KC Confidential | Hearne Christopher, Uncensored

Time 2020-09-23 08:02:54

Web Name: KC Confidential | Hearne Christopher, Uncensored

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They ubiquitous, they re banal,  they re annoying Perhaps you ve seen em.If you live in the burbs Brookside, Prairie Village, Mission Hills, Leawood, Platte City or Parkville -I think you know what I m talking about.Those ubiquitous, post George Floyd, post riots, post defund the police black yard signs that read as follows:WE BELIEVEBLACK LIVES MATTERNO HUMAN IS ILLEGALLOVE IS LOVEWOMEN S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTSSCIENCE IS REALThere might be a Land Rover, Mercedes or Tesla in the upscale suburban driveway that home owners wouldn t dare desecrate with a political bumper sticker, yet they ve got these colorful, attention drawing signs smack in the middle of their front yard.The bottom line? These are just mindless generalities, says Mission Hills attorney Dwight Sutherland. Water is life, love is love. How do you answer that? It s just verbal flatulence it doesn t mean anything who can argue with statements like that?  But beneath the amorphous generalities there lurk very real,very ugly,very extreme policies that they are intended to conceal.” They sound profound, but they re actually just platitudes and they re so broad that they re meaningless. Just like in the 1960s when you heard all these sayings like, give peace a chance and what if they gave a war and nobody came? Do you think if you lived in Russia, Cuba or Vietnam you could be a conscientious objector? They d put you up against a wall. More to the point, why have these signs have become so effing popular? This is all anti-Donald Trump, Sutherland says. It s a fad, because for the hip, pseudo-intellectuals, it s the thing to do because they hate Trump. No wonder Orwell called left wing intellectuals ‘The Herd of Independent Minds’.”Let s break it down:NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL: That s means open the borders, Sutherland says. As Jay Leno said, undocumented immigrants is code for unregistered Democrats. So anyone who is already here should get amnesty, citizenship and full voting rights. They want them to come here so they can vote and convert the nation to a one party state. Then the fun will really begin, a reign of terror against anyone who doesn’t bow down to-or take a knee to -the Gods of Political Correctness. Do we really want to enshrine a movement whose chief spokesman is Al Sharpton? SCIENCE IS REAL: That s climate change ,i.e. the Green New Deal, Sutherland says. But now it s taken on another meaning, that we have to shut the country down until we get a coronavirus vaccine, which will be during the Joe Biden administration. Just  like Trump got the blame for Covid. Never mind that 182 countries have suffered from the pandemic. Continue reading Mission Hills blow-dried Elmer Gantry, The Right Reverend Robert Meneilly,I first met Russell “Rusty” Leffel 40 plus years ago   A fellow Kansas City lawyer, he had graduated from KU Law four years before me.  We were both active in Johnson County Republican politics and I supported him when he ran for Congress in 1984.  I liked Rusty but he had an irksome trait of naiveté combined with self-righteousness that surfaced during the campaign.For example, Rusty seemed inordinately impressed with himself for leading a group at KU his senior year that had some juvenile name like “The Phantom Five” or “The Secret Seven.”This group was started by Leffel to initiate a “dialogue” between the leftist radicals-who burned down the Student Union that year, 1970-and the other students, in order to “find common ground.”  Another friend of mine also tried to “reach out,” to begin a “conversation” with militant black students and ended up being so badly beaten up for his efforts that he was hospitalized.Rusty was unfazed by the fact that such attempts were abject failures and that any sentient human should have known that they were doomed to fail at a time when the different factions on campus were engaged in a literal shooting war.  (Yet another acquaintance was killed as a result of this gun violence.)In fact, Rusty was convinced that this fatuous exercise was a sterling credential qualifying him for high office.  (I thought of him when I saw “Coexist” bumper stickers on Priuses in the wake of 9-11.)Later on I had the misfortune to have a lawsuit in which Rusty “represented” someone I was suing.  I use the term loosely because Leffel got in and out of the case three different times.  He would show up at court hearings where the judge required his client (“Mr. Jones”) to have an attorney present and then would withdraw as soon as the hearing was over.In the meantime, Leffel’s client acted “pro se”, i.e. he acted as his own lawyer.  This meant that Mr. Jones was free to engage in every kind of unethical conduct imaginable, against both me and my client, in order to get us to drop the claim against him.  