Felker sounds like a stumbling narcissist who keeps chasing a dream that will not succeed because he can’t control his impulses. I’m impressed at how you give such color and detail to events that are more than fifty years away. Murdoch’s predator personality seems to have lit up Felker.
Ok, yesterday I followed a kind of ad hoc path through Wikipedia that ran like this (from my Opera browser history) Clay Felker > Gail Sheehy > Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale >Uplifting the South: Mary Mildred Sullivan's Legacy for Appalachia - by Kathleen Curtis Wilson (Google Books not Wiki) > New York Southern Society - Wiki, {"Uh Oh," is this gonna be The South Shall Rise Again crypto-KKK-dressed up in black tie instead of sheets?!} > Redirected in Wiki to Algernon Sidney Sullivan Foundation --- Scholarships for students from Appalachia and the Southeast, many first-generation to ever attend college, so this looks good! no KKK b.s., anyway> Phelan Beale, this is a real "soap opera of the pre- WW1 -1920s ---en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phelan_Beale
Phelan Beale (May 23, 1881 – June 12, 1956) was an American attorney and sportsman in New York City who was married to Edith Ewing Bouvier, an aunt of Jacqueline Bouvier Onassis. Beale is probably best remembered as the absent father chronicled in the Grey Gardens saga portrayed in a 1975 movie documentary, 2006 Broadway musical, and 2009 HBO film, all of which were named for his home in East Hampton, New York. - Early life
Beale was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and grew up in Montgomery, Alabama. He was the grandson of John D. Phelan (1809-1879), an Alabama Speaker of the House and Alabama Supreme Court Justice.[1] Beale graduated from the University of the South in 1902 and from Columbia University Law School in 1905.[2] - The rest is worth a quick read, then, here in Mipples, several hours traversed via my own local phone calls interspersed with K.C. Wilson's book about Irish Linen > Cromwell's New Model Army > Scots (an Irish tribe) return to Ireland > EVENTUALLY back to > en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Moss#cite_note-12, which Note 12 is
Mcgeary, Johanna; Tumulty, Karen (May 7, 2001). "The Fog of War". Time. Archived from the original on October 30, 2010. Retrieved April 27, 2011. > My Google Maps search for Thanh Phong -- there are at least five small villages w/ that name, figured it's near Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, anyway, helluva article > Bob Kerrey > Society of Innocents > Seward, Nebraska > Reinhold Marxhausen en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Marxhausen (Artist born in Vergas, MN. but listed under "Notable People" connected to Seward, only a few miles from the Lincoln, Nebraska campus > en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber_(artist) mentored R. Marxhausen, and painted "Chinese Restaurant (1915),[1] in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, "the finest canvas of his Cubist phase," in the words of art historian Avis Berman.[2]"
So NOW we have returned via this labyrinthine ad hoc synchronistic frolic through the interwebs to NYC:
(Weber) studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn under Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow was a fortunate early influence on Weber as he was an "enlightened and vital teacher" in a time of conservative art instruction, a man who was interested in new approaches to creating art. Dow had met Paul Gauguin in Pont-Aven, was a devoted student of Japanese art, and defended the advanced modernist painting and sculpture he saw at the Armory Show in New York in 1913.[3]
The Fog of War article and the information like this, from Kerrey's wiki bio, really marked a dark, somewhat stunning part of this otherwise light-hearted search:
" Early life and education Kerrey was born in Lincoln, Nebraska on August 27, 1943, the son of Elinor Fern (née Gonder), a University of Nebraska instructor, and James Henry Kerrey, a builder and businessman.[8][9][10] He attended the public schools of Lincoln and graduated from Lincoln Northeast High School in 1961.[11] He went on to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in pharmacy from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1966.[12] Kerrey pledged Phi Gamma Delta fraternity,[13] and during his senior year he was admitted into the Society of Innocents, the chancellor's senior honorary society of spirit boosters.[14] {He ended up essentially "bored out of his mind" as a pharmacist and, well, there's a war on...}
Military service
Kerrey served in the United States Navy as a SEAL officer during the Vietnam War. He completed Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1967. He then received assignment to Naval Amphibious Base Coronado and subsequently completed Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training with class 42 in December 1967. He received direct assignment to SEAL Team ONE, a separate organization from the Underwater Demolition Teams to which new personnel were normally assigned. After extensive pre-deployment training, Kerrey deployed to the Republic of Vietnam as assistant platoon commander with Delta Platoon, SEAL Team ONE in January 1969," .... {the events in a SEAL TEAM raid led by Kerrey the NEXT MONTH --- he has had almost no time to learn a damn thing about the local people, terrain, all of that -- are the subject of The Fog of War article, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, anyway I think I read it was nominated, from my reading of the piece I would definitely concur, if so...
