Triad Today

Anthony Zuiker began his “show biz” career as an $8 per hour tram operator for a Vegas hotel. Back then his passengers hailed from around the globe, so Anthony wrote “The International Phonetic Language Booklet”, which enabled him to converse with his patrons in their native tongues. Even then, young Mr. Zuiker recognized the importance of communicating his message to a diverse audience – a revelation that helped him create one of the most successful franchises in the history of television, starting with “CSI”. The flagship show spawned “CSI: Miami”, “CSI: New York”, and now “CSI: Cyber”, the latter of which follows a team of agents (led by Oscar winner Patricia Arquette) who investigate any crime involving electronic devices. I first met and interviewed Anthony fifteen years ago as he was preparing to launch “CSI”. Last week we talked about his latest incarnation of the franchise.

Longworth: What gave you the idea to do “CSI:Cyber”, instead of “CSI: Raleigh”?

Zuiker: Well we knew if we did a fourth generation of “CSI”, it would not be another city. It didn’t make sense to go and do a different city because we’ve done three previous cities. Jerry Bruckheimer had the idea of possibly doing an FBI version of “CSI”, so that got us thinking.

Ironically, about the same time, Mary Aiken, a cyber psychologist from Dublin, Ireland, was in Hollywood to talk about what she does for a living. Mary spoke with us about “Crime 2.0” and what that looks like now a days, and we were intrigued by that, so I wrote “CSI: Cyber”, and the show was born on that day.

Longworth: Are the “CSI: Cyber” stories based on real-life cases?

Zuiker: No, not at all. There’s some semblance of real life in all of these shows, but we don’t necessarily rip things from the headlines, so to speak. I don’t think we’re going to be doing the Sony hack, but we might do a corporate hack. I don’t like those type of stories personally because they’re a caricature of what really happened. But if there’s a specific storyline or hack, or intrusion event that inspires us, then that makes for a more organic episode.

Thus far, episodes of “CSI: Cyber” have involved crib monitors hacked by a ring of baby brokers, an electronic device that can disable the braking system of a roller coaster or a train, and the murder of passengers who purchased Uber-like transportation services online.

Longworth: One of the characters in “CSI: Cyber” said, “Technology may have made life easier, but it sure hasn’t made it safer.” That sounds almost like a warning to viewers to abandon technology, stop using social media and credit cards, and just go off the grid.

Zuiker: Well technology is here to stay, and there’s no backing out of it.

We’re only going to get more and more connected. So our message surely isn’t to ditch technology, it’s more a message of becoming aware and diligent.

Longworth: Can your new show educate us and possibly even save lives?

Zuiker: Well, we hope. It’s designed to entertain and educate, and if we save lives along the way, that would be great. But, again the message is to make people aware of what’s possible, and to do what they can to protect themselves, without us being overly preachy about it, which I believe we aren’t. And if somebody takes time to make a better decision about what they download, then that’s a good public service.

And today, Zuiker’s public is a growing universe. In addition to writing and producing television programs, Anthony has also penned five novels, and an autobiography titled, appropriately, “Mr. CSI”. But it is his work in TV that has reached the largest audiences, which include a diversity of nationalities, gender, race, and age. In fact, his latest creation is an animated video series for children titled, “Mysteryopolis”, which is sort of a TV show with a game in it.

Zuiker: Kids view the video on a Nabi tablet and are commanded to play a game which moves the story forward. They don’t just watch the episode, they also play the episode.

Longworth: Many years ago you told me about how as a child, you used to sit in your room and invent board games. Is “CSI: Cyber” and “Mysteryopolis” an outgrowth of that curiosity and creativity?

Zuiker: I believe so. I believe that “CSI” at the end of the day is just a game, wrapped around a television show.

Though not a gambler himself, Anthony spent a lot of time in Las Vegas, and knows the ins and outs of betting. That’s why I was compelled to ask him about an incredible piece of luck.

Longworth: Did you rig the Academy Awards so that Patricia would win the Oscar a week before “CSI: Cyber” premiered?

Zuiker: (laughs) No I did not, but I was checking the odds, and she was the overwhelming favorite. We had a pretty good idea she was going to win, so it was excellent timing.

Excellent timing. It’s the story of Anthony Zuiker’s life and success. Of course it doesn’t hurt to have an active imagination. But above all, Zuiker is a communicator, the same guy who once wrote a booklet to help him relate to his tram patrons. By the way, the slogan for that booklet was, “Because there’s no better way to respect a customer than to speak their language.” It’s a slogan that has never failed its author or his audience.