These include calling my boss at my law firm (“Do you know you have a paranoid schizophrenic working for you?”), threatening to bring criminal charges against my client’s brother, verbally abusing me and my office staff, threatening to file an ethical complaint against me with the Kansas Bar Disciplinary Administrator’s Office, and physically assaulting me at a deposition.  (Later, several years after the case was over, I was at a high school basketball game where my son was playing.  During the halftime I was outside the gym, talking to another parent, when I felt someone punch me in the small of the back.  I turned around in surprise, only to see Jones, Leffel’s client, standing there smirking.  He said, “I saw where your old law firm went out of business.  I shouldn’t be surprised when it had terrible lawyers like you working for it.”)Since Jones was not a lawyer none of the legal ethics rules prohibiting this kind of abuse applied.  Leffel had the best of both worlds, getting paid but having no responsibility for what went on, especially if these scorched earth tactics worked and got us to give up and go away.I tried complaining to Rusty about what his intermittent client was doing, some of which he witnessed, but he simply wrung his hands and said he was helpless to stop this bully. Matters got to the point after one hearing where I told Jones that I would take him outside the courthouse and further disfigure his already repulsive face, fit only for scaring small children.  Rusty stood there and whined ineffectually while I delivered this verbal beat down, “Please, Dwight, please!  This is cruel and uncalled for!”  My comments must have worked because Jones never said another discouraging word to me again, at least until after the case was over and he paid what he owed.In the end, I concluded that Rusty Leffel was weak willed and devious, i.e. he enabled a dishonest and bullying client, by going along with his abusive behavior.  As long as he got paid ($150.00? $200.00?) per court appearance he tolerated his erstwhile client engaging in unethical and even criminal activities.  The case went on for three years and generated hundreds and hundreds of pages of pleadings, document production, and deposition transcripts.  By allowing his client to drag the matter out for so long, with no valid defense to our modest claim, Leffel cost both sides in fees a sum representing two or three times the actual amount in controversy.  By thinking he could manipulate the legal process in this manner to his benefit, Leffel also squandered a large part of people’s lives, not least of it his own.Fast forward 30 years and Rusty is back in my headlights.  He owns a vacant lot in Mission Hills, which he is apparently unable or unwilling to sell.  Paraphrasing Robert Louis Stephenson’s classic volume of children’s poetry, A Child’s Garden of Verses, Leffel has created A Child’s Garden of Clichés, Leftist Variety.  To wit: he has caused the vacant lot to be adorned with “installations”, sculptures/signs which look like they were done by my grandchildren’s pre-school art class.The first piece I saw was “Reunite Families”, which I took as a heartfelt call for opening the Southern Border to illegal immigrants, especially if they had children with them when they crossed the Rio Grande.  As Jay Leno once said, “Undocumented immigrants is code for unregistered Democrats.” Next, we have a pro-impeachment montage, first with a black swathed Lady Liberty, then with two signs with quotes from the Presidential Oath of Office. This pompous, pat-on-your-own-back symbolic message was from people who tried to block a duly elected president from taking office and to destroy his presidency before he was even sworn in.Next, we had the Green New Deal mantra, which has now even been repudiated by noted right wing corporate shill Michael Moore and former climate change activist and Obama administration official Michael Shellenberger.  This was followed by anti-gun messages, which ring a little hollow now that we’re going to defund the police and when calling 911 is an act of white privilege, i.e. you’re on your own as far as defending yourself.After that came the COVID attack, which places the blame on President Trump for not preparing the nation for a disease which had never been encountered before.  After all, no other country has “Failed to prevent its spread.”Most recently we got the obligatory tribute to Black Lives Matter.  