Will cease and desist on that, the Vietnam War is still with us, Kerrey wanted to refuse his Congressional Medal of Honor, that stems from the actual events in February, 1969 --- you'll have to read the rest for yourself, or avoid reading it as being perhaps redundant, or triggering godawful recollections/flashbacks, whatever.
That's probably well "beyond the call of" something or other, but the fact is I have found that once every four or six weeks or so, via that kind of "spontaneous ad hoc Wiki-Google +_any other website that seems to hook up," I can learn all sorts of things, connected in interesting ways far from apparent based (too much, anyway) on a first impression --- "what good's a first impression?"
I've always thought that a really good conversation is one which constantly digresses, or goes "all over the map." Mark Twain's "diary" is sort of one long fascinating digression.
I agree. But it drives some people bonkers, of course! And there's a time and a place where eagle-eyed total focus is what is needed, just not ALL the time....
I will frame that youtube. com song by adding, it's a song from the musical Cabaret, a musical based on Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories, set during the rise of Nazism in Weimar Germany --- the 'first impression' of the song lyrics and flowing melody are extremely unlikely to prepare you for the horrific implications of the finish.
Kerrey should have been tried for the murder of a Vietnamese family. Feeling his failed mission (lousy Intelligence) would be ratted out by these civilians, he and his teammates slit their throats rather than run the risk of their position being given away. A Their lives for his decision. A sort of miniature My Lai. Somehow or other, Kerrey ended up with the Congressional Medal of Honor, and went on to the US Senate. I think he even dated Linda Ronstadt. I don't know if he is alive or dead, and I don't care; he disgusts me.
On the one hand, I can see why The Fog of War article deserved a Pulitzer Prize nomination, since the journalists left it up to the readers to decide who was more credible. On the other hand: I think Kerrey was and is more credible, so I have to reject your conclusion. And please read the wiki bio, for info like this:
"Kerrey's SEAL team first encountered a villager's house. Later, according to Kerrey, the team was shot at from the village and returned fire, only to find after the battle that some of the killed appeared to be under 18, clustered together in the center of the village. "The thing that I will remember until the day I die is walking in and finding, I don't know, 14 or so, I don't even know what the number was, women and children who were dead", Kerrey said in 1998. "I was expecting to find Viet Cong soldiers with weapons, dead. Instead I found women and children."[16]
"In contrast, Gerhard Klann, a member of Kerrey's SEAL team, gave a different version independently supported by a separate interview with Vietnamese woman Pham Tri Lanh. According to Klann, the team rounded up the women and children from hooches (shelters) and decided to "kill them and get out of there", for fear that they would alert enemy soldiers. Kerrey responded to Klann's account by stating "it's not my memory of it", and accused Klann of being jealous that Kerrey had not assisted him in obtaining a Medal of Honor for a later mission. Other members of Kerrey's SEAL team also "wholeheartedly" denied Klann's account.[16]"
"Kerrey expressed anguish and guilt over the incident, saying: "You can never, can never get away from it. It darkens your day. I thought dying for your country was the worst thing that could happen to you, and I don't think it is. I think killing for your country can be a lot worse. Because that's the memory that haunts."[16] He was awarded a Bronze Star for the raid on Thanh Phong.[16] The citation for the medal reads, "The net result of his patrol was 21 Viet Cong killed, two hooches destroyed and two enemy weapons captured."[16]
Personal life {It was Debra Winger he dated, not Linda Ronstadt, that was Gov. Jerry Brown, and it was more than casual dating)
Kerrey at the LBJ Library in 2016
While he was Governor of Nebraska, Kerrey dated actress Debra Winger while the latter was in Lincoln filming Terms of Endearment (part of which is set in Nebraska), which won the 1983 Oscar for Best Picture. When confronted with intense questioning by the press over the nature of the relationship, Kerrey famously replied; "What can I say – she swept me off my foot", alluding to the fact that the lower part of one of his legs was amputated because of injuries sustained in his Medal of Honor action in Vietnam.[ And this, the source of my mentioning that Kerrey seriously considered refusing accepting his Congressional Medal of Honor, and much else of importance in evaluating the credibility of Gerhard Klann's version of events versus that of Kerrey and the rest of the Seal Team. "The Fog of War," that sums up so much ambiguity.