(“CSI: Cyber”, which also stars Peter MacNicol and James Van Der Beek, airs Wednesdays at 10pm on CBS )

Stock car racing and wine making are two of America’s most competitive industries, and one man has left an indelible mark upon both.
Richard Childress, a native of Winston-Salem, purchased his first racecar in 1965 for $20, and within a few short years racked up over 70 top-10 finishes, including 6 top-fives. But as much as he loved driving, Childress found greater success as a team owner.

Together with the late Dale Earnhardt, Childress’ team won six national championships in an 8-year span between 1986 and 1994. Today, Richard Childress Racing (RCR) employs several teams who compete in Sprint Cup, XFinity, and Truck Series events, and they have won championships in all three categories.

Not bad for a guy who started out with $20.

But in the midst of the fast-paced world of NASCAR, Childress was drawn to the slow-paced world of wine, and, in 2004, opened Childress Vineyards on 72 acres in Davidson County. It was a business decision that had been formulated decades earlier.

“I think going to California back in the early days, and visiting wineries out there, that was the biggest thing. And I just decided one day that if I ever got the funds, I wanted to do a winery. So I was fortunate enough to be able to put it together.”

JL: What are the challenges you faced in starting a winery?

RC: Besides taking a lot of money to do it and do it right, it takes putting together a team – a bunch of really good people who understand the business where I didn’t. I just had a passion for it, but I had to go out and find the right people, like our winemaker Mark Friszolowski. I needed the right people to make it work, and make it happen, and I’ve been fortunate there.

JL: You mention the “team”. You certainly know how to put together a successful racing team, so did those skills translate for you to the wine business?

RC: Yeah, I think that’s the key to our success, has been getting the right people. I’ve got my partner Greg Johns, Max Ferrell our vineyard manager, Bob Burgin our general manager, and Dolph Cummings in sales. Dolph has increased the wholesale side of our business tremendously. So we’ve been fortunate. It’s been pretty good.

JL: I know that motels and shops have sprung up adjacent to the winery. How has Childress Vineyards impacted the local and regional economy?

RC: We brought in about 160,000 visitors last year, and we think we’ll go over 200,000 this year. And people come and spend money doing a lot of different things. The fans come to see the race shop and visit our museum, then they always end up going down to the winery. So they spend money in other areas. There’s economic impact all around.

JL: What about people who don’t know much about racing, but love wines. What does the winery offer those folks as a tourist destination? What can they do and see?

RC: First you can come in and get a tour of the winery, and understand what it’s all about. Then you have a wine tasting. We have sweet tastings, we’ve got regular tastings and signature tastings. You can have lunch at the Bistro. We’re also building an 8400-square-foot atrium where we can have music and events, even corporate events. It will hold about 400 people. You can even get married at the winery. We had close to 60 weddings at the winery last year.

JL: 60 weddings a year? 

RC: Yeah, we did two and three a week sometimes.

JL: You don’t host any divorces, do you?

RC: (laughs) No, we don’t do those.

The Childress label includes eleven varieties of wines for all palates and all occasions.

JL: There are more than 8,000 wineries in the United States, and over 130 in North Carolina alone. So what makes your wines unique?

RC: Well, it’s like I told Mark at the beginning. I want something that first time drinkers can drink, and we want to have easy-drinking wines that people can move up from. If you first gave some folks a heavy, bold wine from California or Italy, they wouldn’t like it as well as ours. Ours is a softer, easy drinking wine.

And like the proud father of two very different children, it’s hard to pin Richard down on which of his two businesses he loves best.

JL: Which was more exciting – winning your first race?, or opening the first bottle of wine with your name on it?

RC: I can tell you which one was the most expensive (laughs). The wine. But both were enjoyable.

Of course, Richard’s two careers are historically linked, sort of. In the early days of racing, some of the good old boys with fast cars ran moonshine, and later were recruited by NASCAR to compete against each other in events where the only liquid on board was gasoline.

JL: As a vintner, if prohibition suddenly returned tomorrow, would you be running wine?

RC: (laughs) No, I’d probably go back to the moonshine days.

For more information on Childress Vineyards, including directions, hours of operation, wine tastings, Bistro and gift shop hours, and how to schedule events, visit Childress Vineyards website.

Last week, following a disgraceful racial utterance by a White female TV anchorwoman in Cleveland, I called for a national referendum on racist language in the workplace, and suggested that perpetrators should be immediately fired from their job if heard speaking a racial or ethnic slur. No sooner had the ink dried on that column, came news of a racist rant by Sigma Alpha Epsilon frat boys at the University of Oklahoma.

The ringleader was expelled as he should have been, but now we have something else to be concerned about. The expelled student, Parker Rice, said that his racial slurs were “fueled by alcohol.” Of course that’s a pretty lame excuse for being a racist, but it’s an explanation that cannot be dismissed totally out of hand. According to a Harvard study, students more likely to binge drink are white, age 23 or younger, and are residents of a fraternity or sorority. That describes the busload of racist Oklahoma students to a tee. It is also consistent with a study published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) which reported that college Presidents say binge drinking “is their most serious problem on campus.”

