Enotes

"No news is good news." I always wondered about this oft-used phrase. Is it saying that there is no such thing as good news, or that when you find yourself without any news at all, that's a good thing? However you choose to decipher "No news is good news," I have one for you that is without ambiguity. "The news isn't convenient." There shouldn't be any confusion over that, but yet there is. In the whirlwind of social media sharing and updates in the wake of the horrific murders of two young television journalists---one a reporter, the other a photographer---in Roanoke, VA on Wednesday during a live interview, we had ourselves a genuine "made for TV" violent crime, and there was much pontificating about what to do with it. The alleged shooter of reporter Alison Parker and photographer Adam Ward, Vester Flanagan, aka Bryce Williams (on-air name), a reportedly disgruntled and frustrated TV reporter himself, crafted a highly...

The only thing that is certain in the road rage trial of Martin Zale is that it was tragic. A wife widowed. Children growing up father-less. After that, it gets tricky. Zale is the motorist who is accused of murder in the fatal shooting of Derek Flemming last September 2 in Genoa Township, at Grand River Avenue and Chilson Road. Zale was allegedly driving recklessly and Flemming, on a beautiful afternoon after having lunch with his wife, didn't appreciate it. The vehicles stopped at a red light---Zale's in front of Flemming's---and Flemming got out of his vehicle to confront Zale. Witnesses say that Flemming looked very angry and had both fists clenched as he approached Zale's truck. Moments later, Flemming was dead---shot once in the face. He died instantly. Zale didn't flee; rather, he pulled off to the side of the road and called his lawyer. Those are the basic facts. Zale's trial is happening now, and I think it's going to be fascinating ...

In 1984, Bill Cosby helped save an entire television network. Thirty years later, he's toxic to an entire industry. It was in '84 when NBC, lagging far behind brethren CBS and ABC in ratings to the point of being a national joke, brought in Cosby and built a sitcom around him. Cosby was 46 years old and though he'd been canceled in the past with other television vehicles, his star power on TV was still heavy. Viewers still had "Fat Albert" and Jell-O commercials fresh on their minds. The sitcom idea was novel. NBC decided to cast Cosby and his TV family as well-to-do African-Americans living in a tony brownstone in upper Manhattan. This was no "Good Times" scenario. The presentation on TV of blacks living a life that wasn't in poverty wasn't new (witness "The Jeffersons"), but Cosby was a doctor and his wife was a lawyer. With all due respect to dry cleaner moguls, this was different. Plus, Cliff and Clair Huxtable had kids---...

In a perfect world, Derek Flemming would have been able to march up to the driver of a car that cut him off, express some anger, and get back into his own vehicle---without fear of losing his life. The 43 year-old husband and father of two young children would have vented his anger and frustration and still lived to re-tell the story to friends, co-workers and family at every opportunity. We do that a lot, you know---turn storyteller when we are wronged, whether it's from poor service at a restaurant to being incredulous at a retailer's return policy, among other things. But then we get it out of our system and we move on, until someone else relates a story that fires your mental file cabinet into gear and your story gets retold yet again. But Flemming paid the ultimate price in an act that unfortunately will have people---like yours truly---getting into "blame the victim" mode. Flemming was gunned down at a traffic light near Howell after he allegedly comp...

Sometimes the 24-hour news cycle gets extended. Sometimes it's a 48-hour or 72-hour news cycle. And, on occasion, a story manages to stay in the public's consciousness for a week or more. News stories anymore are like pieces of pasta thrown against the wall. Only some stick. The Stephen Utash beating has beat the 24-hour news cycle, by far. Now the question is, Will it matter? The Utash story is right out of a novel or a made-for-TV movie. White suburbanite hits a young black boy with his pickup truck, in the city. The suburbanite stops to check on the condition of the boy and is then beaten senseless, perhaps to death (that's a part of the story that has yet to be resolved), by a mob of black men. It's a story that almost had to happen, to provide the most recent litmus test of where we are as a society, particularly when it comes to violence and race relations. The elements are all there, and if they weren't, the story wouldn't work as well. It w...

It's all a big joke to Justin Bieber. Dangerous drag racing, drugs, alcohol, resisting arrest? Pfft! The mug shot says it all. Bieber, another young entertainer sliding down the slippery slope of hubris and spoilage, was arrested early Thursday in Miami . With the aiding and abetting of his own father and mother--- TMZ reported that Jeremy Bieber, 38, helped block off traffic for the drag race and may have supplied the alcohol, and that prescription drugs Justin Bieber allegedly used came from his mother---the odds are even longer that the youngest Bieber will get his act together anytime soon. In the mug shot after Thursday's booking, Justin Bieber looks like he doesn't have a care in the world---giddy, almost. It's hard to blame him for thinking that way. He's 19, making loads of dough, has the usual protective inner circle that stars often have, and has parents who are his pals rather than his mom and dad. He's indestructible, right? The ch...