And NOTA BENE! The "separate interview with Vietnamese woman Pham Tri Lanh" was later denied as being accurate by, guess who, Pham Tri Lanh. She said she didn't actually see who shot who (this was, after all, an active fog of war zone with N.L.F./Viet Cong in the region). In any case, interviewing citizens of the Vietnamese regime as if they were free of coercion from the local "powers that be" is already a bit ludicrous.
So we will have to agree to disagree, before I start dragging Douglas Pike's study of the N.L.F. and other detailed accounts of the war into this, just kidding! But it's a very grim, confused, Roshomon-like set of circumstances, no doubt about that.
I read Pike's epic before I went to my Advisory Team. I took it with me and found it useful in figuring out the enemy, why they behaved the way they did, why they often were so slow reacting. I wrote him a letter, thanking him.
The Delta area was not known for prisoner-taking, BTW, by either side. It was just nasty. Nevertheless, one has to decide whether or not to behave like a human or a nazi around civilians who were helpless.
OMFG. You know Joel Mabus's song "Hopelessly Midwestern"? I'm a dyed-in-the-wool New Englander but there's a line in there I embraced the first time I heard it: "you'd rather go to hell than to New York City." That is 100% me (and yeah, I've been there a few times).
After reading the preface, l hereby recommend that our dear beloved Pied Piper of Muckland, get an intellectual property lawyer to sort out the finer-points of his original manuscript on the matter currently under consideration in this and the previous post also dated 1976 (that year has a certain illustrious ring to it as in Bicentennial).
Lucian, dear. Get a fuckin’ lawyer, on a contingency basis if necessary. This-here psycho-melodrama is about to go viral, in my humble opinion. It’s got all the ingredients for a much-needed comedy.
Now, back to the text. What Gail Sheehan, the Mother Superior of all Mid-life Crisis’s in a featured representation? I’m hooked (Hotpants et Al)!
I was mystified by the poor showing of responses. But my style of reading is to read the intro and check out the responses. Only then do l attack the body of the post with an eye for where the thrust is going.
I believe those who jump in the deep end are more likely to sink than swim. Occasionally the responses have a blood-thirsty sensibility which l find offensive. I can’t imagine why this story inspired such a modest reaction.
Perhaps they don’t realize the body of the post was written nearly 50 years! Or fail to see the importance of having the text available for scrutiny in light of current events and the revelatory nature of your original story. It can be difficult to sort out.
I’m serious about protecting your interests since you’re relying on copy that was and published already. I was reading the Substack contract stipulations recently and found it somewhat obtuse.
Curious, indeed. Is an intriguing account of the unwinding of NYC print media's ball of string by Murdoch into his own. Adds much perspective and context to the current state of affairs.
Lots of irony in that Murdoch knew weaknesses in others will eventually be revealed allowing him to strike. Yet, Murdoch ignored that very same fact by not immediately settling w/Dominion. Now it's his ball of string being unwound by all those in media he was sure he had vanquished.
One of my readers said that Sheehy was sued by the guy she stole the idea from and she had to give him something like 10 percent of her earnings, a story I had never heard before.