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism says that drinking itself isn’t the problem, but rather it is the negative consequences that result from binge drink ing, a condition which NIAAA defines as having 5 drinks or more in a two hour period or less.

So just how serious is the problem of binge drinking on campus? NIAAA and CSPI provide us with a litany of consequences:

• 7.2 million students are binge drinkers
• 44% of students attending a 4-year college drink at binge levels
• Each year over 1800 college students die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries.
• Nearly 700,000 college age students are assaulted by another student who has been drinking.
• Nearly 100,000 college students are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape.
• 600,000 college students receive unintentional injuries while under the influence of alcohol.
• 30,000 college students require medical attention after binge drinking * About 25% of all college students have academic problems due to alcohol use, including missing class and receiving poor grades.
• And, each year, more than 150,000 students develop an alcohol-related health problem, which includes suicide attempts. Penn State professor Jeff Hayes expands upon that statistic, saying, “students who are binge drinkers are more suicidal … they also have greater mental health concerns, such as depression and anxiety.”

Clearly, alcohol use and abuse among college students has reached epidemic proportions, so what’s the solution?

At Frostberg State University, city police are allowed to patrol campus and keep an eye out for binge drinking. I suppose that makes sense because CSPI says students are less likely to binge drink on campus where alcohol control policies have been put in place. Then there’s the UVA student government spokesperson who recently suggested that alcohol-related sexual assaults could be eliminated by making all frat houses co-ed.

Maybe I’m missing something, but if you really want to stop binge drinking on campus, then why not ban all drinking on campus? Young people will, no doubt bristle at my suggestion, claiming that they are adults, and need no one to tell them what or when to drink. The problem is that freedom to binge doesn’t just translate to health risks for the individual who drinks. It also often affects other people, either directly or indirectly, whether victims of a drunk driver, sexual assault, racist rants, or as surviving loved ones of a binge drinker who dies as a result of his consumption and reckless behavior.

Just as we need a zero tolerance policy when it comes to sexual assaults and racial slurs, we also need the same approach to binge drinking, and that means banning all spirits from all campuses. Students found in possession of alcohol would then be expelled and not allowed to re-enter any college for two years. Of course that policy proposal begs the question, what about binge drinking off campus? Bar owners are already responsible for cutting off binge drinkers, less they lose their liquor license, so that means stiffer punishment is needed for those who serve alcohol to college students in a private setting, such as at a party or picnic.

Some say that drinking alcohol is a rite of passage, but perhaps the time has come for us to take a prohibitive stand on college drinking in total, in order to prevent binge drinking in specific. The rite of passage is one thing.

The right to pass out is another.

Over the past 60 years, America has seen many great advancements in science, technology, and medicine. Some would say that we’ve also made great strides in race relations, thanks to such groundbreaking events as Brown v. Board of Education, the Voting Rights Act, and the election of an African-American to the highest office in the land. Yet here we are in the year 2015, and the nation is still plagued by racial prejudice, and racial slurs, the latter of which is a tangible indicator of how pervasive the former is. Slurs are spoken by people from all walks of life, some in a private setting, others in front of a national audience. Who could forget Seinfeld actor Michael Richards’ on stage rant at a black heckler? Or Don Imus slinging a slur at the Rutgers women’s basketball team? And then there was the recent utterance by a Cleveland TV news anchor.

Following this year’s Oscar telecast, WJM’s Kristi Capel and Wayne Dawson engaged in an unscripted discussion about Lady Gaga’s musical tribute to The Sound of Music. Dawson, an African-American, praised Gaga’s performance, but then Capel, a white former Miss Missouri, responded, “It’s hard to really hear her voice with all that jigaboo music.” Dawson resisted the temptation to verbally scold Capel, so hundreds of viewers and bloggers did it for him. Within minutes of the broadcast, the Twitterverse was ablaze with criticism of the beauty queen, prompting Ms. Capel to post this apology: “I deeply regret my insensitive comment. I didn’t know the meaning, or that it was even a word.”

For me, Capel’s apology rang hollow. First of all, how can you use a word that you don’t think is a word? Second, every caucasian with half a brain (and that pretty much describes Ms. Capel) should know that the word she used is a hurtful, insulting racial slur against black people. So what was Ms. Capel’s punishment? A paltry three-day suspension. Unfortunately that’s the typical response by employers in such situations. Why? Because unlike specific guidelines that deal with sexual harassment or vacation policy, most companies don’t publish a list of racial slurs which, when uttered, result in immediate dismissal. You’d think such a template would exist, but it doesn’t, at least not universally.