In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, here's a piece from the archives, penned two years ago, about how we can all thank Jack Ruby for all the conspiracy theories. Yes, He Did November 22, 2011 He'd be up for parole every few years, always denied. Then he'd return to his private cell and bob back below the surface again. Perhaps Geraldo Rivera or Barbara Walters would have interviewed him. His look would be older and gaunter as time went by. Maybe he'd be propped up by some oddballs as a sort of anti-hero, like they do with Charlie Manson et al. Regardless, he'd have been held up as the assassin of President John F. Kennedy. He would have been the first celebrity "lone nut," as his crime happened just as TV was really beginning to take off as a medium. Maybe you'd see his likeness on t-shirts sold in mall shops such as Hot Topic. Lee Harvey Oswald, 48 years ago today, squeezed the trigger of his Italian-...

Everyday, it seems, we are reminded that just because one holds a position of respect and dignity, doesn't mean said person is respectful and dignified. Take Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. Please. In a New York Times   Magazine interview , the conversation turned to the city of Detroit. That's when Menino checked respect and dignity at the door before opening his mouth. "I'd blow the place up and start all over," Menino said. Now, Detroit has its problems, that's for sure---bankruptcy not withstanding. The city is hemorrhaging population, tax base and credibility. Its schools don't perform. There's a lot of waiting that goes on---to get a streetlight fixed, to get an ambulance, sometimes to even get a police officer to stop by while a crime is being committed. But Menino not only used a poor choice of words, he did so with terrible irony. Boston, as you know, was indeed bombed, at the Boston Marathon in April. Someone really did try to blow ...

Perhaps the biggest irony in Rolling Stone magazine's botched cover of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is their use of the word "thoughtful" in their official statement, in response to the overwhelming negative reaction from everyone from loyal subscribers to vendors. "The cover story we are publishing this week falls within the traditions of journalism and Rolling Stone's long-standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day," the statement read in part . Thoughtful? I would submit that whatever was going on inside the magazine's offices while coming up with the rock star-like photo of Tsarnaev, thinking wasn't really among the activities. I have no problem with the story itself. I think good journalism does indeed seek to find out how someone like the young Tsarnaev went awry, leading to the atrocities he committed in April. But the cover photo was anything but th...

I have never, as far as I know, come into possession of a counterfeit bill. I likely wouldn't know it even if I had. I'm not an expert on American currency, beyond that George Washington is on the dollar bill, U.S. Grant is on the fifty, and Ben Franklin adorns the hundred, among a few others. But apparently at every retail outlet, I am a potential passer of bad bills---"funny money." I'm sure it's happened to you. The cashier takes your twenty or fifty or one hundred dollar bill, holds it up to the light, and/or strikes it with a magic counterfeit detector pen. Every time, my money has passed the test. But I always get the same thought when the cashier does his/her thing: What in the world would I do if I was told the bill I was trying to use was fake? Would bells and sirens go off in the store? Would the house lights go out and a spotlight rain down on me? Would a cop jump from behind the counter? Would the cashier take an ax and strike a piece o...

What is it about being in a position of leadership in Detroit that causes one to lose one's head? Charles Pugh is the latest to exhibit strange, disturbing, and perhaps, illegal behavior. Pugh, the now former City Council President, is in a firestorm of controversy, from the way he vanished from the face of the Earth recently to his alleged "inappropriate" relationship with a teenage boy. Text messages were uncovered that show Pugh's frantic and panicked efforts to get the boy's mother to drop plans to take the relationship public. The mother alleges that in addition to Pugh giving her son, who attended the Frederick Douglass Academy, gifts, there was an additional "incident" that supposedly occurred in Madison Heights recently. In texts uncovered by the Detroit News , Pugh is clearly distraught over potential media coverage that would ensue if the boy's mother went public. “I feel like I’ve run out of options to even have a normal life. ...