I was actually a fan of Sheehy on the basis of her being on of the first “publicly traded” non-fiction writers. After Rachel Carson and Margaret Mead there was a scarcity of “nasty bitches”. I devoured Sheehy’s Hotpants, and even Passages held my attention. Discussing unmentionables opened the boundaries and permitted thought and behaviour to radicalize. The fact that she was in the company of Felker indicates a kind of savvy most “girls” lacked. So kudos!to those who dared.
l must return to my daily dose of “The Pied Piper of Muckland, and the early days of the Murdock Takeover.
I feel it's my duty to tell you that Gail stole the research that was the guts of "Passages." The two psychiatrists whose work it was sued, and Sheehy wound up paying them 15% of everything. One of the psychiatrists, Roger Gould, was a friend. I never looked at her work the same again .
One indicator of how hugely things have changed: The dollar figures mentioned are so tiny by today's standards. I almost think that given a week, maybe less, almost anybody with decent connections could have rounded up the money to buy these famous publications.
$1 million was a lot of money in 1976. My salary at the Village Voice was $80 a week for for years, albeit with some health benefits I hardly used in my early 20's.
$320 a month "for years" in NYC! By 1976 you would have been a Captain (O-3) in the Army making at least $750 base pay, plus other stuff---and had full medical plus a room in the BOQ. And Army pay then was WAY BELOW private industry. Frankly, I don't know how you did it, but I bet you can now squeeze six cents out of a nickle!
Felker sounds like a stumbling narcissist who keeps chasing a dream that will not succeed because he can’t control his impulses. I’m impressed at how you give such color and detail to events that are more than fifty years away. Murdoch’s predator personality seems to have lit up Felker.
Ok, yesterday I followed a kind of ad hoc path through Wikipedia that ran like this (from my Opera browser history) Clay Felker > Gail Sheehy > Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale >Uplifting the South: Mary Mildred Sullivan's Legacy for Appalachia - by Kathleen Curtis Wilson (Google Books not Wiki) > New York Southern Society - Wiki, {"Uh Oh," is this gonna be The South Shall Rise Again crypto-KKK-dressed up in black tie instead of sheets?!} > Redirected in Wiki to Algernon Sidney Sullivan Foundation --- Scholarships for students from Appalachia and the Southeast, many first-generation to ever attend college, so this looks good! no KKK b.s., anyway> Phelan Beale, this is a real "soap opera of the pre- WW1 -1920s ---en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phelan_Beale
Phelan Beale (May 23, 1881 – June 12, 1956) was an American attorney and sportsman in New York City who was married to Edith Ewing Bouvier, an aunt of Jacqueline Bouvier Onassis. Beale is probably best remembered as the absent father chronicled in the Grey Gardens saga portrayed in a 1975 movie documentary, 2006 Broadway musical, and 2009 HBO film, all of which were named for his home in East Hampton, New York. - Early life
Beale was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and grew up in Montgomery, Alabama. He was the grandson of John D. Phelan (1809-1879), an Alabama Speaker of the House and Alabama Supreme Court Justice.[1] Beale graduated from the University of the South in 1902 and from Columbia University Law School in 1905.[2] - The rest is worth a quick read, then, here in Mipples, several hours traversed via my own local phone calls interspersed with K.C. Wilson's book about Irish Linen > Cromwell's New Model Army > Scots (an Irish tribe) return to Ireland > EVENTUALLY back to > en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Moss#cite_note-12, which Note 12 is
Mcgeary, Johanna; Tumulty, Karen (May 7, 2001). "The Fog of War". Time. Archived from the original on October 30, 2010. Retrieved April 27, 2011. > My Google Maps search for Thanh Phong -- there are at least five small villages w/ that name, figured it's near Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, anyway, helluva article > Bob Kerrey > Society of Innocents > Seward, Nebraska > Reinhold Marxhausen en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Marxhausen (Artist born in Vergas, MN. but listed under "Notable People" connected to Seward, only a few miles from the Lincoln, Nebraska campus > en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber_(artist) mentored R. Marxhausen, and painted "Chinese Restaurant (1915),[1] in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, "the finest canvas of his Cubist phase," in the words of art historian Avis Berman.[2]"
