DailyNewsGems

Twist and Shout: The Rocky Relationship of Lennon and McCartney

I devoured Ian Leslie’s tender, beautifully written book: “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs” about the relationship, at times tumultuous relationship, between Paul McCartney and John Lennon, the Mozart and Beethoven of the rock world.

It was unusual to have two individuals with equal talent in the same band, both originating from a port city of Liverpool, England, near the Irish Sea.

But the stars were perfectly aligned when the band was formed in 1960. By the time the Beatles officially dissolved in April, 1970, they had 20 number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the most number-one songs in the United States, according to Billboard. They additionally had 34 songs reach the top 10.

Between October, 1962 and May, 1970, McCartney and Lennon co-wrote approximately 180 songs together. Quite an accomplishment.

The best way to understand the McCartney/Lennon relationship is to think of it as a marriage made in heaven, but the more successful they became, the more the romance fizzled and complications ensued.

They both seemed perfectly in sync (they even finished each other’s sentences), until gradually their bond became more of a rivalry instead of a band joined at the hip.

Leslie does exceptional work in chronicling how these two went about writing a song. They were like two gifted painters at their palette, refining the coloring, texture and rhythm of a song so that the words and the music blended together in perfect unison.

It was nothing less than mystic when they were in the studio aided by the musical prowess of producer, arranger, and conductor, George Martin, the Fifth Beatle.

Leslie argues when McCartney wrote “Yesterday” in 1966, it marked a turning point in the band, when McCartney assumed more creative control of the band.

At that point, Lennon became more insecure that Paul didn’t need him as much. He became jealous of McCartney’s charisma, his panache with women, his musical talents, etc.

Like a bad marriage, Lennon and McCartney grew apart. They never complimented each other on their songs; they were now driven by who can outdo the other.

Yoko Ono, the author claims, filled a void for Lennon. The more insecure Lennon became, the more he relied on Ono to fill an empty space in his life, once filled by McCartney.

By the time the band split, the acrimony between Lennon and McCartney reached fever pitch, their animus: bitter, scathing, hurtful remarks, was usually on display in certain songs or in interviews with rock critics.

Slowly, their vicious feud began to thaw and they had some brief phone conversations and face to face exchanges.

When Lennon was killed, McCartney always regretted they weren’t able to patch things up completely.

They were best friends, after all, soul mates, who did love each other.

John's last words to Paul were: “Think about me every now and then, old friend.”

--Bill Lucey
[email protected]
July 5, 2025

Prohibiting International Students from Harvard Hurts us All

A rally in support of international students held at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. on Tuesday.

Photo Credit: Lucy Lu for The New York Times

***

After President Trump’s scorched earth policy against Harvard University, freezing critical federal funding and attempting to block the enrollment of international students, maybe we should be grateful 47 isn’t running Major League Baseball.

At least, not yet.

From Trump’s vantage point, he believes that Harvard had too many foreign students “because we have Americans that want to go there.”

What if we apply that same twisted logic to major league baseball? What if MLB limits the number of international players in the United States, so that more Americans can play in MLB? Baseball is, after all, “America’s National Pastime.”

In this season alone, imagine baseball without, arguably, the greatest hitter on the planet, Shohei Ohtani (born in Mizusawa, Iwate, Japan), third baseman, Jose Ramirez (born in the Dominican Republic), Mets slugger, Juan Soto (another Dominican), and Cuban born Yordan Alvarez, the Houston Astros left-fielder and DH?

265 internationally born players appeared on Opening Day rosters in MLB, representing 27.8% of all players, as well as 18 countries and territories outside of the 50 United States.

Baseball would undoubtedly be diluted of the best talent that baseball has to offer if the commissioner of baseball, Rob Manfred, clung to Donald Trump’s more Americans, less foreigners, ethos.

Why the president would deny entry into Harvard of some of the best and brightest the world has to offer is simply unfathomable. Such thinking is ludicrous.

Let us count the ways.

The reason elite universities in the United States maintain such a competitive edge in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is precisely because of international students attending universities in the U.S.

The latest data shows that in the STEM fields, over 45% of computer and math scientists with doctorates are foreign born.

Bear in mind that immigrants represent an exceedingly high proportion of entrepreneurs, patent filings, and STEM graduates. Over 75% of patents from top U.S. universities, in fact, come from foreign-born innovators.

What’s more, 99 % of the patents by foreign-born inventors were in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), an area where the U.S. is projected to face a shortfall of 230,000 qualified advanced-degree workers in the coming years.

So, why wouldn’t we welcome immigrants who have proficiency in the very fields we need to fill in order to stay competitive in the global age?

Nick Schulz of the American Enterprise Institute (a bipartisan research and advocacy organization) argues that foreign-born STEM graduates of U.S. universities are job creators.

“Every graduate with an advanced degree,” Schulz wrote, “working in a STEM-related field in the United States has been shown to create on average 2.62 additional jobs for native-born workers. Sending those people away doesn’t protect American jobs, it jeopardizes them.”

Harvard researchers explore how to use generative AI for student feedback

***

According to an article published in Forbes magazine, “firms founded by immigrants are 3.4% to 4.5% more likely to produce new technologies and less likely to use other existing technologies.”

In addition to developing new technologies and creating new patents in critical areas, which will allow the United States to stay ahead of its global competitors, why would the Trump administration curb the entry of international students into the United States when they contribute so much to the economy.

The Washington Post recently reported that international students contributed $44 billion to the U.S. economy in the 2023-2024 school year.

International students, it should be kept in mind, have to pay the full freight of college tuition at elite universities, like Harvard, and aren’t eligible for in-state tuition and other financial aid opportunities like domestic students have.

Aside from costly tuition, international students are also helping fuel the economy by spending on housing, restaurants, and other travel expenses.

According to NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, 82,000 international students who studied in Massachusetts contributed $3.9 billion to the economy, while California’s international students contributed $6.4 billion.

Such a loss of revenue would be shattering to universities like Harvard, which would find it exceedingly difficult to make up for the loss of revenue. Such a blow, could conceivably lead to cuts in advanced degree programs, research, and specialized personnel or educators.

Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, professor of political science and chair of religious studies at Northwestern University, said "the attempt to curtail or even shut down international student enrollment at U.S. universities is going to damage the U.S. economy not only in the tech sector but across a range of fields including medicine, law, and the arts and sciences. It is one of the most counterproductive moves the administration could make in terms of the long-term economic health and well-being of US citizens."

Trump, of course, argues (without proof) that the reason he is trimming international students is that a majority of them are instigators, spewing their antisemitism with pro-Palestinian mantras.

Trump told reporters that most international students are “troublemakers who can’t do basic math. How do they get into Harvard? Why are they there?”

It’s hard to believe such unsound thinking is coming from the president of the United States.

The logic of the vice president of the United States is even more ill-informed. J.D. Vance told Fox News that international students are "bad for the American dream for a lot of kids who want to go to a nice university and can’t because their spot was taken by a foreign student.”

If left to Trump and Vance, Harvard would no longer be an institution for the best and brightest the world has to offer.

Since 1901, 33 % of the country’s Nobel laureates have been immigrants; and in 2014, 40 percent of America’s doctoral degrees were awarded to noncitizens.

Trump and Vance, for reasons known only to themselves, can’t seem to connect the dots that the overall health of the U.S. economy prospers when higher skilled, specialized immigrants, are able to become integrated into the United States infrastructure.

Just think of where the country would be in the health care industry if it wasn’t for immigrants. 26% of U.S. physicians, 16% of Registered Nurses, and 39% of home health aides are foreign-born.

And, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, nearly 3 million immigrants were employed as health-care workers in 2023, accounting for 19 percent of the 15.9 million people in the United States in a health-care occupation.

In addition to the health care industry, the New American Economy, a bipartisan research and advocacy organization, wrote in a press release that “foreign-born inventors played significant roles in the fields of semiconductor device manufacturing (87 percent), information technology (84 percent), pulse or digital communications (83 percent), pharmaceutical drugs or drug compounds (79 percent) and optics (77 percent).”

Imagine, more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants, and yet Trump wants to raise the “need not apply” sign at the front door of Harvard.

A federal judge in Boston on Thursday has blocked, at least for now, the Trump administration order to bar Harvard from enrolling international students.

But the damage might be irreversible.

Many bright, enterprising international students, who thought about being educated in the United States, might pick up their marbles and look for other countries to acquire their degrees and contribute to the country's economy.

In fact, it might already be happening.