Ironically, while racists are getting away with speaking the actual slurs, journalists (including this writer) are generally told to use an abbreviated version when referring to a slur. The fact that racial slurs are still spoken freely in public and especially in the workplace, while reformers are hamstrung from teaching about those slurs, means we have not been successful in explaining to everyone WHY such words are so offensive. Translation? Political correctness hasn’t really corrected anything. That’s the belief held by a number of notable African-American columnists, authors, and comedians. Randall Kennedy, author of Ni**er warns us about the dangers of not openly confronting that particular racial slur, saying, “To be ignorant of its meaning and effects is to make oneself vulnerable to all manner of perils, including the loss of a job, a reputation, a friend, or even one’s life.”

The same could be said of most slurs which still have a powerful impact because we haven’t done enough to explain them or to punish those who use them. For example, until I researched the derivation of racial slurs, I was ambivalent about whether the Washington Redskins football team should keep its name. But then I learned that part of the origin for that slur comes from a time in the early days of our country when white hunters would actually skin Native Americans. I am no longer ambivalent. And so, it’s not enough to simply say that racial and ethnic slurs are bad, we need to know WHY they are hurtful, both historically and currently.

I urge every corporate HR director to search the Racial Slur Database, the Random House Dictionary of American Slang, and the Urban Dictionary, and compile, then post a list of vile words (and their derivations) which, if spoken will result in an immediate termination of employment for the offending party. Ignorance must no longer be an acceptable reason for the use of slurs. Nor should we continue to accept hollow apologies from people who aren’t really sorry for their language, they’re just sorry they got caught. Racial slurs should be fully understood, discussed, and then posted for all the Kristi Capels of the world to see. Employers will never be able to get rid of the hate in someone’s heart, but they can sure as hell get rid of anyone who spews that hate at work.

Earlier this month, Senator Thom Tillis opened his mouth, inserted his foot, and made North Carolina into a laughingstock. Speaking to the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington D.C., Tillis suggested that restaurant owners shouldn’t be forced by the government to make their employees wash their hands after a visit to the bathroom. Usually when a politician says something monumentally moronic, his handlers have him do damage control the next day. Not Tillis. Instead, he defended his remarks, and even added, “…let those who are regulated decide whether or not it makes sense.” And what was the senator’s solution for preventing the spread of disease?

According to The DailyMeal.com, Tillis recommended restaurant owners just post a sign, notifying customers that, “We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom”. “The market”, said Tillis, “will take care of that.” Medical professionals disagree.

On its website, the CDC refers to hand washing as a “Do It Yourself vaccine”, which can prevent the spread of everything from hepatitis, to dysentery and salmonella, all of which can result when food is contaminated with fecal matter. Hand washing also prevents the spread of flu, which, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, has claimed 170 lives in the Tar Heel state during this season’s epidemic.

Tillis, by the way, was not the only politician who said something stupid about health-related issues over the past few weeks. In light of recent measles outbreaks, presidential hopefuls Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey both weighed in on the growing controversy over vaccinations.

The Washington Post reported that Christie said parents “need to have some measure of choice”, while Senator Paul told talk show host Laura Ingraham, “While I think it’s a good idea to take the vaccine, I think that’s a personal decision for individuals.”

Unfortunately the utterances of stupid, absurd, and unfounded statements by elected officials is not a new phenomena.

For example, LiberalAmerica.org reports that in January of 2005, former Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann said, “If we took away the minimum wage…we could virtually wipe out unemployment completely, because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.” Chuckle if you will, but to this day, Congress has refused to pass legislation establishing a livable minimum wage for hourly employees.

Speaking of employment, the Daily Kos reports that in 2013, then powerful Congressman Eric Cantor proposed a ban on paid overtime for hourly workers. And, two years earlier, Wisconsin Congressman Glenn Grothman introduced legislation that would have allowed employers to work their employees seven days a week, with no day off. Then there was Utah Senator Mike Lee who once proposed the elimination of child labor laws.

Politicians also engage in dangerous rhetoric about social issues. IJReview.com still posts the famous 1992 quote from Arkansas Representative Jay Dickey, Jr. who, when referring to how rape inside of a family is not really rape, said, “Incest can be handled as a family matter within the family.” Twenty years later, Dickey’s stupidity was matched by that of Missouri Congressman Todd Aiken who said, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down.”

What’s really frightening about uninformed statements made by elected officials, is that those stupid remarks can help to form public policy. Just imagine the spread of deadly disease that would result if Senator Tillis’s anti-handwashing stance took root. And how many lives would be lost from preventable disease if rhetoric by Christie and Paul influenced legislation to make vaccinations optional?

