Sherman Helmsley Moves To Deluxe Apartment In The Sky

Another one of the iconic actors of my youth has passed on.   I also had the pleasure of meeting him during my airline days, so I was doubly sad to hear this news.  

Actor Sherman Helmsley, who played George Jefferson on that iconic CBS show The Jeffersons, Deacon Ernest Fry on NBC's Amen and was the voice of Earl Sinclair's boss BP Richfield on the ABC animated series Dinosaurs was found dead in his El Paso, TX home at age 74. 

Helmsley's George Jefferson started out as the counterpart neighbor to Archie Bunker but moved on up to his own groundbreaking lead actor sitcom role in 1975 along with television wife Isabel Sanford who passed away in 2004.  The show earned Helmsley Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and The Jeffersons was the first show to feature an upscale African-American couple.  It was also the first to feature an episode with a Black trans character.  

When it was canceled ten years later, it not only at the time was the longest running sitcom on television, it led to his role on 'Amen' from 1986-1991 

Dinosaurs was a guilty pleasure for me when it was on, and I was pleased to discover that Helmsley was doing the voice of BP Richfield..  

Helmsley's death has also caused me to reflect on how much better television was in the 70's and 80's and early 90's in terms of not only entertaining you, but leaving you with a social message as well.  It's something we really need to get back to.   

Rest in peace Mr. Helmsley.  Thanks for the long career in which you made us laugh and entertained us.  Enjoy that rest you've earned in that deluxe apartment in the sky.

Happy Birthday, George!

The George I'm giving a TransGriot birthday shoutout to is probably looking for the Mothership to land instead of a birthday cake.   

Funkateers, raise those hands high and flash the P-funk sign in honor of George Clinton, who was born on this date back in 1941.

Couldn't let this day pass with giving a shout out to the man who kept me and my peers dancing through our  high school and college years. 

He also wrote some lyrics and songs that while sounding nonsensical to the peeps who were faking the funk, were dropping serious knowledge on those of us who knew how to spell psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop and were on the alert for any appearances of Sir Nose D'voidoffunk.

My high school class considers Parliament's Flash Light it's unofficial class song.

And I can't count how many step shows in the early 80's I attended that didn't have the local Omega Psi Phi chapter doing their step routine to the Que Dog National Anthem, AKA Atomic Dog.



Happy birthday, George.

Watergate 40th Anniversary

The next time someone gets the urge to rag on a person who is working as a security guard to pay their bills or derisively call them a 'rent a cop', point out that it was an African-American security guard that got the ball rolling 40 years ago today on the scandal that eventually took down the Nixon presidency.

Then 24 year old Frank Wills was working his midnight to 7 AM shift at the Watergate Office Complex on the night of June 17, 1972  when he discovered at 1 AM that someone had taped the latches on several doors (That allows the doors to close but remain unlocked.)  Wills removed the tape on those doors and when he returned an hour later to discovered those same doors were retaped he called the police which resulted in five people being busted inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters offices..

The five men busted in the DNC office burglary, Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James W. McCord, Jr., Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis, were charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications and convicted on January 30, 1973.

However, when it was discovered that one of the burglars was a Republican Party security aide and money the burglars had been paid for expenses was traced by the FBI back to a fund tied to the aptly named CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect The President), the scandal widened throughout the summer of 1973 and into 1974 as more troubling details emerged.

It eventually ended with the resignation of Richard Nixon from the presidency on August 9, 1974 when he was facing an almost certain overwhelming Senate vote to impeach and remove him from office and the Democrats in a Watergate induced 1974 midterm backlash picking up five Senate seats to add to their majority there and 49 seats in the House.  There was also an overhaul of American Bar Association  regulations to stave off federalizing that responsibility from the various state bar associations, amendment of the 1974 Freedom of Information Act, campaign finance reform and the enactment of the Ethics In Government Act. 

68 people were charged and 49 convicted of various offenses including members of the Nixon administration.  The pardon of Nixon by President Gerald Ford is cited as one of the factors that led to Jimmy Carter being elected president in 1976.

The House Judiciary Committee Impeachment hearings on July 25, 1974 also resulted in a freshman Democratic House representative from Texas named Barbara Jordan making one of the most memorable and still quoted speeches of those hearings



And as for Frank Wills, the African-American security guard who discovered the burglary that brought down the Nixon Administration?  

Sadly while other people including the Nixon Administration folks who instigated the scandal got paid with their best selling books and speaking tours, Wills' life was never the same. 

He quit his $80 a week job after the security company refused to give him  raise for his role in breaking the Watergate scandal.  Washington business and organizations dependent on federal funding refused to hire him for fear their federal funding would be cut off in retaliation.  He later died in poverty from a brain tumor in Augusta, GA on September 27, 2000.

But the Watergate scandal is a lesson to ponder going into this 2012 presidential election (that we liberal progressive never should have forgotten) that the Republifools will go to any lengths including violating the law and the Constitution they claim to reverently respect to win an election and cling to power.