Institutions like Harvard are typically magnets for global talent. International graduates of Harvard, very often, stay in the United States and launch their own companies and develop their new technologies, which benefits the United States. A National Foundation for American Policy study found 55% of America’s startup companies valued at $1 billion or more had at least one immigrant founder.

But with the Trump administration determined to block talent from abroad from entering the country, other countries might begin to outstrip the U.S. in global might, especially in high-tech areas, like AI.

FWD.us report that since 2000, the U.S. has lost 20% of its share of the international student market to countries like Canada, the U.K. and Australia.

China is also reportedly taking strong measures with recruiting international students and foreign-born experts.

China is now well ahead of the U.S in patent applications; and in education, China has gone from having 27 universities in the top 500 in 2010 to 76 in 2020. The U.S., on the other hand, has dropped from 154 to 133.

Norway is yet another country, which has allocated money to lure away American scholars in high-tech areas.

Vivek Wadhwa, author, academic, and entrepreneur, tells me that "talented young people who once dreamed of studying and working in the U.S. are now questioning whether the opportunity is worth the uncertainty, hostility, and disruption."

"This has serious long-term consequences," Wadhwa points out. "International students have been the backbone of U.S. leadership in science and technology—especially in high-growth fields like AI. By targeting them, the Trump administration is dismantling the very foundation of America's innovation economy."

Can you imagine if the Trump administration restricted international baseball players from playing in MLB? That would just pave the way for countries like Japan, Canada, Mexico, and Latin America to open their arms to the best baseball players in the world, leaving baseball in America in the dust without much talent to speak of.

Harvard without international students would be like baseball without hot dogs and peanuts.

--Bill Lucey
[email protected]
May 31, 2025

A Book Extravaganza for Book Lovers

 

If it’s the weekend after Memorial Day, it must be time for the 77th annual Association for Continuing Education/Case Western Reserve University book sale.

The Book Sale began in 1946 as a book exchange, with local celebrities auctioning off books donated by members and friends.

To some, this might sound like just another hum drum pile of books event, but to passionate bibliophiles, this sale is like Christmas, mainly due to its reputation for having such an extensive range of high quality books and CDs to choose from at such a reasonable price. You’ll also come across out-of-print books, and books from estates, which are rare to find in this age.

Right on cue, the annual book sale on an unseasonably chilly afternoon in Cleveland, kicked off at 10 a.m. sharp on Saturday, May 31st and will run through Tuesday, June 3rd.

CWRU charged $20 for the early bird special from 10 a.m. until noon, but after that, the sale is absolutely free through Tuesday, June 3.

The only glitch this year is that the ACE/CWRU book sale isn’t being held at its traditional location, the Adelbert Gym, near the university. Due to the gym being renovated, the book sale moved to 3631 Perkins Avenue in Cleveland, at least for the time being.

The new location sparked frustration and minor annoyance for some patrons who had to get used to the limited space of books for sale compared with the wide-open space of the Adelbert Gym.

The books on display were only a quarter of the space they are normally accustomed to.

Sandy Melzer, co-director of the CWRU book sale understands the limited space available to patrons isn’t ideal, but it’s the best they can do given their financial constraints.

“Warehouse space is extremely expensive,” Melzer says. “This (Perkins warehouse) is an extremely cheap place in comparison. It doesn’t have the size we would have liked, but it has the price tag we can afford. Because as a non-profit, we don’t want to spend $4500 a month on warehouse space.”

The reaction from patrons to CWRU’s new home was a mixed bag; but most put up with the minor inconvenience. Just being around books and book lovers made it a worthwhile experience for many who made the trek to the Perkins Avenue warehouse.

Latoy Gaitor came from Troy, Michigan. “I came in town specifically for this,” Gaitor told me. “This was my first time. I loved the experience and will be back next year. I go to a lot of book sales and fairs, I’m a book collector for my own personal library. I enjoy being around book lovers.”

The first impression of Maggie Erady to the book sale was that it was very crowded. Still, it was a positive experience for the Bay Village resident. “I like to comb the rare and unusual books.” In addition to the CWRU book sale, Erady likes to attend the ongoing Bay Village book sales.

Richard Adams from Strongsville wasn’t a fan of the new location. “It was too small.” He doesn’t think he’ll come back next year. It was so awkward elbowing and positioning himself to peruse the books that he simply gave up after a while. Adams is an avid book lover and attends, on average, about 10 book sales every year throughout the city.

Lauren Lese, a local resident, said she came last year to the CWRU book sale for the first time. Her impressions? “The space is limited and hard for people to get by, but it looks like they still have enough space for the books, so that’s the most important thing. “

Last year, Lese came on the last day and quickly discovered there wasn’t much to choose from. So, she and her partner decided to plunk down $20 for the early bird special this year.

Winston Crausaz, another local resident, had a rather dim view of the book sale. “I come every year. There’s not much here. I probably won’t come back next year. “On the positive note, Crausaz thought the selection of books was amazingly diverse. “It was only now and then that I saw a book that I’ve actually read,” Crausaz said.

I bumped into another gentleman from Cuyahoga Falls, Patrick, (who didn’t want to give me his last name) who told me “I’ve been coming here for the last five to six years. I love it. It feels a bit smaller this year.”

The CWRU book sale had a particular keen interest for Tom Kaschalk who is a new author. Kaschalk is from Seven Hills, but grew up on Cleveland’s southeast side. He tells me that he still frequents a number of bookstores, but doesn’t come across many book sales anymore. “The experience to this sale” Kaschalk says, “has been awesome. I have a bagful of books so far.”

What makes the ACE/CWRU so unique is that it typically entertains visitors from Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Indiana, and Illinois (mostly Chicago). Those that come in are mostly book dealers. Sandy Melzer said “they don’t mind paying the $20 early bird fee (from 10 a.m.-noon) which gives them a chance to buy up tons of stuff to resell at their stores.”

And unlike previous years, book lovers who won’t be able to make it until Monday or Tuesday, take heart. Because the Perkins Avenue warehouse isn’t large enough to handle all the books, they most likely will be rolling out a fresh batch of books on Monday and Tuesday.

And while some book lovers might be frustrated by the limited space this year, they should exercise patience and understanding. All proceeds, after all, are going to a worthy cause.

Proceeds from the book sale, according to Loraine Nelson, Program Administrator, enables ACE to offer low-cost programs throughout the year: Lecture Day in the fall, Book Discussion Day in the spring, a series of Authors Luncheons in the summer, and special tours of special interest in the Cleveland area.

For me personally, the ACE/CWRU book sale is always a pleasurable experience, which I look forward to every year. While, like others, I found little space to maneuver in some isles, especially the European history section, I did come across some real gems in the reference section, my favorite section, because you never know what you’ll stumble on.

This year, a number of jewels ended up my bag, including “The Illustrated History of the 19th Century”, “Hamlet” (deconstructed by Yale University scholar Harold Bloom), “Word Origins and Their Romantic Stories”, “Joy of Words” (selections of literature, humor, history, wisdom, etc.), “Tales from the Ballpark” by Mike Shannon and “A Dictionary of Catchphrases.”

I additionally love the ACE/CWRU book sale, because it gives me a chance to chat with the many volunteers who have given up so much of their valuable time to help book lovers have a memorable experience.

If you come, please be kind to them. They deserve your respect.

Happy hunting!

--Bill Lucey
[email protected]
May 31, 2025

The Very Best of Jimmy Breslin

What a way to relive that legendary Jimmy Breslin swagger!

Dan Barry (columnist for the New York Times) did a magnificent job in putting together a compilation of Jimmy Breslin columns (67 in all), along with the books, “How the Good Guys Finally Won” (when Breslin recounted the sweltering summer of 1974 of the Watergate scandal and the impeachment proceedings) and “The Short Sweet Dreams of Eduardo Gutierrez,” which reports on the life and death of an undocumented Mexican construction worker, Eduardo Gutiérrez.

I originally bought the book, thinking it would be a great reference book in case I had to access a Breslin column; but I ended up reading it from cover to cover.

What’s nice about this volume is all the columns I never read by Breslin, such as the “Old Indian’s Last Stand,” a profile of Early Wynn, age 43, a right-handed pitcher and his pursuit of his 300^th win.

Breslin's blow-by-blow account of 22 year-old Cassius Clay dethroning the heavyweight boxing champ, Sonny Liston, in Miami Beach, Fla.,was epic. It was considered the "biggest upset in the history of boxing."

