An Interview David Letterman Would Like To ‘Do-Over’

David Letterman gave his first interview since departing from “The Late Show” to the Indianapolis Monthly newspaper and opened up about the one interview he wishes he could do over again, writes AOL.com.

The former late show host gave an exclusive interview to reporter and former college friend, Ron Pearson, and discussed his retirement.

When asked if any interview ever made him nervous, one interview in particular came to mind, states AOL.com.

“Warren Zevon was on years ago, and we all knew he was dying,” Letterman said. “I was at a loss because I couldn’t think of an entry point for a conversation with a dying man on a television show that’s supposed to be silly. ‘How are you doing? You look great!’ doesn’t exactly work. I was really dissatisfied with my part of that conversation. I was ill-equipped to connect with a friend who was going through something like that,” quotes Entertainment Weekly magazine.

Zevon was a frequent guest on Letterman and filled in nearly twenty times for bandleader Paul Shaffer. He died in September 2003, nearly a year after appearing on “The Late Show.”

In other news, Letterman claims he doesn’t know how to use a cellphone.

“It’s stunning what you find out about yourself when everything you’ve done for 33 years changes,” he said in the same interview.

It appears that the transition has been a bit rough. “As it turns out, after all these years of having someone make my calls for me, I can no longer operate a telephone,” said Letterman. Luckily his two assistants are staying with him for now to handle the technology, states Vanity Fair.

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/06/15/david-letterman-warren-zevon-bill-clinton

http://www.aol.com/article/2015/06/14/the-one-interview-david-letterman-wishes-he-could-do-over/21195656/

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/06/post-late-show-david-letterman-is-struggling-to-use-a-telephone

Cameron Nominated ‘Revolving Door’ Ex-Lobbyist As EU Commissioner

Is Britain preparing for a “Brexit” (British exit from the E.U.) ?

British Prime Minister David Cameron nominated Jonathan Hopkin Hill last year to the post of EU commissioner.  The nomination of Hill, a revolving door ex-lobbyist, was bad news for Jean-Claude Juncker’s commitment to lobby transparency, according to corporateeurope.org.

Juncker is the 12th and current President of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, writes Wikipedia.  He is also the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg.

Much of the media commentary so far about Jonathan Hopkin Hill’s (link is external) nomination as the UK commissioner for the Juncker commission has focused on the possibility of a British exit from the E.U., or “Brexit.”

A British exit from the EU could happen pending a potential in-out referendum in 2017, writes cororateeurope.org.

A surprising number of political pundits have welcomed his lobbyist background as proof of his ability to strike backroom deals. It may be that this is why David Cameron – UK prime minister – has nominated him.

Hill’s background as the “most senior former lobbyist in government” is not in doubt; he has been through the revolving doors of UK politics to the lobby industry and back again on numerous occasions.

In the 1980s, he went from ministerial special adviser to Lowe Bell Communications; in the 1990s, he went from No. 10 Downing Street Policy Unit to Bell Pottinger Communications (link is external).  Most recently, he moved from Quiller Consultants (which he co-founded in 1998) to ministerial office and, until recently, leader of the House of Lords, the UK’s un-elected upper chamber.

(Updated article)

http://corporateeurope.org/revolving-doors/2014/07/uk-prime-minister-david-cameron-nominates-revolving-door-ex-lobbyist-eu

Did Tories Threaten BBC Over Coverage?

According to The Telegraph, in Britain, senior Conservatives made “repeated threats” of reform to the BBC to try and alter its election coverage, a senior Labour Party adviser claimed.

The BBC is a government-funded media outlet, at least partly paid for by a monthly license fee for all TV owners.

A former Times journalist, Tom Baldwin, said BBC executives were threatened with consequences if it did not “fall into line” with more sympathetic coverage for the Tories.

The news of the threats comes after the appointment of John Whittingdale to Culture Secretary after the Conservatives (Tories) won a majority in the House of Commons.  The Culture Secretary is in charge of the BBC.  Whittingdale has previously called the BBC licence fee “worse than the poll tax.”