It’s OK to laugh at and ridicule politicians who say stupid things, but we must also remain vigilant in monitoring what effect those stupid statements might have if taken seriously. Of course the best defense against the spread of ignorance is to wash our hands of ill-informed politicians when they come up for re-election. Unfortunately Senator Tillis was just sworn in, which means we’ll have to listen to him spew his own brand of fecal matter for six more years. As the villain said to Clint Eastwood in the film “Joe Kidd”, “It’s a shitty deal buddy, but it’s all you got.”

There are two things that columnists really love: irony and symmetry. Last week, a story fell into our laps that gave us both.

On February 10, NBC announced that its long-time anchorman Brian Williams was to be suspended for six months without pay. Later that same day, long-time Daily Show anchor Jon Stewart announced his retirement. Williams garnered high ratings and a big salary for his ability to report the truth. Stewart garnered high ratings and a big salary for his ability to satirize the truth. Williams was suspended for exaggerating the news. Stewart retired because he was tired of exaggerating the news. Both Williams and Stewart rose to prominence because of the Iraq war, and now one of them may be out of the news business because of that war.

Shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Williams was flying in a convoy of Chinook helicopters, some of which were fired upon. Initially he reported the incident accurately, but as the years went by, his story became embellished. According to the Huffington Post, Williams said in 2008 that, “all four of our Chinooks took fire.” But in 2013 he told David Letterman, “Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire including the one I was in.” Then on January 30 of this year, while anchoring the Nightly News, Williams said that his helicopter was “forced down after being hit by an RPG.” Unfortunately for Williams, some of the Chinook crew members who flew that mission, were watching the newscast when Brian weaved his tangled web.

A flurry of blog posts by the crewmen followed, with each one disputing that Brian’s chopper had been hit, or that the anchorman had even been anywhere near the danger. Columnists Maureen Dowd, Ben Mathis Lilly, and others reported a post by one crewmember that wrote, “Sorry dude. I don’t remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened.” That and other posts were published in Stars and Stripes, and suddenly Williams found himself backtracking and apologizing.

Initially Williams said he was taking a few days off while NBC investigated his transgression. But news of other embellishments began to surface, including a similar chopper incident over Israel, and a lie he reported during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. NBC had heard enough, and moved quickly to suspend the face of their news division.

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh speculated that Williams’ suspension and Stewart’s resignation were not coincidental, and that NBC might be courting Comedy Central’s main man to replace Williams. In a way Limbaugh’s theory isn’t so far fetched. Stewart is a valuable commodity, especially because of his ability to attract a younger demographic. In fact, NBC had once approached him about taking over the moderating duties on “Meet the Press.” But while Stewart rebuffed the offer to be a real newsman, Williams reportedly asked his bosses at NBC to let him be a real comedian, and succeed Jay Leno on the Tonight Show. The network quashed that idea and hired Jimmy Fallon instead.

On the night he announced his resignation, Jon Stewart said of his friend Brian’s suspension, “Finally SOMEONE is being held accountable for misleading America about the Iraq war.” It was Stewart’s comically biting way of indicting the Bush administration for an illegal invasion, and, at the same time, shaming the networks for never questioning or challenging Bush’s motives. It was also yet another reminder that the ascendancy of both Williams and Stewart will forever be inexorably linked to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Immediately following the dual announcements on February 10th, Viacom stock prices took a huge hit, and so did Williams’ credibility. Stewart was so popular that just the thought of his leaving caused a 350 million dollar drop in stock prices. Meanwhile, Williams was so unpopular that he dropped from #23 to #835 on the list of the Most Trusted Americans. That’s 15 points lower than Duck Dynasty’s resident homophobe Phil Robertson.

Translation? Stewart’s stock is on the rise and Williams’ is so low it may never recover. Why? Because Brian committed the ultimate sin for a journalist. Columnist Leonard Pitts tells his students, “Your one indispensable asset is your credibility. If you are not believable, nothing else matters.” Daily Beast news analyst Andrew Tyndall expanded on that theme, saying of Williams’ actions, “The actual lie is a trivial one because it has zero public policy or political implications. But the motive for the lie is really damning. Telling fibs to make yourself look braver than you are? … the moral problems that lie raises are massive.”

Jon Stewart is walking away from a job that pays him over $20 million dollars per year to make up stories, while Brian Williams is being removed from a job that pays him $10 million dollars a year to report the truth. Somewhere along the way, Stewart became the more trusted of the two men, and now we know why.

Williams never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Stewart ALWAYS did.

Appearing before a gathering of the Television Critics Association last month, comedian Billy Crystal was asked to comment on the state of television today.

“I’ve seen some stuff recently on TV in different kinds of shows where the language or the explicit sex is really, you know … too much for me,” Crystal said. “Sometimes it’s just pushed a little too far for my tastes…”

I know how Billy feels. Lately it seems that just about anything goes when it comes to sexual content on television. It wasn’t always that way.

