Stephen Newton's diary of sorts... (Free subscription) | 18/11/2009
Each of these seasonal letters from Alistair Cooke is a gem. Dating from 1951 to 2003, they are now doubly impressive as they don’t just take the reader stateside, but back to another time. Just the right length, Cooke’s words are precise and his voice mellifluous. However, the package lets them down. Justin Webb’s introductions [...]
Quickthink (Free subscription) | 15/11/2009
... of my head, the last person I can remember who made a living by being emotionally attractive was Alistair Cooke . But good old Alistair died years ago. There are nice people around (many, for example, like Charlie Rose). But not of the sort that would merit Churchill’s comment about Roosevelt. “Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing...
Baxojayz - Centricity (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
... Birthdays Edwin Powell Hubble (1889-1953): astronomer, namesake of the Hubble Space Telescope Alistair Cooke (1908-2004): longtime host of Masterpiece Theatre ; journalist Judy Woodruff (63) shares this birth date Nadine Gordimer (86): author known for her anti-apartheid views in her native South Africa; other writers born on this date include Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) and Selma...
The Untrusted (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
In 1820, an 80 ton sperm whale attacked the Nantucket-based whaling ship, Essex , an event that inspired Herman Melville's Moby Dick . The Nuremberg Trials began in 1945. Brenda and Phil got married in 1947. Francisco Franco died in 1975. He's still dead . And a fire in Windsor Castle caused £50 million in damage. Born today: Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940), Alistair Cooke (1908-2004),...
Anthro-Ling (Free subscription) | 18/11/2009
... alive with the freshness and immediacy of current events. It is for this reason that I so enjoy Alistair Cooke’s history of America. To me, the proper way to study the past is to recreate the crossroads at which past generations once stood, to wonder anew about truths received as a part of collective memory. It is generally believed that Coptic is an extinct language, alive...
Liquor Barn's Party Line Blog (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
... Bill of Rights ….right on! 1889 – Astronomer Edwin Hubble born …to see stars! 1908 – Journalist Alistair Cooke born …to host PBS’ Masterpiece Theater for many years. 1925 – Robert Francis Kennedy born… to “dream of things that never were and ask Why Not'” 1927 – Actress Estelle Parsons born …to play mom to “Roseanne” and win an Oscar as Blanche Barrow in “Bonnie and Clyde”. 1936 –...
Bryan Appleyard (Free subscription) | 10/11/2009
The real point of comparison isn't the Falklands but the relative indifference in the UK to the first day of the Somme in 1916, with over 20,000 of our young dead or missing, as Alistair Cooke used to point out, from his own memories as a seven-year-old. But it's not just the media making it impossible to wage war. It's that we have yet to see a mushroom cloud over one of our major cities....
Nigel Fletcher in Opposition (Free subscription) | 17/11/2009
... time in the CRD, and am pleased to feel I will always be a small part of its illustrious history. Alistair Cooke, a legendary former Deputy Director who is now the Party's official historian, has written a short article on the CRD over on the , and has edited a book celebrating the Department's 80 years (buy it ) which I highly recommend, and not only because I appear in one of the...
budgie's squawks (Free subscription) | 05/11/2009
... to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Of course, as fans of Alistair Cooke will recall, he never tired of reminding people of the qualifier "peaceably". However, I am long past tired of people, ignorant, stupid people , who - whenever a message board censors something they've written, or (as happened today) Twitter removing what they considered...
Moonbattery (Free subscription) | 05/11/2009
... perpetually offended helicopter mom . On the DVDs, Cookie Monster can be seen as his character of Alistair Cookie in his "Monsterpiece Theatre" segment (a spoof of Alistair Cooke's "Masterpiece Theatre") smoking a pipe. Yep, Cookie Monster smoked. Horrors! The article also notes that in 2006, Cookie monster cut back on the cookies, because the liberal do-gooders who make the...
raincoaster (Free subscription) | 03/11/2009
... to click through and review before moving on to the new material. Now, from the homeland of Alistair Cooke himself (via SeriouslyOMG ), comes this stunning recording of Ronald Christopher Walken performing a dramatic reading of the poet Lady Gaga ’s masterpiece, Pokerface . God knows, others have tried and failed to interpret this most elusive of musical geniuses: Jude Law : Perez...
Pink Is The New Blog (Free subscription) | 04/11/2009
... for grown-ups” in the same sentence. On the DVDs, Cookie Monster can be seen as his character of Alistair Cookie in his “Monsterpiece Theatre” segment (a spoof of Alistair Cooke’s “Masterpiece Theatre”) smoking a pipe. Yep, Cookie Monster smoked. He later eats the pipe because, as he was often prone to doing, he thinks the pipe is a cookie. Cookie Monster used to become so...
Pronk Palisades (Free subscription) | 22/10/2009
... New York nightclubs. His big break occurred (with the revised name of Jonathan) when he worked for Alistair Cooke on the CBS Sunday morning show Omnibus. [3] In 1957, he performed in the first color television show, a 15-minute routine sponsored by Tums. [4] As a stand-up comic with a madcap wildness, Winters recorded many classic comedy albums for the Verve Records label, starting...
Wrinkled Weasel's World (Free subscription) | 18/10/2009
... of a wise Frenchman, that liberty is the luxury of self discipline" These words are from Alistair Cooke, the journalist and broadcaster, who over a long and distinguished career, sent us his Letter from America, a weekly 15-minute talk broadcast on the BBC. Cooke defines this code of obeyed taboos further as that which your conscience will not allow you to do. It is self-regulation,...
TMQ2 (Free subscription) | 17/10/2009
... has no resources worth fighting for and a populace that makes Khalid Sheikh Mohammed look like Alistair Cooke. By contrast, Iraq had a relatively educated, pro-Western populace, but was ruled by a brutal third-world despot. It’s always something with the Muslims. You either have mostly sane people governed by a crazy dictator — Iraq, Iran and Syria (also California and Michigan) —...
