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Success rarely comes more spectacularly than it did to Tennessee Ernie Ford in the 1950s. After breaking into television on "I Love Lucy" in 1954, Ford's recording of "Sixteen Tons" in 1955 became the fastest-selling single in the history of the recording business. Ford was an overnight major star. But there was a cost. Now, in his book "River of No Return," Ford's son Jeffrey Buckner Ford lets us inside the family to see the fame, wealth and success, but also the other side of the coin. Click on this link to listen.
Whom exactly
is the nanny taking care of?
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River
of No Return 
By
PATRICIA TALORICO, The News Journal 
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The Baltimore Sun--Intermarry and be Merry By Arthur Blecher
Meanwhile,
two Jews who each marry non-Jews will collectively produce an average of more
than four children. Even the pessimistic National Jewish Population Survey acknowledged
that the vast majority of these kids grow up with either an exclusively Jewish
identity or a dual Jewish-gentile identity. |
It's
hard to imagine a cozier holiday scene than the whole family gathered together
to trim the tree. But for 2.5 million Americans in Jewish-Christian households,
this is a scenario fraught with tension and feelings of betrayal.
Lincoln writer wins national arts fellowship By CINDY LANGE-KUBICK / Lincoln Journal Star
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Wednesday,
Dec 12, 2007 - 12:25:55 am CST|
"Oh, Alan," Perle said with some surprise. "I'd like you to meet . . . " But I already knew who his guest was. "Yes, sir," I said, extending my hand. "I recognize you from your photographs." My, my, I thought. Mr. Perle is at it again. The exiting guest was Farid Ghadry, an exiled Syrian dissident who, like Perle, believes it's past time to replace Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Ghadry, who heads a Washington-based group called the Syrian Reform Party, hopes to be the man in charge one day in Damascus. When I met him, he had already been granted audiences with David Wurmser, Vice President Dick Cheney's top Middle East advisor and Perle protege, and with Cheney's daughter, Elizabeth, who headed the State Department's Iran-Syria desk from 2005 until last June. I asked Wurmser about Ghadry. Was he another Ahmad Chalabi, the checkered Iraqi exile whom the United States backed as a Saddam Hussein replacement in Iraq? "He's not asking for money, and we're not advocating money for him," Wurmser told me. "As for him wanting power, sure, he probably has an agenda. But it doesn't matter. This is where you go back to the Soviet Union, because it's the same question that we always work with, from Lech Walesa to Vaclav Havel: 'Did they have an understanding of the malady and danger posed by the totalitarian regime in their country?' " The scenario of the U.S. backing exiles to aid in "democratizing" Middle Eastern countries is so appealing to Perle, Wurmser and their like-minded friends that they continue to pursue it despite past failures. Perle, of course, was the most prominent and aggressive advocate of Chalabi, dubbed the "Jay Gatsby of Iraq" for his social life and financial scandals, as the leader of a new Iraq. That effort collapsed when the Iraqi people, finally given a chance to vote in January 2005, did not award Chalabi's party a single seat in the new parliament. Perle insists that his man, who has a new job with the Baghdad government, was the victim of a smear campaign led by the State Department and the CIA. The Chalabi experience has not muted Perle's unabashed affection for dissidents. "I think the best way to bring about regime change," he told me, "is to help decent people who are powerless without outside help." People such as 32-year-old Amir Abbas Fakhravar, an Iranian dissident now living in exile in the United States. In a 2006 Washington Post Op-Ed article, Perle promoted Fakhravar as a heroic and inspirational figure around whom oppressed Iranians could rally, if only he were given America's support. Fakhravar is president of the Iran Enterprise Institute, which takes its name and some of its financial support from the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, of which Perle is a resident fellow. In the coming weeks, Fakhravar will be speaking at a conference in Palm Beach, Fla., on the subject of regime change in Tehran, addressing the Heritage Foundation in Washington and then heading to Rome to deliver a lecture on "Democracy in the Islamic World." Just recently, he was the honored guest at DePaul University's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week," where he was introduced as "the hero of our age." His story, as he and his supporters tell it, could be a Hollywood script. Young, handsome, bold Iranian student leads the oppressed and downtrodden against the crushing tyranny of the mullahs, rising