Last Dance: Donna Summer Passes Away

You peeps who have been longtime readers of my blog know that I long ago revealed my unabashed love for all things disco on the electronic pages of this blog.  

One of my favorite singers during that period was the Queen of Disco, LaDonna Adrian Gaines, better know to the world by her stage name of Donna Summer.  Of course, Donna could sing any style of music with her mezzo soprano vocal range as she repeatedly proved throughout the late 70's and 80's, but she made her name and rep during the 70's 

Summer was an NAACP Image Award winner, a five-time Grammy Award winner and the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach number one on the US Billboard chart.   She also charted four number-one singles in the United States within a thirteen-month period from 1977-1979.

She was also nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010 and 2011 but to mine and many of her fans disappointment wasn't chosen for enshrinement.   Hope they will rectify that oversight soon.

I was shocked and saddened to hear that Donna Summer passed away this morning at age 63 after a battle with lung cancer.

My music collection runneth over with many of her CD's, and there was more than a few times on my way to work I played or sang off key She Works Hard For The Money and countless others of my favorite songs of hers.

But unfortunately we won't get to hear her sing them live any more because another one of our iconic singers and part of my teen years has unfortunately made her Last Dance. 

Rest in peace, Donna Summer.   Your family, I and your devoted fans around the world are definitely going to miss you.  

'Soul Train' Creator Don Cornelius Dead

Feeling my age after hearing the news this morning that Soul Train creator Don Cornelius was found dead at his Sherman Oaks, CA home at 4 AM PST from what police and TMZ are reporting as a self inflicted gunshot wound.

The 75 year old Cornelius was a journalist who realized that there was no show like American Bandstand that featured the music of African-American artists and created the long running syndicated show in 1971.

Soul Train quickly became must see TV for African-Americans and an iconic part of my childhood and any other kid who grew up in the 70's, 80's, 90's and early 2K's and ran until 2006.

Soul Train was instrumental in getting wider television exposure to Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson and The Jackson Five, and James Brown amongst many other acts in the R&B, and hip hop music world.

Soul Train was so popular that even Elton John and David Bowie made appearances on its stage and Spike Lee described the show as 'an urban music time capsule'.

That it is.  The TransGriot and more than a few other peeps learned the latest dances by parking ourselves in front of the TV and watching the multicultural and gracefully acrobatic Soul Train dancers execute their moves every Saturday.

And yeah, I'll admit was more than jealous of the sistahs that strutted their stuff on the show in the fashionable clothing and hairstyles of the day.

Soul Train is also responsible for something that is an iconic part of African-American culture, the Soul Train line that you see at every wedding, social gathering and party in ours and other communities..

I'm sure the story of what happened to Mr. Cornelius will continue to evolve and come out, but in the interim the only way to close this post about an iconic broadcasting pioneer is use his classic Soul Train show sign off line.

Wishing you love, peace and soul Mr. Cornelius.

Olympic Gender Drama-The 1976 East German Swim Team

TransGriot Note: Another post in a series documenting the gender controversies that have occurred during the Olympic games.

During the 1976 Games in Montreal gender drama and cheating raised its head at the Olympics once again. 

The scene of this gender sports crime was Montreal's Olympic Swim Center pool and the perpetrators were the DDR government.  Also involved without their knowledge at the time, the East German women's swim team.

In the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, the USA women swimmers claimed 17 total medals- eight gold medals, five silvers and four bronzes. Of their eight gold medals, six were claimed in world record times while the other two were Olympic records.  The USA women during those Munich Games had two events in which they finished 1-2 and swept the 200m butterfly.   They also won both relays in world record times.  Two of those USA silver medals were claimed by a then 15 year old Shirley Babashoff  

The DDR during those same Munich games won zero gold medals, four silvers, and one bronze during that Olympic swimming competition with no world records

One of the East Germans collecting silvers during those games was a then 13 year old Kornelia Ender. She was responsible for three of the four silver medals the DDR girls went back to their side of the Inner German border with.  

But in the four years between the Munich and Montreal Games the East Germans starting in 1973 came out of seemingly nowhere to make dramatic improvements in their times and the color of the medals they took back home to the Deutsche Demokratische Republik.

No thanks to State Plan 14.25, the DDR's state sponsored doping program combined with their sports science rooted training methods and weightlifting regimens, they began to dominate the sport of women's swimming and the East German national anthem became a very familiar tune at those competitions.

In the 1973 FINA championships the DDR took 10 out of the 14 golds in Belgrade, Yugoslavia and two years later matched that performance in Cali, Colombia.

Then came the Montreal Olympic Games and the DDR wundermadchen total domination of the pool.   They took home a grand total of 18 medals with 11 of them being golds.  Out of the 13 events contested in the women's Olympic swim program in Montreal, only the 200m breaststroke (which was a Soviet sweep) and the 4x100 freestyle relay in which they claimed the silver eluded their grasp. 

