Frank Beacham's Journal

Ed McMahon Dies, Ending the Carson TV Dynasty

I was surprised how I reacted to the death of Ed McMahon. 

Most younger people remember him as the Publishing Clearinghouse shill, knocking on doors and giving away money. But I remember him as Johnny Carson's sidekick...the man that made "Heeeere's Johnny" part of the American television lexicon. He was the straight man extraordinaire—winging it when Carson did his famous Carnac the Magnificent skit or just about anything else.

I photographed Carson and McMahon at the Apollo 11 launch in Florida in 1969. Close friends, they sat in the VIP stands at the Cape Canaveral launch facility three and a half miles from the rocket. We later learned that if the rocket had blown up—a distinct possibility in those days—that it would have spread shrapnel a range of three miles. That meant we all had a margin of error of a half mile that morning!

In later years, I wrote a story about the Tonight Show and became the subject of one of Carson's skits later that night. It was terrifying, and thrilling, to be a part of that show.

Ed McMahon had it tough in his final years. Illness, a broken neck, and the near foreclosure of his home all came at once. It was a perfect storm of calamities, he said last year. 

Yet, I will always remember him in his finest hours...sitting next to Johnny Carson, joking with the slickest, most talented television host in history.

Ed and Johnny at Cape Canaveral for the Apollo 11 launch.

Free My iPhone!

On Friday, I purchased a new iPhone 3G S. I've been hooked on iPhones since day one and find it incredibly useful in my daily activities. Apple has done it again with a beautiful new machine.

That said, I hate AT&T, the service provider. In essence, the iPhone has been hijacked by its carrier. Not only does AT&T have the iPhone exclusively in the United States, but now it has chosen to delay the use of new technologies like MMS, tethering and high-speed network coverage. We are at AT&T's mercy as to when these features will become available.

Fortunately, there are moves in Congress and at the FCC to free the iPhone and other smartphones. I support a new campaign by Free Press called "FreeMyPhone."  It seeks to free all smartphones from corporate attempts to cripple their best features, block full access to the Internet and stick customers with astronomical bills.

FreeMyPhone seeks to end the "exclusive deals" between phone carriers and phone makers—ending the monopolies and forcing the phone networks to open to free commerce. The time is now to do this. 

The future of the Internet is wireless and mobile. About 87 percent of Americans now have mobile phones. If you care about universal Internet access, net neutrality, innovation and competition, sign the petition by Free Press.  AT&T's hijacking of the iPhone must end.

Noam Chomsky Fills Riverside Church in New York

The Riverside Church in New York City has a rich political legacy. It was from its pulpit that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached his famous anti-Vietnam War sermon; Nelson Mandela addressed the nation during an interfaith celebration welcoming him to America; and Marian Wright-Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund spoke about the need to provide quality healthcare to all children.

On June 12, the 40th anniversary of the publishing of his classic "American Power & the New Mandarins," Noam Chomsky came to the historic sanctuary to speak to a packed house of 2,100 people. Chomsky addressed a wide range of issues including the global economic crisis, U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and South Asia, left electoral and social movement upsurges in places like El-Salvador, Bolivia and Venezuela, and the election of Barack Obama.

Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics. However, since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident, an anarchist and a libertarian socialist intellectual.

Beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War, Chomsky established himself as a prominent critic of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. He is a self-declared adherent of libertarian socialism which he regards as "the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society."

Chomsky told the assembled New Yorkers that large scale intervention by the state into the economy is nothing new. “The public takes the risks and the profits are always privatized by the corporations,” he said.

Millions face starvation at home and throughout the world. Yet, the U.S. always focuses on short term fixes without addressing long term problems. “True crisis results from a Western lack of concern,” he told the audience.

Chomsky is a long time critic of political power. Unless justified, he says, it is inherently illegitimate. The burden of proof is on those in authority to demonstrate why their elevated position is justified. If this burden can't be met, the authority in question should be dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified. 

As the author of over 100 books and one of the nation’s top intellectual thinkers, Chomsky should be known to all Americans. Yet he is rarely quoted by the mainstream American media. We should all keep asking why?  He is an important part of today's political debate.

Noam Chomsky at Riverside Church in New York

Saving the News

Genuine change always comes from outside an entrenched industry. The same will be true for newspapers and television news. For those thinking about this issue, I recommend an excellent new 48-page report released by the Free Press, a nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. It’s called Saving the News: Toward a National Journalism Strategy. The report has some of the best new thinking I’ve heard yet about what’s needed to reinvent the news media in the United States.

 

It identifies five promising models that should be top priorities for saving journalism:

 

• New Ownership Structures. Encourage the government to establish nonprofit and low-profit news organizations through tax-exempt and low-profit limited liability company (L3C) models. This could reorient news once again from a profit-making enterprise to one that provides a public service.

 

• New Incentives. Create tax incentives and revise bankruptcy laws to encourage local, diverse, nonprofit, low-profit and employee ownership.

 

• Journalism Jobs Program. Fund training and retrain for novice and veteran journalists in multimedia and investigative reporting.

 

• R&D Fund for Journalism Innovation. Invest in innovative journalism projects and experiment to identify and nurture new media models.

 

• New Public Media. Transform public media into a world-class noncommercial news operation utilizing new technology and focused on community service.

Saving the News is a must read for those who care about the future of media. Download it here.

Woodstock: The Director's Cut is Breathtaking

What a difference 40 years makes! I had seen Woodstock, the movie, when it was originally released in 1970 and always considered it fair at best. Certainly not in the league with The Band's Last Waltz, made by Martin Scorsese, a young assistant director who also worked on Woodstock. Now, Michael Wadleigh, the director of the original Woodstock film, has done his "director's cut" and it is breathtaking!

Wadleigh added 56 minutes of new footage, which includes previously unseen material by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane. A beautiful new digital remix of the soundtrack is a huge enhancement! There's also more of the kids, including a hilarious yoga lesson and interviews that set the movie and event as the cultural icon it became.

The original film featured performances by Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Country Joe and the Fish, John Sebastian, Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie, Joe Cocker, Sly and the Family Stone, Ten Years After, Santana, and The Who. All remain, but are much better now than you remember them. 

The film is soon to be released and I had the chance to see all four hours of it in New York City at Lincoln Center at the "premiere" of the the director's cut on June 3. Many of the Woodstock filmmakers and musicians attended the screening. Wadleigh must have asked everyone there their opinion. He was obviously elated at his achievement.

Three members of Santana were at the screening. Gregg Rolie, who played keyboards and did lead vocals, and Mike Carabello, the conga player, were joined by Michael Shrieve, the drummer. Shrieve got the biggest applause of the night. At only 18, he stole the movie with an amazing drum solo that put Santana on the map. It is still thrilling after all these years—one of the great rock drum solos recorded on film. But Shrieve, like everyone else associated with the film, is much older now.

See Woodstock again this summer. You can't go back to the real thing, but you can relive what it was like in this restored version of the classic Academy Award-winning documentary.

The cast and crew of Woodstock

Michael Wadleigh, the director of Woodstock

Michael Shrieve, the former Santana drummer.  At 18, his drum solo steals the movie.

Gregg Rolie, keyboardist and vocalist of Santana

Joel Rosenman, producer of the original Woodstock