Steffan Tubbs, co-host of “Colorado’s Morning News” on 850 KOA, posted information about the incident on his Facebook page shortly after the event. Now, both local and national media outlets are investigating what Tubbs calls a “freaking fiasco.”

Tubbs was part of a week-long trip to Hawaii to honor the memories of fallen soldiers as well as thank living veterans for their service. On Dec.9, the group – average age: 91 – held an emotional ceremony at the Punchbowl including the presentation of colors, the National Anthem and Taps, says Tubbs, a board member of The Greatest Generations Foundation, the Denver-based group which organized the trip.

Tubbs and the veterans. all but one Pearl Harbor survivors, weren’t allowed to complete the ceremony in private. Cast and crew from CBS’s “Hawaii Five-O” were also on the scene preparing to shoot footage for the cop show.

“I noticed as Taps was being played people were walking back and forth to their production vans,” he says of roughly 15-20 show crew members on the same area where the ceremony was taking place.

“Immediately what struck me was, it’s going on on the graves,” he says. “All the Hollywood production was literally on the grave sites, not a grassy area.”

Tubbs understands that the crew likely had its own deadlines to meet, and that shooting a major television show isn’t cheap. But he says that can’t explain how some crew members treated the elderly veterans.

“There was a guy with an ear piece walking among the vets, hushing them, in essence, hurrying them along and telling them to be quiet,” he recalls. “I think I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say.”

One of the veterans tried to take a picture of the actors from the program at one point, but a crew representative nixed the plan, saying the actors were “skittish” around still cameras.

The coup de grace for Tubbs came when a caterer for the show walked across the graves – and the veterans laying roses atop them – to bring salmon and blackberries to actors on the set.

“I’m feeling like [the veterans were] shown the ultimate disrespect,” he says.

Over the weekend, Tubbs had a robust exchange with the show’s executive producer, Peter M. Lenkov, via email regarding the incident. The news anchor posted the back- and-forth online, but since doing so hasn’t received any new messages from Lenkov.

“The executive producer tried to make me out to be some right-wing wacko blogger. I’m a news man … my entire career is based on being credible and telling it like it is,” says Tubbs, who admits he DVRs “Hawaii Five-0″ every week. “They’re accusing me of having an agenda.”

CBS Television Studios released a statement to Big Hollywood regarding the incident:

“We were surprised to hear this report and are looking into the matter,” said CBS Television Studios spokesperson.  “Our veterans deserve the highest level of respect and reverence for their service, particularly during a ceremony honoring those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.”

Tubbs doesn’t want the event to simply fade away, but he’s also more than happy to see it wrap in an amicable fashion. That starts with an apology from CBS, he says, and perhaps a show of support for the veterans themselves.

“Make a contribution to the Foundation and call it a day, and all is forgiven,” he says.

What if the government tracking your every move could be a good thing?

The new CBS series “Person of Interest” poses that intriguing question with mostly satisfying results.

To “the machine,” you’re just a number – a Social Security number. The machine was created to ferret out and identify potential terrorist threats to America. However, being a machine that gathers information without discernment, it identifies all lethal threats to everyone everywhere. Naturally, law enforcement can’t keep up with being the entire population’s personal bodyguards. So the machine received a tweak: divide the list into two – relevant and irrelevant, with the individual persons of interest identified by only their social security numbers. While federal agencies focus on the relevant list dealing with national security emergencies, the irrelevant list, with the information about threats to individuals, gets tossed.

Until now. Finch (Michael Emerson), the designer who created the machine and its software, decides to salvage the irrelevant list and save as many people as he can. The problem is, Finch is handicapped and ill-equipped to handle the physical demands of rescuing victims and disabling assailants. Finch recruits John Reese (Jim Caviezel), a former Army Ranger presumed dead. Every week, the two of them receive a new number from the machine, either a potential victim or potential criminal, and work to thwart the attack.

Meanwhile, Detective Carter (Taraji P. Henson) of the NYPD Homicide Department has discovered Reese at each of her crime scenes. She’s sure he’s not the killer since, thanks to Reese, they catch the murderer or attempted murderer every week. However, she knows he’s involved somehow and is doing her best to find out who he is and how he knows what he knows.

Both Reese and Finch are understated characters. So far, not much has been revealed about their back stories. There was a point in time in which Finch was able to turn his neck. Reese used to be in a serious relationship with a woman. Beyond that, “Person of Interest” keeps its cards close to the vest. More information will come as the show goes on, of course, but for now, we’re satisfied to watch them thwart criminals every week without knowing their entire lives’ history.

