#and it happens at Brinkley Court

[huanglaoshu]

"The Junior Ganymede club book is still in existence. That is what tempers my ecstasy with anxiety. We have seen how packed with trinitrotoluol it is, and we know how easily it can fall into the hands of the powers of darkness. Who can say that another Bingley may not come along and snitch it from the secretary's room? I know it is too much to ask you to burn the beastly thing, but couldn't you at least destroy the eighteen pages in which I figure?" "I have already done so, sir." "What?" "Yes, sir." You wouldn't be far wrong in saying that I was visibly moved -- so visibly, indeed, that Gus the cat, who had gone to sleep on my solar plexus, shot some inches in the air and showed considerable annoyance. "Jeeves," I started to vociferate, but he cut in first. "In taking this step, sir, I do not feel that I have inflicted any disservice on the Junior Ganymede club. The club book was never intended to be light and titillating reading for the members. Its function is solely to acquaint those who are contemplating taking new posts with the foibles of prospective employers. This being so, there is no need for the record contained in the eighteen pages in which you figure. For I may hope, may I not, sir, that you will allow me to remain permanently in your service?" "You may indeed, Jeeves. It often beats me, though, why with your superlative gifts you should want to." "There is a tie that binds, sir." "A what that whats?" "A tie that binds, sir." "Then heaven bless it, and may it continue to bind indefinitely. Fate's happenstance may oft win more than toil, as the fellow said." "What fellow would that be, sir? Thoreau?" "No, me." "Sir?" "A little thing of my own. I don't know what it means, but you can take it as coming straight from the heart." "Very good, sir."

-- Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, chapter 17

[pop-squeak]

Okay, sorry to just plop this into your ask box, but the reverse Jooster au has wormed its way into my brain.

Bertie still keeps getting into scraps and Jeeves needs to get him out of them, but now it’s

Bertie’s not very good at being a valet (he burns trousers when he tries to iron them, can’t really make tea, etc), but after dinner, he plays the piano for Jeeves

Jeeves spends most of his time getting his rich friends out of scraps but still make Bertie do all his dirty work.

Bertie dresses horribly and Jeeves keeps trying to give him better outfits

Jeeves has to help Bertie pack their bags when they travel.

The Brinkley court debacle happens because Bertie feels bad that his employer has to help him all the time, and Bertie tries to convince him he can do things on their own

that's all I can think of right now but I will probably be back for more lol

YES TO ALL OF THIS

also I like to think that Bertie is like a bad influence on Jeeves' wardrobe. like after doing some dirty work for Jeeves, he low-key kinda blackmails him into wearing a god-awful necktie in return for his under-the-table services(bertie would never actually tell anyone what he does for his master, but he still wants to see Jeeves in a teal necktie, and by golly he's not afraid to punch a little low to get that)

and for no fucking reason, I believe that while he is absolute ass at every other aspect of being a valet, bertie is like a really good cook, and makes some fucking stunning meals. Jeeves likes to hang out with him while he's cooking and will gladly perform taste tests for his boyfriend valet. I have no place in the text to support this claim it just feels right to me

please come back and tell me anything else you think of! I love freaking out with other people abt these guys

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

Once again tumblr is silencing my voice by not letting me add more than 30 tags. Okay the rest of what I was going to say is that if you gave him an assignment that was simple and out of the way enough, even upstairs, he might be able to stick it out for a couple hours. Another factor that determines how long that might be is where this is happening. Is he at Brinkley Court? Then Aunt Dahlia and the other servants (whom he seems to be on good terms with) will cover for him. No matter what he screws up, “oh, that’s Barry! He’s just new here!” Jeeves might be able to work something similar at a different manor house (presuming Bertie’s face isn’t already known there) if he’s on good terms with any of the servants there. They might agree to take Bertie under their wing as a favor to Jeeves. It also depends on whether Jeeves himself is there to help him, whether they’re working in the same area of the house, and if they’re able to inconspicuously pull each other aside to confer.

In conclusion: can’t answer question, too many variables

[brn1029]

Here’s the mainnstuff that happened on this date in music. And Dolly Parton is CRYING all the way to the bank...

1954 - Danny Cedrone

Guitarist Danny Cedrone died following a freak accident; 10 days after he had recorded the lead guitar break on 'Rock Around the Clock' with Bill Haley and His Comets. Session player Cedrone was paid $21 for his work on the session, as at that time Haley chose not to hire a full-time guitarist for his group. He died of a broken neck after falling down a staircase.

1971 - Carole King

Carole King went to No.1 on the US album chart with ‘Tapestry’ for the first of 15 consecutive weeks. The album contained ‘It's Too Late’, ‘I Feel the Earth Move’, ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’’ and ‘You've Got a Friend’. The cover photograph taken at King's Laurel Canyon home shows her sitting in a window frame, holding a tapestry she hand-stitched herself, with her cat Telemachus at her feet.

1972 - Don McLean

Don McLean had his first UK No.1 single with 'Vincent.' The song was written about the 19th century artist Vincent Van Gogh. The song is played daily at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

1972 - The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones album Exile on Main Street started a four-week run at the top of the US charts. The double album, regularly regarded as one of the band's best, features 'Rocks Off', 'Rip This Joint', 'Happy' and 'Tumbling Dice'.

1973 - Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton recorded 'I Will Always Love You' in RCA's Studio "B" in Nashville. Written for her one-time partner and mentor, Porter Wagoner, (the two were splitting professionally at the time). The song was later a world-wide hit for Whitney Houston.

1976 - Blondie

Blondie released their debut single 'X Offender'. Written by Gary Valentine and Debbie Harry, the title of the song was originally 'Sex Offender', written about an 18-year-old boy being arrested for having sex with his younger girlfriend. Debbie Harry changed the lyrics so that the song was about a prostitute being attracted to the police officer that had arrested her. Private Stock, the band’s label insisted that the single be changed to 'X Offender' because they were nervous about the original title.

1977 - Elton John

After Jimmy Helms pulled out of a gig at Shoreditch College, the members of the social committee decided to call upon famous local, Elton John who lived up the road and ask if he would perform. Elton did the gig for two bottles of wine.

1978 - Andy Gibb

Andy Gibb became the first solo artist in the history of the US charts to have his first three releases reach No.1, when 'Shadow Dancing' hit the top of the chart. Spending seven weeks at No.1 it became the best selling single in the US in 1978.

1978 - Olivia Newton-John

'You're The One That I Want' by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John started a nine week run at No.1 on the UK singles chart. The song was from the film Grease.

1979 - Anita Ward

Anita Ward was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Ring My Bell'. The only hit for the gospel singer from Memphis, making her a One Hit Wonder.

1987 - Motley Crue

Florida real estate agent Vittoria Holman sued Motley Crue and their concert promoter for hearing loss allegedly incurred at a concert in December 1985. Holman and her daughter had front row seats less than 10 feet (3 meters) from the speakers. The case was settled out of court with the band's insurance company paying Holman over $30,000. (£18,200).

1997 - Ozzy Osbourne

Fans rioted at an Ozzfest concert in Columbus Ohio, after Ozzy Osbourne couldn't perform due to throat problems. Angry fans broke windows, uprooted trees, and turned over a parked car.

2009 - Billy Joel

60-year-old Billy Joel and his third wife, 27-year-old Katie Lee Joel announced that were splitting up after nearly five years of marriage. Joel's nine-year union with model Christie Brinkley ended in 1994. His nine-year marriage to Elizabeth Weber, for whom he wrote 'Just The Way You Are', ended in 1982. It's believed that Billy had a prenuptial agreement to protect the millions his many hits have earned.

2012 - Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen played his longest show when he turned in a three-hour-and-48-minute, 32-song, set at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid. (This surpassed the previously longest show, Dec. 31, 1980 at the Nassau Coliseum, Long Island, New York, which clocked in at 3:43).

