Thank You, Ron Silver.

I was saddened this morning to hear of the passing of Ron Silver. The talented actor, perhaps best known for his apparances as political campaign strategist Bruno Gianelli on The West Wing, and as attorney Alan Dershowitz in the true-life drama Reversal of Fortune, was also a Tony-award-winner, for his role in Speed-The-Plow.

I enjoyed Silver's work quite a lot - especially on The West Wing. But I admired Silver far more for his political activism, and for his refusal to be painted with the brush of any political party. Silver considered the use of his celebrity for political purposes to be a duty, not a privilege or a bid to be Hollywood-trendy. His causes swung wildly from the far left of the political spectrum to the far right - even as his friends in Hollywood grew to shun him in his later years for failing to blindly fall in line with what was expected of him - to be a Bush-bashing unquestioning liberal Hollywood Democrat.

How liberal was Silver? Well, in 1990, he co-founded the Creative Coalition, a Hollywood political activist group, along with other actors like Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins and Alec Baldwin - the very definition of Hollywood liberal. The group took an active role in lobbying Congress on traditionally-Democrat things, including the environment, women's issues, and protecting the arts.

Then, after 9/11, Silver found himself aligning more with the GOP in terms of how the U.S. should be dealing with terrorism, and he was vocal in his support of the Bush administration's policies. He even addressed the 2004 GOP convention - a move that could have (but in all honesty, probably didn't) cost him a great deal of acting work. To see Silver's take on his journey to Pariahville in his own words, click here.

I won't spend any time debating the merits of Silver's stance on any of these issues. That would be irrelevant. My admiration of his comes from the fact that he had the courage of his convictions - the guts to create his own political platform and to be an activist, regardless of what it cost him both personally and professionally.

The world would be a much better place if we all could be as strong as Ron Silver.

Thank you, Ron.

To Paul Harvey... Good Day!

Doesn't it just figure that I blew my best nugget of Paul Harvey material just a couple of weeks ago on the Michael Phelps story? Timing is everything, which just goes to prove that when my ship comes in, I'll be at the airport!


There's not much I can add about the passing of Paul Harvey, except to say that many people of my generation have heard the name "Paul Harvey", but still don't really know who he WAS. My generation, of course, was the first to abandon the AM radio band, where Paul Harvey was largely heard.


For those of you in the dark, then please allow me to tell you that Mr. Harvey was the idealized grandpa you never really had... The master storyteller who worked every word - every syllable and every breath - to improve the flow of the story he was telling. He could express in five words what it would take any other human 15 words to say.


Too often, we blow off people who are older than us - we don't have time to consider their wisdom - or we want something new to look at. I worked at WMAL for all of those years, and for ALL of those years, people were asking when Paul Harvey was going to retire. Well, now those people have their answer, don't they?


I REALLY think people wanted Paul Harvey to retire because they secretly knew they'd never be as good at what he did as he was.


I met Paul Harvey only one time - on the inaugural cruise of the first Disney cruise ship - the Disney Magic. The radio studio on board that ship was being christened in Paul's name, and we had him on WMAL as a guest. This would have been in 1997, so Paul would have been 78.

He seemed frail even back then, and he had the aura, at least to me, as being somewhat like a silent era movie star. Even as the temperature pushed 90 degrees, Paul wore a leather bomber jacket, a sailing captain's hat, and an ascot. Yes - he wore an ascot! Paul's wife, Angel, was resplendent in canary yellow. It was like having Mr. and Mrs. Thurston Howell the Third with us... First class passengers riding in steerage with the rest of us.

Paul was about as gracious as he could be - and he seemed genuinely thrilled to be meeting other radio professionals.

Mrs. Harvey died less than a year ago, and it come as no surprise to anyone that Paul was not long for the world. After all, he spent half-a-century on the radio talking about how much he loved his wife.

I can only imagine how Paul would have delivered his own obituary in his own unique style... "Doctors in Arizona say Mr. Harvey died of natural causes. But in actuality, he really died (long pause)... of a broken heart.

Paul Harvey... Good Day!

Remembering George Carlin

I am beat to hell today, and I have TONS to blog about after an uber-busy weekend of New York bat mitzvah-hopping and getting my kids off to summer camp for a month. All of that will have to wait until tomorrow, but one thing could NOT wait.

Today, I lost a true childhood hero - George Carlin. George was a hero to me on two levels... First of all, he was to me what "Family Guy" and "South Park" are to my 14-year-old son. My first adolescent taste of counter-culture... The first opportunity I had for my parents to look the other way as I listened to Carlin's record albums with my friends behind the cliosed doors of my bedroom. Carlin was everything I was NOT... Long-haired... stoned... and COOL. Talk to any guy of my generation, and I can almost guarantee you he'll remember at least a small bit of George Carlin's humor.

Secondly, and most importantly to me, George Carlin was one of the real inspirations I had to launch a career in radio. His radio bits were not only funny as hell to me... it also was performed at a comfort level and at a rhythm that I mimicked time and again as I fooled around with being a budding disk jockey in junior high and high school.

Carlin's obituaries will remember him most for the seven dirty words you can't say on television, but to me, the quintessential George Carlin is wonderful WINO radio... Thanks, George.