The dialogue is tight, and the banter between Finch and Reese is charming but not cute or the hackneyed cop-partners-bickering-like-an-old-married-couple schtick. They respect each other’s respective skill sets and personalities. The pacing is swift and carries you along for the full hour without feeling like a full hour. Every episode leaves you wanting more.

Caviezel cuts a strong figure as an action hero and keeps Reese serious and focused. While trying to be enigmatic, Caviezel unfortunately at times brushes with “wooden.” However, those moments have fortunately become fewer as the series goes along. His strongest scene was at the end of episode 4, “Cura Te Ipsum,” where Reese and Finch chase a serial rapist. Faced with the reality that the rapist is rich and influential enough to never be prosecuted for his crimes, Reese confronts the rapist alone. The show ends unresolved, leaving the viewer to decide whether Reese kills the rapist or the rapist kills himself in fear. It’s a powerful scene and Caviezel keeps the mood intense but not hammish.

Emerson’s Finch spends most of his screen time confined to his headquarters, gathering information and disseminating it to Reese and occasionally Carter. The one time we’ve been given a glimpse into his back story, we learn that he didn’t create the machine alone. He had a partner who has since died. Sometime between that flashback and now, the partner died, Finch was injured, and given the drive to save as many people on the “irrelevant” list as possible. Emerson’s sharp delivery and dry humor bring a fun contrast to Reese’s gravity. Emerson is every bit as exciting to watch on “Person of Interest” as he was as Benjamin Linus on “Lost.” Getting to see him play one of the “good guys” is no less satisfying.

“Person of Interest” has good long-term potential as new crimes and new criminals are explored every week, and eventually a multi-episode story arc develops. New “Person of Interest” episodes return at 9 p.m. EST tonight on CBS.

In December of last year I wrote a post entitled “Meet Whitney Cummings: Up-and-Coming Comic Who Steals Jokes about Handicapped Babies.”  The gist of it is that at a roast for Quentin Tarantino at the New York Friars’ Club, the comedienne had this to say about Sarah Palin and her son Trig, who suffers from Down syndrome:

[Tarantino has] produced more retarded things than Sarah Palin’s vagina.

Regarding her choice of targets, I summed it up this way:

Who is the butt of this joke? A toddler who suffers from down-syndrome and the mother that chose not to destroy him while he was in the womb. Yikes. Regarding Trig: Lay. Off. The. Kids. Okay? Regarding Mama Palin: Is it possible to write a more obvious joke on a more obvious target? I’m sure Ms. Cummings fancies herself irreverent; what would be truly irreverent is if she would harness a little of that hate that dwells in her dreary heart and direct it toward someone who is actually in power. Here are some possible targets she may want to consider: Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, or Joe Biden (notice how I’m not mentioning Obama’s children?). If she insists on resorting to humor that’s main attribute is shock-value, why not try a target that might actually shock someone?

What makes this joke even more embarrassing for one of the comedy world’s rising stars is that Cummings had stolen the hideous one-liner, as I explain in the post.

Yet, Cummings’ comedy has apparently struck the fancy of executives at NBC and CBS, as both networks have readied TV shows with her for this upcoming season.  First, she’s the star, writer, creator, and executive producer of the NBC sitcom “Whitney,” set to premiere in September. Here’s a preview:

“I love you so much, I’m not going to marry you.” Wow.  Not only is she funny and attractive, she’s so progressive.  As you might have been able to guess, the buzz on this one is bad… very bad.

Cummings is also the Executive Producer and Creator of CBS’s upcoming “2 Broke Girls,” starring Kat Dennings.  The show is set to follow “How I Met Your Mother” on Monday nights, also beginning in September.  The buzz on this one is that it has tested very well:

This preview’s a bit funnier, though the “you’ve been robbed! No wait, you just have a really messy place” joke is hardly original.

As the anticipation of Whitney Cummings TV Takeover approaches its boiling point, here’s something worth keeping in mind:  Cummings’ attack on Trig had a very similar tenor to the more high-profile jokes at the expense of the handicapped toddler levied by Wonkette last month.  For those of you unfamiliar, writer Jack Steuf’s mockery of Trig Palin on his birthday led to the formation of the twitter group known as #TrigsCrew, who hounded advertisers to pull their sponsorship from the Wonkette blog.  Dozens removed their ads, and Steuf and Wonkette parted ways a couple of weeks later.  As John Nolte put it, “other than the most craven among us, Wonkette has brought many together in agreement that the use of a child as a partisan political bludgeon is not [fair game].”

