died a few years ago, and Daniel was raised largely by his father.  One day Daniel's father tells him he's taking him to what seems like an abandoned warehouse but in reality is The Cemetery of Forgotten Books.  There, Daniel is told he can roam throughout the building, which is filled with shelves and shelves of books, and pick out one book, which will then be his responsibility to care for and protect for the rest of his life.  This sets in motion the rest of the novel and, indeed, the four books Ruiz Zafon would write.

Just the title itself -- La sombra del viento/The Shadow of the Wind -- is masterful.  Then, the first chapter introduces the Cemetery of Forgotten Books!  For an admitted bibliophile like me it had, as we say in Spanish, hook (Tener gancho -- to be attractive, irresistible).  Ruiz Zafon started his career writing tweener novels, and La sombra starts in that realm, but over the course of the next two books -- I've yet to read El laberinto de los espiritus -- Daniel and his sidekick Fermin grow and age.  I'm still shocked that no option on a movie has even been discussed.

Since El laberinto came out, I've been looking anxiously for news that Ruiz Zafon had begun a new series.  His skills as a novelist are rare in today's world.  Then, the awful news of his passing came while looking at a Spanish site that had this simple notation:  Carlos Ruiz Zafon, D.E.P.  For English speakers out there, D.E.P, means descanse en paz, or rest in peace.  I couldn't locate his obituary fast enough.  And then I confirmed the sad news.

It's selfish of me to want this to be untrue, because I want to revel in more of this writer's work.  The series, so far -- I've only read the first three volumes -- has been mesmerizing.  I read it as I read a trilogy by another author who died far too young:  The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series, by Stieg Larsson, who died at roughly the same age.  Now, I'm left with the final installment of the series and nothing more.

At some point, I have to believe a movie will be made of at least La sombra, if not the entire series.  I'm surprised, frankly, that it hasn't happened already, in Spain if not in Hollywood.  Perhaps it's in the works.  But it would be a shame if this great writer's work weren't exposed to the masses more.  

Ruiz Zafon had a gift for turning a phrase, for creating a new world, for setting forth a plot that was indeed irresistible.  That he is no longer able to do that is our loss.  That he was able to do what he did was our gift.

He will be missed, greatly.  

(c) 2020 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

The Side-Effects of War

America is a country that was born out of war, a revolutionary war to be more precise.  I realize that Memorial Day is the proper day to honor those who have fallen in defense of our country, but over the course of the last week, I've read or watched things that I need to address.

First, even though this isn't an American story, Americans were involved in the battle.  Atony Beevor's book on Operation Market Garden, Monty's horrible miscalculation to crown himself with laurels, The Battle of Arnhem:  The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II, closed with this poignant story:

A lieutenant of the Parachute Regiment, who had married only five days before Operation Market Garden, suffered a psychological breakdown under heavy shelling.  Along with two medical orderlies in a similar state, he hid in the smaller cellar of a large country house on the western edge of Oosterbeek.  The place was owned by the Heilbroek family who were sheltering in the larger cellar.  But the three men, evidently still frozen by fear, stayed put throughout the battle and made no attempt to rejoin their unit.

They were still there on 26 September, after the evacuation of Urquhart’s men across the Neder Rijn.  The Heilbroek family ran a great risk.  If the British soldiers were found in their house, they would be executed.  They had to beg the Englishmen to escape when the Germans ordered the population of Oosterbeek to abandon their homes.  The Heilbroeks’ son finally persuaded the three to follow him after dark to the Neder Rijn, where they could swim across to Allied lines on the southern bank.  The two medical orderlies made it across, but in the fast current the newly married lieutenant drowned.

Two years later, when the war was over, the young widow visited Oosterbeek.  Presumably, she had heard some of the details from one of the orderlies, because she went to mee the Heilbroek family.  One thing led to another, and not long afterwards she married the sone who had led her husband to the riverbank.

Those were the last paragrapsh of the book.  It was a stunning conclusion to the book.  In some ways, I guess, it's to show that after the many sacrifices warfare causes people to make, life goes on when peace returns, sometimes in the most unexpected way.

