Broadcasting Germs

    Hitherto the plague had found far more victims in the more thickly populated and less well-appointed outer districts than in the heart of the town.  Quite suddenly, however, it launched a new attack and established itself in the business center.  Residents accused the wind of carrying infection, “broadcasting germs,” as the hotel manager put it.  Whatever the reason might be, people living in the central districts realized that their turn had come when each night they heard oftener and oftener the ambulances clanging past, sounding the plague’s dismal, passionless tocsin under their windows.

Albert Camus, The Plague, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1948.  (Translated by Stuart Gilbert.)

Rich and Strange

   Reacting to yesterday's NY Times story (link) concerning preferential White House access being given to significant Democratic Party donors (the article's capstone was former Rep. Patrick Kennedy's statement that access-for-campaign cash was an explicit quid pro quo affair), Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) today recharacterized the argument on Chuck Todd's MSNBC Daily Rundown show as essentially one of "reverse discrimination" (my description, not his words).


      He said that what Kennedy (n.b., the gift that keeps on giving) meant by quid pro quo was that prominent donors should not be denied such access because they made hefty political contributions.  Clearly, this response makes no sense whatsoever.

     Obviously -- and the NY Times piece made this clear -- cash-for-access is a regular and frequent practice of both major political parties.


     But Clyburn's statement, which was allowed to stand unchallenged and uncontradicted by host and reporter of sorts Chuck Todd, reminds us that we live in confusing and dangerous times where a mostly recumbent, snoring media suborns dishonesty either through sloth, ineptness or, as is obviously the case with MSNBC (I'm calling you, Al "Tawana Brawley" Sharpton), born-in-the-bones corruption.




 

     I regret to say that I cannot report back on the "White House Soup of the Day," astonishingly a regular Daily Rundown feature.  I needed to walk our dogs, Andy and Edie, which is more important than watching morning television, especially a micro-rated White House "fan show," which seems to be running on fumes.

 

All images taken from Alfred Hitchcock’s film, “Rich and Strange” (1931)

Clarity Regained As Lost Elvis Girl Found -- Some GOOD News From ArtDaily.org

  

Photographer Alfred Wertheimer said he never asked for the woman's name when he took the photograph and she never told it to him.

NEW YORK (REUTERS).- 

        A U.S. magazine has identified the mystery woman seen kissing singer Elvis Presley in a backstage theater stairwell in an iconic 1956 photograph.

        Barbara Gray, now 75 and living in Charleston, S.C., told Vanity Fair magazine that she didn't reveal her identity for the money or fame.

    "I just wanted to get my name on the damn picture," she said.

        Gray admitted that she become fed up with being known only as the "unknown woman in the wings" with a young Elvis in a stairwell at the Mosque Theater in Richmond, Virginia.

        Photographer Alfred Wertheimer said he never asked for the woman's name when he took the photograph and she never told it to him.

        After newspaper coverage of Wertheimer's photography exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. in early 2010 showed him standing in front of the photograph called "The Kiss," Gray tracked Wertheimer on Facebook and sent him a message.

        "I'm the girl. 'The Kiss.' Have a good story for you," she said.

        But Wertheimer, who had heard from many women who claimed to be the woman in the photo, didn't respond at first. Gray's claim was aired on the radio and eventually found its way to Vanity Fair, which authenticated Gray's claim.

        While Gray's own photos from the mid-1950s are nearly mirror images of the young woman in the photo and her recollections of the time and place were accurate, the clincher was her height. She is only four feet, 11 inches, the same height as the woman in the picture.

        "God he's beautiful," Gray recalled thinking when she met Presley, then 21, at his hotel in Richmond. But she also found him "kind of insecure" with an accent that made him sound like "a goofy guy from the sticks."

        After accompanying him to his show, Gray and Presley kissed in the stairwell. Later she found herself in Elvis' compartment on a New York-bound train. When a voice told Elvis the train was leaving, Gray said, "So, am I."

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; editing by Patricia Reaney) 



NOTE:   I was up in last night worrying about various things when the above Reuters article and famous photo slid into view.  It was nice to find one mystery solved, but another posed in the last paragraph of the piece.  Watching the lowest common denominator punditry on television this morning, I am pleased to live in Elvis Elysian Fields, at least temporarily.  Queries:  1.  Will MSNBC reinvent itself as a children's network?  Has it already? 2.  When Thomas L. Friedman's (in the New York Times) amped-up panic level hits VU-meter red range territory and his prose becomes almost coherent (if still unpleasant to read), does this indicate: a) a "market bottom;" or b) imminent Armageddon?   Silver Lining?  Although stress has caused me to put my back out, my dieting success is on the upswing because I'm too scared to eat.