By that logic, we can count Whitney Cummings in the “most craven among us” crowd.

You can look forward to seeing her all over your television starting this September.

]]> http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/amarlow/2011/05/25/television-talk-trig-trashing-comedienne-whitney-cummings-ramps-up-two-network-shows/feed/ 66 http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/hollywoodland/2011/04/08/ken-burns-whats-this-nonsense-about-pbs-and-npr-skewing-liberal/ http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/hollywoodland/2011/04/08/ken-burns-whats-this-nonsense-about-pbs-and-npr-skewing-liberal/#comments Fri, 08 Apr 2011 23:14:16 +0000 Hollywoodland http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/?p=464204 Great filmmaker but just a wee bit out of touch…

Left-wing Politico:

[T]he Civil War wasn’t the only thing on Burns’s mind as he visited Washington. As the budget battle continues in Congress, many lawmakers have discussed cutting off funding for public broadcasting, which has been Burns’s bread and butter for decades. …

“This is a completely foolhardy, unnecessarily partisan attempt at social engineering, of picking on something that they can score points with the base and it doesn’t make any sense and it will come back to hurt people. It won’t be a political hurt immediately, but what we’re talking about is whether we will retain our superiority as a country. That is the question. … If you’re serious about balancing the budget, then go and talk about much more significant parts of it, not a fraction of 1 percent of the whole budget. … People can make arguments about the marketplace, but if your house is on fire at 3 a.m., you don’t call the marketplace. When your road needs plowing, you don’t call the marketplace. The marketplace doesn’t have boots on the ground in Afghanistan. And while I would never suggest that public broadcasting has to do the defense of our country, it actually makes it worth defending.” 

As for the notion that the reporting of such public broadcasting outlets as PBS and NPR skew liberal, Burns says that’s nonsense. 

“This supposed bias, prove it. It may be true that if you line up every journalist in print, on TV, on the Internet that there may be a significant number of left-leaning people, but is their work that? … I don’t think you can start pigeon-holing ‘Sesame Street’ or Fred Rogers into a red-state, blue-state framework.”

Full piece here.

It’s dinner time for the Reagan clan, and the extended family of CBS’ Blue Bloods is crammed around the table, sharing the news that their parish priest has been sent off to Bolivia after allegations of sexual advances, in an episode airing tonight (10 ET/PT). 

It’s the only time the show’s entire main cast, led by Tom Selleck, Donnie Wahlberg, Will Estes and Bridget Moynahan, comes together in its Brooklyn studio. 

“Luckily we don’t have to eat anything crazy like cheesecake or Chinese food,” says Moynahan (who plays daughter Erin, an assistant DA) of Bloods‘ signature scene, which caps every episode and gives writers a chance to show the family debating the issues raised by the cases.

“I think the audience responds to these things more than any part of the show, really. It’s a place where you get everybody’s point of view.” 

It could be the tight-knit family, or Selleck’s star appeal, or the unusual blending of a family drama with a sturdy police procedural, but Bloods is this season’s most-watched new series. It chugs away on Friday nights, with an average of 12.4 million viewers, and is considered a lock for a second season. …

Bloods connects its cases to the multi-generational family, led by police commissioner Frank (Selleck), a stoic police commissioner who’s sometimes at odds with a mayor who appointed him when his last pick didn’t work out. 

“He was a way of getting the mayor off the hook for choosing a corrupt man,” Selleck says of his character. “His biggest flaw is he cares too much; he has a hyperactive sense of responsibility.”

His dad Henry (Len Cariou), a retired commissioner, is a grandfatherly fixture at those dinners, even though Cariou, 71, is actually just five years older than Selleck. Erin (Moynahan), a divorced single mom, is the by-the-book legal compass. But Danny, a hotheaded cop, is an Iraq War vet who “may bend the rules because he knows he’s going to get away with it more,” Wahlberg says.

Full piece here.

There’s simply no upside for either party not to work this out.

Post-firing, Sheen’s played it pretty smart. Thanks to his, uhm, antics, he’s a bigger star after the firing than before. He obviously understands the power of celebrity and how to maximize it and in the process quite deliberately made himself more valuable to the network today than while the show was in production. The publicity surrounding his return to a sitcom that’s already one of the most popular on television would be the stuff of legend. If the report below is true, my guess is that everyone’s sobering up (for lack of a better word) and looking at the win-win involved with getting back to work.