[butch-snufkin]

jeeves and wooster: series 1 episodes ranked by gayness

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

1x1 (Jeeves Takes Charge): full of that great early chemistry as the characters figure each other out. this kind of dies down in the next couple episodes before coming back as an even gayer facet of their relationship. more quirky and funny than anything else, but I enjoy the dynamic of bertie and jeeves when they first meet. 5.3/10 on the gay scale (+1 point for butch legend honoria glossop and her tennis gf daphne)

1x2 (Bertie is in Love): the characters have been well introduced at this point and are settling into their roles in the series. although bertie is fascinated by jeeves' schemes, he is still very standoffish towards him for most of the episode. bertie spends the whole first twenty minutes trying to propose to a woman while jeeves tries to get him not to. bertie eventually gives up on her when she pranks him so good he can't bear it anymore. 4/10 on the gay scale (-1 point because I had to listen to sonny boy so many times) 

1x3 (Village Sports Day at Twing): everytime I watch this episode I am so unamused. nothing interesting happens. bertie, jeeves, and their friends set up a couple bets on a bookie who cheats them out of their money. I can never pay attention to anything that goes on in this episode it's so boring. jeeves nearly hits a teenage boy in the head for making fun of him so. there's that lmao. ???/10 on the gay scale (bertie and jeeves briefly chill together on the grass and I always thought that was nice)

1x4 (The Hunger Strike): a full 55 minutes of bertie insisting he knows more about relationships than jeeves and giving all his straight friends bad advice. bertie and jeeves bond over the oddity of gussie and madeline's newts-and-bunnies romance while spending all their time together because no one likes bertie and his bad advice. 6.2/10 on the gay scale (very married, ft. bertie being confused by heterosexuals)

1x5 (Will Anatole Return to Brinkley Court?): basically a continuation of the same story from last episode. bertie and jeeves reunite the couples who were broken up due to bertie's relationship advice. they reunite, like, three out of four, so not a bad track record. jeeves makes bertie bike 16 miles in the rain and bertie is bitter but forgives him anyway. monsieur anatole is in it and as we all know. anatole is gay. 6.8/10 on the gay scale (bertie and jeeves star in a co-dumbassery moment while spiking gussie's orange juice)

[tabloidtoc]

People, July 20

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Nick Cordero -- a life cut short by COVID-19 

Page 1: Chatter -- Tom Hanks joking about writing and producing and starring in the new film Greyhound, Shawn Johnson on battling an eating disorder after the 2008 Beijing Games, Kevin Hart on how his wife Eniko feels at 6 months pregnant, Kristen Bell on reactions to news that her 5-year-old daughter wears diapers, Gavin Rossdale on his divorce from Gwen Stefani being his most embarrassing moment, Ricky Martin on his quarantine experience 

Page 2: 5 Things We’re Talking About This Week -- Kanye West says he’s running for president, Beavis and Butt-Head make a comeback, Michelle Pfeiffer reveals a relatable makeup mishap, Floor is Lava heats up on Netflix, Baby Yoda takes over breakfast 

Page 5: Contents 

Page 6: StarTracks -- Stars in the Sun -- Brooke Shields rocking a star-spangled bikini during a dip in her pool in the Hamptons 

Page 7: Pregnant Katy Perry and fiance Orlando Bloom took a beach stroll with their dog in Santa Barbara, Luke Evans cooled off during a boat ride in Ibiza, John Legend twinning in matching swimsuits with son Miles, Sailor Brinkley-Cook celebrated her 22nd birthday with mom Christie Brinkley and sister Alexa Ray Joel, Gabrielle Union 

Page 8: Jason Derulo performed without an audience due to the pandemic for the Wawa Welcome America virtual festival, Emily Ratajkowski wore a mask while out for a walk with her beloved dog Colombo, Serena Williams and daughter Olympia hit the tennis court in matching gear, Carson Kressley cohosted the livestreamed celebration of the 50th annual N.Y.C. Pride March

Page 9: Royals Back in Action -- Prince William and Princess Kate Middleton celebrated the 72nd anniversary of the National Health Service, Prince Charles visited Cotswold Farm Park, Camilla Duchess of Cornwall stepped out at the Swindon Fire Station to thank firefighters and hospital staff and paramedics 

Page 10: Five months after losing husband Kobe Bryant and daughter Gianna Vanessa Bryant celebrated Independence Day with her daughters Natalia and Bianka and Capri, Chris Pine flashed a peace sign during a grocery store run, Jessica Simpson celebrated son Ace’s seventh birthday 

Page 11: British racing driver Lewis Hamilton took a knee against racism before the Formula One Grand Prix of Austria, Luke Wilson playing golf in Bel Air, Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas shared a laugh during a morning stroll, Maren Morris and son Hayes went motor-floating 

Page 15: Scoop -- Meghan Markle felt unprotected by the palace 

Page 16: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are free to speak their minds, Jada Pinkett Smith speaks out after affair allegations with August Alsina 

Page 18: Heart Monitor -- Chris Evans and Lily James dating?, Kacey Musgraves and Ruston Kelly separated, Camila Mendes and Grayson Vaughn heating up, Julia Roberts and Danny Moder happy anniversary 

Page 21: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt amicably co-parenting, D.L. Hughley tackles COVID-19 and racism 

Page 23: Sean Astin -- my mother’s Patty Duke’s legacy on mental health 

Page 24: Mandy Moore on family and love and making music 

Page 27: Passages, Ghislaine Maxwell charged 

Page 29: Stories to Make You Smile -- thanks to a colorful custom soundboard a dog speaks and she has a lot to say, this boy wants to help save the Earth one park at a time 

Page 31: People Picks -- Greyhound 

Page 32: The Old Guard, Brett Eldredge -- Sunday Drive 

Page 33: P-Valley, Crikey! It’s the Irwins: Life in Lockdown, One to Watch -- Little Voice’s Brittany O’Grady 

Page 34: Brave New World

Page 35: Palm Springs, Margo Price -- That’s How Rumors Get Started, Q&A -- Leslie Odom Jr. of Hamilton

Page 37: Books, Star Picks: What We’re Reading -- Tracee Ellis Ross is reading Me Talk Pretty One Day, Chris Hemsworth is reading The Boy, the mole, the Fox and the Horse, Elle Fanning is reading The Nightingale 

Page 38: Cover Story -- Broadway Star Nick Cordero 1978-2020 -- a brave battle and a family’s heartbreak -- after three months in the hospital fighting COVID-19 the actor and new dad lost his life to the virus; how his story and his wife’s unending love and devotion inspired people around the world 

Page 45: Raven-Symone: Introducing the Real Me -- after decades in the spotlight the former child star is independent in love and finally in control 

Page 48: A Fort Hood Soldier Murdered -- what happened to Vanessa Guillen? -- months after she mysteriously disappeared the 20-year-old was found dead; inside the shocking case 

Page 50: Carl Reiner 1922-2020 -- Farewell to a Comedy Legend -- creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, father of Rob Reiner, BFF of Mel Brooks, mentor to Steve Martin, he entered and exited laughing 

Page 52: A Demand for Answers -- a young man’s tragic death -- Elijah McClain died last summer after police tackled and restrained him as he walked home from the store. His family is still asking why 

Page 54: NASCAR’s Bubba Wallace -- Driving for Change -- the sport’s only top-ranked African-American driver takes on the fight for racial equality 

Page 58: Poo-Pourri founder Suzy Batiz -- the sweet smell of success -- the mom of three overcame abuse, bankruptcy and depression then built am empire by taking the P.U. out of poo 

Page 63: Lindsay Ell surviving sexual assault -- after years of hiding her pain the country singer opens up and finds healing by helping fellow survivors 

Page 66: A Friendship Born in the COVID-19 ICU -- her kind words helped save his life -- an unexpected bond between a patient fighting to stay alive and a hospital housekeeper made all the difference just when it mattered the most 

Page 68: Patricia Heaton -- embrace your second act -- the actress shares adventurous stories of transformation including her own in a new book 

Page 69: Mike Monteleone 

Page 71: Liz Smothers, Ta’u Pupu’a 

Page 73: Dani Klein Modisett, Yudi Bennett 

Page 77: COVID-19 Surges Again -- as new infections set records epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm talks about steps we can take to slow the spread 

Page 81: Summer Beauty Issues Solved -- Ciara 

Page 87: Second Look -- Lin-Manuel Miranda and Phillipa Soo in Hamilton 

Page 88: One Last Thing -- Charlize Theron

[ckerouac]

And since I love giving recs, 5 Fiction & 5 Nonfiction books I rec this year that I’d recommend if you’re looking for something new to you.

Fiction

1. Paladin’s Faith by T Kingfisher: What happens to the paladins after their god dies? Do you enjoy the idea of romantasy but prefer adult aged (30+) main characters with adult concerns? I fucking love this series and highly recommend it.

2. Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez: A father and son are on the run to escape the son’s destiny as a sacrifice to the family cult. It touches on so many complicated family relationships, can/should you try to outrun destiny, what sacrifices are worth making, religion, horror… I’m still obsessed with this months later. Translated from Spanish.

3. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley: A British bureaucrat is put in charge of helping a 1800s sailor from the HMS Terror adjust to modern day - but is the government telling the truth about why? It’s got time travel, suspense, a bit of romance and a way with the language that I really enjoyed.

4. James by Perceval Everett: What if Huckleberry Finn was told from Jim’s perspective? I love how this book used language to ask and answer questions about how/why we present ourselves to others the way we do. I read this in two sittings, couldn’t put it down.

5. Guillotine by Deliah S. Dawson: A woman goes to meet the family of her rich boyfriend. They think their wealth protects them from any consequences of their actions - the estate staff will prove them wrong. It’s a short book where shitty rich people get hunted for a satisfying comeuppance. It’s cathartic horror.

Nonfiction

1. Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen: What happens in the first 90 minutes after a nuke is launched at the US? How about the next 90 min? Is there anything left after another 90 min? Jacobsen plays out the war game in terrifying clarity and makes me happy that I live close enough to a likely target that I’d die instantly.

2. King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild: A thorough investigation into Belgium’s horrific colonization of the Congo. Each chapter you think it can’t get any worse, and Leopold goes hold my beer. A really great history on something I knew was bad but didn’t realize the full extent.

3. Silent Spring Revolution by Douglas Brinkley: A history of the US environmental movement during the 60s. It’s a fascinating look at how so many things Americans take for granted like EPA regulations were hard won, and also a surprising amount of bipartisanship that is unthinkable in the current political climate.

4. Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham: An incredibly researched minute-by-minute story of the Challenger disaster, including a history of the shuttle program and the ominous warning signs of a tragedy to come, recognized but then ignored, and later hidden from the public. I was riveted and realized quickly that what I thought I knew barely scratched the surface.

5. Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church by Gareth Gore: A thrilling exposé recounting how members of Opus Dei—a secretive, ultra-conservative Catholic sect—pushed its radical agenda within the Church and around the globe, using billions of dollars siphoned from one of the world’s largest banks. Each time I thought I couldn’t get madder, I’d start the next chapter. The playbook for groups like this is so similar - charismatic founder, laundering money, trapping women, targeting influential individuals for membership (here we go from Francoists in Spain to the US Supreme Court).

Well, that was a longer list than I expected this year 🫠

[forthosebefore]

Juneteenth Candlelight Vigil honors Sugar Land 95 By Kristi Nix, Staff writer, The Houston Chronicle

A crowd of more than 100 people gathered for a Juneteenth candlelight vigil to honor the Sugar Land 95 at Mayfield Park on Tuesday, June 18. Holding electric candles, participants clapped and sang songs celebrating freedom.

“As a people of all creeds and colors, if we can step into the realm of love we can move forward, as we should,” Cynthia Ginyard, chair of the Fort Bend County Democrats, said during the candlelight ceremony.

Prior to the candlelight vigil, guests socialized and enjoyed a BBQ luncheon at the American Legion Hall catered by Dixie’s BBQ from Missouri City. Reginald Moore, founder and president of the Convict Leasing and Labor Project (CLLP) served as master of ceremonies for “The Journey to Freedom and Salute to the Sugar Land 95” presentation, which featured a plethora of VIP guest speakers including State Representative Ron Reynolds, city manager for the City of Sugar Land Doug Brinkley, CLLP Board Member Barbara Crump Jones, Pastor Bobby Hamilton from Friendship Community Baptist Church, Melissa Waddy-Thibodeaux, Harold Williams, Trooper Robert Coleman from the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston and Fort Bend County Precinct 4 Commissioner Ken DeMerchant.

“The great news is we’re not at the finish line yet, but we’re progressing every day,” DeMerchant said. “We just had Governor Greg Abbott sign a bill that allows Fort Bend County to operate a cemetery. That was a huge step in this undertaking.”

DeMerchant said he and other members of the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court met with Judge KP George recently for a workshop to discuss a proposed facility bond to go before voters for approval next November. The list of proposed projects includes an interment center, education center and Memorial Park to be created at the site where the bodies of the Sugar Land 95 were discovered in Sugar Land.

“This is going to turn something that was a dark moment in our history into something positive, a learning experience.” Demarchant said and urged guests to support the not-yet-finalized facility bond. “People are going to know what it took to get here for Sugar Land. It was on the backs of ‘slavery by another name’. People need to know that.”

Talk from the Elder Harold Williams, a lifelong resident of Sugar Land of 80 years was introduced as speaker for a “Talk from the Elder” presentation.

Williams was the fourth child from a family of fourteen children. He told guests that his father was a farmer who raised his family on a salary of 50 cents a day.

“To all of you here, I had the opportunity to be told ‘You can’t sit here. You can prepare the food and feed the people, but you have to eat in the back or outside.’ I know what went on here in Sugar Land and around Sugar Land,” he said. “Today the question is still in my heart: why? What did my parents, my forebearers, do to make you have so much hate against us because of the color of our skin? I don’t know. But, I want to know.”

Williams said years ago he worked in a farm across from the Sugar Land prison system and the prison cemetery.

“I can’t tell you more about the prison system that has been written up. We saw them carrying the bodies to the cemetery,” he said. “We saw the dogs pull the prisoners from the edge of the Brazos River. The men hit them on the head and put them in the back of a wagon. It was really bad. You’re going to have to tell your offspring what happened. There’s no reason to keep them in the dark,” he said.

Williams told the crowd that there were many more prisoners buried under the homes in the New Territory neighborhoods that remain undiscovered.

Discovery of the Sugar Land 95 In February 2018, construction crews working for Fort Bend ISD uncovered human remains in 95 unmarked graves. The bodies are believed to be African American prisoners forced into backbreaking work on sugar plantations in a post-civil war system known as convict leasing, a system called by most historians as “slavery by another name”.

Many Sugar Land neighborhoods were built over sugar plantations which were later consolidated into the Imperial Sugar company in the early 1900s. Business owners of the sugar industry rented black prisoners from state prison officials to continue the lost profits of free labor after the end of slavery. Historians say post civil-war laws in the south targeted African Americans for petty crimes such as jaywalking and enslaved them with harsh sentences. These prisoners were rented to private business owners and forced to work in nightmarish conditions that led to the deaths of an untold number of prisoners.

After the bodies were discover, Fort Bend ISD officials proposed moving the bodies about half a mile away to the Old Imperial Farm cemetery, a small plot where the remains of inmates and guards who died at a local prison between 1912 and 1942 are buried. However, Reginald Moore and other community activists fought the district and a court battle ensued, with district officials alleging it would cost $18 million to change their building plans.

But, district officials met with Commissioner DeMerchant, County Judge KP George and other elected officials shortly after Martin Luther King Jr. Day and agreed to a new plan for a cemetery to be owned by Fort Bend County located where the bodies were found. County to operate the cemetery.

Read more about the initial discovery here

Source: The Houston Chronicle

[xtruss]

Scooping The Supreme Court! The First Roe v. Wade Leaks Happened Fifty Years Ago.

— May 16, 2022 Issue, The New Yorker | By Jane Mayer | May 6, 2022

Justice William O. Douglas. Photography from Bachrach/Getty

Supreme Court watchers have been calling the leak of a draft opinion in advance of the Court’s abortion decision “unthinkable” and “unprecedented.” Chief Justice John Roberts has ordered an internal investigation by the marshal of the Court, and former Attorney General Bill Barr has suggested that a criminal probe may be warranted. Fifty years ago, however, the Court sprang another leak—two, in fact—in connection with the original Roe v. Wade decision. A rookie writer named David Beckwith published a story in Time asserting that the Court was about to legalize abortion, a few hours ahead of the official decision. Speaking by phone the other day from his home in Austin, Texas, Beckwith said, “In my little incident, no one had any mal intent.” He joked, “They just had the bad judgment to trust me.

Beckwith, a law-school graduate, joined Time’s Washington bureau in 1971, just as the Supreme Court was about to hear arguments in Roe v. Wade. On July 4, 1972, he noticed what he called “one of the strangest stories I’d ever seen” on the front page of the Washington Post. It had no byline and quoted no sources by name. But it contained an extraordinary number of confidential details about a struggle inside the Supreme Court’s chambers over the right to abortion. The story revealed that, while a majority of the Justices clearly supported a constitutional right to abortion, Chief Justice Warren Burger, who opposed abortion rights, wanted to hold off announcing a decision until President Richard Nixon could fill two vacancies on the Court—which Burger hoped would change the outcome.

