Triad Today

Something delightful happened in the fall of 1984. On Sunday night, September 30, at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, CBS premiered Murder She Wrote, a light-hearted drama series about Jessica Fletcher, a widowed mystery novelist who helped Cabot Cove law enforcement solve murder cases. For 12 seasons, the show was comfort food for hungry viewers, and a […]

TV crime shows often depict plea deals as a method of catching a murderer by offering less jail time to an accomplice in exchange for his testimony. Seldom, however, do we ever see plea deals offered to the main criminal himself. After all, why make a deal with someone you’ve already got dead-to-rights? Yet that’s what […]

I know this isn’t a profound thought, but athletic events should be about athletics not social issues, scandal, or controversy. The Olympics should be a competitive celebration of individual achievement, and for the most part, it is. Simone Biles, for example, was fun to watch as she displayed individual excellence, and the athleticism of America’s […]

Growing up in the 1950’s we had one television set in the house, and most of the time Dad and I had it tuned to westerns. But once a year Mom made us watch the Miss America pageant, and that was OK with Dad because he got to see women in swimsuits. Mostly though we […]

At about 1:45 p.m. this past Sunday, Joe Biden released a statement on social media in which he announced that he was not seeking re-election. A half-hour later he followed his first post with a second one in which he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him. All of this was the result of […]

On an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, rock-throwing hillbilly Ernest T. Bass descends on Mayberry in order to obtain a diploma. Using a map, Sheriff Andy helps Ernest study for his geography test. Andy: The United States is bordered on the north by Canada, on the south by Mexico, and on the east by the Atlantic […]

Late last month the American Film Institute honored Nicole Kidman for her lifetime of achievement. But Nicole is only 56 years old, which raises the question, “What constitutes a lifetime?” Inquiring minds want to know because every year hundreds of organizations give out lifetime achievement awards. In addition to AFI, there’s the Grammy Lifetime Achievement […]

I’m old enough to have watched the very first televised presidential debate back in 1960 between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John Kennedy. I was not, however, old enough then to understand how optics translates to votes. According to surveys, people who listened to the debate on radio thought Nixon won because of his […]

Over the past 20 years, North Carolina has had its share of municipal scandal and controversy. Town and city managers have made news for everything from sleeping with co-workers to domestic disturbances. And even on a good day, it’s not unusual to see local governing boards get into heated arguments about one thing or another, […]

Growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, I was addicted to television even before I could walk, and my Dad took me to see my first movie as soon as I had graduated from diapers. Of course, I wanted to emulate on-screen heroes like Superman and John Wayne, but one of my most lasting […]

Having played organized baseball in my youth, I developed what turned out to be an unrealistic sense of fair play, which I thought applied to every facet of life. In baseball, both teams begin the game with a score of 0 to 0, and thus have an equal chance of winning. The distances to the fence and between […]

One of my pet peeves is when a media critic or a performing arts group names the 100 best films of all time, or the 50 best TV shows of all time. Frequently these kinds of lists are based on such things as awards, ratings, or box office receipts. In doing so, they disregard likeability. Sure, Citizen Kane is a great film, but it is not a […]