So NOW we have returned via this labyrinthine ad hoc synchronistic frolic through the interwebs to NYC:
(Weber) studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn under Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow was a fortunate early influence on Weber as he was an "enlightened and vital teacher" in a time of conservative art instruction, a man who was interested in new approaches to creating art. Dow had met Paul Gauguin in Pont-Aven, was a devoted student of Japanese art, and defended the advanced modernist painting and sculpture he saw at the Armory Show in New York in 1913.[3]
The Fog of War article and the information like this, from Kerrey's wiki bio, really marked a dark, somewhat stunning part of this otherwise light-hearted search:
" Early life and education Kerrey was born in Lincoln, Nebraska on August 27, 1943, the son of Elinor Fern (née Gonder), a University of Nebraska instructor, and James Henry Kerrey, a builder and businessman.[8][9][10] He attended the public schools of Lincoln and graduated from Lincoln Northeast High School in 1961.[11] He went on to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in pharmacy from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1966.[12] Kerrey pledged Phi Gamma Delta fraternity,[13] and during his senior year he was admitted into the Society of Innocents, the chancellor's senior honorary society of spirit boosters.[14] {He ended up essentially "bored out of his mind" as a pharmacist and, well, there's a war on...}
Military service
Kerrey served in the United States Navy as a SEAL officer during the Vietnam War. He completed Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1967. He then received assignment to Naval Amphibious Base Coronado and subsequently completed Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training with class 42 in December 1967. He received direct assignment to SEAL Team ONE, a separate organization from the Underwater Demolition Teams to which new personnel were normally assigned. After extensive pre-deployment training, Kerrey deployed to the Republic of Vietnam as assistant platoon commander with Delta Platoon, SEAL Team ONE in January 1969," .... {the events in a SEAL TEAM raid led by Kerrey the NEXT MONTH --- he has had almost no time to learn a damn thing about the local people, terrain, all of that -- are the subject of The Fog of War article, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, anyway I think I read it was nominated, from my reading of the piece I would definitely concur, if so...
web.archive.org/web/20101030125443/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,108006,00.html
Will cease and desist on that, the Vietnam War is still with us, Kerrey wanted to refuse his Congressional Medal of Honor, that stems from the actual events in February, 1969 --- you'll have to read the rest for yourself, or avoid reading it as being perhaps redundant, or triggering godawful recollections/flashbacks, whatever.
I will read everything you point to but it will take me a few days to do so.
That's probably well "beyond the call of" something or other, but the fact is I have found that once every four or six weeks or so, via that kind of "spontaneous ad hoc Wiki-Google +_any other website that seems to hook up," I can learn all sorts of things, connected in interesting ways far from apparent based (too much, anyway) on a first impression --- "what good's a first impression?"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAS0Yn0dDk0
I've always thought that a really good conversation is one which constantly digresses, or goes "all over the map." Mark Twain's "diary" is sort of one long fascinating digression.
I agree. But it drives some people bonkers, of course! And there's a time and a place where eagle-eyed total focus is what is needed, just not ALL the time....
I will frame that youtube. com song by adding, it's a song from the musical Cabaret, a musical based on Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories, set during the rise of Nazism in Weimar Germany --- the 'first impression' of the song lyrics and flowing melody are extremely unlikely to prepare you for the horrific implications of the finish.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Berlin_Stories
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabaret_(musical)
Apologies in advance if you are already quite familiar with either one or both, and don't need me as a "volunteer cicerone"!
Thank you Richard, for the link to the Time Magazine "Fog Of War" article. Onwards now to Phelan Beale for some presumably lighter food for thought.