A great deal was made of Breslin’s profile of the $3.01 an hour gravedigger for John F. Kennedy, Clifton Pollard; but equally as compelling was “Death in Emergency Room One” in which Breslin captures the painful moments when Jacqueline Kennedy, with blood splattered over her dress, holding back tears, helped Father Huber deliver the final blessing to her slain husband. “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord”, Father Huber said. “And let perpetual light shine upon him, the First Lady responded.

Also, heart-rending was the eulogy he published after the death of his first wife, Rosemary Dattolico in 1981. “As was said of another aristocrat such as this one, “Earth received an honored guest.”

His column clubbing with Joe Namath in 1969 was highly entertaining, leaving little to wonder why they called Namath, “Broadway Joe.”

One of the infectious charms of Jimmy Breslin is his insatiable ego, which, at times, was bigger than the Grand Canyon.

His correspondence with the infamous “Son of Sam” is printed here, about the serial killer David Berkowitz, who terrorized New York City between July 1976 and July 1977, which resulted in the killing of six people and wounding seven others.

Someone once asked Breslin why he thinks Berkowitz wrote to him? Jimmy said, “Who else would he write to" ? Of course, he’s going to write to the King of New York when it comes to column writing.

When he pounded out his John Lennon column under a tight deadline in December, 1981, he was called at his Forest Hills, Queens home by the editors at 11:20 pm. He dashed out of his home, raced to the Roosevelt Hospital, then to the Dakota (Lennon’s residence), interviewing some policeman, and filed his column at 1:30 a.m., making deadline. Breslin noted, “I don’t think there is anyone else who can do this kind of work this quickly.”

When the brash, tough talking New Yorker won a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1986, someone asked him if he was surprised, he won? “The only thing I’m surprised about is that I haven’t won 4 or 5 Pulitzer’s by now” Breslin deadpanned.

For those profiling Breslin in the future, Barry put together a superb chronology of Breslin’s highly celebrated career, from his birth in 1928 in a “sooty neighborhood” in Queens to his final column in 2012, when he wrote about the capsizing of the French passenger liner Normandie after it caught fire in New York Harbor in 1942.

Breslin died on March 19, 2017. He was 88.

Photo Credit: AP

***

As one can tell after reading these columns, Breslin wasn’t interested in writing about royalty, U.S. presidents, greedy billionaires, or the one percent of society.  One of his columns was “Trump, The Master of the Steal.” (written in June, 1990).

He was more interested in railing against the mayors of New York, profiling the plight of the less fortunate, and sticking up for the forgotten souls who were left to fend for themselves in the dust heaps of history.

After reading such a broad swath of Breslin’s work, it’s little wonder that Jimmy towered over New York, much like Mike Royko did in Chicago.

With social media and the internet polluting the news cycle, I forgot how captivating, skillfully crafted newspaper columns used to be written.

--Bill Lucey

April 12, 2025

[email protected]

Al Pacino Bares His Soul in "Sonny Boy" A Memoir

I thought I knew all there is to know about Al Pacino, known affectionally as “Sonny Boy’’ by his mother and later friends of his.

After all, not only have I’ve seen most of his epic movies, I’ve been watching the Academy Award winner in television interviews for years, decades even.

What I especially like about Pacino’s television interviews is that he rarely discusses frivolous topics like, for example, being at a Hollywood cocktail party with Martin Scorsese. Instead, he usually discusses how he plies his trade by dissecting the inner-workings of an actor and how he approaches a scene. By getting into the weeds, discussing his own acting methods, the audience comes away with the added benefit of understanding what makes actors tick.

The last really good interview I saw Pacino in was on the Charlie Rose show in 2015.

Here in “Sonny Boy: A Memoir,” Pacino puts away discussing acting methods so he can bare his soul, recounting the good, the bad, and the ugly in an acting career that spans almost 60 years now.

Before meeting with worldwide success in The Godfather (1972), when director Francis Ford Coppola cast him, a relatively unknown actor, over Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, and Robert De Niro to play the role of Michael Corleone, Pacino, a high school dropout, cut his teeth learning the mechanics of his trade at the Herbert Berghof Studio (120 Bank Street) in Greenwich Village. It was at the Berghof Studio where Pacino met another struggling actor, Martin Sheen. They both shared an apartment together in the South Bronx for a while.

Later, Pacino would hone his acting skills at the Lee Strasberg Actors Studio, a membership organization for professional actors, theatre directors and playwrights located on West 44th Street in Hell's Kitchen in New York City. This is where he met another young aspiring actor, Dustin Hoffman.

The Actor’s Studio helped Pacino pay his $50 rent from the James Dean Memorial Fund and it is where he was able to perform Shakespeare and Eugene O'Neill, giving him confidence, enough to stay focused, give up menial jobs and concentrate solely on acting.

As much as he learned from the Berghof Studio and the Actor’s Studio, and from his mentor Charlie Laughton (who introduced him to his favorite poets and novelists), it was Marlon Brando, who, according to Pacino, was the “influence, the force, the originator” of the method acting sweeping through New York in the 1950s and 1960s.

According to Pacino, there was a triumvirate of actors who were the originators of this movement: Montgomery Clift, James Dean, and Brando.

"Clift had the beauty and the soul, the vulnerability. Dean was like a sonnet, compact and economical, able to do so much with the merest gesture or nuance. And if Dean was a sonnet, then Brando was an epic poem. He had the looks. He had the charisma. He had the talent,” Pacino so eloquently wrote.

For the record, Pacino’s first professional screen debut was in an episode of the TV police drama, N.Y.P.D. in 1968.

Al Pacino as a youngster, with his mother, Rose Gerard Pacino

Source: "Sonny Boy: A Memoir" by Al Pacino

***

He was born Alfredo James Pacino on April 25, 1940, in New York City to Salvatore and Rose Pacino. His parents split when he was only two; leaving his mother in her early 20s the hefty responsibility of finding a home for young Al and herself while supporting herself doing menial jobs and factory work.

It was a mighty tall order since his mother wasn’t getting any financial support from Al’s father, Salvatore; and there were no court ordered alimony financial assistance either at the time. They lived in furnished rooms in East Harlem before moving in with her parents in the South Bronx.

Though he lost his mother when he was only 22 years old from an apparent suicide, Pacino sprinkles readers with tender memories of his mother throughout his memoirs, as if she never left.

His mother first attempted suicide when young Al was just six years old. He raced home one afternoon, only to see his own mother wheeled out of their Bronx apartment. 16 years later, she tried it again. Al, however, believes, though prone to bouts of depression, she died choking on her pills and not from an intentional suicide.

Pacino wrote that his mother, Rose’s, real tragedy was poverty. She couldn’t get out of the mud.

Interestingly, it was his mother who gave her only son two gifts that served him well and blazed a path for him to meet with success later in life.

First, she frequently brought Al to the Dover Theater, a two-story building on Boston Road in the Morrisania section of the Bronx to watch movies from the balcony. Though Al was young at the time, the movies left a deep impression on him and he when he got home-without any television or playmates-he would often act out the scenes. “I learned at an early age,” Pacino wrote, “to make friends with my imagination.”

The second gift his mother gave him was in steering him away from some bad influences he surrounded himself with in the neighborhood; namely, Petey, Cliffy, Bruce, friends of his, who were getting into scrapes with local police authorities and often causing havoc on every street corner in the South Bronx. Though his mother struggled with depression, she had great instincts and insisted Al stay away from them, his only connection to the world. For the longest time, he hated his mother for this.

Petey, Cliffy, and Bruce, his three closest friends, eventually all died from heroin overdoses. If Al's mother hadn't intervened, her only son could have met the same fate.

It wasn't until Pacino was 52-years old and staring himself in the mirror, thinking about his acceptance speech he was about to deliver at an awards dinner, did he realize, as if being struck by a bolt of lightning, that the only reason he was standing here was due to his mother.

One of the benefits about writing your memoirs is setting the record straight about some misconceptions that have been erroneously floating around for decades.

Many have believed that Al Pacino snubbed the 1973 Academy Awards ceremony because he was upset that he was in the best supporting role category and not in the best actor category with Marlon Brando for The Godfather (1972).

Pacino makes it abundantly clear that wasn’t the case.

“The real truth,” Pacino says, “is I was overwhelmed with the newness of this. I was young, younger than even my years, and I was afraid to go. If you want to be honest--and I don't know if I do--I think I was playing the Garbo card. I was reclusive and I just wanted to be alone.”

Pacino did attend (though he might have wished he didn’t) the 1974 Oscar ceremony, when he was nominated, once again, this time in the best actor category for Godfather II.

