Goodnight Sweet Bozo...

Childhood television staple, Larry Harmon, a.k.a. Bozo the Clown, passed away today from congestive heart failure. The late clown was 83-years-old.

While not the originator of the Bozo character (that honor went to Pinto Colvig, the original voice of Disney's Goofy), Harmon, in a stroke of brilliant business acumen, did license the character to television stations all over the country. Harmon himself helped to choose the different Bozos and held a high standard for all prospective clowns who hoped to fill his size 83AAA red shoes.

Bozo's career was not free from scandal. He became caught up in a minor controversy in 2004 when the International Clown Hall of Fame in Milwaukee took down a plaque honoring him as Bozo. The Hall of fame instead formally endorsed Colvig for creating the role.

“Isn’t it a shame the credit that was given to me for the work I have done, they
arbitrarily take it down, like I didn’t do anything for the last 52 years,” he
told the AP at the time.

Harmon donned the Bozo outfit again in 1996 when he appeared in the Rose Parade in Pasadena. The crowd reaction, he recalled, was deafening. He was a popular culture icon, and his very character's name became synonymous with clownish behavior.

Harmon is survived by his wife, his son, Jeff Harmon, and daughters Lori Harmon, Marci Breth-Carabet and Leslie Breth.

Here's to you, Bozo...

R.I.P. Tim Russert

I have been a longtime admirer of Tim Russert and was saddened to hear that he died of a heart attack--at the young age of 58. Even though I get my daily doses of Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman, I always looked forward to Meet the Press on Sundays and especially his political coverage during the recent presidential primaries. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Big Russ and the rest of the family.

NBC's Tim Russert dies of apparent heart attack

Associated Press
June 13, 2008

Tim Russert, host of NBC's "Meet the Press" and its Washington bureau chief collapsed and died at work Friday after suffering an apparent heart attack. He was 58.

Longtime NBC anchor Tom Brokaw confirmed his death in a special report on NBC. Brokaw says Russert's death came during a political campaign that he loved.

R.I.P. William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. dies at 82

Hillel Italie
National Writer - Associated Press
February 27, 2008

William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.

His assistant Linda Bridges said Buckley was found dead by his cook at his home in Stamford, Conn. The cause of death was unknown, but he had been ill with emphysema, she said.
Editor, columnist, novelist, debater, TV talk show star of "Firing Line," harpsichordist, trans-oceanic sailor and even a good-natured loser in a New York mayor's race, Buckley worked at a daunting pace, taking as little as 20 minutes to write a column for his magazine, the National Review.

Yet on the platform he was all handsome, reptilian languor, flexing his imposing vocabulary ever so slowly, accenting each point with an arched brow or rolling tongue and savoring an opponent's discomfort with wide-eyed glee.

"I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition," he wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1986. "I asked myself the other day, `Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?' I couldn't think of anyone."

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