notanotherbookreview

  Heaventown New York's claim to fame is Saint Billy , a film about  a local war hero, Billy Temple. Starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara, this Xmas favorite has spawned a plethora of tourist traps; a Billy themed museum, hotels, restaurants, boutiques. When veteran reporter Charlie Ginsberg is assigned a "puff piece" on the quaint town in advance of their annual Billy Festival, he's resigned to his fate. While The Word , a news site, offers few challenges, at least he's got a paid trip to a scenic place. He vows to enjoy the view but Charlie can't mothball his brain. Why are there no photos of the real Billy Temple in the museum that bears his name?  What about his accidental" death from the Billy-named bridge? BLIZZARD OF LIES, Howard Rosenberg's entertaining mystery, is both a satirical and earnest look at American values and character.  Charlie mercilessly investigates stereotypes who often are on target and not--including himself. Yes he...

  Let us talk about that most crazy and foolhardy of  free lance journalists, brave ones who cover wars and in our time the "forever wars" of Afghanistan and Iraq. Vietnam a different story, body bags being loaded on planes, front and center on the six o'clock news. People were riveted-overloaded by daily body counts like a dark casino jackpot ever rising. Until it was enough, and Americans--old and young, liberal and conservative, veteran and resistor, surged in the streets to end that war. That old coverage gets little play now but then the numbers were enough. (Today, without the nightly network focus, would it happen?) This post is to celebrate this rare journalist in the present, when our wars merit scarce network attention and coverage is often but a distanced reminder of what is going on far away --the horrific daily reality of war.  But there are news outlets who occasionally run stories by journalists enbedded with soldiers and their allies, working inch ...