up, a la "Les Miserables." He stands atop the barricades during student protests in Iran in 1999 and is then imprisoned and tortured. He communicates with the West from Tehran's maximum-security Evin prison via a cellphone and escapes to freedom, with a shoot-to-kill order hanging over his head. Unfortunately, Fakhravar's detractors, including some Iranian dissidents and exiles, insist that his story might as well be a Hollywood script. In a report last November in Mother Jones, Laura Rozen interviewed Iranian dissidents and journalists who cast doubt on Fakhravar's story. They claim, for example, that in their experience, political prisoners at Evin weren't allowed to use cellphones to communicate with the outside world. And, they say, he did not so much escape from prison, he simply went AWOL while on a kind of furlough that prisoners could sometimes arrange. As for other harrowing details, in reality he took a regular flight to Dubai (where he was met by Perle). Most important, Rozen's sources told her, Fakhravar was never a major figure in the student uprising of 1999. Writing in Progressive magazine, Muhammad Sahimi, a chemical engineering professor at USC, lists Fakhravar among the exiles who have no credibility in Iran: "They are not even known there." Although Amnesty International lists Fakhravar among those tortured by the Tehran regime, it uses the word "reportedly" to describe his ordeal. Perle insists that Fakhravar is being smeared by forces opposed to aggressive regime change. But the fundamental problem for Perle and like-minded others is that the men they are supporting lack the stature of their successful and illustrious predecessors, the Walesas and Havels. In the first place, Walesa and Havel did not operate in exile; they remained in their countries despite repeated imprisonment, government pressure and threats. There was never any question that they were recognized as the real thing -- opposition leaders -- by the throngs in the shipyards of Gdansk and St. Wenceslas Square. They may have had personal as well as altruistic ambitions and motives, but they were nothing if not authentic. Which brings us back to America's Middle East wannabe heroes. Take Ghadry, an American-educated Arab with a passion for technology start-ups as well as saving Syria. Unfortunately for Perle, Ghadry is seen in many quarters as a front man for Israel. Not only is he a dues-paying member of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful Israeli lobby in Washington, but a recent column on his website, titled "Why I Admire Israel," seems to play right into the hands of those who believe the Bush administration's obsession with regime change in the Middle East is really all about protecting Israel. Did Perle, the savviest of Washington power players, believe that Ghadry's tub-thumping for Tel Aviv would make him more popular in Syria? "No," Perle replied. "I don't. But he's his own man. I don't always understand what he's doing and why he's doing it." So, in his quest for idealistic dissidents to do in the Middle East what the Walesas and Havels achieved in Eastern Europe, Perle and his acolytes have tapped the discredited Ahmad Chalabi for Iraq, the suspect Amir Abbas Fakhravar for Iran and the allegiance-challenged Fahrid Ghadry for Syria. They're just not making heroes like they used to. Alan Weisman is the author of the first biography of Richard Perle, "Prince of Darkness -- Richard Perle: The Kingdom, the Power, and the End of Empire in America." |
Richard
Perle is again propping up regime-toppling Mideast dissidents who lack credibility.|
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Tale of two worlds: reporter and mom Sharon O'Donnell Through the news studio window, the New York City streets and skyline glistened in the morning sunlight as Cary resident Amanda Lamb sat in the guest chair on “The Today Show.” She was on the show several weeks ago to be interviewed about her first book, Smotherhood, a book of humorous and honest essays about motherhood. Lamb was relaxed and personable, answering questions from anchor Ann Curry and discussing the struggles of working mothers. The Sept. 10 appearance garnered tremendous publicity for the book, sending sales numbers upward. Afterward, “Smotherhood” was listed No. 4 in the parenting category on the Amazon hit rankings. Lamb, the mother of two young daughters, is currently balancing her job and parenting duties with book signings. Lamb is well known in the Triangle area because she has been a reporter for WRAL-TV for the past 13 years, covering mostly hard news and crime. But not many people know that Lamb is also an author with two books coming out in the next year. Her other book is a true crime story called “Deadly Dose,” which is about the Eric Miller arsenic murder and is told from the perspective of a veteran homicide investigator whose crusade for truth finally led to an arrest. The book will be released in June. I met