An LGBT Moon Colony?

Radio talk show host Thom Hartmann, a liberal, once briefly interviewed a scholar who worked at a libertarian think tank. The scholar had written a paper regarding the colonization of the moon as a social experiment.

That idea got me to thinking: what if lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people established a moon colony? Would that society be just and egalitarian or corrupt and totalitarian?

True Crime On The Radio

I can't recall on which old-time radio show I first heard an episode of the true-crime series, Somebody Knows. It was either Hollywood 360 (nationally syndicated) or The Golden Age of Radio (on New York's WBAI-FM).

Somebody Knows, which ran on CBS, was the forerunner to such shows as Unsolved Mysteries. Per my sketchy notes, the episode I heard concerned a 39-year-old  Boston cab driver named Samuel I. Paris, who was robbed and killed in April 1948.The episode aired on August 10, 1950. "Through narration and dramatizations," reports the CD/DVD website Amoeba.com, "the known facts of unsolved crimes were presented and listeners who provided information leading to the conviction of a criminal" would be given a cash reward.

According to the website, only two of the eight episodes are available on recordings. As an old-time radio fan, especially of detective and mystery shows, I would love to hear not only those two episodes but those of another show Wanted, the rival of Somebody Knows, that ran on NBC. Wanted, according to Amoeba.com, "avoided dramatizations all together [sic]" but instead used the recorded "voices of DAs, newspapermen, police, prison officials, witnesses, etc."

What I would like to know is how many of these cases were ever solved.

Bill Whitaker, Newsman And Voter

This past Tuesday, November 6, I was a poll worker at one of the poll sites in my neighborhood. This was the seventh election that I worked. While sitting at my assigned table, Bill Whitaker of CBS's 60 Minutes newsmagazine show came to the table to sign the Voter Registration List. When I asked if he was Bill Whitaker the newsman, he quickly nodded and continued signing his name. One website noted that Whitaker "never stops to flaunt his media talent." That statement is very true.

I hope he plans to write a memoir of his world travels as a journalist. It would be compelling reading. Meanwhile, I'm following him on Twitter.

There Are No LGBT Programs On National Public Radio

William F. B. O'Reilly, a consultant for Republicans and a newspaper columnist, stated in his column (published in amNew York, the free daily newspaper, on April 6, 2017) that "National Public Radio [is] home to New York's liberal intelligentsia." If National Public Radio (also known as NPR) is so liberal or progressive, why isn't there a weekly one-hour national and international news and public affairs program dealing with LGBT issues, events, and personalities? If I'm mistaken, and such a program exists, I would like for someone to let me know. I would love to tune in. WBAI, the listener-supported, and progressive, Pacifica station in New York, has a weekly show called Out FM that has been on the air for several years.

Rod Serling's Rejected Teleplay

Rod Serling's daughter, Anne, wrote a foreword to Mark Dawidziak's Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Twilight Zone (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press). It's a fascinating self-help book that reveals the life lessons to be learned in various episodes of The Twilight Zone, Serling's iconic science-fiction/fantasy television series that ran on CBS from 1959 to 1964.

Ms. Serling writes that the 1955 murder of  the Chicago teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi "profoundly affected my father." So much so that he wrote a television script called Noon on Doomsday, "his first attempt," she further writes, "to tell the story and it was turned down by the sponsors who were afraid it might offend their southern customers."

Lately there have been live telecasts on network TV of musicals such as Peter Pan and Hairspray. Wouldn't it be wonderful if one of the networks decided to air a live telecast of Rod Serling's rejected teleplay? It's probably as relevant today as it was back then.