On the night of the ceremony, Pacino was drinking heavily and popping Valium. When he got out of the shower, he thought he would go with the wet look. Marty Bergman, his agent and producer, took one look at him and told him he was an idiot and started frantically blow-drying his hair, which made his hair rise higher and higher, looking like he was wearing Abe Lincoln’s stovetop top hat. While he was in his seat at the ceremony, Pacino was still popping Valium.

He never prepared a speech because he didn't think he had a chance against the likes of Jack Nicholson, Jack Lemmon, Robert Redford and Marlon Brando. But then he had a terrible thought. What if they give me the statue just to get back at me?

So, Al started shaking, he was pumped with Valium and scared to death of winning. Just when his anxiety reached fevered pitch--he heard the words: “Jack Lemmon for Save the Tiger.” (1973). Pacino wrote that he just smiled and screamed inside with joy. If you watch the presentation on YouTube , Pacino looked cool, calm, and collected, but he was anything but.

The well-seasoned New York actor additionally comes clean on why he agreed to do Godfather III (1990), a film that was met with widespread criticism, many wondering why it was even made at all since it came 16 years after Godfather II.

Pacino admitted he did it solely for the money, because he was flat broke. The film’s director, Francis Ford Coppola, did it for the same reason, he was broke as well.

Pacino said, among other things, Godfather III suffered a severe loss without Robert Duvall, who played the consigliere, Tom Hagen, in Godfather I & II. He never understood why Duvall didn’t want to do Godfather III.

I could have told Al why Duvall refused.

In a 1991 interview on the NBC show “Later” (with Bob Costas) Duvall said that if they had offered him two or three times less than what they offered Al Pacino, it wouldn't have been ideal, but I would have accepted it. When they offered Pacino five times more than what they offered him, it became unacceptable and he refused to be in it.

In describing the many highs of his career, which included nine Academy Award nominations (winning one for “Scent of a Woman” in 1993), Pacino writes about the not so pleasant moments of his career, which usually centered on being broke and falling prey to excessive drinking.

His drinking became out of control after “Dog Day Afternoon” (1976), when fame became too “intense” for him and only got through the day with heavy amounts of alcohol and drugs until his manager and producer, Marty Bergman, finally convinced him he had to give up the sauce. Al surrendered. He started therapy soon after realizing Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) wasn’t for him. From the motion picture “Bobby Deerfield” (1977) on, Pacino had licked the booze.

Pacino never married, but he has four children with three different women. In “Sonny Boy”, Pacino lists most of the actresses he was dating from Jill Clayburgh to Tuesday Weld.

Two times in his career, Pacino lost heaps of money because of crooked accountants; the first time was in the late 1980s, the second time was in 2011, when his accountant was arrested and charged with running a Ponzi scheme and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. “I had fifty million dollars and then I had nothing,” Pacino wrote.

As a result, arguably the most celebrated actor in the world, now in his 70s, was forced to do some really bad films that he declined to mention, just for the cash.

After reading “Sonny Boy’’ I certainly had a stronger appreciation of how much effort Pacino puts into movies once he commits to a project.

During the filming of “...And Justice for All” (1979), there was a courtroom scene in which he wasn’t happy with after seeing the final edit and insisted it had to be redone. He really went to battle with the producers and the director before they agreed to the reshoot.

That happened again in Scarface (1983), involving the famous scene of Tony Montano completely plastered in a black-tie restaurant. The director (Brian De Palma), for budgetary reasons, wanted that scene shot in a Miami nightclub instead of an aristocratic, snobbish restaurant. Pacino exploded and said they were ruining the poignancy of the scene. Studio execs finally agreed to do it Pacino’s way.

And in Godfather II (1974) Pacino wasn’t happy with the original script and started typing out rewrites on his own before the script was collaboratively redone to his liking.

Al also did a number of artsy films, such as “Wilde Salomé” and “Looking for Richard” (both docudramas), for next to nothing or even pouring some of his own money into the project because he believed in the project so much, which might be the reason he ran into cash flow problems a couple times in his adult life.

Pacino was nominated for an Academy Award nine times, winning once for "Scent of a Woman" (1993)

Photo Credit: Sky News

***

What I admired most about Pacino’s career is that he never gave up on the theater; he started in the theater and to this day is still doing theater or stage productions in one form or another, from Richard III to Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. He could have coasted along, quite comfortably, eliciting big paydays doing motion pictures from major studios, but his attachment to the theater was too great.

At age 84, is there a final act for this South Bronx actor?

He’s hoping to put together a very ambitious film adaptation of King Lear. Pacino mentions he has the director, the screenwriter, the producer, and himself, of course; what he doesn’t have is the financing, not yet anyway.

What a fitting ending that would be to his distinguished career. If there was any actor who was every inch a king, it’s Alfredo James Pacino, Sonny Boy.

--Bill Lucey
[email protected]
March 15, 2025

What to Know About Ukraine

A man walks through the destroyed historic city center of Mariupol, Ukraine

Photo Credit: Maximilian Clarke/LightRocket via Getty Images

***

Since the Ukraine conflict continues to grow more ominous by the hour, I compiled some historical facts about the Eastern European country.

Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, was founded about 1,500 years ago by proto-Ukrainian Slavic tribes.

Historically, in December 1922, Ukraine together with Russia and Belarus, and Trans-Caucasian Federation were the founding members of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine is home to more than 100 different national or ethnic groups.

Ukraine's population is overwhelmingly Christian; the vast majority - up to two thirds - identify themselves as Orthodox.

Since the 17th century, Ukraine was divided among three Empires - by Austrians in the West, by Turks in the South, and by Russians in the East.

The Ukrainian national anthem is called ‘Shche ne vmerla Ukraina’ which translates in English to ‘Ukraine’s glory has not yet perished’

Ukraine’s name derives from the Old East Slavic word "ukraina" meaning "borderland or march (militarized border region)" and began to be used extensively in the 19th century; originally Ukrainians referred to themselves as Rusyny (Rusyns, Ruthenians, or Ruthenes), an endonym derived from the medieval Rus state (Kyivan Rus)

At the end of the World War I, Ukraine was divided into two: Western Ukraine became part of Poland and Eastern Ukraine, the larger part was absorbed by into the Soviet Union and renamed the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Both governments imposed their own language and government.

The Second World War claimed the lives of 5.5 million Ukrainians, including at least one million Ukrainian Jews.

Most Ukrainians live in cities (67.2 %). The largest metropolitan area in Ukraine is Kiev (3.2 million), Kharkiv (1.7 million), Donetsk (1.7 million), Dnipropetrovsk (1.5 million), and Odessa (1.1 million). The largest ethnic group are ethnic Ukrainians (78%) and ethnic Russians (17 %).

The state language is Ukrainian, an east Slavic language that uses the Cyrillic alphabet, composed of a mixture of Latin, Greek, and Slavic letters.

The famous Carol of the Bells Christmas carol is based on a Ukrainian folk tune.

In the 8th-10th centuries, parts of what is now Ukraine were ruled by the Khazars, a Turkic tribe which converted to Judaism.

The territory of Ukraine became the site of almost constant warfare between Poles, Muscovites, Ottomans, Tatars, and Ukrainian Cossacks in the 16th and 17th centuries. According to Alexander Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark, “the subsequent incorporation of most Ukrainian territories into the Muscovite State and its successor, the Russian Empire, cut off Ukraine from its roots in Europe and had ruinous consequences for Ukrainian religion, language, and culture, which were progressively Russified or banned.”

During the 16th and 17th centuries, tens of thousands of Ukrainians were captured annually and shipped to and sold in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman empire, as slaves.

Ukraine experienced a major cultural, political, and economic revival in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when the charismatic Ivan Mazepa served as leader of an autonomous Cossack polity known as the Hetmanate—until his defeat by Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava in 1709.

Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Shevchenko, was born a serf in 1814 in a small village south of Kyiv.

Ukraine was the birthplace of many prominent Jews—among many others the writers Joseph Roth, Paul Celan, Bruno Schulz, Sholom Aleichem, Vasily Grossman, Isaac Babel, and Shmuel Agnon. Zionist leader Vladimir Zhabotinsky and former Israeli Prime Minster Golda Meir were also born in Ukraine, as was the founder of Hasidism, Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer.

Twentieth-century Ukraine was the site of two genocides—the Holodomor of 1932-1933, during which millions of Ukrainians were mercilessly killed in an artificial famine engineered by Joseph Stalin and his henchmen, and the Holocaust, which took the lives of millions of Jews. Ukraine suffered 15 million “excess” deaths between 1914 and 1948, due to wars, genocides, and Stalin’s repressive policies.