Although no one seemed to pick up on the Post’s account, published on a national holiday, Beckwith took notice. He decided to dive in and report out the story, interviewing more than a dozen Court insiders, including Justices and clerks.

A close reading of the Post story shows that it was leaked by someone with inside knowledge of the Court’s private deliberations. It revealed the date on which the Justices had met to discuss the case, and also disclosed that the Court’s reigning liberal, Justice William O. Douglas, was enraged by what he viewed as Burger’s delay tactics, which he saw as an attempt to subvert the outcome. Douglas circulated a memo describing the Chief Justice’s improper power plays to his fellow-Justices and their clerks. Within days, its contents were on the front page of the Post.

Douglas Brinkley, a historian who is writing a book in which Douglas is a central figure, thinks it’s plausible that Douglas himself gave the memo to the Post. “Douglas leaked constantly to the press,” Brinkley said. “That was his modus operandi.” He was a passionate defender of individual liberty and the right to a zone of privacy. He’d written the 1965 decision supporting the right to contraception, on which Roe was modelled. “He was very worked up about it,” Brinkley said. “There would be no Roe without Douglas.” The Justice also moved in the same social circles as the Post’s editor, Ben Bradlee, and its owner, Katharine Graham, although Bradlee’s widow, Sally Quinn, is dubious that Douglas was close enough to Bradlee to leak the memo to him. The journalist Bob Woodward said that the recent leak was a “big, big deal,” but that a leak from the Supreme Court, generally, “is not that unusual.” His book “The Brethren,” co-authored with Scott Armstrong, used as sources five Justices and approximately a hundred and forty Court clerks.

The Court heard Roe v. Wade a second time, in October of 1972. Beckwith continued digging, and on January 22, 1973, Time published his article, predicting that the Court was about to legalize abortion.

In scheduling his story, Beckwith had been guided by an anonymous source, who asked him to hold off until after January 17th, when the decision was slated to be announced. But then Burger unexpectedly delayed again: he was about to preside over Nixon’s second Inauguration, and, Beckwith surmised, he was so afraid to stand face to face with Nixon, who opposed abortion rights, that he postponed the Roe announcement until the week after. Time, though, printed Beckwith’s article as planned, scooping the Court on its own decision.

Today, such news would have broken the Internet, as the Alito leak did. But Beckwith said that not even the New York Times picked up his story. One Time subscriber who did notice the piece was Justice Harry Blackmun. He was the author of the Roe decision, and he was furious that he had been preëmpted before he could announce the decision that he had anticipated would be the apex of his legal career. (He was further upstaged by Lyndon Johnson, who died the same day that the Roe decision was announced.)

“Blackmun lit a fire under Burger,” Beckwith said. The Chief Justice summoned the top editors of Time to Washington to discuss the leak, and Burger, out for blood, presented them with a three-inch-thick binder detailing all of Beckwith’s contacts with Supreme Court personnel.

Although Beckwith said that his investigation had taken “a lot of shoe leather,” one Court clerk, Larry Hammond, a law-school classmate of Beckwith’s, confessed to the Justices, thinking that he had been the only source. “He took the hit, poor guy,” Beckwith said. Hammond was forgiven by the Justices, including Burger, and went on to a distinguished legal career.

Burger, in his meeting with Time’s editors, had demanded that Beckwith be fired for “espionage.” Instead, the editors realized just what an industrious journalist they had. Beckwith stayed at Time until 1989.

After decades of reporting, Beckwith became an aide to conservative politicians, including former Vice-President Dan Quayle. He is not a fan of the Roe decision, and he worries that the recent leak of Alito’s draft opinion was aimed at influencing the outcome of the case in a way that his own story was not. “But I’m still enough of a reporter to say the more information out there, the better,” he said. “Good for the guys who got the story.”

[ericvick]

AT&T is turning DirecTV into a standalone company

The Conversation

Misinformation-spewing cable companies come under scrutiny

If its services help deliver misinformation to your home, what responsibility does Comcast have for that? AP Photo/Mike StewartLooking at political violence in the U.S., a New Jersey state legislator sent a text message to an executive of cable television giant Comcast: “You feed this garbage, lies and all.” The cable channels Fox News and Newsmax were “complicit” in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection, the lawmaker, Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, said. Like other cable companies, Comcast brings those channels into American homes. What, Moriarty asked, was Comcast going to do about them in the wake of the assault on democracy? A few days later, Washington Post columnist Max Boot suggested Comcast might soon “need to step in and kick Fox News off,” as a consequence of its assistance to Trump’s incitement of insurrection. A similar suggestion by Democratic members of Congress ignited considerable controversy and became a subject of contention at a subsequent hearing on “disinformation and extremism in the media.” A CNN media reporter, Oliver Darcy, observed that Facebook, Twitter and Google have faced significant pressure to curb disinformation on their platforms – especially since Jan. 6. But, Darcy said, “somehow [cable providers] have escaped scrutiny and entirely dodged this conversation,” even though they are also “lending their platforms to dishonest companies that profit off of disinformation and conspiracy theories.” As a researcher who studies both television news distribution and how profit motivates the spread of falsehoods, I’m curious about whether it’s feasible – or wise – for cable companies to play moderator to the channels they carry. A parallel between TV and online services Since Jan. 6, social media companies have cracked down hard on disinformation campaigns, including cutting off President Donald Trump’s Twitter account. Amazon, Google and Apple also sharply reduced the reach of the Parler social network when that platform refused to remove posts apparently aimed at inciting violence – though Parler has since come back online. But disinformation is not happening online only. Fox News has increasingly come under fire for on-air staff and guests who hawk right-wing conspiracy theories, including spinning lies that voting machines somehow stole the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden. Fox is facing a multibillion-dollar lawsuit about those false claims. The company also recently paid at least US$10 million to settle a lawsuit from the family of a murdered Democratic National Committee staffer over falsely alleging the killing was part of a left-wing plot. Fox News is just one channel that has brought cable providers under fire. Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images What’s next for Fox News? Amid the threat of continued political violence, Fox News appears poised to further “turn up the outrage dial” on television. In recent months, the channel has lost viewers to even farther-right alternatives, like Newsmax and One America News Network, and is responding by firing traditional journalists and increasing the amount of partisan commentary it offers. Comcast, with 20 million subscribers, represents roughly a quarter of the pay TV market in the U.S., so it might seem Comcast has considerable leverage over Fox News’s content. But Comcast isn’t just a content distributor through its cable network. The company also owns a huge swath of American media companies, including Fox News’ direct competitors, MSNBC and CNBC. Even if Comcast felt an obligation to lean on Fox, any significant pressure it might seek to apply could easily be met not just with customer complaints, but with legal challenges claiming anti-competitive behavior, particularly if this included threats of kicking Fox off its platform. Who regulates cable TV content? In the past, the American public has entrusted the responsibility of determining what sorts of communications do and don’t serve the public interest to public entities, like the Federal Communications Commission, which was originally the Federal Radio Commission. When radio and television broadcasting began, for instance, they relied exclusively on airwaves owned by the public and regulated by the government. At the height of their powers, from the 1930s through the postwar era, federal regulators tended to side with commercial station owners – as they do today. But periodically they demonstrated they could do much more than just fine broadcasters for airing obscenities. They did not shy away from stripping broadcast licenses from purveyors of harmful disinformation and inflammatory rumors. The most famous example is probably sham doctor John R. Brinkley, who advertised on air for questionable cures and sham surgeries, which killed dozens of people in the early 20th century before he lost his broadcast license. Moreover, federal court and Supreme Court decisions established that when the commission reviewed TV and radio stations’ past editorial content as part of considering whether to renew their broadcast licenses, it wasn’t violating their free speech rights. Rather, officials were vetting users of public resources in an effort to protect the public interest. Cable channels, of course, don’t need the public airwaves, and instead are distributed over privately owned networks. The owners of those systems, including Comcast, are the ones who decide which content providers can reach their subscribers. But their goals are not necessarily aligned with the public good so much as profit for shareholders. Comcast owns TV and film studios as well as its cable television distribution network. Paul Harris/Getty Images Could anything change? Comcast’s power in the media landscape has long been controversial. The company owns elements in every step of the media pipeline, from content creation to marketing and distribution to consumers. Critics contend that sort of consolidation is anti-competitive and deprives the public of the benefits of market competition, from decreasing the diversity of content to higher prices and weaker privacy protections. Media law scholar Tim Wu – who may be joining the Biden administration – has argued that media companies like Comcast should be regulated by a “separations principle” that would bar companies that owned distribution systems from also owning content creators. Such a restriction would almost certainly require Comcast to choose between its media production subsidiaries and its cable network. Whichever Comcast decided to keep or sell, the cable television system would be a standalone. It would no longer be a producer of content or a competitor with other channels – which might make it less fraught for the company to decide not to do business with content creators of any political stripe who spread inflammatory lies. Another possibility could be for cable companies to engage in some form of industry self-regulation. They might, for example, establish an independent board to examine problems like Fox’s disinformation spreading. The companies would have to agree to abide by the board’s decisions to sanction or suspend the distribution of channels trafficking in dangerous or inciting disinformation. Such an approach borrows from established methods in other media industries. These industries follow a model of appealing to independent boards to make controversial decisions, such as film or video game ratings, while blending in more recent self-regulatory measures by digital platforms. No version of self-regulation is perfect or above criticism. And it may seem worrisome to let cable companies, either individually or collectively, decide on what speech is acceptable for public consumption. Indeed, there is plenty of concern over whether Twitter or Facebook should be making similar decisions unilaterally. But it’s worth noting that government oversight has been weak for years, with many critics arguing that the FCC doesn’t do much to ensure that even traditional broadcasters promote the public interest. The cable industry may not use the airwaves, but it does use other scarce public resources, negotiating with local and regional governments to lay wires under streets and on telephone poles over sidewalks across the nation. Some cable companies even belong to or partner with cellular providers to deliver video wirelessly to mobile devices – which is very much like traditional broadcasting in the sense that it uses public airwaves. It’s not a huge stretch, then, to imagine local or even federal regulators treating cable TV more like broadcast channels, and even returning to past practices of requiring stations to serve the public interest.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Joshua Braun, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Read more:Don’t blame Fox News for the attack on the CapitolFor tech giants, a cautionary tale from 19th century railroads on the limits of competition Joshua Braun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

[dipulb3]

Has John Roberts been watching 'Hamilton'?

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/has-john-roberts-been-watching-hamilton/

Has John Roberts been watching 'Hamilton'?

Big deal, right? It’s important because the justices rejected his claim of a temporary absolute immunity while in office. The historian Douglas Brinkley called it a “dark day” for Trump. And a criminal investigation into Trump’s company in New York can go forward.

Not that Trump cares, because the court also did him a favor.

The justices handed the cases — one involving the New York DA’s investigation of hush money payments to Trump’s alleged former mistress and the other involving lawmakers in the House — back to lower courts.

So while he’s not above the law, according to the court, his financial records are untouchable for the moment. Typical Supreme Court. That’s a clear victory for him heading into the last election where he’ll appear on a ballot. Read Appradab legal analyst Joan Biskupic on how Roberts threaded the needle so everyone felt like they got something to call a win.

Back in prison: Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations associated with those hush money payments the New York DA is investigating, was taken back into custody for violating terms of his pandemic-induced furlough.

Side note: Presidential legacies last. The other ruling released by the Supreme Court on Thursday involved tribal land in Oklahoma. Actions taken by Trump’s favorite President, Andrew Jackson, featured in the decision, which found that much of the state is still tribal land for the purpose of criminal prosecutions.

Has John Roberts been watching ‘Hamilton’?

We went to Appradab’s Katelyn Polantz to ask about today’s decision and what it means both for Trump and for future presidents. Our conversation is below:

ZBW: I find the Supreme Court to be extremely frustrating. They SAY he’s not above the law. But they also make sure voters will not see his financial information. What’s your take?

KP: A grand jury or Congress may not get access to Trump’s records by the election, but these opinions aren’t about the election. They’re about history and figuring out the justice system’s place in it.

You can tell by how much time Chief Justice Roberts spends, especially in the Vance decision, writing about events as far back as the saga of Aaron Burr. (Roberts even throws in a footnote about how the governor of the Louisiana Territory colluded with Spain!)

“In the two centuries since the Burr trial, successive Presidents have accepted [Chief Justice John] Marshall’s ruling that the Chief Executive is subject to subpoena,” Roberts writes.

Funny enough, remember when a subpoena of the President was the what-if of the Mueller investigation?

At the time — circa 2018 — soon-to-be-attorney general Bill Barr was of the belief the President shouldn’t be open to subpoena in a criminal investigation for obstruction, and Trump’s lawyers were getting ready to challenge a subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller.

Mueller never pulled the trigger, deciding his investigation didn’t want or need a detour in court over a subpoena when the fact-finding was already winding down.

But now we know what the Supreme Court likely would have said about that: The President is just like every man when it comes to criminal law.

Roberts and six of his colleagues are flatly shooting down Trump’s lawyers’ assertion during proceedings in this case — with the court deciding that if Trump shot someone on Fifth Avenue, he would not be immune from consequence.

An absolute immunity for the President isn’t “necessary or appropriate,” Roberts writes in this case. “Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our Court established that no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding. We reaffirm that principle,” the opinion ends.

So here we are, 200 years after Burr’s trial and almost three years after the question dogged the Mueller investigation. We have an answer now going forward, past November.

The latest on Covid

We keep writing the same thing every day, but it’s getting more important, not less. So here goes: The disconnect between Trump and the scientists is only getting more intense.

Turns out the CDC won’t revisit its guidelines for reopening schools despite Trump’s pressure.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who keeps popping up doing interviews with newspapers and podcasts (importantly, not on TV) , told a Wall Street Journal podcast on Wednesday that states where Covid is exploding may have to consider shutting back down.

He later clarified that. “Rather than think in terms of reverting back down to a complete shutdown, I would think we need to get the states pausing in their opening process,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told The Hill’s editor-at-large Steve Clemons on Thursday.

120 Covid-related deaths were reported in Florida on Wednesday, a single-day record.

This Texas Tribune report is worth reading: An increase in people dying at home suggests coronavirus deaths in Houston may be higher than reported.

And Berkeley frat parties meet Covid. Ugh.

What was it all for? The most galling thing about this new surge of coronavirus is that the early sacrifice of shutting down the economy now feels completely wasted. Everyone shut things down. And, because states opened early, it’s raging all over again.

Stop saying what should happen. Figure out how.

And it’s also why Trump’s demand that schools open is so craven. Of course the schools should open. Everyone wants the schools to open.

It’s how to open up without spreading the disease that no one can seem to figure out.

One very simple thing would be to wear a face mask in public to shut down people like this Ohio lawmaker who thinks nothing is wrong.

If the schools open, as Trump demands, and teachers and other adults who work there get sick, they’ll close again. Just like the states that must now pause reopening.

Yesterday, it was a summer camp in Arkansas that closed after people started testing positive. Now Nashville says it’s delaying the opening of its school year — which had been planned for August 4 — until Labor Day at least.

Presidents and policymakers need to play chess: Think ahead, identify possible outcomes and be ready for contingencies.

That’s hard to do when you don’t believe there’s a problem.

[tabloidtoc]

Us, September 23

Cover: Felicity Huffman faces the judge -- secret, lies and justice? 

Page 4: Red Carpet -- stripes -- Nina Dobrev, Cara Delevingne 

Page 5: Alison Brie, Hailey Bieber

Page 6: Who Wore It Best? Sara Sampaio vs. Kate Bosworth, Jemima Kirke vs. Ellie Bamber, Lydia Hearst vs. Aisha Dee 

Page 8: Carrie Underwood vs. Mandy Moore vs. Dua Lipa vs. Heidi Klum vs. Claire Foy vs. Charli XCX vs. Katy Perry vs. Milla Jovovich 

Page 10: Miles Teller vs. Seth Rogen vs. Reid Scott vs. Garrett Hedlund 

Page 12: Loose Talk -- Bill Hader on Finn Wolfhard, Jessica Simpson, Justin Bieber and Avril Lavigne, Sara Foster 

Page 14: Contents 

Page 16: Hot Pics -- Prince William and Duchess Kate Middleton and Prince George and Princess Charlotte 

Page 17: Demi Lovato, Michael B. Jordan and Brie Larson 

Page 18: Wells Adams and Sarah Hyland, Ireland Baldwin and dad Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez 

Page 19: Chip and Joanna Gaines, Tom Kaulitz and Heidi Klum, Ashley Graham 

Page 20: Reese Witherspoon, Lil Nas X, Jennifer Lawrence and Cooke Maroney, Sarah Jessica Parker 

Page 22: Celebs Go to Court -- Alec and Hilaria Baldwin, Tiger Woods, Jameela Jamil and James Blake, Anna Wintour, Tom Hiddleston 

Page 24: Stars They’re Just Like Us -- Lucy Hale, Melissa and Joe Gorga, Ellen Pompeo, Sylvester Stallone 

Page 26: Hollywood Dads -- Andy Cohen on son Benjamin 

Page 28: Love Lives -- Zendaya and costar Jacob Elordi getting cozy 

Page 30: Miranda Lambert and Brendan McLoughlin -- no more sad songs, Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade do crazy things for love, Jonah Hill engaged to Gianna Santos 

Page 32: Hot Hollywood -- Britney Spears tells her father to stay away from her kids 

Page 33: Christina Anstead and Ant Anstead welcomed their first child together, Nikki Bella says her ex John Cena is still in touch with her grandmother, Duchess Meghan Markle flew to New York to see Serena Williams play in the U.S. Open while Prince Harry watched baby Archie 

Page 34: Chris March RIP, new details on the death of Mac Miller, VIP Scene -- Brody Jenner and Devin Lucien, Cheyenne Jackson and Jason Landau, Shakira and Gerard Pique, Chris Rock, Christina Milian, Joe Jonas, 50 Cent

Page 36: Toronto Film Festival 

Page 37: What’s in my bag? Alex Borstein 

Page 38: Cover Story -- Felicity Huffman -- her worst nightmare come true 

Page 41: What does it mean for Lori Loughlin? 

Page 42: Kevin Hart’s car crash -- what really happened 

Page 44: Teddi Mellencamp -- Surprise, I’m pregnant 

Page 46: The season 28 cast of Dancing With the Stars -- Hannah Brown, Lamar Odom, Sean Spicer, Karamo Brown

Page 47: Kate Flannery, James Van Der Beek, Lauren Alaina, Christie Brinkley 

Page 48: Style -- Ramy Brook -- Jaime King, Kate Beckinsale, Emma Roberts, Laverne Cox, Martha Hunt, Cindy Crawford, Regina Hall 

Page 49: Rachel Lindsay, Jessica Alba, Jamie Chung, Selma Blair, Tori Kelly, Anna Faris 

Page 52: Entertainment 

Page 54: Ansel Elgort on The Goldfinch 

Page 55: Lilly Singh on A Little Late, Ryan Michelle Bathe on The First Wives Club 

Page 58: Fashion Police -- Scarlett Johansson, Bella Hadid, Lil Mama 

Page 59: Liv Tyler, Ari Lennox, Hayley Kiyoko 

Page 60: 25 Things You Don’t Know About Me -- Tanya Acker 

[kansascityhappenings]

A nightmare of medical fraud in Kansas from decades ago inspired a movie currently in pre-production

MILFORD, Kan. — With fall finally here and Halloween right around the corner, it’s time to look back at one of the spookiest, strangest, and most disturbing series of events that’s ever happened in Kansas. One man’s curiosity around goats and emerging technology reveal some of the horrors of a lack of regulation in the early 20th century. The goat gland operation tales are just as disturbing as the ghouls, vampires, werewolves, and mummies that haunt on Halloween, if not more so.

Without proper regulation, public radio became a pubic health crisis for Americans as con artists used airwaves to spread false information, such as the healing power of goat glands. Scammers gained a large amount of wealth off early radio from advertising revenue. These tales from decades ago may sound eerily similar to other events in our modern time with our social media craze, but at the same time, one man’s goat dream is several times removed from our zeitgeist.

John R. Brinkley. The goat gland specialist.

There is no one quite like John R. Brinkley. He lived from July 8, 1885 to May 26, 1942. He practiced medicine in Kansas and even launched two campaigns for governor. The fraudulent practitioner received international recognition for his fertility surgeries involving… goat gonads.

Widespread quackery, malpractice, misinformation, and greedy ghouls

Back in the late 1880s to 1930s, fraud doctors took root in several cities and towns across the United States. In 1937, Norman Baker, a quack doctor and con artist used the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas to open up a cancer hospital and health resort. He learned about an alleged cure to cancer by Charles Ozias of Kansas City, and he got excited by the prospect – despite all five of the test subjects dying from the treatment.

The Crescent Hotel | Eureka Springs

Baker first went to Muscatine, Iowa to create a cancer center. His injections were expensive and made out of common substances: corn silk, watermelon seeds, clover, water, and carbolic acid. Carbolic acid is poisonous if someone touches or swallows it.

Baker had no cure for cancer, but patients flocked to his second cancer center: “Bakers Hospital” in Eureka Springs. The famous Crescent Hotel is rich with ghost stories and other haunted tales to this day. Staff at the hotel claim many of the ghosts there used to be the fraud doctor’s patients.

Dr. Norman Baker

Dr. Baker kept a morgue in the basement. His staff moved deceased patients in the middle of the night from their rooms, so others wouldn’t see them. He took advantage of people during the Great Depression: the hospital cleared an estimated $500,000 in one year. His booming business turned sour and fell apart after federal authorities arrested him in 1939 on a mail fraud charge. Court records indicate that he asked each patient to write home at least three times asking for more money.

Baker also mailed his “miracle elixir” around the country. Some estimates find he conned as much as $4 million out of hopeful patients. He served five years in Leavenworth and then moved to Florida where he died in 1958.

Out in San Francisco, during the same time-frame as these quack doctors, Albert Abrams was advocating his life-changing machines. He claimed the inventions could cure any cancer, ailment, or disease. The American Medical Association didn’t take his claims seriously and pushed back on his promises.

Abrams invented such machines as the Oscilloclast and the Radioclast.

How did they work? The doctor, or others, wired a patient to the oscilloclast. The patient was insulated from the surroundings with his or her feet resting on upturned drinking glasses — a good thing, because the patient would have likely been electrocuted by the mechanics of the device. The threat of electrocution may have led to the development of the much safer Micro-Oscilloclast, a box that connected to essentially nothing.

Both the osciolloclast and the radioclast came with tables of frequencies designed to attack specific diseases. Clients needed to undergo several treatments if they hoped to cure their illnesses.

John Romulus Brinkley’s tale puts him in the same camp as these quack doctors. One of them was actually his rival, but first let’s take a look at how he came to dream of goats.

An empire around goats and men’s health

Brinkley’s fame to claim was that he promised he could cure male impotence. He also claimed he had a panacea for a wide range of ailments, both terminal illnesses and minor bodily inconveniences. He operated clinics and hospitals in several states, despite serious concerns around his practices.

Critics from the medical community quickly discredited his methods. But Brinkley was a charismatic man making it difficult to stop him. He befriended people in local communities and used emerging mass media in his cons. He died practically penniless as a result of the large number of malpractice, wrongful death, and fraud suits brought against him.

The fraud doctor is credited with starting the era of Mexican border blaster radio. Mexico was upset that the United States took control of radio frequencies without consulting Mexico, leading to unregulated shows getting on the airwaves.

The border blaster radios had broadcasting signals far more powerful than U.S. stations. Along the Mexican border, blasters could be heard over large areas of the United States from the 1930s all the way to the 1970s. This irritated American radio stations which couldn’t overpower the blasters.

John R. Brinkley’s early history

The fraud doctor grew up to a poor mountain man who practiced medicine in North Carolina. His father served as a medic for the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. His mother died of pneumonia and tuberculosis when he was only five years old. His father died when he was ten. He finished schooling at the age of 16. Brinkley worked as a mail carrier and learned how to use a telegraph. Records indicate even in his early youth he dreamed of becoming a doctor.

Brinkley met Sally Wilke sometime in late December 1906 or early January 1907. She comforted him after another one of his relatives died; they got married quickly. The newlyweds traveled around the country posing as Quaker doctors, going to rural towns to put on medicine shows. The couple spent time in Knoxville – where he hawked virility “tonics” with a man named Dr. Burke.

The couple eventually moved to Chicago. Brinkley enlisted in the Bennett Medical College, an unaccredited school with a focus on Eclectic medicine. It was a branch of American medicine which focused on botanical remedies and other substances, along with physical therapy practices. The last Eclectic Medical school closed in Cincinnati in 1939.

Sally gave birth to a daughter almost nine months after the couple’s wedding.  After two years of studying, and a large pool of debt, Brinkley doubled his summer workload by taking two shifts at Western Union, the railway company. He came home one day and realized his wife had left him and that she had taken their daughter.

Sally filed for divorce and child support. Two months later she kidnapped his daughter and ran away to Canada. The couple eventually reunited, but Sally would leave him again two more times. She  finally had enough sometime in 1913. Brinkley refused to give up his goal of becoming a doctor, and Sally was tired of the debt and other marital problems.

On August 23, 1913, after a four-day courtship, Brinkley married Minerva Telitha “Minnie” Jones at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. They honeymooned in Kansas City, Denver, Pocatello, and Knoxville – where police arrested Brinkley for practicing medicine without a license and for writing bad checks. He eventually weaseled himself out of this mess to be hit with a bigamist claim from Sally, who hadn’t officially divorced him.

The dream of medical practice unfolds… in garish epiphanies

In October 1914, the Brinkleys moved to Kansas City. John enrolled in the city’s Eclectic Medical University. He only needed one more year in school to finish the education he started at Bennett.

Brinkley focused his studies on the prostate gland in elderly men. He graduated on May 7, 1915. His diploma from Eclectic allowed him to practice medicine in eight states.

Brinkley took a job as the doctor for the Swift & Company meatpacking plant. He patched minor wounds and studied animal physiology. Talking with workers, he learned that the healthiest animal slaughtered at the plant was the goat. This gave him an unprecedented epiphany of sorts following his research on the prostate.

In 1917, Brinkley served about two months in World War I as an Army Reservist. He spent most of his time in the armed services sick. He had at least one nervous breakdown before he was discharged. In October of the same year, Brinkley and his wife moved to small town Milford, Kansas. They had spotted a newspaper ad looking to recruit a doctor to the area.

Milford, Kansas is about 145 miles west of Kansas City. About 540 people live there now. The town had a lumber mill in its early days.

The next year, Brinkley opened a 16-room clinic in Milford. He won over the locals by paying good wages, invigorating the local economy, and making house calls on patients afflicted with the deadly 1918 flu pandemic. His work started out as virtuous to the community. His work to nurse flu victims back to health gave him a positive reputation that took decades to damage.

The infamous goat gland operations

The doctor somehow came to the conclusion that transplanting goat testicles into men would solve impotence. One of the first patients actually begged Brinkley to try the operation on him; he was willing to pay $150. According to an inflation calculator, $150 in 1918 is equivalent to $2,548 in 2019.

The patient’s son later told the Kansas City Star that Brinkley had offered to pay the man to go along with the experiment.

At his clinic, Brinkley performed several operations he claimed would restore male virility and fertility through implanting the testicular glands of goats in his male patients at a cost of $750 per operation. A value of $12,740 today.

The goat gonads failed to graft into the body. They were placed near sexual organs in both men and women.

Patients frequently complained Brinkley was intoxicated, that the setting was less-than-sterile, and of infections following the surgeries. An undetermined number of patients died. The doctor signed at least 42 death certificates during his time at the clinic. Several wrongful death lawsuits were filed against the quack doctor between 1930 and 1941.

Goat gland operation

Soon after Brinkley started his practice in Milford, he created an advertising campaign that received national attention from newspapers: he claimed the wife of his first goat gland transplantation patient gave birth to a baby boy. According to the book Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam, Brinkley promoted goat glands as a cure for 27 ailments, ranging from the serious, like dementia, to less concerning problems, like flatulence.

The American Medical Association didn’t take Brinkley lightly. His burst of publicity and brazen claims attracted the association’s attention. It sent an agent to the Milford clinic undercover.

The agent’s findings weren’t pretty. The AMA representative found a woman hobbling in circles at the clinic. She had surgery to get goat ovaries as a cure for a spinal cord tumor. Brinkley was then permanently on the AMA’s radar.

Doctor Morris Fishbein: had no empathy for malpractice

One doctor – Morris Fishbein — spent a huge chunk of his career exposing Brinkley’s medical frauds. Fishbein was the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association from 1924 to 1950.

Fishbein campaigned for the regulation of medical devices. His book Fads and Quackery in Healing debunks a wide range of practices from homeopathy to radionics. He is vilified in the chiropractic community for his campaign to end the practice as a profession.

Quackery appealed to curiosity, despite legitimacy

It wasn’t only about the goats in that time. Brinkley got jealous of one surgeon he thought was stealing his limelight.

Serge Voronoff was known for grafting monkey gonads into men. In 1920, Voronoff did a demonstration of his technique in front of several doctors at a hospital in Chicago. Brinkley showed up uninvited. He was barred at the door.

The media found out about Brinkley showing up at the Chicago hospital, and his profile in the press eventually led to his own demo at a hospital in the Windy City.

Brinkley transplanted goat testicles into 34 patients, including a judge, an alderman, a society matron and the chancellor of the now-defunct Chicago Law School. Despite the goat glands showing any success at healing, people sought after the procedure. The con man would likely be deemed a serial killer by today’s standards.

While on a tour in Los Angeles, Brinkley spent time at KHJ, a radio station. He fell in love with the idea of radio and the power to broadcast any message. He saw radio as a way to advertise and market his services; at this time in the United States, advertising on public airwaves was discouraged.

John R. Brinkley.

By 1923, Brinkley had enough capital from his medical practice to build KFKB (“Kansas First, Kansas Best” or sometimes known as “Kansas Folks Know Best”). He aired whatever he wanted — without sources or confirmation. It was a fake news propaganda machine.

Brinkley talked on the radio for hours daily. His first goal was to promote his goat gland treatments. He capitalized on men and women’s fears based around their lack of virility and fertility.

In between Brinkley’s advertisements, his news station included a motley crew of segments: performances by military bands, French lessons, horoscope readings, Hawaiian music, old-time string bands, gospel choirs, and early country music. It seemed charming to the listeners but was all a ploy.

The same year, the St. Louis Star published a critical expose on medical diploma mills. The Kansas City Journal Post followed suit.

The journalistic coverage brought unwanted attention Brinkley’s way. In July 1924, a grand jury in San Francisco handed down 19 indictments to people responsible for granting fake medical degrees and for doctors who received the diplomas.

Brinkley was indicted for his questionable application for a California medical license. Reviewers said his entry was fully of lies and discrepancies. Agents from California came to arrest Brinkley, but the governor of Kansas, Jonathan M. Davis, refused to extradite the doctor. Davis claimed Brinkley made the state too much money.

Davis’ term as the 22nd Governor of Kansas from January 8, 1923 to January 12, 1925 was fraught with error. After his term ended, police arrested him. He was indicted twice for bribery, tried twice, and acquitted both times.

Brinkley’s last leg of medical practice in Kansas

Brinkley had a hold on Milford. The advertising on his radio station kept his bank account healthy. He would use that money to keep Milford residents smitten to him; he paid for a new sewage system, sidewalks, installed electricity, built a bandstand, and built apartments for his patients and employees. He also bought a new post office to handle his mail.

The quack doctor was a hometown hero. The Kansas Navy named him an “admiral.” Brinkley also sponsored the Milford baseball team, aptly called the Brinkley Goats.

John R. Brinkley

AMA editor Morris Fishbein sought to put an end to Brinkley’s regime. Fishbein wrote dozens of articles about people who got sick or died following the goat gland surgeries. But his readership was limited to other doctors; meanwhile, Brinkley’s fake news radio station poured directly into his viewers’ ears at their homes daily.

The Kansas City Star at the time owned a radio station that competed with Brinkley’s. The Star ran an unfavorable series of reports on him to end the craze.

In 1930, the Kansas Medical Board held a hearing and decided ultimately to revoke Brinkley’s medical license. The medical board stated Brinkley “has performed an organized charlatanism … quite beyond the invention of the humble mountebank.”

Six months later, the Federal Radio Commission didn’t renew his station’s broadcasting license. He was found guilty of advertising, which violated international treaties. The FRC also claimed Brinkley aired obscene material, and his Medical Box Question series was “contrary to the public interest.”

Quack doctor almost becomes the Governor of Kansas

The quack doctor tried to make a comeback, both with his medical and radio career, by launching a gubernatorial campaign. The political position in Kansas would have allowed him to appoint people of his choice to the medical board. This would have helped him to reopen his practice into goat gland operations.

The governor campaign kicked off just three days after he lost his medical license. He used his radio station to advertise himself. Brinkley was a write-in candidate. He lost the race to democrat Harry Hines Woodring.

The goat gland transplantation specialist almost won the election. The state only counted ballots with J.R. Brinkley written in, disqualifying tens of thousands of written ballots with other variants, like John Brinkley. He would have won if all the ballots had been counted.

Brinkley ran again in 1932 as an Independent, receiving 244,607 votes (30.6 percent of the vote). He lost to Republican Alf Landon, who later was the Republican nominee for President in 1936. Landon lost to incumbent president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The quack doctor gave up. He sold his KFKB station to an insurance company. He kept his Milford clinic open. Two of his proteges took over the clinic’s operations. He then relocated to Del Rio, Texas, a town just across a bridge from Mexico. The city is about 160 miles west of San Antonio.

The second age of Brinkley’s malpractice

Brinkley continued to perform goat gland transplants while he lived in Texas. His practice did shift; he mostly focused on performing vasectomies and something called prostate “rejuvenations.” He charged $1,000 for each operation, which amounts to about $19, 735 today.

The fraud doctor also prescribed his own invented medicine for after-care. He also found a way back to radio.

By 1936, John Brinkley became one of the wealthiest people in America. He built a mansion for he and his wife on 16 acres of land.

Minnie Brinkley with her son

The couple owned a dozen Cadillacs, a greenhouse, a fountain garden surrounded by thousands of bushes, and exotic animals imported all the way from the Galapagos Islands.

Brinkley ran the circuit there happily, until a rival doctor cut into his business: Norman Baker.

Baker also used the radio to broadcast his quack industry. He claimed to be an inventor. Baker operated the border blaster XENT in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.

The quack doctor rivalry started when Baker offered to do similar procedures for a lower cost than Brinkley’s practice. Del Rio’s city council refused to put the competitor out of business – so Brinkley closed up shop and started practice in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas.

Baker then moved to Eureka Springs where he built his infamous cancer center. Eureka Springs is about 150 miles northwest of Little Rock.

In 1938, AMA editor Morris Fishbein targeted Brinkley yet again. He published a two-part scathing series called “Modern Medical Charlatans.” It included a thorough review of Brinkley’s work.

Brinkley sued Fishbein for libel and lost. A barrage of lawsuits followed the jury verdict. The IRS also investigated Brinkley for tax fraud. He declared bankruptcy in 1941, the same year the U.S. and Mexico reached an agreement on allocating radio bandwidth and shut down his blaster station XERA.

On May 26, 1942 Brinkley died penniless. He suffered from heart failure while in San Antonio. A mail fraud case involving Brinkley hadn’t gone to trial yet.

Vandals defaced Brinkley’s grave in Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee in early 2017. Someone stole the winged angel atop the column marking where he was buried.

The Reply All podcast did an episode on the quack doctor: it’s episode #86, “Man of the People.” A film based on the episode is in development now. Director Richard Linklater will helm it, and it will star actor Robert Downey Jr. IMDb lists it as an untitled John Brinkley biopic.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/09/22/a-nightmare-of-medical-fraud-in-kansas-from-decades-ago-inspired-a-movie-currently-in-pre-production/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/09/22/a-nightmare-of-medical-fraud-in-kansas-from-decades-ago-inspired-a-movie-currently-in-pre-production/

[womenofcolor15]

Meek Mill Appears In Court To Get 2008 Drug & Gun Conviction Overturned, Van Jones Is Confident It'll Get Done Soon

Meek Mill is fighting for his freedom after being on probation for over 10 years. He appeared before a judge to get his 2008 drug and gun conviction overturned. Here's what happened & Van Jones' prediction...

Rapper Meek Mill (real name Robert Rihmeek Williams) is out of prison, but he's still not free.

Lawyers for the "Dreamchasers" rapper - who is the co-chair of the REFORM Alliance - appeared in appeals court yesterday (July 16th) to try and get the rapper's 2088 drug and gun conviction overturned. The case has kept the Philly native on probation for over a decade and he's doing everything he can to become a free free man.

Meek's legal team reportedly stood before three Pennsylvania Superior Court judges in a Philadelphia courtroom to ask that his 2008 conviction on gun and drug charges be tossed out and a new trial be set.

  MEEK MILL IS STILL NOT FREE. That could change today. This afternoon, REFORM Co-Chair @MeekMill has a hearing with the Pennsylvania Superior Court that could lead to his conviction finally being overturned. It’s time to rectify this injustice once and for all. #FreeMeek #REFORM pic.twitter.com/t7OrUx6vrh

— REFORM ALLIANCE (@REFORM) July 16, 2019

  His lawyers argued controversial Judge Genece Brinkley - who sent him to prison in 2017 over a parole violation - has become too involved in the rapper's life and has lost her impartiality. They also argued the arresting officer is a "bad cop" who provided poor evidence against Meek. The sole witness at the original trial was the now-retired Reginald Graham. Turns out, Graham was placed on the Philadelphia district attorney’s office “do not call” list due to his history of misconduct.

“He now has been discredited,” lawyer Kim Watterson of Los Angeles told the three-judge panel. “They (prosecutors) do not have confidence in his testimony and will not call him at retrial.”

“Although he was not charged federally with the other officers in the narcotics unit, Graham resigned from the police department prior to being formally dismissed,” Krasner’s office wrote, referring to a 2015 police corruption trial that ended with the acquittal of six officers. “The Commonwealth cannot call a witness whose credibility it mistrusts.”

  Assistant District Attorney Paul George said the office wouldn’t call Graham due it its “legal, ethical and constitutional obligations.” So yeah, both sides are seeking a new trial.

Right now, prosecutors could choose to drop the case if a new trial is granted, which would leave Meek Mill unconvicted and free. However, the court usually takes several months to make such a ruling.

CNN's Van Jones - the CEO of REFORM Alliance - spoke out after the hearing and he's confident that Meek's conviction will be overturned within two months.

“I have been in criminal justice for 25 years, and I have never seen a district attorney’s office be calling for a new trial at the same time the defendant is calling for a new trial,” said Jones. “We are one step closer to justice. This hearing was an extraordinary moment where you have attorneys on both sides saying that a new trial should go forward.”

Here's a clip of Van Jones speaking to the media after the hearing below:

  The @meekmill case is a stench in the nostrils of God. Tomorrow a judge will decide if Meek will get a new trial. We’re dedicated to fighting for Meek and all those in his position. #FreeMeek pic.twitter.com/IsEwLV9rG3

— Van Jones (@VanJones68) July 16, 2019

  You'll recall, Meek Mill became the poster child for prison reform after all of his drama with Judge Genece Brinkley. She sentenced him to two to four years in prison for parole violations. He ended up spending five months behind bars before a court ordered him to be released last year. 

The court hearing comes before his two-part in-depth interview with "CBS This Morning's" Gayle King. He opens up about his experiences with the broken justice system and how it has pushed him to fight for prison reform in the United States.

"If you take a drone right now in Philadelphia and you put it on the main line of the suburbs and you put it on the main line of the ghetto, you would see there's two Americas," he said. "You would see chaos on one side and you would see people going to their mailboxes and kids coming from school on one side."

  AHEAD: Rapper @MeekMill fights to clear his name.

Only on @CBSThisMorning, he tells @GayleKing how he wants to change the criminal justice system. pic.twitter.com/Mc1pvZnOYj

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) July 16, 2019

  The 32-year-old rapper also talked about how being on probation put a damper on regular, everyday activitivies, such as picking his son up from school:

"My son lived in New Jersey, but I lived in Philadelphia, and the bridge is a 15-minute ride," he said. "It's just a bridge. I couldn't go get my son from school when I wanted to . . . Some days I would get off work early, I would just have a free day, and I would just want to pop up at my son's school and get him from school. I'd been out of town for two weeks in a row working. Can't really do it."

Check it:

On August 9th, the rapper's "Free Meek" documentary - produced by Jay Z - will be released on Amazon.

For kicks...

            View this post on Instagram

                  Damn you still on probation you like 60 meek? Yeah I might be about to get off tho god willing

A post shared by Meek Mill (@meekmill) on Jul 16, 2019 at 6:38pm PDT

    Meek got in on the FaceApp fun, poking fun at his situation. Hey, at least he can laugh about it now.

  Photo: Getty

[Read More ...] source http://theybf.com/2019/07/17/meek-mill-appears-in-court-to-get-2008-conviction-overturned-van-jones-is-confident-itll-