I next read Eric Blehm's Fearless:  The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown.  Brown was a SEAL who had a checkered past leading up to his making the teams.  He was a go-getter in high school, including one notorious stunt where he jumped out of a moving vehicle on a bridge to land in the river some sixty feet below.  But afterwards, he was largely aimless, which caused him to become a drug addict.  He was ultimately arrested, went to rehab a couple of times, married, had children, and made it as an operator on SEAL team SIX.  If that were all it was, the story would be unremarkable.  Brown was the ultimate team player, always volunteering for whatever job needed done; nothing was beneath him.  In a training accident, a practice round made it past his eye protection and compromised the sight in his right eye, which ultimately had to be removed.  Then, while in Afghanistan on a mission, he right hand, which was his dominant hand, was crushed with three fingers almost severed.  After the surgery, he retaught himself to shoot left-handed well enough to become a SEAL sniper.  Then, on what was to be his last rotation before retirement, he was killed on a successful mission to kill a notorious bomb maker.  He left behind a widow and two young children.

That story is impressive enough.  But what touched me even more was how the SEAL community rallied around his widow and children afterwards.  Some months after the funeral and the memorial,fellow operators went back to Arkansas, his home state, and jumped off the bridge where Brown had made his madcap jump some years before.  There's a picture of their stunt in the book.

Brown had a tremendous effect on his fellow operators.  He was a Christian and would engage doubters in talks about their faith.  Several of them later turned to Christ and gave Brown the credit.  Sadly, several of the team members who helped Brown's family after his death were tragically killed when their chopper took an RPG in Afghanistan.

The book is a page-turner.

Finally, we rented The Last Full Measure, the story of William H. Pitsenbarger, an Air Force parajumper who died providing assistance to an Army unit that was pinned down in what was the deadliest attack by VC and NVA forces in the Vietnam War.  The story has many twists and turns as a civilian Pentagon attorney fights bureaucratic red tape to get Pitsenbarger's award upgraded to the Medal of Honor, which eventually he does.  For anyone who is familiar with what Vietnam vets went through during that time and the closeness it created for them, this movie will move you.  What Pitsenbarger did defies reason, but also provides evidence of John 15:13, that greater love hath no man this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

So on this 244th Independence Day, this ungrateful colonial chooses to not only celebrate our independence, but also those men whose sacrifices made it so.

(c) 2020 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles 

George Floyd And Antifa

On Memorial Day, George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police.  There's no other way to state it.  Unreasonable force was used to subdue a man who had passed, allegedly, counterfeit money.  A counterfeiter doesn't get the death penalty.

After his death became public, and after it took the local authorities about a week to charge the cretin police officers reasonable for Mr. Floyd's death, the inevitable protests began.  Well, at least they should have been protests.  At some point on the night the protests began, they turned into riots.  Looting, pillaging, attacking law enforcement...it's as if Attila's Huns had returned.  And not just to Minneapolis.  The riots spread across the country and, as of today, 2 June, they continue.  New York, Nashville, Columbus, Los Angeles, Chicago...Businesses were torched, merchandise was stolen, lives were ruined.

The weird thing, though, is that it appeared to be a concerted effort not to protest police brutality but to destroy and rob.  Video of people destroying Target stores, exiting with shopping carts filled with goods, are all over the news.  Thieves in Santa Monica are seen exiting upscale stores with mutlitple pairs of blue jeans in their arms as they race to hide their booty.

Out of the blue, pallets of bricks are appearing on street corners to be used by these thugs to smash store windows.  Unless there were some mass renovation projects going on across the country, these pallets of bricks are placed there for only one purpose, and it's not a good one.

Police officers are being shot, run over and battered with anything that's at hand.  In turn, rioters are being shot and killed.  Anarchy prevails.

Of course, the ignorant intelligentsia in Hollywood is taking up donations to assist rioters who were arrested with their legal defense.  This they can do as they sit behind gates and walls protected by armed security.

The President is being assailed for being the cause of this unrest as well as the man unable to quell it.  Had he stopped it immediately he would have been accused of violating people's First Amendment rights...

...But one thing has been missing from all the discussions on TV and radio about this.  George Floyd's murder was despicable.  I don't chalk it up to racism as much as I think it's police brutality.  Lawful protests about police brutality and, perhaps, racism, are legitimate and welcomed.  The rioting that has ensued is unexpected in this sense:  Its fury and spread is beyond what has happened in the past. 