Ukrainians formed the majority of Soviet political prisoners; they staged revolts in the concentration camps of the Soviet Gulag; they fought bravely against Stalin and Hitler; they resisted Muscovite and Russian imperialism for centuries.

The Ukrainian diaspora in the United States consists of about 1.25 million people, who, while concentrated in the formerly industrial Northeast and Midwest, are found in all 50 states.

Prominent Americans of Ukrainian descent include astronaut Heide Marie Stefanyshyn-Piper, actors Jack Palance, Natalie Wood, Vera Farmiga, and Liev Schreiber, policymaker Paula Dobriansky, Metropolitan Opera singer Paul Plishka, football great Bronko Nagurski, economist Greg Mankiw, inventor Igor Sikorsky, journalist Mike Royko, and writer Chuck Palahniuk.

The first literary tradition of the Ukrainian language was created by Ivan Kotliarevskyi at the end of 18th century and developed at the beginning of the 19th century by the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevechnko. According to Sergei Zhuk, Professor of History at Ball State University, since a publication of Shevchnko's collection of poetry Kobzar in 1940, Ukraine witnessed a rise of nationalist movement which eventually untied Western part (Austrian) and Eastern (Russian) part of Ukrainians in one large patriotic movement, resulting in an independent state in 1991.

A peaceful mass protest, the "Orange Revolution" in 2004 forced the authorities to overturn a rigged presidential election and to allow a new internationally monitored vote that swept into power a reformist slate under Viktor YUSHCHENKO.

Ukraine celebrated its 30th anniversary of independence in 2021.

--Bill Lucey

[email protected]

March 6, 2025

Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS); Sergei Zhuk, professor of History at Ball State University; Alexander Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark; Monica White, Associate Professor of Russian & Slavonic Studies at the University of Nottingham; Robert W. Orttung Research Director, Sustainable George Washington University Research Professor of International Affairs (IERES); “A History of Ukraine: It’s Land and Peoples” by Paul R. Magocsi

MLB Hall of Fame Balloting Snubs

Ted Williams and Casey Stengel pose with their Hall of Fame plaques in Cooperstown, N.Y. , July, 1966

Photo Credit: AP

***

I agree, wholeheartedly, that Ichiro Suzuki should have been voted into the Hall of Fame ballot unanimously, but so too, should the following legends.

Just Remember:

• In 1953, Joe DiMaggio was passed over on his first appearance on the Hall of Fame ballot, coming in eighth with 117 votes out of a possible 264. Interestingly, it wouldn’t be until 1955 (his third try) when Joltin Joe’ was finally elected to the Hall of Fame with 223 out of a possible 251 votes.

• Mr. Chicago, Ernie Banks was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977 with only 83.81 percent of the vote (321 votes on 383 ballots).

• Jackie Robinson entered the Hall with only 77.5 percent of the vote in 1962 (124 of 160), just 2.5 percent over the required 75 percent for induction. In that same class, Cleveland Indians flame thrower, Bob Feller, “Rapid Robert,” received 150 out of 160 votes, 93.75 percent.

• Willie Mays was snubbed by 23 voters in 1979 (94.68 percent); and a whopping 52 members didn’t think Sandy Koufax was worthy of the Hall, giving the Dodger southpaw 86.87 percent of the vote in 1972.

• “The Splendid Splinter,” Ted Williams received only 282 of 302 votes in 1966, giving him 93.4 percent of the vote.

• 11 writers, if you can imagine that, left Babe Ruth, “The Sultan of Swat’’ off their HOF ballots, giving him 95.13 percent of the vote.

• Hank Aaron, who belted 755 home runs in his celebrated career, earned 97.8 percent of the vote with nine members of the Baseball Writers Association opting not to vote for him on the 1982 Hall of Fame ballot.

• Ty Cobb collected 222 of a possible 226 votes, a 98.2 percentage.

Knowing these greats were far from unanimous, I think we can live with one sports writer deciding not to vote for Ichiro, as exceptional as he was.

 

--Bill Lucey

January 23, 2025

[email protected] 

Source: Baseball Reference

Presidential Inaugurations: Feats Facts and Historic Firsts

Due to cold temperatures, Ronald Reagan, the 40th U.S. President, delivered his inaugural address in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

Photo Credit: AP

***

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” novelist John Steinbeck wrote in his 1937 masterpiece.

Apparently, the best laid plans of mice and U.S. presidents on Inauguration Day can also go awry.

President-elect Donald Trump announced on social media Friday that his inauguration on Monday will be moved indoors, due to the bone-chilling temperatures and howling winds that is expected to descend on the nation’s capital.

Such unfortunate news comes as a disappointing shock to more than 250,000 ticketed guests that were expected to view the ceremony from the Capitol grounds.

The interior of the Capitol Rotunda will accommodate VIP guests and other dignitaries, but space will be extremely limited.

Reportedly, only 96 people were invited into the Rotunda January 21, 1985 for Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration, when temperatures in D.C. dropped to minus-4 degrees (a record for the date) and only reached 7 degrees at noon.

Alternatively, the Capital One Arena, a downtown D.C. stadium with a capacity of 20,000, will screen the swearing-in live and host the presidential parade, Trump announced.

The 47th U.S. president was hoping to decorate his inauguration with mountains of pomp and pageantry, including being the first president to invite world leaders to the ceremony. Argentine President Javier Milei confirmed he’ll be in attendance.

“America the Beautiful,” will be sung by country singer, Carrie Underwood, accompanied by the Armed Forces Chorus and the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club.

The last seven presidential inaugurations, since George H.W. Bush in 1989, have had one or two members of the clergy offering prayers and readings, but Trump’s inauguration is scheduled to have six.

The former New York real estate mogul and reality TV star will be sworn in with two Bibles – one that Abraham Lincoln used at his 1861 inauguration, and a personal one given to him by his mother.

According to The New York Times, Trump raised more than $170 million for his inauguration, a record amount.

Despite the change of plans, neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail shall keep Donald Trump from being inaugurated on January 20, 2025.

At Richard M. Nixon's second inauguration, January 20, 1973, flags were flown at half-staff in honor of Harry S. Truman, the 33rd U.S. President who died on December 26, 1972.

Photo Credit: AP

***

So, as we inch closer to the inauguration, I compiled some feats, facts, and historic firsts from previous inaugurations.

• Article II, Section 1, clause 8 of the Constitution requires the President to take an oath of office.

• The President is required to recite a specific oath under the Constitution. Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution spells out the presidential oath: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

• The Vice President takes a different oath.

• Trump, a Presbyterian, plans to attend a private pre-inaugural prayer service with his family at St. John’s Episcopal Church, located a block from the White House.

• Prior to Donald Trump beating Kamala Harris, November, 2024, Democrat Grover Cleveland was the only president to serve nonconsecutive terms, from 1885 to 1889, and from 1893 to 1897. Trump served as the 45th U.S. President from 2017-2021.

• On December 30, President Joe Biden announced that in honor of the death of the 39th U.S. President, Jimmy Carter, December 29, 2024, he was directing that all flags of the United States be displayed at half-staff at the White House and on all public buildings and grounds for a period of 30 days from the day of his death.

• Despite Biden's proclamation, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced, recently, that the flags at the Capitol will fly at full-staff to celebrate Donald Trump's inauguration. They will then return to half-staff after the inauguration.

• When Richard M. Nixon was sworn in for a second time on January 20, 1973 at the East Portico of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., flags were flown at half-staff in honor of former President Harry S. Truman, who died on December 26, 1972.

• March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson became the first President to be inaugurated at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., in a room now known as the “Old Supreme Court Chamber.”

• Presidents are not required to swear the oath on a Bible, though it's been a custom since George Washington’s inauguration, 1789.

• Rather than a bible, John Quincy Adams and Franklin Pierce placed their hands on a constitutional law book during their swearing in ceremony.

• After the first inauguration of George Washington was held April 30, 1789, his second was held March 4, 1793, and from that time on, March 4 was established as the official Inauguration Day.

• The 20th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1933, moved the date of the inauguration from March 4 to January 20th.

• Several bills were introduced in the 95th and 96th Congresses (1977-1980) to make Inauguration Day a nationwide public holiday, but no further action was taken on any of those proposals.

• In 1909, Helen Taft became the first woman to accompany her husband, William Howard Taft, back to the White House as First Lady.