Continue reading This is what happens when your head is so far up your ass all you can see is your navel Let s start from the beginning. The Oscars are irrelevant to everybody but those in the fading film industry itself other than those who come out once a year to complain about this or that.There, I said it.How did this happen?Well, films devolved from art to business.Oh, they were always a business, but along the way studios and directors occasionally created art and therefore gained respectability. But TV threw a monkey wrench in the whole process so the industry went for event pictures.Then it the 1960s found that by tackling stories too outré, too sexy, too deep, too dangerous for TV, people would be drawn to the theatre. Sure, there was still lowbrow stuff purveyed, but it was films like Bonnie Clyde and The Graduate and The Godfather, never mind classic comedies like Annie Hall, that drove people to the theatre, but even more, had America and the world, talking about them.Those days are through.Let me catalog the reasons Pure greed. Once Jaws and then Star Wars demonstrated how much money could be made, studios no longer wanted to hit singles, however profitable, they wanted home runs.Marketing. In an era where it s hard to reach anybody, studios spend upwards of a hundred million dollars trying to reach a potential audience, and they only want to do this if the film has mass appeal.Therefore they don t want to make any small pictures.As a matter of fact, studios cut down production. You can shoot a movie in hi-def on your iPhone, but good luck getting a green light at a studio. So, you post your effort on YouTube, or you make movies and series for streaming services, like Netflix.Yes, TV has finally killed the traditional movie experience.But Bob, people still want to go to the theatre!Yes, for a night out, the experience is more important than the film. And the experience, especially in this age of smartphones, can be so distracting as to convince people not to attend.At home, it s quiet. If you want to talk to your spouse, no one complains. And with the standard now a 65 screen, in 4k, home viewing satisfies. Never mind that it s on demand, i.e. the picture starts and stops whenever you want it to.So, Oscar ratings continue to drop.On this one night, they appeal to cineastes, but the industry is supported by lowbrows.And they re not interested in the pictures nominated.Furthermore, the number of cineastes is decreasing, just like the number of symphony fans, they re aging out. It s a circle jerk, I tell you. If you win a big award the studio can advertise such, but an Oscar is barely more meaningful than a Grammy  which no longer gives you a sales bounce, which is employed by most musicians as a line on their resumé to hopefully increase live bookings.Once again, the audience does not care, and the victors rarely comport with the Spotify Top 50, which is what the majority of people are listening to. Then again, the Grammy voters, just like the Oscar voters, have contempt for this popular stuff.So, the goal is to save the Oscars which are out of touch with the film industry itself and the way to do this is Include television. Continue reading Let s see, do I embarrass myself or Oh, what the heck. After all,  slime ball Kansas City Star editor Mike Fannin didn t mind laying down a phony tear jerker about how his mom came to visit and the whole family had to endure a gut-wrenching bout of Covid before moving on with their lives (as most coronavirus cases do under the age of 80, sans underlying issues or being massively overweight).That said, it was a great way for Fannin to blow a little smoke up the new owner s you-know-whats, in the hope they d overlook his twin DUIs, assault conviction (beating up his brother) and affair with a certain married Star sports editor that worked you know -,directly under him.(Pun intended)I digress, my confession is less dramatic, but I have too tell you I nodded off a time or two during the early part of the blockbuster movie Tenet at AMC s Ward Parkway theater.Might have been for lack of oxygen wearing my Nancy Pelosi mask.Again, I digress Because what s important here is my blow-by-blow on the not-so-grand reopening of AMC Theatres to the general public.The verdict is in: It was an incredible experience and one that I heartily recommend.I ll preface my remarks by noting that I have some serious audio and video equipment at home, and have been outspoken in predicting the demise of brick-and-mortar movie theaters given the competition from home theater, costs, health issues, etc.And I m standing by those predictions.Still finding myself front and center with a gigantic screen and killer-beyond-belied sound effects was nothing short of amazing.Seriously.Now I don t want to do a Mike Fannin and over dramatize things, but frankly and somewhat too my surprise I was blown away.As for the movie itself, eh..It was a non stop roller coaster ride of violence, chase scenes, explosions and dramatic effects quilted together with a somewhat tepid plot that required of my wife s 23 year-old daughter to rate the movie an 8 on a scale of 10. Add to that, that much of the dialogue was indiscernible and she couldn t wait to read a review so she could more fully understand what the movie was actually about.Funny thing, that s kinda how I felt after reading Fannin s pot boiler.Especially the part about his mom s voice growing stronger on Day  4 as the treatments took hold and the prayers continued