Gitell on Michael Graham Show

I’ll be on 96.9 FM Talk with Michael Graham shortly after 3:20 today. The subject will be the war crimes conference in Andover.

Gitell on NECN NewsNight Quiz

Watch me compete against humorist Ben Alper and WMJX d.j. Candy O’Terry on NECN NewsNight’s quiz. Here is a link to the first segment links. The host is Jim Braude.

Israel at 30: When Streisand Sang for Golda

I mentioned earlier that I had something up my sleeve for Israel’s 60th birthday celebration. It took more time than I wanted to put together. But here’s a piece for Nextbook that describes how America did it 30 years ago.

It’s hard even to believe now, but ABC put together a prime time variety show capped by an amazing Streisand performance. (This was, after all, the network that gave us “The Battle of the Network Stars.”)

I spoke to two great show business men to get the inside scoop — Buz Kohan and Charlie Fishman. Kohan is a veteran of scores of memorable t.v. shows, such as “Motown 25,” where Michael Jackson unveiled the moonwalk, to “Muhammed Ali’s 50th Birthday Celebration.” He is also the patriarch of a Hollywood family: his son, David, created “Will and Grace;” his daughter, Jenji, “Weeds.” For his part, Fishman is the head of Washington D.C.’s Duke Ellington Jazz Festival and a former manager of Dizzy Gillespie. Here is an excerpt of the piece:

“Fishman had brought Stan Getz to Israel in 1977, a trip filmed for the 1978 documentary Stan Getz: A Musical Odyssey. ‘How do you break away from the late night television?’ Fishman remembers asking himself. ‘I sat back and said, ‘What would be the hippest thing to do? What would be the biggest star-power thing to do?’ ‘

No other Jewish American performer of the time was as big as Streisand. This was little more than a year after the release of A Star Is Born, which had garnered her an Oscar for the song ‘Evergreen.’ Fishman enlisted producer James Lipton, now famous for Inside the Actors Studio, and director Marty Pasetta, another award-show veteran, and set to work getting Streisand. She was interested, but had her own conditions: She wanted to sing accompanied by Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. So that’s exactly what she got. And with the strength of Streisand’s name, Fishman and company sold the show to ABC.

In the days before the show aired, Kohan and Mehta went to Streisand’s home to help her prepare. ‘She wanted to sing ‘Hatikvah,’ only she didn’t know’ the song, Kohan recalls. Kohan picked up the phone, called his wife, Rhea, and asked her to sing the song to Streisand. ‘I hope she’s not intimidated,’ Rhea quipped before launching into it.

Streisand’s preparation worked. For the organizers, the result was transcendent. ‘She was remarkable,’ says Kohan. ‘Everybody was impressed with the last twenty minutes of the show.’ ”

You can watch Streisand here.

Kennedy Statement

Here’s the statement of Kennedy’s office on his hospitalization via Boston.com:

“It appears that Senator Kennedy experienced a seizure this morning. He is undergoing a battery of tests at Massachusetts General Hospital to determine the cause of the seizure. Senator Kennedy is resting comfortably, and it is unlikely we will know anything more for the next 48 hours.”

Gitell.com’s prayers go out to the senator as he recovers.

Gitell on NECN NewsNight

Watch me here on NECN NewsNight along with key Barack Obama fundraiser Alan Solomont. The host is, of course, Jim Braude.

Gitell on NECN NewsNight

I will be part of NECN’s Election Night coverage. My appearance will be during the 8:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. block.

Hillary Clinton and 1960s Radicalism

Remember my post on Hillary Clinton’s vulnerability to charges of radicalism after the last Democratic debate?

Now I’m joined in that thought by former 1960s radical Tom Hayden. Here’s what he writes in The Nation:

“Hillary is blind to her own roots in the sixties…She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale law school meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an “unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged.” She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. She surely agreed with Yale president Kingman Brewster that a black revolutionary couldn’t get a fair trial in America. She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents.

Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm’s partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others ‘tolerated communists’.” 

 

 

Jeremiah Wright’s Media Tour

I caught most of Jeremiah Wright’s address to the National Press Club today. There’s no way this can be helpful to the campaign of Barack Obama. It was notable that Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, called into MSNBC on-air to push back against the wire-to-wire coverage of Wright’s media tour. That’s the best evidence that the Obama campaign would love to see Wright just go away. The fact that he isn’t means damage for the campaign, both now and for November.

Pennsylvania Primary: After Action Report

I have to give great credit to Suffolk University’s David Paleologos for once again nailing the PA primary result.

This is my third experience of being in a state the night prior to an election and experiencing the tremendous enthusiasm around Barack Obama, only to see him lose. Hillary Clinton may not pull passionate supporters at rallies in such large numbers as Obama, but her people come out and vote on election day.

I’m starting to think that members of the media are mislead by these exuberant events. Obama supporters, to be sure, are the most likely to go to rallies and then to vote on election day. And, if you are a passionate Obama backer, you are likely to go to a rally to be part of the Obama experience. But few observers ever consider the people who don’t go to Obama rallies when he’s in town. The people who don’t show up aren’t necessarily Obama voters, and reporters don’t interview them .

Also to my comments about the Jewish community. According to Andrea Mitchell today on MSNBC, the Jewish community in Pennsylvania was divided on its support, as I suggested it would be.

PA Primary Update: Millvale

Yesterday my reporting took me to the Western Pennsylvania community of Millvale. Millvale lies only minutes from the heart of Pittsburgh, but its distance across the Allegheny River makes this compact former industrial town feel much farther away.

The big issue in town is flooding, which has contributed to pervasive job loss. Local officials present said Senator Clinton understood the needs of a small town like this more than her opponent, Mr. Obama.

Bill Clinton showed up for a campaign event at the old St. Ann’s Church. It looks like one of the many proud old Catholic and Orthodox churches that dot this area, but is now a night club, Mr. Smalls Funhouse, owned by members of the jam band Rusted Root. The church is now a club because the area’s dwindling population has meant the consolidation of parishes.

Clinton spoke for just over ten minutes. His was a classic political stump speech. “If you’re hearing somebody say you better quit because you can’t win, it’s because they’re afraid you will win,” he said.

After the crowd poured out of the church, onlookers lined up along the hilly street adjacent to it to catch a glimpse of him leaving. He exited wearing glasses but quickly took them off when he noticed there was such a large crowd waiting. He gave them the classic Clinton, bit lip and thumbs up. Then before he got in his vehicle he crossed the street to hug 85-year-old May Mayhugh, standing out on her porch. Mayhugh who had just gotten out of the hospital.

“I have prospered under Bill Clinton, and I’ll be happy to have another Clinton in the White House,”  Millvale’s mayor, Vincent Cinski, said after Clinton had departed. 

It’s important to point out that despite the economic plight of Millvale, it has a branch of the fabulous Pittsburgh chain of diners, Pamela’s, famous for the breakfast and pancakes. But due to the observance of Passover, I have no report on this PA food find today.