The move has triggered speculation that the BBC Trust could now be abolished and the license fee drastically reformed or even scrapped.

Mr Baldwin, one of Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband’s most senior advisers, hit out at the pressure the BBC was put under by Labour’s opponents in his first public comments since the election defeat.  He claimed that BBC journalists and executives told him that they were threatened by Conservative Leaders about “what would happen” if they didn’t fall into line over the election coverage.

(Updated article)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11601847/Senior-Tories-repeatedly-threatened-BBC-during-election-says-Ed-Milibands-top-spin-doctor.html

What is ‘Turing’s Law’ in Britain?

Benedict Cumberbatch played the part of Alan Turing in the film The Imitation Game recently.  Turing cracked the German “Enigma” code and is considered a hero of World War II.

According to The Independent, last February, the real-life family of Alan Turing visited Downing Street to demand that the British government pardon 49,000 men who – like Turing – were prosecuted for being homosexual.

In England, homosexuality was illegal until it was decriminalized in 1967, states the BBC.

The Independent states that Turing’s great-nephew, Nevil Hunt, great-niece, Rachel Barnes, and her son, Thomas, handed over the petition – which had almost half-a-million signatures – and demanded a new law on the matter be approved.

Ms. Barnes, 52, from Taunton, said: “I consider it to be fair and just that everybody who was convicted under the Gross Indecency Law is given a pardon. It is illogical that my great uncle has been the only one to be pardoned when so many were convicted of the same crime.”

Turing, the cryptanalyst and mathematician, was convicted in 1952 for “gross indecency” with a 19-year-old man.

As part of his sentence, he was chemically castrated and he died in 1954 after apparently committing suicide.

He was exonerated in 2013, but his family and petitioners want the government to pardon all the men convicted under the outdated law.

“Generations of gay and bisexual men were forced to live their lives in a state of terror,” said the editor of Attitude Magizine, Matthew Todd.

How does the British government feel about it?

A law on the topic has not yet been enacted, but that would probably change after the British Parliamentary Elections coming up on May 7th.

In March, the Leader of the Labor Party, Ed Miliband, said that a future Labour government would pave the way for posthumous pardons for gay men convicted under historical ‘gross indecency’ laws, according to the BBC.  It would allow the families of those men convicted to apply to have their records expunged.

Legislation would be known as “Turing’s Law” in memory of Alan Turing, said Miliband.

Miliband’s decision may have also had an effect on The Conservative (Tory) Party.  Recently, during April, The Conservatives pledged to introduce a new law helping to “lift the blight of outdated convictions” from other people found guilty of similar offenses, states The Telegraph.

“Thousands of British men still suffer from similar historic charges, even though they would be completely innocent of any crime today,” the Tory manifesto read.

The manifesto reads: “Many others are dead and cannot correct this injustice themselves through the legal process we have introduced while in government. So we will introduce a new law that will pardon those people, and right these wrong.”

(Updated article)

More here:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-31707197

What Publications Have Reported On Bill O’Reilly’s Questionable Facts?

David Corn and Daniel Schulman recently published a scathing article in Mother Jones attacking Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly for allegedly misspeaking about reporting from a “war zone” in the Falklands in 1982.

Corn and Media Matters exposed a series of questionable claims made about his reporting during the Falklands War and the El Salvadoran Civil War.

In the former case, O’Reilly repeatedly suggested to viewers he was in a combat zone in the Falkland Islands when no CBS News reporters (O’Reilly’s employer at the time) ever reached the islands.  He, instead, covered protests in the capitol of Argentina, Buenos Aires.   In the latter case, O’Reilly said on multiple occasions that he witnessed the execution of four American nuns in El Salvador – an event that took place before he was even in the country.

“It’s pretty lightweight to say you were in a war zone because you covered a protest,” said Corn to HuffPost Live.

The story about O’Reilly’s inconsistencies began with the publication Mother Jones and then spread to Media Matters. What other publications have reported on it?