In the 1950s, CBS wouldn’t allow the word “pregnant” to be used when Lucy was “with child,” and censors also wouldn’t allow ample cleavage or belly buttons to be shown. In the early 1960s, television characters that were married on screen still had to sleep in twin beds. I once asked my friend Dick Van Dyke if Rob and Laura Petrie ever had sex. Said Dick, jokingly, “Well yeah. They had a kid, didn’t they?” The point is that the Petries never had sex on camera, yet we still knew that they had affection for one another, and we knew how that affection manifested itself without having to witness it.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, less was left to the imagination as studios gave us “Jiggle TV,” where stars such as Farrah Fawcett and Suzanne Somers were allowed to bounce around sans bras or wearing skimpy bikinis. Shocking as that was to some viewers, it was nothing compared to audience reaction when, in 1989, thirtysomething showed two gay men in bed. Then came 1993’s premiere of NYPD Blue, in which David Caruso and Amy Brenneman rolled around in the sack with their bare buttocks showing. That scene caused so much controversy that over 50 ABC-affiliate stations refused to air the episode for fear such nudity would violate community standards of decency.

Not surprisingly, though, by the dawn of the new millennium, naked butts were no longer much of an issue. That’s because cable programs bombarded us with all kinds of sexual content. There were lesbian love scenes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and later in The L Word. Gay men had sex in Queer as Folk.

David Duchovny and Kim Cattrall had serial sex in Californication and Sex in the City, respectively, and nudity is a regular fixture on Masters of Sex and Girls. TV even showed its first graphic hand job in an episode of the short-lived series Tell Me What You Want. And just recently, Chris Noth went down on Julianna Margulies in an episode of The Good Wife, but the act itself was not shown, just implied.

Leaving something to the imagination is what my generation loved about sex on TV and in the cinema. And perhaps that’s what Billy Crystal meant when he alluded to programs that push the boundaries a bit too far.

Nudity and sex acts can be photographed tastefully, and can be crucial to advancing a storyline, but then again, they can just be graphic and gratuitous.

Of course sometimes, offensive material is just used for comedic purposes and not for titillation. Such was the case with a music video starring Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg on Saturday Night Live. The video, titled “Dick in a Box,” was about — you guessed it — a dick in a box, sort of. During the video, each man presented a large box to his respective girlfriend, and when the girl opened the box, she was surprised to see that it was empty, except for what we imagined was one of the men’s private parts protruding through a hole in the box. “Box” by the way, is also a term used for describing a receiving part of the female anatomy, and it’s a colloquialism for a TV set. Who would have thought that a box could be so naughty and so entertaining at the same time? The producers of Sex Box, that’s who.

Produced by WEtv (a division of AMC) and adapted from a BBC program of the same name, Sex Box involves two people (of any gender) who have sex inside of a giant box, while a panel of “sexperts” and a studio audience wait patiently for the couple to emerge from the box all aglow. And while Sex Box depicts no on-screen nudity or lovemaking, it does something much more offensive. It exploits sex for ratings.

The producers want us to believe that “Sex Box” has educational value, but I’m not buying it. On the BBC version I viewed, the participants Rachael and Dean were interviewed by the moderators after they had just had sex.

Moderator: So how did you start?
Rachael: By stripping off.
Dean: Then foreplay.
Rachael: Then right into it.

I guess that’s what we call educational discourse about instructional intercourse.

Again, Sex Box doesn’t show actual sex acts, so why all the fuss from parent groups? Perhaps the answer lies in a study by the Rand Corporation, which concludes that “Television in which characters talk about sex affects teens just as much as television that actually shows sexual activity.” Translation? Sex Box can lead to as much unprotected sex, STDs and teen pregnancies as programs that depict graphic sex on screen.

Don’t get me wrong. Old guys like Billy Crystal and me aren’t prudes. After all, we came of age during the pre-AIDS sexual revolution. Nor do we believe in censorship of any kind. It’s just that we come from a generation in which films and television left certain things to our imagination, and we learned about the birds and the bees from our dads, not from a panel of experts on TV.

Yes, television has evolved, and so too have our views about sex. Even so, I still love to watch the box. I just don’t want people screwing in it.

In the entertainment business, a triple threat is someone who can sing, dance and act. It’s also someone who’s accomplished on stage, in film and on television. I guess that makes Ken Berry a double-triple threat because he can do just about everything in any venue.

I first got to know Ken some years ago when I was preparing an event for the Television Academy.

Last month we reconnected to talk about his career.

Born in Moline, Illinois on November 3, 1933, Ken was drawn to performing at an early age. As a teenager his considerable skills as a dancer landed him a spot in the Horace Heidt Youth Opportunity Program, which performed all over America and Europe. After graduating high school, Ken enlisted in the Army, and was stationed at Fort Bragg. It was his first introduction to North Carolina but not his first connection. More on that later.