• On March 4, 1921, President Warren G. Harding became the first president to ride to and from his inauguration in an automobile.

• The first inaugural ball held on inauguration day at Long's Hotel in Washington, D.C., was in 1809 to honor President James Madison.

• For his second inauguration in 1905, Theodore Roosevelt wore one of Abraham Lincoln’s rings.

• President Howard Taft holds two physical distinctions: He was America’s heaviest president, weighing more than 300 pounds. He was also the last president to sport facial hair, his signature handlebar mustache.

• Chief Justice John Marshall, the longest serving chief justice in U.S. history (1801-1835), administered the presidential oath of office nine times.

• When Franklin Pierce was inaugurated March 4, 1853, he became the only president to “affirm” rather than “swear” the office of the president.

• Theodore Roosevelt, sworn in after the death of President McKinley in 1901, was the youngest president at 42. Joe Biden, age 78, was the oldest president to assume office in 2021 before being eclipsed by Donald Trump on January 20, 2025. Trump is 78, a few months older than Biden.

• Most outgoing presidents accompany their successor to the inauguration, a tradition formally begun by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren in 1837.

• In 1801, President John Adams did not attend the inauguration of his successor, Thomas Jefferson. Others, including Andrew Johnson (1869), John Quincy Adams (1829), and Richard Nixon (1974) also didn’t attend their successor’s swearing in.

• Two others, Martin Van Buren (1841) and Woodrow Wilson (1921), were inside the U.S. Capitol signing last-minute legislation but did not attend the public ceremony outside.

• Thomas Jefferson was the first to be sworn in as President in Washington, D.C., March 4, 1801.

• James Buchanan’s (1857) was the first to be photographed.

• William McKinley’s (1897) the first to be recorded by a movie camera.

• Herbert Hoover’s (1929) the first to be on a talking newsreel.

• Calvin Coolidge’s (1925) the first to be broadcast by radio.

• Harry Truman’s (1949) the first to be televised.

• Jimmy Carter’s (1977) the first to feature solar panel heating.

• Bill Clinton’s (1997), the first to be live streamed over the internet.

• Abraham Lincoln’s parade in 1865 was the first to include African Americans.

• Woodrow Wilson’s was the first to include women in 1917.

• January 20, 1965: First use of a bullet-proofed, closed limousine.

• The shortest inauguration speech? George Washington said a mere 135 words after his second inauguration in 1793. The longest? William Henry Harrison, March 4, 1841, spoke for almost two hours (8,445 words).

• Martin Van Buren, March 4, 1853, was the first president to deliver inaugural address without referring to notes.

• Sarah T. Hughes, U.S. District Judge of the Northern District of Texas, became the first woman to administer the oath November 22, 1963.

• August 3, 1923: Oath of office of Calvin Coolidge was given by the president's father, a Vermont Justice of the Peace, after the death of Warren Harding.

• In 1817, James Monroe, the 5th U.S. president, became the first to give an Inaugural Address to an assembled public crowd.

• After his inauguration, Andrew Jackson, who was regarded as the "man of the people" opened the White House to all Americans. Reportedly, a mob of about 20,000 people lumbered through the official residence, breaking and stealing items and leaving mud on furniture.

• James Madison, March 4, 1809, set the precedent of using the United States Marine Band for his inaugural ball.

• John Adams, March 4, 1797, became the first president to receive the oath from the Chief Justice of the United States (Oliver Ellsworth).

• The first inauguration to take place on East Portico of the Capitol was for Andrew Jackson in 1829.

• The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, states that no president can be elected to that role more than twice.

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1945 inauguration took place during the Second World War and adopted wartime butter and sugar rations. White House cook Henrietta Nesbitt served simple unfrosted cakes to guests.

• At the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy January 20, 1961, Robert Frost became the first poet to read at a presidential inauguration. Bill Clinton in 1993 and 1997, Barack Obama in 2009 and 2013, and Joe Biden in 2021—additionally featured poets at their inaugurations.

• In keeping with his down to earth, unpretentious style, Carter used “Jimmy” instead of “James Earl” at his swearing in.

• Unlike Trump four years ago, President Joe Biden will follow examples set by all but five of his predecessors and attend his successor’s swearing-in ceremony. All of America’s living former presidents will attend the ceremony as well.

Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS), Greg Phillips (Troy University), the Architect of the Capitol (AOC); Council on Foreign Relations; Library of Congress; White House Historical Association; Pew Research Center.

--Bill Lucey
[email protected]
January 17, 2025

Inauguration Resources:

The Avalon Project (Yale Law School): The Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents

The White House Historical Association: Presidential Inaugurations

The Library of Congress: U.S. Presidential Inaugurations: A Resource Guide

Readers Treated to a Voyage Around the Queen

Just when I thought I had consumed enough biographies on Queen Elizabeth II, comes another must read, English critic and satirist Craig Brown’s beautifully written and well documented book: “Q: A Voyage Around the Queen.”

Instead of writing the typical cradle to the grave biography, Brown was wonderfully creative in presenting the Queen in short chapters, centered on different topics, such as the Queen’s corgis, PM meetings with the Queen, royal rumors and scandals, etc.

It was really a fascinating way to present the Queen to the public, which underscores on just about any topic under the sun, including prominent individuals in British culture, world leaders, and celebrities--had some connection to the Queen.

Brown points out that in addition to the Queen, others who died in 2022, included: Pope Benedict XVI, Olivia Newton-John, Sidney Poitier, Angela Lansbury, Jerry Lee Lewis, Robbie Coltrane, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pele, Vivienne Westwood, Lester Piggott, Jean-Luc Godard and Hilary Mantel. Of this list, amazingly, only two, "Jerry Lee Lewis and Jean-Luc Godard-had never met the Queen."

The chapter on her beloved corgis is hysterical. Corgis are apparently temperamental dogs, and they would often nip at the ankles of her Majesty’s guests. Her husband, Prince Philip, hated the corgis, they always seemed to get in the way of his path when walking.

At one point, the Queen owned as many as nine corgis at one time. Someone asked her, how do you tell them apart? The Queen snapped back, “do you have trouble telling your children apart.”?

The big joke at Buckingham Palace was the Queen’s true loves in life were her corgis, her horses, Philip, and her children—and in that order.

Craig additionally has a chapter or two dealing with all the Prime Ministers and celebrities she met. The Queen wasn’t much for small talk, she would just say a few words and move on. Some celebs, so nervous about meeting the Queen, got tongue tied and barely got words out of their mouth before she moved on to the next person to shake hands with.

In her meetings with Prime Ministers, the Queen would often pepper her leaders with tough questions about current world affairs. Many were caught off guard and at times found themselves back on their heels, trying to answer her questions in an intelligent, well-informed manner.

Some thought they would charm the Queen and engage her with their personal stories, but before they got into the heart of their stories, the Queen usually rang the bell in the state room at Buckingham Palace, indicating the meeting was over.

Over her 70-year reign, the Queen was exceptionally shrewd in sizing up world leaders. She reportedly told someone that she thought Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, must have some business arrangement with her husband. If she didn’t, the Queen said, Melania would have left him long ago.

The Queen’s death on September 8, 2022, age 96, had a profound impact on so many from Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, to Johnny Rotten (whose real name is John Lydon).

The author does a remarkable job chronicling all the letters, tweets, and messages from all over the world expressing their deep sadness over her death and the profound sense of duty she gave to the United Kingdom so admirably under her reign.

Craig Brown put together a highly entertaining book filled to the brim with facts, figures, and anecdotes, many of which I never knew about Her Majesty, the Queen.

QE2: Fast Facts
• The Queen has met more leaders than anyone in history.
• Visited 117 countries
• Traveled at least 1.3 million miles
• During her lifetime the Queen has sent 307,000 hundredth birthday messages

--Bill Lucey
January 10, 2025
[email protected]

Most Viewed Online Stories of 2024

Syrians chant slogans and wave rebel flags as they gather for Friday prayers at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.

Photo Credit: Leo Correa/AP. 

***

2024 proved to be a tumultuous year, both on American soil and around the world.

The Israel/Hamas war continues unabated, a bloody confrontation, which originated on October 7, 2023, when Hamas (a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islamist political organization) launched a land, sea, and air assault on Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Since the fighting began, approximately 1.9 million people, representing 90% of Gaza’s population - have fled their homes over the past year, and 79% of the territory is under Israeli-issued evacuation orders, according to a Human Rights Watch report.

The United Nations additionally estimates that at least 56% of Palestinian civilians killed in the Israel–Hamas war were women and children.