When the president was elected in 2016, a segment of the population lost its mind.  He was their anti-Christ, the devil incarnate, and he had to be removed at any cost.  Conservative speakers were not allowed to proceed with their speeches...and buildings were broken into, burned and looted.  U Cal Berkeley, once the bastion of the Free Speech movement, prevented speakers from giving their scheduled speeches.  Safe zones popped up.  Language was changed to protect feelings.  Groups wearing bandanas to mask their identities attacked anyone wearing a Trump hat, or journalists who asked questions the masked marauders didn't like.  Antifa -- short for anti-fascist -- was given a chance to gain a foothold and this is the result.

Antifa is allegedly busing people into cities to incite violence.  Police report that of those that are arrested, very few live locally.  Right there, that says something.  This is an organized movement that has its own agenda that has nothing to do with righting the wrong of George Floyd's death.  It's a parasitic group that has learned from Rahm Emanuel to let no crisis go to waste.  See what a former member of Antifa says:

A former member of the radical Antifa organization told "The Ingraham Angle" Monday that the group's claim to be "anti-fascist" is a "false narrative."

Gabriel Nadales told host Laura Ingraham that he was in Antifa around 2011, and recalled it as the most violent group he had ever been part of.

"I think it has to do with the fact that so many college administrators and college campuses ... allow Antifa to work under their noses," he said. "[Campus Reform] reported on a story from the University of Florida [this past fall]. It was an Antifa group openly recruiting in broad daylight.

"Let me just say this very clear," Nadales added, "We don’t allow ISIS to recruit on college campuses and we should not allow Antifa to do that either."

Nadales said Antifa's misleading moniker hides its true identity as a vessel for far-left political activism.

"Antifa pretends to be about fighting fascism, but then they define fascism as basically anything that does not conform with their radical leftist agenda; which goes back to exactly what President Trump is doing," he said.

"I’m incredibly happy that he’s finally declared Antifa a domestic terrorist organization because that really helps fight against this false narrative that Antifa is fighting anything but for their failed leftist socialist ideology."

This, then is the new enemy. The problem arose in 2017 and rather than give the group more ammunition, it was allowed to operate in the guise of First Amendment protection.  There were certain arrests, but nothing came of them.  If anyone went to jail for their misdeeds, I never heard about it.  We are now left with this.

George Floyd's murder has been hijacked.  What the police did was wrong and they should be held accountable.  But these rioters, many of whom are white, are merely using his death to further their own sick agenda.  

When and if they come by our house -- a very unlikely possibility -- it will be a target-rich environment that will allow me to use my rightfully owned firearms to defend my family.  They won't be burning down whitey or stealing from him.  

(c) 2020 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Side Effects of Self-Quarantining

Well, we're into the self-quarantine phase of the arrival of the coronavirus, a/k/a Covid-19, a/k/a the Chinese Virus, and I've noticed some curious things that have occurred as a result.  Not about what's happening in society generally -- although there's been plenty of that, to be sure -- but with my habits and free time.  So I thought I'd jot down some of the weirder elements of my time in self-quarantine:

--  For years I've been trying to watch the movie Schindler's List, and now I finally have.  It was a little less daunting than what I'd been led to believe, and I'm still unsure if Oskar Schindler did what he did purely out of altruism of if he was led there after profiteering.  And just to keep me in the mood I saw Black '47, a movie of revenge during the Great Famine.  Just the kind of movies to watch during a pandemic.

-- My eating has changed, but for the better.  I'm actually losing weight.  Karen's making loaves of sourdough bread and I eat my fair share, but I'm losing weight.  Go figure.

--  One positive result of staying home is that we got a jump on our spring cleaning, especially the yard work.  I had a brush pile that needed cut up and burned an it's down to a few spare branches.  Karen got her flower beds squared away and we cleaned out a corner of the garage that was in desperate need of a thorough cleaning.

--  Walking has seen an uptick.  We take Mosby for walks that are about a third of a mile in total.  It's nice to get out and breathe in fresh air.  Being with Mosby is, as I've often said about our dogs, like being with the Beatles.  People stop and ask about him or smile and laugh as they drive by.  Mosby, for his part, is the most aloof dog we've had since Sherman.

--  Our dogs don't know what to make of us being home full time.  On the one hand, not being stuck in a kennel all day is preferable for Custer and Maisie.  On the other hand, being told not to pee on this or to stop whining or not to hump one's aunt (Mosby) is a little disorienting.