The wundermadchen also set eight world records, equalled another one in the 100m butterfly, set three Olympic records and had five events in which DDR swimmers finished 1-2.  The East Germans also swept the medals in the 200m butterfly.


As for Kornelia Ender and Shirley Babashoff, their Olympic scripts were flipped.  The 17 year old Ender was the individual swimming star of the Montreal Games, taking home four gold medals and a silver.  She also beat Babashoff twice in their head to head individual races.  The four golds were all won in world record times.

19 year old Shirley Babashoff was aiming to be the femme version of 1972 Olympic swimming star Mark Spitz in these Montreal Games.  She was entered in five races, and in four of them except for the relay she was beaten by an East German swimming in world record time.  In addition to finishing with silver medals in her 100m and 200m freestyle races with Ender, she finished with silver medals in the 400m and 800m freestyle races won by Petra Thumer.

The lone gold for Babashoff was as a member of the 4x100 freestyle relay in which she and her American teammates upset the East Germans.  They had the added satisfaction of not only defending the gold they won in Munich and beating their Montreal tormentor Ender, but breaking the East Germans world record in the event by an astounding four seconds. 

That 1976 Olympic race is also considered the greatest ever in international women's swimming.

But people were noting not only the muscular builds of Kornelia Ender and her East German wundermadchen teammates, so was the rest of the international swimming community. 

They noted the East Germans suspiciously dramatic improvements in times in the runup to Montreal   They also noted with some sarcasm that the voices of many of the East German women were unusually deep, which is a telltale sign of the effects of steroid use in women.

When a frustrated American coach repeated the observation during the Montreal Games, an East German coach replied, "We came here to swim, not sing."

Shirley Babashoff, the USA's most decorated swimmer and a later inductee into the swimming hall of fame also noticed.  She and other frustrated American female swimmers loudly complained about what was to them obviously going on with the wundermadchen and threw some shade at their bitter East German rivals.

"To be frank, I don't think we should look like men."…
"I wouldn't want to walk around the neighborhood looking like a guy."

"That's not the way God created us – to be like that (looking like DDR Swimmers)"…
  
Babashoff was bold enough to state the obvious back then and was derided by the world press covering the Games as 'Surly Shirley' and a sore loser for it.  

She would be vindicated by the fall of the Berlin Wall 14 years later and the opening of the once secret Stasi files confirming what Babashoff was bold enough to call out in 1976.  The DDR's astounding success in the pool at the Montreal Games and in subsequent international swimming competitions through 1988 was steroid fueled. 

So IOC, I repeat the question I asked in 2008.  When are y'all going to take away the ill gotten Olympic medals the East Germans won like you swiftly have for any non-white Olympic athletes caught cheating?

That doping program not only robbed people like Babashoff, Canada's Nancy Garapicki and countless others of medals they should have earned, it also had devastating consequences for the young East German women themselves.

Their developing female bodies were given steroid cocktails and their health was sacrificed in the name of winning medals and enhancing the international sporting prestige of the DDR for propaganda purposes.
  

It also left a lot of people who finished behind those doped up DDR female swimmers, including some of the East German swimmers themselves wondering what the results would have been if there had been a clean pool in Montreal?

Joe Frazier Passes Away

Former heavyweight and 1964 Olympic champion Joe Frazier is inextricably tied with 'The Greatest'.  He won a lot of fights and an Olympic gold medal during his career but unfortunately he lost his battle against liver cancer and passed away at age 67 last night.

Muhammad Ali said in a statement that the "world has lost a great champion."  "I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration. My sympathy goes out to his family and loved ones."

The South Carolina born Frazier became an icon in his adopted hometown of Philadelphia, PA and a legendary fighter as well thanks to his unforgettable battles with Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. .

Then undefeated Joe Frazier beat a then undefeated Ali in the heavily promoted March 8, 1971' Fight of The Century' at New York's Madison Square Garden. He won in a unanimous decision after stunning Ali with a hard left hook in the 11th round and knocking him down in the 15th round to defend his heavyweight title.

He'd picked it up after Ali was stripped of it and suspended for three years for his refusal to be inducted into the Army.  After boycotting the WBC tournament held in protest of the decision, he beat Jimmy Ellis in a 5th round TKO to claim the title.

Frazier eventually lost his unbeaten record and his WBA and WBC titles to an unbeaten George Foreman in a January 22,1973 bout in Kingston, Jamaica when he was knocked out in the second round by my fellow Houstonian. 

Frazier would clash with Ali in two more bruising fights in a January 1974 bout in New York and the legendary October 1, 1975 'Thrilla In Manila' before he eventually retired from boxing with a 32-4-1 record in 1981.

In later years he owned a boxing gym in which he trained his own son Marvis and his once white hot rivalry with Ali mellowed over time.  He was also awarded the Order of the Palmetto in his Beaufort, South Carolina birthplace in 2010.

As 'The Greatest' said about Frazier, we have lost a great champion.

Rest in peace 'Smokin' Joe'.
.