After 61 years of ruthless dictatorship, the Ba'athist Syria regime (officially the Syrian Arab Republic or SAR), came crashing down in early December, when the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, fled Damascus after one of the country's main rebel groups, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, (Liberation of the Levant) launched a surprise attack in November. Syria has been tangled in a crippling civil war for the last 13 years.

On December 13, thousands took to the streets of its capital city, Damascus, to celebrate the fall of the Assad regime.

In March, in the Russian presidential election, incumbent Vladimir Putin was reelected to a fifth term as he continues his quest to heighten his offensive against Ukraine with a vow to wipe the Eastern European country off the map.

Donald Trump delivers victory speech on Election Night.

Photo: Time.com

***

And after four years out of office, Donald Trump, will return to power on January 20th after he was elected for a second non-consecutive term on November 5, the first candidate to do so since Grover Cleveland in 1892, and only the second in American history. The former New York real estate tycoon and reality TV star, won both the Electoral College and the popular vote, becoming only the second Republican to win the popular vote since 1988.

To add a little icing on the cake, the Republicans won both chambers of Congress. The last time the GOP controlled the Senate, House and presidency was from January 20, 2017, to January 3, 2019, Trump’s first term in office.

Before thumping Vice President Kamala Harris and Tim Walz by grabbing 49.9 % of the popular vote in November, Trump was found guilty, on May 30, of 34 counts of falsifying business records in a New York hush money trial, which makes him the first president to be ever convicted of a felony.

But Trump might have been delivered a timely lifeline with other criminal indictments he faces, when on July 1 – in Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6–3 decision that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity from prosecution for official acts that rely on core constitutional powers, taken while in office, presumed immunity for other official acts, and no immunity for unofficial acts.

On June 11, Hunter Biden, the embattled second son of President Joe Biden, was convicted of three felony counts of possession of a firearm while under influence of narcotics. He would later be pardoned of the conviction by his father, the President of the United States.

***

Gun violence continued to rear its ugly head in 2024.

A Sept. 4 mass school shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia left two teachers and two students dead.

While campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, there was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump; fortunately, the Republican nominee escaped with minor injuries. Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.

Brian Thompson, 50, CEO of UnitedHealthcare wasn’t so fortunate. He was mercilessly killed by gun shots fired by Luigi Mangion, 26, in Midtown Manhattan on December 4th. The Ivy League suspect hailed from Towson, Maryland.

As of December 14, at least 19,577 people have died from gun violence in the U.S. this year -- an average of almost 46 deaths each day, according to the Gun Violence Archive. 

2024 was also another cataclysmic year for victims of hurricanes, resulting in scores of deaths.

On September 26 – Hurricane Helene, considered the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since Hurricane Maria in 2017, made landfall in Florida as a category four hurricane, resulting in 236 deaths and more than 685 missing across six states in the southeast.

From October 8-11, Hurricane Milton, a powerful and destructive tropical cyclone, made landfall in Florida, where 35 people were killed, six were missing, and 3.4 million people were without power. Between October 8–9, 44 tornadoes touched down across Florida, including three EF3 tornadoes (wind speeds between 136 and 165 mph).

Taken together, five hurricanes made landfall in the continental U.S. in 2024.

In this year’s Fall Classic, the Los Angeles Dodgers made quick work of the New York Yankees in five games of the 120th edition of the World Series, enabling the Dodgers to capture their 8th championship in World Series history.

The fifth game at Yankee Stadium was punctuated with a heightened sense of drama, when the Dodgers made history by bouncing back from a 5-0 deficit during the Series clinching win, the first team to accomplish such a remarkable feat and prevail victorious, 7-6.

Previously in the year, history was again on the Dodgers side when superstar and Japan native, Shohei Ohtani, became the first major league baseball player to become a 50/50 man; that is, belt 50 home runs and steal at least 50 bases in a single season.

On June 17, the Boston Celtics conquered the Dallas Mavericks in five games to win their 18th overall NBA championship, surpassing their chief rival in the west, the Los Angeles Lakers, with the most NBA championships.

A week later, on June 24, the Florida Panthers beat Edmonton in the Stanley Cup Finals, to claim their first championship in NHL franchise history.

***

It’s Caitlin’s world, we just live in it.

Iowa native, Caitlin Clark, turned in a sensational rookie year and catapulted the WNBA to new heights. In addition to being named rookie of the year, the “Mad Bomber” tallied the most points by a point guard in a season in WNBA history, recorded the most double-doubles by a rookie guard in WNBA history, and most points by a rookie in WNBA history, among other milestones.

And if those accolades weren’t enough, the slender, dribble happy point guard for the Indiana Fever was named Time magazine’s Athlete of the Year on December 12th.

In the entertainment industry, 2024 was a monster year for the atomic bomb thriller, “Oppenheimer,” which came away with seven Oscars, including best actor (Cillian Murphy), best supporting actor (Robert Downey Jr.) and best director (Christopher Nolan) at the 96th Academy Awards on March 10 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

Taylor Swift’s complete dominance of the music industry was in full swing. Much like the Energizer Bunny; she kept going and going and going. “The Eras Tour” culminated on December 11 in Vancouver, British Columbia after 149 dates, spanning five continents over nearly two years, which grossed an estimated $2 billion in ticket sales, doubling the record set by Coldplay’s 156-date “Music of the Spheres World Tour.”

On September 16--rapper, record producer, and record executive, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs was arrested in Manhattan and charged with racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

***
To get a better grasp of some of the major stories of the year, I checked in with some popular news websites to see what single story generated the most page views on their home pages.

Here is what some websites reported.

CNN

CNN's # 1 article for 2024 was CNN’s story around Sean Combs / Cassie Ventura following CNN airing the exclusive video of Sean Combs in the hotel.

For 2024, CNN's Election Day live story was #1 with 85 million page views.

FOX News

The most viewed story at FoxNews.com for 2024 was “107 days: Kamala Harris has yet to do formal press conference since emerging as Democratic nominee.”

BBC

According to a BBC spokesperson, “over the year, BBC News Online has seen its innovative live pages, implemented as part of BBC News’ digital-first strategy, act as the primary driver of UK audiences online. Live pages combine live BBC News channel broadcasts, on-the-ground updates, video clips and expert analysis from BBC News correspondents and BBC Verify."

The most viewed stories of the year on BBC News Online included:

General Election results live page

U.S. Election Results Live Page

Southport stabbings live page

UK riots live page

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times' most-viewed story of this year is "The dirty secret of California’s legal weed," an investigation in collaboration with Weed Week reported by LAT's Paige St. John and WW's Alex Halperin:

The Guardian

The Guardian’s interactive on the UK general election result, which saw Labour win by a landslide, was the Guardian's most viewed article this year in terms of page views. This was closely followed by US election results and map. 

The Times and Sunday Times (London)

The most-visited article from The Times and The Sunday Times this year, so far, was 'Meet the queen of the ‘trad wives’ (and her eight children)

The Daily Beast (American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture).

The Daily Beast’s most viewed story of the year was “Cheryl Hines Brutally Trolled After RFK Jr. Endorses Trump”

The Economist

The Economist's two biggest articles of the year were their interactive poll tracker and their presidential forecast model.

A spokesperson from the Economist said they saw more than 30% more traffic to the model than during the previous election period in 2020. There was a further swell of visitors as results arrived: Wednesday November 6th set an all-time record for traffic on our app and website.

ProPublica (a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in New York City).

ProPublica's top story of the year, measured by views, so far: "Multiple Trump Witnesses Have Received Significant Financial Benefits From His Businesses, Campaign" by Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski (published June 3).

The Marshall Project (a nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about inequities within the U.S. criminal justice system.

Measuring web traffic on all of the Marshall Project’s sites, a chilling story about penalizing women who give birth for often false drug tests was their most viewed story of the year.

“5 Things to Know About Kamala Harris’ Criminal Justice Record” was the most viewed article for 2024 on their home page only.

OpenSecrets (a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that tracks and publishes data on campaign finance and lobbying, including a revolving door database which documents the individuals who have worked in both the public sector and lobbying firms and may have conflicts of interest.)

The most viewed stories at OpenSecrets for 2024 included:

Total 2024 election spending projected to exceed previous record

Pro-Trump dark money network tied to Elon Musk behind fake pro-Harris
campaign scheme

Kamala Harris drives record fundraising after Biden exit

New York Magazine

The most viewed stories at the New York Magazine website for 2024 included:

Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control

The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger by Charlotte Cowles

My Unraveling: I had my health. I had a job. And then, abruptly, I didn’t. By Tom Scocca, the editor of Indignity.