Kerrey should have been tried for the murder of a Vietnamese family. Feeling his failed mission (lousy Intelligence) would be ratted out by these civilians, he and his teammates slit their throats rather than run the risk of their position being given away. A Their lives for his decision. A sort of miniature My Lai. Somehow or other, Kerrey ended up with the Congressional Medal of Honor, and went on to the US Senate. I think he even dated Linda Ronstadt. I don't know if he is alive or dead, and I don't care; he disgusts me.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Kerrey
On the one hand, I can see why The Fog of War article deserved a Pulitzer Prize nomination, since the journalists left it up to the readers to decide who was more credible. On the other hand: I think Kerrey was and is more credible, so I have to reject your conclusion. And please read the wiki bio, for info like this:
"Kerrey's SEAL team first encountered a villager's house. Later, according to Kerrey, the team was shot at from the village and returned fire, only to find after the battle that some of the killed appeared to be under 18, clustered together in the center of the village. "The thing that I will remember until the day I die is walking in and finding, I don't know, 14 or so, I don't even know what the number was, women and children who were dead", Kerrey said in 1998. "I was expecting to find Viet Cong soldiers with weapons, dead. Instead I found women and children."[16]
"In contrast, Gerhard Klann, a member of Kerrey's SEAL team, gave a different version independently supported by a separate interview with Vietnamese woman Pham Tri Lanh. According to Klann, the team rounded up the women and children from hooches (shelters) and decided to "kill them and get out of there", for fear that they would alert enemy soldiers. Kerrey responded to Klann's account by stating "it's not my memory of it", and accused Klann of being jealous that Kerrey had not assisted him in obtaining a Medal of Honor for a later mission. Other members of Kerrey's SEAL team also "wholeheartedly" denied Klann's account.[16]"
"Kerrey expressed anguish and guilt over the incident, saying: "You can never, can never get away from it. It darkens your day. I thought dying for your country was the worst thing that could happen to you, and I don't think it is. I think killing for your country can be a lot worse. Because that's the memory that haunts."[16] He was awarded a Bronze Star for the raid on Thanh Phong.[16] The citation for the medal reads, "The net result of his patrol was 21 Viet Cong killed, two hooches destroyed and two enemy weapons captured."[16]
Personal life {It was Debra Winger he dated, not Linda Ronstadt, that was Gov. Jerry Brown, and it was more than casual dating)
Kerrey at the LBJ Library in 2016
While he was Governor of Nebraska, Kerrey dated actress Debra Winger while the latter was in Lincoln filming Terms of Endearment (part of which is set in Nebraska), which won the 1983 Oscar for Best Picture. When confronted with intense questioning by the press over the nature of the relationship, Kerrey famously replied; "What can I say – she swept me off my foot", alluding to the fact that the lower part of one of his legs was amputated because of injuries sustained in his Medal of Honor action in Vietnam.[ And this, the source of my mentioning that Kerrey seriously considered refusing accepting his Congressional Medal of Honor, and much else of importance in evaluating the credibility of Gerhard Klann's version of events versus that of Kerrey and the rest of the Seal Team. "The Fog of War," that sums up so much ambiguity.
And NOTA BENE! The "separate interview with Vietnamese woman Pham Tri Lanh" was later denied as being accurate by, guess who, Pham Tri Lanh. She said she didn't actually see who shot who (this was, after all, an active fog of war zone with N.L.F./Viet Cong in the region). In any case, interviewing citizens of the Vietnamese regime as if they were free of coercion from the local "powers that be" is already a bit ludicrous.
So we will have to agree to disagree, before I start dragging Douglas Pike's study of the N.L.F. and other detailed accounts of the war into this, just kidding! But it's a very grim, confused, Roshomon-like set of circumstances, no doubt about that.
www.nytimes.com/2001/04/25/magazine/one-awful-night-in-thanh-phong.html
I read Pike's epic before I went to my Advisory Team. I took it with me and found it useful in figuring out the enemy, why they behaved the way they did, why they often were so slow reacting. I wrote him a letter, thanking him.
The Delta area was not known for prisoner-taking, BTW, by either side. It was just nasty. Nevertheless, one has to decide whether or not to behave like a human or a nazi around civilians who were helpless.
Wow! Your backstory is worth a book.
OMFG. You know Joel Mabus's song "Hopelessly Midwestern"? I'm a dyed-in-the-wool New Englander but there's a line in there I embraced the first time I heard it: "you'd rather go to hell than to New York City." That is 100% me (and yeah, I've been there a few times).
At least we're free of that class one season a year, when the ones not on the East End vacate our island for yours, Susanna. ;-)
Now, now. It was where some of us were born, raised and LIVED!
After reading the preface, l hereby recommend that our dear beloved Pied Piper of Muckland, get an intellectual property lawyer to sort out the finer-points of his original manuscript on the matter currently under consideration in this and the previous post also dated 1976 (that year has a certain illustrious ring to it as in Bicentennial).