Fox News Online:

The president and CEO of CBS was working Monday toward bringing disgraced TV star Charlie Sheen back to “Two and a Half Men,” RadarOnline reported. …

The source added, “The core issue is, as he put it, the volatile relationship between Charlie Sheen and Chuck Lorre. He believes that if CBS and Warner Bros. TV honchos can find a way to get Chuck and Charlie to speak again, cooler heads will prevail.”

Sheen, whose recent bizarre public pronouncements and enforced spell in rehab led to questions of his mental state, was cashing in on his infamy with a rant-inspired 20-date concert tour.

Sheen’s been awfully quiet lately, as well. Which might be another sign negotiations are in play.

I’ve never seen an episode of “Men,” and though I’m a big fan of Sheen’s under-appreciated and under-rated B-movie run in 90s, I really have no dog in this fight. But I do find the political and business maneuverings of Hollywood endlessly fascinating — especially at this level.

Matthew Vadum of the Washington-based Capital Research Center says that naming the character “McVeigh” conjures an unmistakable inference. “Calling a character ‘Kurt McVeigh’ conjures up unmistakable images of mass murdering terrorist Timothy McVeigh. Hollywood screenwriters don’t live in a cultural vacuum; they help to create American culture,” Vadum told Fox News.

Even as the TV producers claim that they weren’t trying to discredit Sarah Palin by naming a character that supports her in its series after America’s most murderous homegrown terrorist, they also admit that they purposefully chose the name to invoke anti-government sentiment in the show’s other characters.

Using quite a bit of spin, executive producer/co-creator, Robert King said, “The Kurt McVeigh character was introduced mid-season our first year, and at that time, he was given a name that was intended to play into the anti-conservative prejudices of the more liberal [character in the show].”

That is an interesting formulation of motive, isn’t it? On one hand the show’s producers are trying to claim that the name was not used to invoke a murderous, real-life namesake, yet on the other hand they admit that the name was picked to provoke the “liberal” character to refer to that very madman. You can’t have it both ways, Mr. King. Either you meant the name to make viewers think of the murderous Timothy McVeigh, or you didn’t.

While producers are trying to claim that the choice of the McVeigh surname was not meant to invoke its murderous namesake — even as in a round about way they admit it was — the choice of the name is not a subtlety lost on others. Fox quotes entertainment commentator Jenn Hoffman to just that effect. “Timothy McVeigh does happen to have some key beliefs in common with the Tea Party,” she said. Obviously The Good Wife’s producers got their point across.

Of course, it is no surprise when TV producers surreptitiously attempt to push a left wing agenda into their product. A few months ago, for instance, I wrote about the TV show Medium having a character based on the real-life law-and-order Sheriff Joe Arpiao of Arizona. Only Medium’s character turned out to be a bit less upstanding of character than the real Sheriff Joe. Their Arpaio was a child-rapist and murderer. (In my 2010 year in review piece I wrote of several such incidents)

Decades worth of TV programming has been undergirded with a liberal perspective and when any show tries to evince a different ideological base line the show is mercilessly attacked. Remember how 24 was constantly attacked from the left as outrageous “torture-porn” and slammed for its supposedly right-wing, pro-America theme?

There can be little doubt that the producers of The Good Wife had every intention of invoking a mass murderer by naming its leading conservative character after America’s most notorious domestic terrorist.

If you don’t know the name Nir Rosen, count yourself lucky.

He’s a jerk.

Even he knows that.

But here’s some back up: after it was reported that correspondent Lara Logan was brutally, sexually assaulted in Egypt during the revolution “celebrations,” Rosen unloaded some repulsive tweets about the incident. To sum them up: he made fun of a woman who was viciously sexually attacked.

And there went his career.

Once his hideousness had been exposed, he quickly had to resign his position at NYU.

Then, in an interview, he explains why:

US academic establishments are already under attack from the right, and my Center at NYU stood to be harmed by the pack of dogs sent to take me down.

Yeah, right. he resigned to save the college.

So you’re an ass and a liar.

But it gets worse. Nir says,

I think certainly my tweets have been unfairly attacked and blown out of proportion…and I was not aware of the right wing attack machine waiting to take me down… Had I been a right-wing writer I doubt this would have happened to me.

Oh, so YOU’RE the victim here.

Nir – Let me point out that it wasn’t the right who went after you for being a ghoul.

It was the world.

Maybe that’s too much for you to bear – knowing your repulsiveness transcends ideology.

My advice for you: stop giving interviews. Stop writing articles defending yourself.

Shut up.

Anyway, we here at Red Eye wish Ms. Logan well, and hope Mr. Rosen finds a place in the universe appropriate to his talents.