The Divorce Tapes by Beth Raymer

The Lure of Divorce by Emily Gould

Vox (an American news and opinion website owned by Vox Media)

Top stories of the year at Vox, ranked by visitors, included:

Scientists just discovered a sea creature as large as two basketball courts. Here’s what it looks like.

Stop setting your thermostat at 72

January 6 insurrectionists had a great day in the Supreme Court today

The Supreme Court just lit a match and tossed it into dozens of federal agencies: SEC v. Jarkesy could render much of the federal government unable to function.

The Epstein “list,” explained: What the tranche of recently unsealed court documents contains.

Michelle Obama articulated something Democrats have been afraid to say

America is not ready for what comes next: The attempt on Donald Trump’s life has put the republic in peril.

Republicans ask the Supreme Court to disenfranchise thousands of swing state voters: A new Supreme Court case could potentially hand Arizona to Donald Trump. 

Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis, explained: Three months after she disclosed her illness, the Princess of Wales is making a return to public life.

FBI.gov

The most viewed story at FBI.gov for 2024 was “FBI Seeking Assistance Connecting Victims to Samuel Little’s Confessions” (originally published in 2019).

The most popular FBI Story on FBI.gov for 2024 (originally published in 2024) was “Chinese Government Poses 'Broad and Unrelenting' Threat to U.S. Critical Infrastructure, FBI Director Says”

The most visited page on FBI.gov for 2024 other than the home page was their top 10 fugitive list.

Weather.com

The most viewed article from weather.com this year was "Hurricane Milton to Make Destructive Florida Landfall Tonight"

Google

On December 10, Google announced the top searches of the year under multiple categories, including: trending, sports, entertainment, and google maps, among others.

Merry Christmas! and Happy Holidays!

--Bill Lucey
December 16, 2024
[email protected]

Polls Underestimate Trump Supporters--Yet Again!

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica

***

Donald Trump won the popular vote by approximately 2.4 million votes, marking the first time a Republican had accomplished such a feat since President George W. Bush won reelection in 2004.

It also means a majority of pollsters have completed the hat trick: for the third consecutive presidential cycle, the polls have missed the mark, vastly underestimating the strength of the former New York real estate tycoon.

The latest election results show Trump with 76,977,118 votes or 49.9% of the vote compared with Vice President Kamala Harris’s 74,479,029 votes or 48.3% of the electorate.

The last election pollsters predicted, correctly, was Obama/Romney in 2012, when Nate Silver catapulted to fame as a wunderkind by correctly predicting not only Barack Obama's victory but the outcome of the presidential contest in all 50 states.

Now, pollsters are about as reliable as a Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback.

Pollsters, of course, much like Donald Trump after losing to Joe Biden in 2020, don’t like to admit defeat.

They now tell us they were right on the money with Harris’ vote percentage (48.3 %) but underestimated the strength of Donald Trump supporters (49.9 %)

Such explanations sound like a badly worded concession speech from a candidate who went down in flames.

Nevertheless, most pollsters continue to argue their polling was not flawed.

Political Scientist, Peter J. Woolley, founding director of PublicMind—an independent public opinion research group at Fairleigh Dickinson University thinks the suggestion that polls have been wrong in the last three presidential elections is a myth.

“Good pollsters,” Woolley says, “are the first to say their work are ‘estimates’ not predictions and not pinpoints. It is media outlets and internet trolls that tend to over-report the accuracy of polls, not good pollsters. Bad pollsters tend to brag about their polls. Good pollsters are always on edge. Good pollsters know that under ideal conditions, one in 20 poll measurements will be ‘wrong.’ Polls are a scientific method of arriving at an estimate. Estimate is the keyword.”

***

Most polls I was following one or two months prior to the election, showed Harris with a one or two percentage lead, including The Washington Post, the New York Times, Nate Silver (The Silver Bulletin) and FiveThirtyEight.

On Election Eve, Silver declared Harris a marginal favorite, though his “gut” told him Trump may pull off an upset.

When I asked The New York Times about misfiring on the presidential election vote totals, a spokesperson for the Times, issued the following statement:

"Polls will never be perfectly precise, nor are they advertised as such, and a main feature of our coverage this year was helping readers understand the uncertainty in the race. We made clear in our coverage that if the polls were off by even a little bit from final vote counts, as they were likely to be, that one of the candidates could sweep all seven battlegrounds."

My big beef isn’t so much the accuracy of the polls themselves, but how certain news organizations attached so much prominence to them.

The New York Times, Washington Post, among others, treated these polls, at least from my vantage point, like they were gospel and glaringly splashed these polls across their home pages as if they're credible and reliable sources of information, or at least that was what the reader was led to believe.

Despite the statement released from a Times spokesperson, I rarely saw these polls accompanied with a warning that they shouldn’t be interpreted as being “perfectly precise.”

To their credit, the New York Times did publish articles explaining how tricky the polls can be in accurately predicting the outcome.

Nate Cohn, of the Times, for example, did underscore two weeks before the election, that pollsters might very well have egg splattered on their face for the third straight presidential election. Cohn went on to explain how different polling methods have been recalibrated over the last 15 years to better gauge the mood of the country.

One pollster who was unquestionably off her game was J. Ann Selzer, president of the Des Moines, Iowa-based polling firm Selzer & Company, which she founded in 1996. Selzer, known as the “Queen of Polling” predicted vice president Harris would win Iowa by three percentage points, 47% to 44. By the time the votes were all counted, Selzer was off by 16 points.

Trump ended up winning Iowa by 13 points, 56% to 43%. Selzer, in turn, ended her polling operation altogether as she tries to defend her reputation, which has been badly bruised since the stunning election results.

While a majority of pollsters may continue to staunchly defend their polls as being within the margin of error, most agree that they need to reevaluate how they gather information from potential voters.

Most pollsters agree that they’re increasingly having difficulty identifying Trump supporters. Democrat voters tend to be more civic minded and usually respond to survey questions from pollsters. Trump supporters, on the other hand, are distrustful of pollsters and the media, and have a tendency not to respond to surveys.

In particular, pollsters recognize the need to expand their polling methods beyond online, text, and phone methods and conduct more mail survey forms. Republicans and conservative voters seem more receptive to surveys sent to them in the mail, preliminary studies show.

The Trump campaign was able to focus on low-propensity voters or voters who haven’t consistently voted in the past and were decidedly less “politically engaged.”

Though pollsters can talk until they’re blue in the face about how close their estimates were to the final tally; a David Brooks column highlighted just how disengaged the Democratic ticket was from the average voter.

Brooks wrote: "In 2024, Kamala Harris did worse among Black voters than Joe Biden did in 2020. She did worse among female voters. She did much worse among Latino voters. She did much worse among young voters."

"She did manage,” Brooks explained, “to outperform Biden among two groups: affluent people and white voters, especially white men."

When I saw the seismic shift of the country going into Trump's column on Election Night, I immediately thought of James Carville's opinion piece in the New York Times (July 8, 2024) when he stressed that Kamala can't be just crowned the nominee without a democratic process. Carville wrote, "it can’t be by anointing Vice President Kamala Harris or anyone else as the presumptive Democratic nominee. We’ve got to do it out in the open."

Nancy Pelosi and her cabal stripped the ball from Joe's hands and force-fed Kamala to the American voters instead of creating a mini-primary (as Carville suggested) where the best and the brightest of the party would vie for the nomination. Pelosi did this because she reasoned-we have our progressive candidate who will easily trounce Trump, a convicted felon, as he appeared to be unraveling at the seams and sounding mentally unstable by the day. This was Pelosi and her inner circle's big opportunity to get a progressive into the White House.

Many are going to argue that this proves the country isn't ready for a woman president. That's just plain wrong. The country isn't ready for a progressive female candidate (Hillary & Kamala, for example) who promoted abortion rights and LGBTQ rights at the expense of traditional working-class issues, like economic growth, reduced grocery prices, affordable housing, while ignoring illegal immigration and the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.

The Democrats have kicked the can down the road on immigration and cost of living for way too long, opting instead for the status quo.

For better or worse, richer or poorer, voters reached a tipping point and opted for a candidate who promised to turn the federal government on its head.

God help us, I think we’re in for a tumultuous four years under Donald Trump when the treasured principles of our Republic will be brought to a severe test, but Democrats have only themselves to blame.

--Bill Lucey
November 25, 2024
[email protected]