pouring in from across the country. Seriously? Prayers pouring in from across the country? Fannin actually goes to church? And pouring in from where exactly?Apparently Fannin forgot to mention his mom was Beyonce. Continue reading In the 60s, the faders were pushed up, everything to the max and we could hear all of it  We started off with mono, ended up with 16 tracks. And by time the decade ended there was so much going on and you were aware of all of it. Of course, there was a generation gap, our parents were the last generation that got old.Boomers today wear jeans and run marathons and are teenagers until they pass. Unlike their forefathers who were shell-shocked by the Depression and two wars and were risk averse.The 60s were all about testing limits, intellectually and emotionally. Sure, drugs were part of the equation, but they were billed as a way to expand your mind. We were in it together, developing together, and we knew it all.In the 70s we licked our wounds.In the 80s we had a monoculture, dictated by MTV. There was more going on, but you didn t hear about it.Then in the nineties it all started to fracture where today nothing is truly popular nothing is known by everybody. Everybody s got different facts and resides in a different bubble, but not in the 1960s.In the 50s the underground was truly underground.But it surfaced in the 60s the Beat poets never mind Bob Dylan and the folk scene and then the Beatles.We wanted more, we wanted it all.America was the land of possibilities, and our generation spearheaded it. We d brooked no crisis until the advent of the Vietnam War. Of course your view was different if you were a minority, but this was also the decade where others were exposed to the plight of minorities. And sure, there were some who didn t like it.And Nixon rounded them all up and emerged in victory, but we stood up to them, these were turbulent times.But the transitions!Like your hair Crew cut and then after the Beatles, long.Hats flew by the wayside with Kennedy s inauguration.Ties faded, bell bottoms arrived, along with paisley your clothes were a statement you were either with us or against us. And you d be surprised how many found it difficult to change, they grew their hair out in the 70s, bought Rolling Stones albums in the 80s.People were frightened, they needed their feet firmly planted, whereas everybody else was hopping from stone to stone, not believing it was even possible to slip and fall into the water.Although the tide started to turn on the coast in the early 60s, the pace was slower elsewhere. At first we believed in our country, were excited by the space program, by the possibilities. Then the Beatles swept us off our feet and they didn t play by the rules. Lennon said the taboo, that the band was bigger than Jesus and they were the back to God movement didn t really start until the 70s.It wasn t like the internet.There was no brittle break, no great leap forward, but an evolution. You were here, then you found yourself there. And it was surprising what you would not leave behind, like sports.Which were also different in the 60s.The games may have been the same, but that was all. The stadiums were not branded by sponsors. There weren t that many teams. The NFL grew into a monolith over the decade, its pinnacle being Super Bowl III, with Namath s victory, but the truth is, baseball ruled. And it still rules for many boomers. Continue reading It was to have been the sci-fi action-epic of the spring and then the summer But like so many other 2020 tentpole titles TENET was pushed back on Warner Brothers release schedule to coincide with the ever fluid state of the world s pandemic and its effect on national, regional and local health advisories.Give credit where credit is due.Unlike other film distributors who took their summer titles to premium streaming platforms or moved them way into the future Warner Bros. finally settled on this Labor Day weekend for their domestic release of director Christopher Nolan s 2.5 hour long spectacle and kept its release exclusively to the theater experience!What to expect?As with most of Nolan s films expect the unexpected and in a massive cinematic way tailored for the BIG SCREEN.(Think back to 2010 s  INCEPTION , his film within a dream. Or was it the other way around?)With TENET we are served up another dose of the innovative filmmaker s dimension-bending sci-fi thrills. And all in the realm of inversion and high-octane time zone jumping travel/reality.So pay close attention as the film rapidly bounces within elements of time and could otherwise leave you behind. Continue reading Nothing really new here The Pitch has been mooching money from readers for years.However, the former alt weekly now a monthly freebie under new owners is upping the ante.Like never before.It s one thing to sit on a sidewalk on the Plaza, rattle a cup and beg for cheeseburgers. Or to race up to cars at traffic signals, smear soapy substances on some their windshield ,then charge them to make things rightVery conventional.But that s chump change, given the kind of red ink the Pitch is hemorrhaging these days.You don t treat a chainsaw wound with a band-aid.Noop, times are tough and the Pitch is swinging for the fences.Loyal readers:can now become a member for 50 bucks a year.For which they get a monthly newsletter from one of the Pitch s new publishers and a sneak peek at each monthly issue prior to it hitting the street.Ah, but for a mere hondo ($100), you get all that plus discounts on select Pitch events -should they ever come to pass, post pandemic and, access to giveaways like concert tickets and flood coupons again should concerts ever return post pandemic.Got $200 that s not working?Now you can achieve what they re calling a feature and get a limited edition T-shirt and your name in an annual print ad slated to appear in the print Pitch.But you ain t seen nuthin yet Continue reading Toronto, Berlin and Cannes All home to some of the world s most popular and competitive film festivals.Now the BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL takes its annual event to the next level.Beginning with its 71st edition in 2021 the Berlin Festival will make specific acting categories gender-neutral .Allow me to explain.Rather than awarding Best Actor and Best Actress awards, the two sexes will compete against one another.Same will hold true for Best Supporting performancesThe new designations will simply be the award for Best Leading Performance and Best Supporting Performance in a motion picture. Continue reading It starts with porn In the 1960s and 1970s porn was controlled by a small cabal of producers and distributors.With the advent of the videocassette in the late 70s and early 80s profits went through the roof as a limited number of old and new players controlled the business utilizing professional actors. Then came the cracks in the system as the cost of production sank with the availably of cheap recording equipment. However distribution was always a snag.Until the internet.People used to talk about this a lot. In the early days of the web. How porn creeped into every nook and cranny, how it happened in porn first. But as the net was built, as it became more profitable with Amazon and Facebook, porn went back to its naughty news hole and got little coverage while it was ravaging the web. But this time, the story was the amateurs.At first amateurs had their own brands. Distributing their product on their own websites. You could do it yourself, but the back end was not sophisticated, and people were reluctant to give up their credit card numbers.Then the big boys went free.In other words, intermediaries like Brazzers and PornHub became clearing houses for porn and the value of the majors and their product went down, and the amateurs got little monetary reward, but major distribution.Meanwhile, porn stars were still trying to eke out livings with their own websites.But now came the beginning of clips. Yes, once everybody had broadband, it was about video, and you could record yourself on your phone and sell clips on Clips4sale or ManyVids, but there was no sense of community. Meanwhile, cam girls was now a thing, but it had a dirty imprimatur.You could Chaturbate you could buy your time but it had the appearance of a sleazy transaction. And all these cam sites were filled with amateurs, they ruled.So, let s recap.As a result of the cost of production and distribution coming down, the usual suspect content creators and distributors lost power as new players entered the marketplace, and then the scene overflowed with amateurs.Not everyone made a buck. Or they made a little buck. Or some bucks for a very short time. Still there was money in it, however it was divided. Continue reading No way it was planned this way.Who could have predicted a formulaic action flick like UNHINGED would be the post pandemic gateway back into movie theaters?But because of major release shifts due to the coronavirus it is this week!UNHINGED is a 90 minute-long road rage revenge thriller that takes us to the darker side of society.A minor road rage altercation between Russell Crowe and stressed out single mom Caren Pistorius who simply honks her horn at him really ticks him off.What follows is a path of psychological destruction. A vengeful exercise against the victim, her friends and family. A confrontational escalation that Crowe pulls off as we follow him and  he becomes unhinged in the worst way imaginable.Not that we haven t seen this subject matter explored before. But Oscar winner Russell Crowe letting lose certainly elevates this action-thriller to a step above the usual B-grade material.So is this a violent film? Continue reading Two billion here, five-hundred million there it adds up The financial toll the coronavirus is taking on Kansas City s AMC Theatres is staggering, but the company may be beginning to see some light at a seemingly never-ending, gloomy tunnel that is the year 