Tonight:

Pat Caddell

Nick Gillespie!

—–

Clint Eastwood’s played dozens of characters who have done a lot of brave things, but knocking Hollywood’s Precious One 10 days before a crucial election just as you’re releasing your latest Oscar contender…? Sgt. “Gunny” Highway would be proud.

The political meat of the interview starts a little past the 15-minute mark, but if you can stand Katie Couric it’s well worth watching all of it. Amazing man, amazing career, and thankfully all but untouchable by Big Media blacklisters such as the LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein, Movieline’s Kyle Buchanan, EW’s Mark Harris, HuffPo’s Jackson Williams, Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells, and please do welcome our newest member!, Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams…

CBS:

During an interview about his latest film “Hereafter,” Eastwood told Couric that the president is not “governing” and he’s laying out lines in the hopes that people will believe him “so he can stay in his position.” 

Eastwood, who was once the Mayor of Carmel, Calif., expressed his view on the political election process. 

“I don’t think there’s anybody I see out there, or many people that have that kind of discipline, that are willing to take a chance on losing.”

Full story here.

I guess CBS couldn’t possibly present its Sheriff Arpaio-styled character as a good man. Their Arpaio-like character had to be seen as a sicko, rapist, and murderer. It is just another example of how Hollywood and the TV industry can’t stand it that there are real men out there that the voters love because they are public servants that are tough-minded, but fair. No, to TV, anyone that isn’t a liberal must be a rapist, a murderer, or a mentally deranged cretin.

In this episode titled “How to Kill a Good Guy,” main character Allison, a psychic detective of sorts working for the District Attorney’s office, saw a crime committed in her trance state. She saw the murder of a young girl. Then the murdered girl appeared to psychic Allison and told her exactly where her rapist and murderer buried her body.

The dead girl told Allison that she was buried in a shallow grave in the desert, an area that happened to be in the jurisdiction of a character named Sheriff John Guillory of Yucca County, Arizona.

Allison then goes into the DAs office to tell him that they need to look for this dead girl’s body in Yucca County. But the DA is not too keen to go to this county. Why? Here is how the DA character explains his reticence:

I’m not going to lie to you. Yucca’s not my favorite place. I’m not crazy about the way the do things there.

Well, gosh. What could be so bad? How do they “do things there”?

The next scene shows us this Sheriff Guillory for our benefit. Guest star Tom Wopat portrays a sheriff that is dismissive of the health and welfare of his prisoners, he’s a man that snickers at them, and treats them as less than human. This sheriff makes his prisoners wear — gasp! — pink jumpsuits and work on chain gangs! Oh the horrors.

After we are introduced to this callous character, the main characters have a scene in the car on the way back to their own office. Here another conversation occurs.

Allison: I didn’t even know that there were chain gangs anymore.

District Attny: Huh, that’s because you haven’t spent any time in Yucca County. Around here you’re convicted of a crime, Sheriff Guillory fits you for a pink jumpsuit and assigns you to a work crew. The ACLU hates him but the voters love him. (He says this last bit obviously disdainful of those voters.)

The next scene has the Allison character in bed that night at home telling her husband about meeting Sheriff Guillory.

Allison: This whole experience was so unexpected. I mean on one hand you look at him and he seems so awful and cruel having prisoners wear those pink jumpsuits and parade around in a chain gang.

Gosh, who could this Sheriff John Guillory character mean to invoke in the viewers of “Medium”? Could writers and producers of “Medium” mean to invoke in viewer’s minds the real-life, tough-minded sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio? The same man that instituted volunteer chain gangs and forced his prisoners to wear pink underwear?

Don’t you think the similarities are too much to ignore?

Only there is one major difference between the real Sheriff Joe and this fictional Sheriff John. This Arpaio-like character is a rapist and murderer of teen girls. This TV character is meant as no less than a slur on the person of Joe Arpaio.

Once again we see the hatred that the leftists in our American entertainment industry have for all things conservative. Has there ever been the slightest hint that Joe Arpaio might be as much of a sicko as this character, John? Not a one. But that won’t stop the leftists of the TV show from creating a character obviously based on a real-life person and turning that person into a monster simply because he’s conservative.

For the record, I’d like to state that I am otherwise a fan of this series. I think I’ve seen every episode on both networks upon which it has aired. My wife got me into this show and I’ve followed it ever since. So this review isn’t born of hate for the show.

But the fact is that this episode and its murderous Sheriff John Guillory character reveals the amount of contempt that Hollywood has for millions of Americans.