In the second year of his enlistment, Ken and other soldiers from Special Services Corps toured the country and entertained other troops. It was during that time that he won the All-Army Talent Competition. Thanks to YouTube, you can catch his winning act via The Big Picture, a weekly TV series produced by the Army in the early 1950s.

If you have not seen an athletic dancer do his thing, then treat yourself to this video gem.

Ken’s biggest supporter in those days was Sgt. Leonard Nimoy, the future Mr. Spock, who had already dabbled in acting and knew the ropes in Hollywood.

“I was going to be on the Ed Sullivan Show because Ed put the winners of the AATC on the air every year. And Lennie said, ‘You really ought to get in touch with the heads of the talent departments at major studios, and see if you get any response.’ And I said, ‘I don’t know how to do that.’ So Lennie said, ‘Well then I’ll do it for you,’ and he got two bites — one from Fox, and one from Universal. I can’t remember why, but we settled on Universal, and I went out there after I got out of the Army. I did a screen test that turned out very well I thought, and I don’t usually think that about my work.”

Despite the successful screen test, Ken’s first regular TV series work was still several years away. In the meantime, he continued to hone both his academic and artistic skills.

“I was going to school on the GI Bill. I wanted to stay in school and keep studying because I wasn’t well-rounded, and I wanted to be a better song and dance man. I didn’t have any money, so I took a job in Vegas working with Abbott and Costello. I made a whole $125 a week. They weren’t really getting along, in fact, it was the last time they ever worked together.”

Ken was ready to make his move; though his timing was perfect on stage, it couldn’t have been worse for a career in singing and dancing.

“I realized that the studios weren’t making motion picture musicals anymore. It’s like aspiring to be a basketball player and things are coming along, then you pick up the newspaper, and it says ‘Basketball canceled.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

But while musicals weren’t in demand, Ken’s acting abilities were, and he landed roles on The Ann Southern Show and Dr. Kildare. Then in 1965, Warner Brothers hired Ken to play a bumbling cavalry officer in F-Troop, a spoof of the old West. The role called for a lot of physical shtick, but Ken was up to the challenge. In fact, his pratfalls earned him high praise from his idol Buster Keaton. F Troop was ABC’s second-highest-rated comedy and an instant cult hit, and it outperformed such classics as Gilligan’s Island and Star Trek, the latter of which starred his old sergeant. Despite its popularity, however, F-Troop was canceled after two seasons, presumably because Warner’s new owner, 7-Arts, didn’t want to incur the high costs of producing a series in color. Fortunately for Ken, Mayberry, North Carolina came calling.

“My wife read that Dick Linke was President of the Personal Managers’ Council, so she wrote to him asking if he would watch a Carol Burnett special I was going to be on with Carol, Frank Gorshin and Rock Hudson.”

The letter worked. Linke, who was also Andy Griffith’s manager, took Ken on as a client, and before long Andy hired Ken as the lead in a spin-off series, Mayberry RFD.

“I always knew how lucky I was to get that job,” Berry said. “I think they were scraping the bottom of the barrel, that’s how I got most of my jobs. (laughs)” In the series, Ken played farmer Sam Jones, a widower who was also head of the town council. He was now the straight man for all of the old familiar Mayberry characters, and the show was an instant hit, ranking 4th in the Nielsens, with a 25 rating for the first two seasons. To put it into perspective, Seinfeld usually garnered no more than a 21 rating, and Friends averaged about a 15. If RFD aired today, CBS would have to bring in a Brinks truck to pay Ken each week. Instead, some puny-brained network executive decided to purge all of the so-called rural comedies from its line-up in 1971, and once again, a Ken Berry show was canceled at the height of its popularity.

The following season, Ken hosted his own variety series, titled, appropriately, Ken Berry’s WOW Show! The program was short-lived, but it gave audiences a glimpse of Ken’s prowess as a singer and dancer. In 1974, he appeared on an episode of The Brady Bunch in what was to be a spin-off series, with Ken playing the father of three multiracial children. But Kelly’s Kids never made it onto a network schedule. Afterward, Ken appeared in several films and a number of stage plays, before being cast as the dim bulb son of Vicki Lawrence, in the long running series Mama’s Family.

Today, after six decades in show business, Ken deserves a rest, yet he joked about his retirement, telling me, “I don’t have anything going on until April.”

“What happens in April?” I asked. “Nothing happens in April. I was just kidding,” he said.