2020.That after a $2 billion-plus first quarter earnings hit and another $500 million in the company s recently announced second quarter earnings.Why even bother to call them earnings?All of that said, let s take a gander at what passes for good news these days at the country s largest operator of movie theaters.For starters, AMC kissed and made up with Universal, settling a short lived boycott of Universal after it went straight to premium video on demand (PVOD) this past spring with its Trolls World Tour movie.Universal pocketed more than $77 million on PVOD (keeping 80 percent of the revenue versus the 50 percent they get from theaters) and said it planned to continue bypassing theaters.That was then the latest? Continue reading This is what Kansas Citians used to love (or hate) about Jason Whitlock Aside from pimping local sports fans in the pages of the Kansas City Star, Whitlock regularly delivered the pro white guy goods to the newspaper s mostly non-black readership. These days he s poking holes and obliterating political correctness online, like his column on the mainstream media s current fave, the George Floyd mythology.It didn t really take that much, but Whitlock s perspective on racial politics carried more cred given that a black dude was doing the honors. And despite the ups-and-downs of his career in the decade since he left KC, it s made big sexy a popular Fox News guest for Bill O Reilly, Tucker Carlson and the like.Because almost without fail, Jason loves to debunk phony racism claims.Usually skillfully, I might add.Case in point, London Daily Mail s recent release of the dramatic body-camera footage of George Floyd s arrest.Unfortunately, the way mainstream news organizations like USA Today and CNN covered the story, they mislead readers by casting police in a bad light so as not to contradict the media narrative that Floyd was a innocent victim of police racism.Yet anyone who bothered to watch the video like Whitlock did can see that the cops were polite and unlike USA Today s report, the officer did not approach Floyd s car with his gun drawn. Only after repeated requests for Floyd to raise his hands did the officer briefly take his gun out, holstering it when Floyd finally complied.The online headline for Whitlock s column pretty much says it all: Leaked Video Exposes George Floyd s Death as a Tragedy Race Hoax Used to Divide Us Continue reading You ve probably heard about the big comeback of drive-In theaters But let s not put the cart ahead of the horse.For example, why DID so many of America s Drive-Ins shut down since their heyday in the 1950 s and 1960 s?Real estate is probably the main reason.Drive-Ins were usually located on the outskirts of town where land was cheap. Then the growing suburbs did them in.While many so-called Ozoners were still profitable, the big, fast money to be made by owners was in selling them to the developers of shopping malls in growing communities.It was also a time when America was serviced by just three television networks typically and home video tape had yet to be invented.And that s just the tip of the iceberg.One of the biggest problems of course was the seasonal as in weather aspect of Drive-In operations in most of the country.For example, here in the Midwest they were pretty well dependent on the relatively short span between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day to turn a seasonal profit.And a rainy month could wipe out their ENTIRE season.So why now? Continue reading Long time, no sports talk from former WHB powerhouse Kevin Kietzman Ah, but come September Kietzman will rise like a sports phoenix via a midday daily podcast covering not just sports but politics and life itself.In the meantime, inquiring minds want to know, does Kietz think the Chiefs are going to have a full season? I believe so, he says. I can t think of any reason not to. Did anybody notice the Kansas Shrine Bowl game  the annual Kansas high school seniors all-star game was played last week in  Topeka and they had 5,000 people there? And you re telling me we couldn t have had 5,000 at the Kansas Speedway last night. It holds 100,000 people, they could have easily put 20,000 in there. But the crazy people on the left didn t/t know there was a football game last week, so it didn t get any coverage.Put another way, Kietzman thinks there will be live fans at Arrowhead. Continue reading Word that AMC Theatres delayed its reopening sent shudders through the industry The entire movie industry is shook up right now, says KCC movie man Jack Poessiger. The dominoes have fallen, let me put it that way. That after both Disney s Mulan and Christopher Nolan s blockbuster Tenet were delayed.Could this be the beginning of the end for the KC-based exhibitor? The beginning of the end for AMC? Poessiger asks. Ot the the Chinese people who own AMC? Let s define it here, the Chinese ownership? Whatever are they going to blow taps? No, Poessiger says. My gut feeling is a company like