Lamb over a decade ago when she first came to a meeting of the local writers group I had been a member of for several years. At the time, I had two young sons, and she was yet to have children, although she and her husband were contemplating the decision. I remember her saying she really enjoyed sleeping in past 11 a.m. on the weekends and how she guessed they wouldn’t be able to do that any longer if they had kids. I looked at her and said point blank, “Amanda, with kids, there’s no way you’d sleep past 11. You’d be lucky to make it to 8.” Her smile faded when I said this, but I figured I’d better level with her about the realities of parenthood. This news must not have been too dissuading for her because several years later, Lamb and her husband had their first child. She has now seen some of those realities of parenting up close and personal. Along the way, she started to write about these experiences and eventually became a regular blogger on dot-moms.com, a Web site featuring 40 women from around the world who blog about being a mom. Lamb started writing longer pieces about parenting and submitted them to the members of the writers group. The theme of a lot of her essays was the juxtaposition of her two different worlds: one world filled with reporting from murder trials in a courtroom or from a Hurricane Katrina-ravaged Gulf coast, while her other world was consumed by potty training, setting up play dates, preschool volunteer responsibilities and Indian Princesses. Our writers group members told her we thought there was definitely an audience for her essays. “Really?” Lamb asked. “You think so?” She began putting together the book, and her mother came up with the perfect name for it; the title “Smotherhood” says a lot in itself: Mothers love their children immensely, but sometimes, yes, to be candid, it does feel like we’re smothered by all the demands and expectations placed on us. Soon Lamb had an agent, then a publisher, and then suddenly somehow, she found herself on “The Today Show.” When her publicist called her to tell her he’d booked her on the show, she admits she was overwhelmed. “That’s every author’s dream,” she said, “but believe it or not, I was a little nervous knowing the whole country, including my parents, would be watching.” She said her mom and dad sent out hundreds of e-mails telling everyone to tune in and that they got a huge kick out of watching, particularly because they live in Pennsylvania and rarely get to see her on television. Lamb said her children, 7-year-old Mallory and 4-year-old Chloe, don’t know the difference between national and local TV so for them it was just another day at the office for Mommy. Then Lamb added, “Except for the fact that I was gone overnight in New York, which annoyed them to no end.” Lamb’s honesty in “Smotherhood” surprises some people. Lamb said she says things out loud in the book that women think about but are afraid to say because women have been socialized not to say anything negative about motherhood. “It’s about those times,” Lamb explained, “when your kids are having meltdowns and you think about walking out the door, getting in your car and driving away, but you don’t of course. “It’s about those times when they are driving you crazy and you do something that’s not politically correct — like let those balloons from the grocery store out the sunroof after your kids have hit them into your face while you’re driving one too many times.” Lamb said there is a constant supply of material to write about with young kids. And with a possible “Smotherhood 2” on the horizon, she’s glad she has an endless source of inspiration for parenting anecdotes. Even if it means she doesn’t get to sleep in past eleven on weekends. |
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Carnal Knowledge | Condoms: A look
at their place in history
Take the 17th century, when they were sold openly to men and women by tailors and taverns or through special shops, says Aine Collier, a University of Maryland professor and author of a book on prophylactics through the ages. Casanova "was passionate about condoms," she says, and would often entertain women by blowing the condoms up, which also tested for holes. She maintains that the 18th- A condom advertisement from the 1930s, reprinted from "The Humble Little Condom: A History." century libertine was particularly diligent when having sex with nuns, although his autobiography mentions one nun who supplied her own. Collier, who teaches history and English, learned all that after a romance writer asked whether it would be historically accurate for her 17th-century heroine to slide a condom onto her lover's tumescent manhood, or whatever she called it. The subject caught her imagination as a lens through which to view human nature, politics, commerce, and power struggles between the sexes. So she gathered enough lore to write The Humble Little Condom: A History, to be released by Prometheus Books next