Before we ended our conversation, Ken said he had one more thing he wanted to tell me: “When I was stationed at Fort Bragg, I had a strange feeling of being at home in North Carolina. Not long ago I got in touch with a genealogist and learned that the Berry family settled in Orange County. One branch then went South into northern Alabama, and my branch wound up in southern Illinois. But I always did feel at home in North Carolina.”

Praise indeed from the head of the Mayberry town council.

MacMillan defines diversion as “something intended to take someone’s attention away from something you do not want them to concentrate on.” Magicians and illusionists, for example, are masters at creating diversions, and now, it seems, so too is our 44th president. In fact, his latest State of the Union Address was replete with obfuscations and diversions. Here are a few examples.

The President told us that this century began with “a new generation fighting two long and costly wars.” Later in the speech he returned to that theme to brag that, “our combat mission in Afghanistan is over.” Not so says Atlantic correspondent Jim Fallows who claims we actually lost the war in Afghanistan. Speaking with Bill Maher last Friday, Fallows said, “This has been a decade of strategic defeat for the United States. The 2 to 3 trillion dollars we spent in Iraq and Afghanistan might as well have been burned for the good they’ve done.” True, George Bush got us into the Middle East mess and probably should have been tried for war crimes for his role in the deaths of over one million innocent Iraqi civilians, but Obama did nothing to expedite our collective withdrawals from that region, and his delays ran up the totals on casualties and costs. Our Illusionist-in-Chief also didn’t mention that we spend twice as much on our military as the next fifteen countries combined.

According to Mr. Fallows that represents 4 percent of our GDP. And, Obama failed to mention that he has bombed seven different countries since taking office. That’s more than any other president in history. Not bad for a man who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign rhetoric then spent the next six years waging war. Nice diversion Mr. President.

Speaking of senseless casualties, I also loved how concerned Mr. Obama seemed to be about gun violence in America, saying, “I’ve mourned with grieving families in Tuscon and Newtown, Boston, Texas, and West Virginia.”

Hey Mr. President, maybe you wouldn’t have had to mourn in all those cities if you had grown a pair after the first massacre occurred and fought hard for a ban on assault weapons.

Obama apologists say that’s because Congress blocked him at every turn. How soon we forget. Truth is that during his first two years in office, Mr. Obama operated with Democrats in control of both legislative chambers. In January of 2009, the House of Representatives began its 111th session with 256 Democrats and 178 Republicans, while the Senate gave the President a 55 to 41 edge. So thanks for directing our attention away from your policy failures by telling us how much you mourned. That’s not just a diversion, that’s an ironic diversion in extremely bad taste.

One of my favorite diversions during the President’s address was when he talked about the economy. “We have risen from the recession freer to write our own future than any nation on earth,” he said, then later added “We reversed the tide of outsourcing and created 11 million new jobs.” I scarcely know where to begin exposing those illusions. First of all, we have not risen out of the recession. The official unemployment rate may have finally fallen below 6 percent but that doesn’t take into consideration those who have given up looking for gainful employment, nor those who are underemployed. Even worse, of the jobs created since 2008, over 60 percent are low wage jobs. But that’s something the Grand Illusionist doesn’t want us to focus on. And don’t get me started on his claim that we have reversed the tide of outsourcing. Many US companies (including one based in the Triad) are continuing to thrive because of outsourcing.

They shutter plants here, reopen them in third world countries, pay slave wages, then import the cheaper goods back into America at about a 2 percent tariff. That compares to countries such as China and India whose tariffs range from 20 percent to 40 percent. The President slipped up last week when he said, “We need strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe.” I guess his diversionary rhetoric was working so well that he figured he could mention something which he should have fixed long ago. Obama has had six years to repeal or reform bad trade pacts including NAFTA, but he has never taken one step in that direction.

Ironically he also spoke of income inequality in his address, something which has grown under his administration, in large part due to his failure to close the loopholes that are allowing companies to send their jobs overseas. Author Bret Stephens observed “The weird thing is to have a President six years into his office suddenly discover that the middle class has been hard hit for the last six years.” And what’s Obama’s solution for narrowing the income gap? He wants to impose about $320 billion in new taxes on people with money. Speaking on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” Stephens offered a warning about that kind of revenue-raising strategy. “French President Hollande came into office proposing a 75 percent super tax on the rich, not so different from what Obama is proposing. What Happened in France? The economy plummeted, and unemployment rose to 10 percent…”

I’m hopeful that most Americans weren’t fooled by Obama’s smoke and mirrors act. After all, according to Nielsen, his was the lowest rated State of the Union address of the past fifteen years. On the other hand, only a true illusionist can make viewers disappear. And speaking of chasing people away, it is interesting to note that ever since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, whenever the President speaks to a joint session, a select number of congressmen are required to relocate to an unknown site, just in case of a disaster. Who would have guessed that Obama’s speech itself was enough of a disaster to warrant the evacuation.