The former child star is a breed of his or her own. You never know what you're going to get once the lights dim and the shows are canceled and the cherubic face is no longer in the public consciousness. There's almost like a cocoon that the star lives in, in the interim period between the time the last inch of videotape or film is recorded, and when he or she re-emerges. It's during that incubation when things either go fine or terribly wrong, it seems. Then the former child star emerges, splashing back onto the scene like a frog landing on your windshield. Too often, the incubation wasn't kind. The round, full face isn't so round or full anymore. The bright eyes aren't so bright. He or she isn't 17 years old anymore. The star is back on the scene, but with a cocktail in one hand, a cigarette dangling from the mouth, and telling the world to go screw itself. The face is gaunt, the eyes baleful and blood shot. The frame is considerably more bo...

Robert Downey Jr.'s birth certificate reads that he was given life on April 4, 1965. That should come with an asterisk. They say a cat has nine lives. But no feline has anything on RDJ, as he is known in this Internet world of abbreviations and acronyms. Downey may be working on damn near that ninth life by now, but the good news is that he doesn't seem to be in need of any more leases. Downey is on top of the world now, riding the crest of a wave portraying multi-billionaire Tony Stark, aka Iron Man. The third Iron Man movie was released this spring, to rave reviews. In between all the Iron Man movies was 2012's  The Avengers, which was a meeting of the minds, brawn and good looks of Marvel Superheros Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Captain America, the Black Widow and Hawkeye. Downey wowed them in The Avengers , too. But what's fascinating about Downey isn't how he combines dashing good looks, borderline cockiness and a little boy's vulnerability in his To...

Limbs lying on the sidewalk, unattached. Shrapnel filled bodies, including those of children. Smoke. Buildings with windows and concrete blown out. Screams from the injured and the maimed, fighting to be heard over the sirens. Scenes from a battlefield, perhaps. Or from a war-torn, third world country. Not in the United States. Not in downtown Boston. Not at the Boston Marathon. The scenes of war have once again been played out in the streets of America. Once again our soil is sopped with blood of the innocent. The limbs were torn from the unfortunates who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But is there ever a right place, a right time? How can there be, when you can be sitting in a movie theater and realize too late that you're not a sitting patron but a sitting duck for a crazy with a machine gun? How can there be, when little school children are mowed down in their classroom? How can there be, when a stroll across a college campus suddenly turns into a run ...

They say there are three versions of a violent event: the accused's, the victim's, and the truth. When the violence results in the victim's death, we are left with only two of those three---usually. In the matter of the trial of grandmother Sandra Layne, a 911 call gave a glimpse into the victim's version. And it was enough to convict Layne of second degree murder. The 75-year-old Layne, from West Bloomfield, was convicted the other day in the killing of her 17-year-old grandson, Jonathan Hoffman. She shot the troubled Hoffman six times last May 18, in her home. She claimed self defense---that she was fearful for her own life. The teen had been living with Layne and her 87-year-old husband while the kid's parents (divorced) were in Arizona to help tend to a daughter with a brain tumor. The jury didn't buy Layne's plea of self defense. They didn't embrace Layne, really, when she took the stand in her own defense, which is always a risky move. ...

Unless you're a member of Jimmy Hoffa's immediate family, do you really care what happened to his body? I mean, anymore? The former Teamsters boss, who vanished on July 30, 1975 outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant at Telegraph and Maple, has been rumored to be buried, ground up, etc. in a variety of locales, from Michigan to New Jersey. In the 37+ years since Hoffa's disappearance, there has been no shortage of theories as to his final resting place, nor a shortage of "insiders" who purport to know the real deal. The latest tipster is 85-year-old Tony Zerilli, son of reputed Detroit mob boss Joseph Zerilli. The younger Zerilli says that Hoffa was buried under a field in northern Oakland County, and that investigators could find Hoffa there right now, should they choose to look. Zerilli unveiled his story to WNBC-TV. Zerilli has some credibility, apparently. He  was in a position to know secrets---including the fate of Hoffa, who was the former president ...

His name really was Mudd. Today is the 179th birthday of the most vilified doctor this side of Mike Myers' Dr. Evil. Samuel Mudd was born on December 20, 1833. Before his 32nd birthday, he was a convicted felon. With the rebirth of Abraham Lincoln in our social consciousness (they even made a movie where Abe isn't a vampire hunter ), now is a good time to remember Dr. Mudd, who was convicted along with several others for conspiring to kill the president in 1865. Justice moved a lot quicker in those days, for good and for bad. The president was assassinated on April 14, 1865 (he died in the wee hours of the 15th). Less than a month later, Mudd and his co-defendants were on trial. By the end of June, Mudd was convicted along with the others. It was Mudd's prior acquaintance with assassin John Wilkes Booth that planted the seeds of conspiracy. Mudd first met Booth, history says, in November 1864 in a church in Bryantown, MD. Booth used a guise of a real estate hun...