month. The condom was officially invented and reinvented more times than the wheel, especially by sausage manufacturers who kept noticing what else you might put in that casing. Condoms may predate even the sausage, having evolved from various other types of penis coverings used as long ago as ancient Egypt. The concept may go back even further. A cave painting at Grotte des Combarelles in France that was determined to be at least 12,000 years old shows what appears to be a couple coupling, Collier says, "and it looked for all the world as if the man had covered himself with some kind of animal skin." But condoms took off big time in the late 16th century, when they were made from linen or animal stomachs or other innards. "They were very crude," Collier points out, fitting like a Baggie and secured with plain twine or colored ribbon. People of the powdered-wig era liked the protection their condoms offered from unwanted pregnancy as well as from syphilis and other infections. In the 1870s, however, morality czar Anthony Comstock launched a war on condoms in America. He and various New York businessmen pushed what was known as the Comstock Act through Congress in 1873. It outlawed pornography as well as the sale or purchase of condoms and other birth-control devices.Collier's research found that 3,873 people were arrested and more than 2,900 convicted for condom-related crimes, among them giving lectures that advocated birth control. "The States are still trying to recover," says Collier, who spent part of her childhood in England. |
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Investigative
Biography of Richard Perle from Union Square Press Union Square Press, the newest imprint of Sterling Publishing, has signed veteran news producer Alan Weisman to write a book on political advisor and lobbyist Richard Perle, to be published in November. Prince of Darkness-Richard Perle: The Kingdom, The Power and the End of Empire in America is not an authorized biography, but Perle did grant Weisman several one-on-one interviews. "This will be an investigative biography of the highest quality, from a writer with superb media connections," said Philip Turner, the editorial director of Union Square Press who acquired the book. "By examining the career of Richard Perle in depth, it will give readers a profound understanding of how American foreign policy has been shaped over the past 30 years, and especially how we were led into war in Iraq." Weisman previously worked with CBS News, 60 Minutes and Charlie Rose and wrote Lone Star: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Dan Rather in 2006. He is represented by Sharlene Martin of Martin Literary Management. |
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Tan and rested? Not Dan Rather. He's ruddy and revved up. "We're going full
throttle," the ex-CBS News anchor told me yesterday about "Dan Rather
Reports," his upcoming weekly show on Texas zillionaire Mark Cuban's HDNet
cable network, which reaches just 4 million households. Rather's shooting for
a late October or early November debut. "Cuban has given me absolute and
complete editorial control," Rather said over lunch at Table XII. "Cuban
told me, 'I want you to have whatever you need for a quality program,' and he's
been as good as his word, and in many instances better than his word. Budgeting
is one of the things I'm learning. I'm taking a crash course in the MBA school
of hard knocks." 
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How heroes reclaimed the sky Let's not
forget the people of the airline industry on Sept. 11.
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Lone Star: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Dan Rather by Alan Weisman | ||||
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June
5, 2006 -- DAN Rather made some surprising enemies during his many years as an
award-winning reporter and anchorman for CBS News - one of them being his "60
Minutes" colleague Morley Safer, who Rather once suggested should have been
shot dead. "Though the author has known and worked with Dan Rather
for decades, in the end Rather decided not to cooperate with the book," Michael
Onorato, a director at Wiley Books, told Page Six's Bill Hoffmann. |
Ovitzes,
Wingers, DeVitos—and the Hollywood live-in babysitters and all-around household
gofers who make their busy lives bearable—are the subject of former nanny
Suzanne Hansen’s You’ll Never Nanny in This Town Again, to be
released by Crown on Dec. 27. In her frank, chatty memoir (and self-publishing
crossover success story), Hansen may have the last word with some former bosses—the
title was inspired by the words of one particularly despotic employer. The marketing
and publicity departments at Crown, a division of Random House, are currently
organizing a major marketing campaign, and the film and TV rights, sure to ultimately
be a coveted prize for the acquiring production company, are still on the table.
