by Roy Exum
posted May 12, 2008
 Roy Exum |
Published out of New York and edited by a guy named William Falk, The Week bills itself as a vehicle that tells you “all you need to know about everything that matters” and is a weekly summary of “the best of the U.S. and international media.”
While I do most of my morning reading on the computer – because its faster and things are so accessible – I prefer The Week in its magazine form because I can put it down, pick it up later, carry it around and usually wind up reading something I’ve passed by two or three times earlier, be it about a ghost town in Alabama named Claiborne or why Microsoft gave up on Yahoo.
Now what the editors do to hook me is include a bunch of funny tidbits among the stories of Hillary running out of gas, Eight Belles dying at the Kentucky Derby and “Married to the Mob,” which I think is a very clever headline for the polygamous Mormon sect.
Lest you think this is an advertisement, I am trying to set the stage for my morning tale which was spawned by this week’s The Week. On its “People” page, it noted a wonderful story on the actor Donald Sutherland that has recently appeared in the British news magazine, “New Statesman.”
You’ll remember Sutherland’s early years when he appeared on M*A*S*H and in a bunch of war movies like Kelly’s Heroes and The Dirty Dozen. Well, the truth was Donald was not only an anti-war activist, he was almost radical about it.
Now he’s 72 and mellowed somewhat, but he’ll still talk about the three years he dated Jane Fonda when she was the accursed “Hanoi Jane” and they went around the country spewing what turned out to be a lot of rubbish. Anyway, he’s still got his sense of humor and still believes there might have been some big changes back then if the right leadership came along – which it didn’t.
So I’m reading this article - which I normally wouldn’t - when Sutherland tells the New Statesman reporter that the lack of leadership is what killed the revolution of the ‘60s. “It was all coming from the bottom and there was no one to understand and reflect it. We were all in a pretty desperate situation."
Sutherland, who was married to former actress Shirley Douglas at the time, realized how pointless the whole thing was one certain day. “I was in Yugoslavia when I found out. Clint Eastwood came walking out of the sun like it was a spaghetti western and said, ‘I have some bad news for you. Your wife’s been arrested. For buying hand grenades. From an undercover agent of the FBI. With a personal check.’
“Well, when he got to the ‘personal check,’ he started laughing so hard he fell on the ground. I had to help him back up,”
Oh, I love stuff like that. Suddenly Donald Sutherland is so human, so personal. My goodness, here’s Keiffer Sutherland’s mother buying the Black Panthers hand grenades with a personal check! I guess I laughed about that all day.
Alight, here’s one more tidbit from The Week: A man in Wisconsin gave police an alias when a car in which he was riding was pulled over on a routine check. “He was forced to admit his lie because he had coincidentally chosen the name of a wanted murderer. The man, who was afraid he would get arrested for some unpaid traffic fines, was charged with obstruction.”
To find out more about The Week, you can go to the website, www.GiveTheWeek, and learn “all you need to know about everything that matters.”
royexum@aol.com
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