USA Today’s editorial board is calling on Fox News to “distance itself” from the network’s “truth-challenged” Bill O’Reilly in the wake of revelations that the Fox host has repeatedly lied about some of his experiences as a reporter.

CNN’s Brian Stelter picked up the story. O’Reilly reportedly called Stelter “another far-left zealot … masquerading as a journalist. CNN can do a lot better than this guy.”

David Corn told The Huffington Post Live recently that O’Reilly “still has yet to refute a single fact” in his and Daniel Schulman’s original Mother Jones’ report on O’Reilly’s Falklands claims.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow did a segment about O’Reilly’s threatening behavior towards David Corn.

The British paper The Guardian published a piece relating to inconsistencies with O’Reilly’s reporting on the LA riots in 1992.

Politico reported that Bill O’Reilly threatened a New York Times reporter interviewing him about recent allegations he made up stories concerning his reporting on the Falklands War in 1982.

During a phone conversation, O’Reilly allegedly told Times reporter Emily Steel there would be repercussions if he felt her coverage was inappropriate. “I am coming after you with everything I have,” O’Reilly said. “You can take it as a threat.”

O’Reilly has also threatened David Corn, suggesting that he needs to be placed in the “kill zone.”

Updated post.

David Cross and Sam Seder Discuss Horses In New York

Comedian David Cross and Majority Report and discuss the coming NYC horse carriage ban, which leads them talking about horses and protests.  Sam Seder and David Cross reminisce about an anti-war protest.

Sam Seder

Who Was David Carr?

New York Times media critic David Carr recently died. MSNBC takes a look at a big week for big media.

Carr died after he “collapsed in the newsroom” on Thursday, according to the Times. He was then taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Carr wrote the best-selling book Night Of The Gun.

The news comes one day after the death of revered 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon in a livery car crash in Manhattan Wednesday night, and caps a week that has affected the journalism industry.

On Tuesday, NBC announced it would suspend anchor Brian Williams for six months without pay after revelations that he claimed to have been on board a Chinook helicopter that went down during the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Earlier this week, the host of The Daily Show John Stewert announced he would be leaving the program.

Mark Halperin, author and managing editor of Bloomberg Politics, tweeted, “In Latin, we’d call David Carr ‘sui generis.’ In English, we’d call him an American original. In my gut, I’d call him irreplaceable.”

MSNBC

Horowitz: Obama Lets ‘Aggressors Of Color’ Be ‘Victims’

Right Wing Watch

In this video, David Horowitz tells Newsmax TV that Ferguson was a “lynch mob” that spread all across the country, and the president wants to “let aggressors of color get to be victims.” He also calls the president a “racist” and Al Sharpton the “chief racist.”

David Horowitz is an American conservative writer who is a founder and current president of the think tank the David Horowitz Freedom Center, editor of FrontPage Magazine, and director of Discover the Networks, a website that tracks individuals and groups on the political left, according to Wikipedia.

Horowitz was raised by parents who were members of the Communist Party USA, and between 1956 and 1975, Horowitz was an outspoken adherent of the New Left before rejecting leftism completely. Horowitz has written about his ideological journey in a series of different retrospectives, which culminated in his 1996 memoir Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey.

Pastor David Manning: Obama Cut Deal With Terrorists

Right Wing Watch

Right-wing Pastor James David Manning and Alex Jones speculate that the recent terrorist attacks were in France because of a secret Obama-Al Qaeda deal.

House GOP Leader Once Addressed White Supremacists

A House GOP leader has acknowledged that he once addressed a gathering of white supremacists, though his office denies any association with the group’s social views.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, the chamber’s third-ranking Republican, served in the Louisiana Legislature when he appeared in 2002 at a convention of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO).

The group was founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified the group as a hate group.

In a written statement, Scalise aide Moira Bagley Smith confirmed that Scalise addressed the group as it gathered at a hotel near the neighborhoods that both Scalise and Duke represented during separate terms as state lawmakers.

MSNBC video.

More:

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/euro

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/30/crybaby-racists-support-steve-scalise.html