--  We've binge watched a couple of shows.  One, Tiger King, was a complete waste of time.  I don't need to watch a show about misbehaving trailer trash as entertainment.  Ozark, on the other hand, was engrossing.  Watching Jason Bateman act snarky and sarcastic while in a serious role was refreshing.  The characters in that show are...interesting.

--  Reading has also seen an increase.  It would seem, however, that sports books are put together without any thought.  I read one about my Blackhawks that was written by the old Chicago Stadium announcer and it was so poorly edited...Cliff Koroll came out liff Korol.  The 80's and 90's were all but ignored, the poor man repeated stories every other page, paragraphs ended with exclamation marks all too often and it was written with an Andy Hardy Gee Whiz tone that was long out of date.  This was nothing but a money grab for the guy.

-- Having to watch updates about Covid-19 is getting redundant.

-- On social media, people are putting forth all manner of stupid quizzes and test and Show Me Your Pictures...ugh, enough already.  And the political sniping....it's sad.

-- Sleep.  Ah, how my habits have changed.  I used to rush to get in bed before 10p.  Now, I'm lucky if I'm in bed before 11.30p and even luckier if I'm awake before 8a.

-- The firewood pile has grown.  I may as well cut up the logs, since we're having fires on account of the cooler than normal weather we're having and the fires in the fireplace we're having as a result.

-- Going out for food with a mask on is weird, but it's even weirder going to the bank with a mask on.  Think about that one for awhile.


(c) 2020 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Networks and the #MeToo Movement

As bad as Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer were, they were mere amateurs when compared to Jeffrey Epstein.  Whatever term you want to use to define them -- rapists, sexual predators, what have you -- the apex predator in this tawdry Rogues' Gallery has to be Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein, who either committed suicide in his jail cell while on suicide watch or was more likely murdered to keep him quiet, was accused and probably guilty of hundreds if not thousands of cases of statutory rape with unwilling young girls procured for him by Ghislain Maxwell, his accomplice.  The girls, who are now women, were promised money and careers in modeling or acting in exchange for massages they were to give Epstein and other prominent men like Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton -- although both these latter guys deny it roundly despite evidence to the contrary.  The massages eventually turned into unwanted sexual encounters.

The long, sordid judicial history of Epstein's brush with justice isn't worth repeating here other than to say that, for whatever reason, he was treated very, very favorably, until last year.  He was indicted on new charges in New York and put in jail.  Mysteriously, although he was put in solitary and on suicide watch, he allegedly committed suicide, although there is some debate about that.

Even so, it later came out that Amy Robach of ABC had conducted an interview with one of Epstein's victims three years before, but the story was quashed by the higher-ups who claimed it wasn't ready yet.  There is video of Ms. Robach speaking with other media members that was caught on a hot mic and then leaked to the press:

After the video was leaked, ABC went into damage control mode, ultimately -- albeit incorrectly, it would seem -- identifying someone who had left ABC for CBS a couple of weeks before the leak. 

Now, ordinarily, ABC would issue the standard denials and then hush up, hoping the story would die down and go away.  But ABC didn't do that.  Instead, ABC called CBS, who then fired its new employee, despite her denials that she was the source of the leak.

I don't know if NewYork is an at-will state, but it would seem to me that if nothing else, the young lady might have a claim for defamation of character.  In the meantime, the networks are playing a shell game with sexual harassment, as evidenced by the relative silence on the Matt Lauer controversy, the NBC attempted whitewash of Ronan Farrow's story on Harvey Weinstein and now ABC's abject silence and startling alacrity to get its former employee fired at CBS.

Yet, all things must come full circle.  Ironically, Megyn Kelly, deposed at NBC (of all places), interviewed the former ABC/CBS employee, Ashley Bianco, who vehemently denied being the leaker and stated that the leaker is still working at ABC. 

After that, someone claiming to be the actual leaker put out this note, anonymously:

To those wrongfully accused: It is terrible that you have been lashed out at by the company. I know some may put the burden of guilt on me, but my conscience is clear. The actions of the company towards you are the result of their own and not anyone else. The public outcry, from coast to coast, of all people, creeds, and political affiliations, is clear. I have not one doubt that there will always be support for you, and you will have prosperous careers. For neither you, nor I, have done anything wrong...To ABC News: I sit right here with you all in complete shock. I, like many, are at a loss for words on how this has been handled. Instead of addressing this head-on like the company has in the past, it has spun into a mission of seek-and-destroy. Innocent people that have absolutely nothing to do with this are being hunted down as if we are all a sport. I challenge all of you to actually look inwards and remember why this company engages in journalism.