Lucian, dear. Get a fuckin’ lawyer, on a contingency basis if necessary. This-here psycho-melodrama is about to go viral, in my humble opinion. It’s got all the ingredients for a much-needed comedy.
Now, back to the text. What Gail Sheehan, the Mother Superior of all Mid-life Crisis’s in a featured representation? I’m hooked (Hotpants et Al)!
Well, it's hardly gone viral here on Substack. Fewer likes and comments than usual, which I find kinda curious.
I was mystified by the poor showing of responses. But my style of reading is to read the intro and check out the responses. Only then do l attack the body of the post with an eye for where the thrust is going.
I believe those who jump in the deep end are more likely to sink than swim. Occasionally the responses have a blood-thirsty sensibility which l find offensive. I can’t imagine why this story inspired such a modest reaction.
Perhaps they don’t realize the body of the post was written nearly 50 years! Or fail to see the importance of having the text available for scrutiny in light of current events and the revelatory nature of your original story. It can be difficult to sort out.
I’m serious about protecting your interests since you’re relying on copy that was and published already. I was reading the Substack contract stipulations recently and found it somewhat obtuse.
Curious, indeed. Is an intriguing account of the unwinding of NYC print media's ball of string by Murdoch into his own. Adds much perspective and context to the current state of affairs.
Lots of irony in that Murdoch knew weaknesses in others will eventually be revealed allowing him to strike. Yet, Murdoch ignored that very same fact by not immediately settling w/Dominion. Now it's his ball of string being unwound by all those in media he was sure he had vanquished.
I seem to have missed Part 1. Will go back and find it.....
I feel vindicated for thinking Sheehy's much-acclaimed PASSAGES was pop pablum the first (and only) time I tried to read it.
One of my readers said that Sheehy was sued by the guy she stole the idea from and she had to give him something like 10 percent of her earnings, a story I had never heard before.
I was actually a fan of Sheehy on the basis of her being on of the first “publicly traded” non-fiction writers. After Rachel Carson and Margaret Mead there was a scarcity of “nasty bitches”. I devoured Sheehy’s Hotpants, and even Passages held my attention. Discussing unmentionables opened the boundaries and permitted thought and behaviour to radicalize. The fact that she was in the company of Felker indicates a kind of savvy most “girls” lacked. So kudos!to those who dared.
l must return to my daily dose of “The Pied Piper of Muckland, and the early days of the Murdock Takeover.
I feel it's my duty to tell you that Gail stole the research that was the guts of "Passages." The two psychiatrists whose work it was sued, and Sheehy wound up paying them 15% of everything. One of the psychiatrists, Roger Gould, was a friend. I never looked at her work the same again .
Oh indeed.
One indicator of how hugely things have changed: The dollar figures mentioned are so tiny by today's standards. I almost think that given a week, maybe less, almost anybody with decent connections could have rounded up the money to buy these famous publications.
$1 million was a lot of money in 1976. My salary at the Village Voice was $80 a week for for years, albeit with some health benefits I hardly used in my early 20's.
$320 a month "for years" in NYC! By 1976 you would have been a Captain (O-3) in the Army making at least $750 base pay, plus other stuff---and had full medical plus a room in the BOQ. And Army pay then was WAY BELOW private industry. Frankly, I don't know how you did it, but I bet you can now squeeze six cents out of a nickle!
$320 a month, plus a backstage pass to the Filmore East and the Apollo. And there were other, less public, perks.
Ha-Ha! I read you, loud and clear.
This is soooooo much fun. The names being dropped are the living Page 6! Please let us have part 3 soon.
Coming tomorrow morning. Here's a tease. The title is: "Part Three: With blood in the water and tears on the carpet, Murdoch closes the deal."
I love it…the sinister phase!!!
Briliant. Next up, Sun Valley?
The next one will be your favorite by far.
This could be an HBO series - Jeremy Strong as Clay Felker, Sarah Snook as Jackie Onassis
Um, Sarah Snook as Jackie? I'll bet anything you're not a casting director in real life.
Love this thread. Please continue it.