Today in History: March 22

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

William Shatner is 85 today. As of the moment I am typing this, 4:05 p.m. on March 21, Mr. Shatner has sent out approximately 40 Tweets today alone, all of them joshing replies to questions from his many admirers, like this one:

 
I am sure there will be 40 more between when I type this and when you will be reading this.

His show business career is legendary, one of the few in which an actor has traveled the road from up-and-coming new star of the future to leading man to has-been to leading man to parody to self-parody and then back to leading man. Perhaps he has always been an up-and-coming performer, just starting out, and we are the ones who have insisted on boxing him in. Shatner has remained a perpetual 45-55 years of age for the last 45 years. I have friends who have interviewed him, and the reports are always that meeting him was one of life’s highlights for them.

He is living long and, it appears, prospering. And he seems incapable of slowing down, much less stopping. A tv appearance from February (below the fold):
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CODEPINK’s 10 Points for Peace

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In an ideal world, there is no need for the phrase, “In an ideal world.”

We do not reside in an ideal world. We reside in a world in which business and political interests, often using social and political structures, demand the individual to stand down and obey. Wars are fought and the reasons or causes are often left unclear, lest we the many individuals find the reasons or causes suspect or lest we suspect that the reasons or causes are not in our interests.

I have been using this website to shine a light on human rights stories, and in doing so, I try to always remember that any one individual’s story that I may take the time to write about is one of many similar (sometimes, identical) stories in that person’s country. Raif Badawi, the blogger who is imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for his writing and who was flogged as part of his punishment on January 9, 2015, is one of an estimated 30,000 political prisoners in his nation. And Saudi Arabia is but one nation, one nation with business, political, and also religious interests that demand that one can only celebrate a “freedom of expression” by freely expressing that one ought not be free to express oneself.
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Today in History: March 21

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Vivian Stanshall was born on this date in 1943. I published a tribute two years ago, “Vivian Stanshall: Not an Eccentric.”

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“A House Divided,” the final episode of the third season of the television drama, “Dallas,” aired 36 years years ago tonight on CBS. It ended with the shocking cliffhanger: J.R. Ewing is shot in the final seconds and left for dead. His assailant is not seen. In the long-unfolding plot of the series, the season, and the episode, the number of characters who might have wanted to see the grinningly evil J.R. Ewing shot numbered in double (perhaps triple) digits. For the next eight months, until the first episode of the next season, American media was obsessed with this question: “Who shot J.R.?” When that episode aired, on November 21, 1980, some 75% of all American televisions that were turned on that night were tuned to “Dallas” on CBS. The “shooting” (below the fold):
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