If that is true and accurate, it would seem that Ms. Bianco was not the leaker, the leaker is still at ABC and ABC is playing ostrich.

But the overarching issue is this:  When confronted with clear examples of sexual harassment and opportunities to unmask it and lead the charge on informing the public and doing whatever it can to wipe this malignancy from its industry, the networks chose instead to circle the wagons, protect their own and point fingers at others, hypocritically, as sanctimonious, self-righteous Pharisees.  They would sooner lynch the President for his execrable comments about grabbing a woman by the pussy than take Lauer to task for actually forcing women to have sex with him, Weinstein for destroying careers of women who refused to have sex with him and muckety-mucks who refused to air a story about one of Epstein's accusers.  There are certainly rumors that the Clintons put the kibosh on this.  Louder still were concerns that Ms. Robach voiced that by airing the allegations of the victim, Prince Andrew's reputation would be sullied and ABC wouldn't have access to the royals as a result.

Still, the president is fair game for statements he made nearly twenty years ago.  He's taken to task for his affairs and other indiscretions -- as he can and should be as a public figure -- while those on the Left are protected by the MSM because they're one and the same.  For all the highfalutin platitudes about protecting women and honoring the #MeToo Movement, the networks are more concerned with their own survival and reputation than actually doing something to rectify the problem.  Putting on air an interview with Epstein's victim would go far to shining a light on abuse of wome, but the networks prefer to cover it up, point the finger and say, But look at what the president said!

It's shameful.

Why Ms. Robach continues to work at ABC is beyond me.  Why any woman continues to work at any of the networks mystifies me...and that includes Fox, where Roger Ailes was another member of that sordid fraternity.  The hypocrisy, though, of the networks, the moralizing and gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, over the #MeToo Movement while at the same time giving protection and cover to some of the most violent abusers is incomprehensible.

Somewhere, Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave.

(c) 2020 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Things That Never Fail

It's a new year, but I have the same sardonic outlook.  It hit me when I was driving around the other day.  Sometimes, no matter what I'm doing, some things never fail to happen no matter how much I'd like them to:

--  If I'm approaching a green light that I could see has been green for some time, if I speed up to get through the light before it changes, it never fails that it turns yellow about twenty yards before I am about to hit the intersection.

--  If Custer is out with us (sometimes he has to stay in another room because of the unexpected antipathy he has for Mosby and the dangerous outcomes that result therefrom), and I sit down to eat dinner, it never fails that he'll look at me and start whimpering for me to take him out.  Similarly, if I take him out and he pees, ten minutes after I get him in the house he starts whimpering at me to take him out so he can poop.

--  If I am in one room of the house, it never fails that, as she's walking away from me into another room in the house, Karen will start telling me something.

--  If I'm looking for a handicapped parking space, they'll all be taken.  If I'm not looking for one, there will be some available.

--  When I get back to my car from a store or restaurant, and there's no car parked in front of mine that will otherwise allow me to pull through and not have to back out of my space, just as I'm getting ready to drive off, someone will pull into the heretofore vacant space in front of me.

--  If I hold the elevator for someone who's running to catch it, and I'm going to a floor somewhere north of ten, the person for whom I just saved the elevator will get on and punch the second floor.

--  If I buy something at a store because it hasn't been on the shelves for awhile, it never fails that the next week it will go on sale in a BOGO promotion.

--  If I forget to dump my glass of iced tea in the sink at the end of the night, Bupkes, our cat, will play with it and spill it all over the coffee table.

--  It never fails that I can't start an engine that requires a pull-chord, so I give it to Karen and she gets it going right away.

--  It never fails that my teams fail to make the playoffs, or if they do -- especially when they're heavily favored -- they lay an egg (except for the glorious years of 2010, 2013, 2015 and 2016).

--  It never fails that when I absolutely have to get a rush job done, the computer freezes and no one with the knowledge to get it unstuck is available.

-- It never fails when I open a yogurt to try and eat healthily, the cup spits yogurt on my shirt.

--  It never fails that when I try to untie my shoes, I invariably pull the end of the shoelaces that won't untie the knot.

--  It never fails that when I have a good idea for a blogpost, and I come up with what I consider brilliant points to make, that by the time I get to the blog...I forget half of them.

Sorry.

(c) 2020 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles