A letter to Mandy Patinkin

Dear Mr. Patinkin,

I am writing to you today after watching your 60 Minutes interview last night.  I have never written a fan letter before, but your story has moved me to write you.  To begin, let me tell you a little about myself.  I have been working in educational production in Vermont, and after 17 years at a university media production department, I started work in a high school technical center teaching media production.  My students produce all forms of media, from public service announcements to dramatic fiction.  I am a strong believer in the freedom of speech, but my students know I draw a line at violent content.  I find this to be increasingly difficult given the amount of violence in the media today.

I have always been a fan of your work, and have watched you in movies and television, as well as your stage and musical performances. I appreciated the interview last night, but I have to be honest that I was disappointed that you didn’t mention why you left Criminal Minds. I realize that this was an interview on CBS and perhaps it was not the right forum for such a discussion, and we viewers never know what is left on “the cutting room floor”.  I find the level of violence on such shows as Criminal Minds and Stalker to be way over the threshold of “appropriate” violence.  I personally agree with you when you said that such violence was “very destructive to my soul and my personality”.  I have read the studies on media violence and I know there is no conclusive evidence that violent programming will cause a person to commit violent acts.  I do believe that my students are much more desensitized to violence, and it takes more and more graphic depictions to have an impact on them.  This seems to me to be a tragic “slippery slope”.  I admire you for taking such drastic action as jeopardizing your career by walking away from a network show.  Thank you for being one of the few celebrity voices that is willing to take a public stand and say that such media violence is destructive.  

In closing, let me make a quick plug for my state of Vermont.  It would be great if you ever found an opportunity to perform in our wonderful state.

Sincerely,

Gary Lambert

 

President Obama calls on the FCC to reclassify under Title II !!!

"The Dog" and Andy Kaufman

My entry today is about 2 unconnected items that have caught my attention today. First, after showing the movie "Dog Day Afternoon",  which is based on a real bank robbery, I started searching information about the real person portrayed by Al Pacino - John Wojtowicz.  To my surprise, I discovered that there is a documentary about the real man that was just released in August of this year.  It sounds interesting, and is on my list of films I must see.  Here is Bob Mondello's review of the new documentary "The Dog". This is the "true" story of the man Al Pacino played in "Dog Day Afternoon":

NPR Review

The second item, and even more interesting, is about a new Andy Kaufman book written by his friend and writing partner Bob Zmuda.  In the new book,  “Andy Kaufman: The Truth, Finally” (BenBella Books), written with Lynne Margulies, Kaufman’s girlfriend,  Zmuda reveals that Kaufman is still alive after faking his death, and that the 30 year time limit is up this year and Andy will soon return. Here is a link to a recent (September 28, 2014) NY Post article:

Andy Kaufman Alive!

This isn't the first time there was talk of Andy's return. Just last year his brother said he was still alive, only to admit that he had been a victim of a hoax.  There is a full entry on snopes.com that talks about all of the "Andy is alive" rumors.  They declare that Andy is, in fact, still dead.

Monday Monday

The new school year is upon us, and so starts a new season of blogging.  This year I have opted to save some trees, so all my ERA students are required to create and maintain a blog in place of the written journal notebooks I used to hand out. They have to write 1 entry a week, and so I am joining them and will be posting on a weekly basis here. So let the blogging begin!

My last post was on Net Neutrality, and it's still a major concern. Last week was the "Net Slow Down" where web sites and companies like Netflix  posted graphics of the loading icon to illustrate the impact of a slower Internet.  I have heard people complain about how slow their computers were because of this, but the problem is these were only graphics and did nothing to actually slow the Net down.  Perhaps increased concern added net traffic, but all I know for sure is that the FCC comments site was overwhelmed and crashed again. If you want more information about what happened, This Site has some numbers and info.

Here are some tweets by members of congress:

The solution to this problem is simple. The FCC MUST reclassify Internet Service Providers as “common carriers” and enact the network neutrality rules we need under Title II of the Communications Act.