Aaron Barnhart's TVBARN.COM

Zehme dissects Dave

It started with a conjunction. Most journalists started their stories — even the celebrity-profile journalists, you know, the kind who seemed to follow their own rules for writing their celebrity profiles, including the one where you had someone above you edit the story — most journalists started their stories with nouns. Preferably a proper noun. Preferably, really preferably, the name of the celebrity being profiled. What with readers having such short attention spans these days and all.

(All right, I'm not the first critic to try his hand at mimicking a Bill Zehme celebrity profile. But it got you to the second graf, didn't it?)

But Bill Zehme, that zany Bill Zehme. He started his profile of David Letterman in the May issue of Esquire with a conjunction. "And," to be specific. To be really specific, he wrote, "And then, quite suddenly, there was a man down. And he was the big man ..."

Later in the elephantine first graf, some 150 words later, Zehme makes the first of many, many revelations that even this veteran Letterman watcher found surprising, sometimes amazing. "As news filtered beyond the portals," he writes, referring to word of Letterman's emergency heart-bypass surgery, "Burnett held a confidential conversation with the opposition, Leno himself ... as both a courtesy and a pre-emptive strike. As one mole would reveal, 'The fear was that Jay would seize the news of Dave's emergency and, as usual, grab the spotlight for himself by playing his Nice Guy role, the concerned so called friend.'"

It is also one of several revelations that cast Jay Leno in an, ehhh, let us say not fully favorable light. Zehme shared his upcoming piece with me a week ago, and I promised not to divulge details until we were closer to publication date. I still think you should read the thing, top to bottom — with a highlighter I called out no fewer than 18 passages from the seven-page cover piece, of which only a half a dozen are mentioned here — but here are a few of the juicier ones.

Read on

Pick To Click: They thought the KKK was too soft

Economic uncertainty. Technological change. Guns and seemingly random acts of violence. Though they are all grist for today's news mill, these were all present in Depression-era America, too. We're reminded of that in a chilling new documentary on the Black Legion, a violent fascist group that thrived in the Midwest in the 1930s. "Terror in the Heartland" (8 p.m. Monday, History Channel) looks at the extremist group that was formed in Ohio by ex-Southerners who thought the Klan was getting soft. Targeting Jews, Catholics, recent immigrants, union activists and of course African-Americans, the Black Legion's ranks swelled to the tens of thousands. Its members were behind countless unsolved murders and assaults, and the group's secrecy allowed police chiefs and mayors to join. This program puts the Black Legion into the larger context of pro-fascist activity in prewar America. There's video here of an American Nazi rally held in Madison Square Garden — in 1939.

The daily digest ... for April 10, 2000: Coming to you from San Antonio, where Mrs. TV Barn and I dined on the Riverwalk, then hurried back to our hotel room to watch the season finale of "The Sopranos." Naturally we ate Italian, though the waiter did talk me out of ordering the baked ziti, insisting that "the manicotti is our best baked dish" ... Then, of course, the missus roped me into the all-new "Practice" episode and that left it up to readers like our pal Tom Roche to watch George Clooney and Co. perform the live version of "Fail Safe." Tom writes that although each act was a generous 20 minutes or so in length, the commercial breaks ran seven minutes on average — meaning that only 1 hour 24 minutes out of a possible two hours was actual program material. A typical "Hallmark Hall of Fame" is eight minutes longer. "Still, really smooth for a live switch," adds Tom. "B&W letterbox look (was) a pleasure" ... Here's AP television critic (and longtime TV Barn reader) Frazier Moore's review of "Fail Safe" ...

By the way, if any TV Barn readers are at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas, please check in with a report ... Meanwhile in Cannes, at the trade show we'd all like our editors to send us to, the Mipdoc festival that precedes the regular MIP-TV confab featured some 8,000 screenings and around 700 attendees. Variety reports that traditional documentaries are falling out of favor, while the year's hottest trend in the genre are "docu-soaps," whatever those are. Documentaries, in case you haven't noticed, are booming business, and this is not good news for independent-minded filmmakers, said Jacques Bensimon, managing director of French programming services for tfo/TV Ontario, in a Saturday panel: "You have to limit what you do. It's become a real business suddenly, where people want to take world rights" on whatever you do ... Finally, back in Kansas City, the TV news chopper wars have resumed after a four-year hiatus, and yet another deadline was averted in the Hearst-Time Warner Cable standoff. Read these stories in my roundup of local TV news from Saturday's Kansas City Star.

Previously on TV Barn:
7 April: CBS's loaded sked; "Phantom Menace" on video
6 April: ReplayTV and TiVo
5 April: "Wonderland" protests; Fox hits new low
4 April: "Falcone" v. "Sopranos"; new sci-fi stars
3 April: iCraveTV; BET v. Univision
31 March: Video kiosks; Tavis Smiley; Peabody Awards; quit griping about Oscar
30 March: Pilots of the airwaves (II)

Coming up next ... subject to last-minute changes:
Tuesday: Sci-fi loft

On this date... in 1967, on "The Andy Griffith Show," a typo could cost Goober Pyle $200 if'n he has to pay off Floyd the Barber for winning his "Grab-bag for Cash" contest. The fellow playing Floyd, though, is no winner; Howard McNear "cuts out" after this episode. A stroke during the show's second season left McNear immobile, requiring him to be shown in close-ups, scenes where he could be shown sitting, or secretly propped up with a brace. By 1967, he is too ill to return for the show's final season. McNear passes away on January 3, 1969. -- Tom Heald