When the Left was the Left

Professor Michael Parenti and UAW leader Walter Reuther -- two towering progressives of 20th-century America.



(WARNING: Both were white, male, and straight.)

Fuck #MeToo

"Individuals who are already in many cases privileged and wealthy would have us believe that sexual harassment, which now includes a wide range of behavior, is a martyrdom and its victims are among the most put-upon and oppressed members of society."

Hail, David Walsh!

Comfort

Seventeen minutes of newly released footage from the JFK Library, home movies of Hyannis Port taken a couple weeks after the death of their still-born son Patrick, and two weeks before the beginning of Assassination Autumn.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was not only the last great American leader, but also the coolest dude on the planet.

Good Cheer

A lonely snowman takes care of a baby fire-wolf in an Adventure Time very much in the holiday spirit.

Merry Christmas!

The Twelve Shows of Christmas

Reposts from previous Decembers. Holiday episodes all.

Alfred Hitchcock

Newhart

Komaneko

The Odd Couple

Father Knows Best

Have Gun Will Travel

Johnny Staccato

SCTV

The Andy Griffith Show

Plus three:

"Alan Brady Presents" from December '63



Tom & Jerry's "Night Before Christmas" (1941)



Max Fleischer's "Christmas Comes But Once a Year" (1934)

The Last Christmas

A warm, relaxed, very funny interview with the President of the United States, 55 years ago this month. (Sadly, only a kinescope of the first half of the broadcast can be found.)

It would be our final Christmas before, in Norman Mailer's words, "Americans became a slave to anxiety."



The full audio version.

Colors

The sexiest (and most innocent) girl in the current cartoon world is here split into five parts. The more the merrier.

From Allen to Fallon

Is there a more precise embodiment of the "comedy" aspects of our smirking prick HiDefecation culture than a flyspeck known as Jimmy Fallon? Not only does Fallon's material seem like something shat out by a bunch of luded dimwits (and lapped up by his equally luded, I guess, live audience), but Fallon's delivery and timing make the dead seem creative. And such Coolness! (This from a pimp for the crime combine known as Capital One Bank.) How the heck did this guy get his own late-night talk show? How the heck did real estate gangster Donald Trump get to be President of the United States? Both by being psychopathically ambitious Nowhere Men, I guess.


Could this, and the four-eyed tubby sidekick, be parody?


What makes Fallon even more sickening is that he and his gimmick occupy the same Midtown NBC studio space once occupied by the greatest talk show host of all time (and pretty much forgotten), Steve Allen.


Most great stuff from 1950s and early-60s television has been remastered and Blu-rayed. Not Allen's. At the moment, nothing of Steve Allen exists on DVD/Blu-ray or is planned for release, which must make pygmies such as Jimmy Fallon feel very safe.

Legend has it that one night in the late-50s, Allen passed out lemons to all members of his studio audience, then led the audience outside to launch an attack on a nearby fruit stand, run by a guy who'd been mean to Allen earlier that week -- an attack which today would give birth to 10,000 lawsuits and have Allen and his audience immediately arrested as a terrorist organization.

Steve Allen!

Teen

Thirteen years of wonder and beauty and joy.

Thank you to the best daughter in the world.

Happy 13th Birthday!!