AMNC would declare Chapter 11 and rid themselves of their poorer performing theaters. That s what norm ally happens. Worst case scenario? If that doesn t work, I think the Chinese will piece meal it out, Poessiger says. AMC has too many good theaters. Seems like only yesterday when you could hop on a cheap thrill Iceland Air flight and head for Europe Remember?On top oof which you could take an extended layoff and party in Iceland penalty free.Those were the days.The latest: Did you hear the latest on Iceland Air, asks KCC travel dude Jack Poessiger. They ve had problems with their unions and they were going to get rid of their flight attendants and have the pilots do some of their duties. Posted in Uncategorized Comments Off on Hearne: Remember The Good Old Days When KC Had Iceland Air Service to Europe? He speaks fluent German and has been a movie critic here since the earth cooled I m talking about Jack Poessiger, of course, the author of Jack Goes Confidential and New Jack City here on KCC.So has Man Jack unleashed his last Jack Goes to the Movies movie review? Well, we ll see, he says. I don t know. I haven t decided yet. It s had a long run, but right now it s on hiatus. But I m not going to do Jack Goes Streaming or Jack Does Netflix. That s not my bag. What about reviewing the new Tom Hanks war movie Greyhound? You mean, like Jack Goes to the Apple Mart, Poessiger quips. They sent me a link, but I m not going to review it. I ll leave that to Shawn Edwards. The high point of Jack s movie reviewing career? Continue reading This just in Kansas City s prominent sports personality the past 20-plus years Kevin Kietzman has settled his issues with Sports Radio WHB  the station he all but singlehandedly put on the map and will announce his return  to local broadcasting in the next two weeks.Just not on the radio I m going to start a podcast in September, Kietzman says. I won t give away the name yet, but I ll let you know in a couple of weeks. Ready for the shocker? It s going to be about sports, politics and life, Kietzman says. I m going to do a daily podcast that I hope to upload every day at 10 am. Just in time to spare Chiefs fans and sports talk listeners the drudgery of mediocre midday radio.Kietzman hopes to make the podcast available on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, I ll be everywhere, he says. I called my past radio sponsors and they are all in Buck Roofing, Joslin Jewelry, Smoke n Fire. Five years ago  12 percent of the people on Spotify listened to a podcast every week. Now 39 percent of them do. And the prospect of Kietzman returning to the airwaves? I d like to be back on the radio in Kansas City someday, absolutely, he says. If I was going anywhere else  I d be long gone by now. We love it here. Kietzman s take on Coronavirus: waaaaay overblown by the media. Continue reading BakerHard to argue that we re living in an Alice in Wonderland, through-the-looking glass world That following the death of George Floyd, the country has climbed through a mirror where like a reflection everything is reversed including logic.Sound familiar?No?You must not be a member of the New York Times or Kansas City Star editorial boards, because that s sure not the way they see things.Case in point: Kansas City got off with minimal damage and death during the recent spate of widespread rioting and looting pardon me, I meant protesting.That includes the Vietnam War.Yet, instead of the KC Police Department getting much deserved attaboys for keeping a lid on things, the local newspaper and far left leaning groups are balls-to-the-wall trying to get police chief Rick Smith fired.Which makes no sense whatsoever to Westport businessman Bill Nigro and others who ve seen and worked with Smith extensively in KC s at times volatile entertainment district. Rick Smith is the best police chief Kansas City s ever had in my 42 years down in Westport, Nigro says. And Darryl Forté is a close second. Forté, the former KCPD chief, is Jackson County s first ever African American sheriff. Now Kansas City s being overseen by two of the best that KC s ever produced, Nigro says. Both of them have very high moral, christian values. And Rick Smith has the best open-door policy of any police chief I ve worked with going back to 1978 and I ve worked with them all. Continue reading The Chiefs will remain the Chiefs. Stop arguing that point. It’s a straw man.                                       Sam Mellinger Kansas City StarThe above quote is the final paragraph of a recent column in the Kansas City Star.Which is around the 4th or 5th story by the sinking newspaper that was just sold at a bargain basement price to bring them out of bankruptcy.Seems to me the main one suggesting to change the name or branding elements of the Super Bowl Champ Chiefs is the Star. The suggestion of course, is part of the popular movement to change the names and acts of anything that can be interpreted as having the slightest hint of so-called racism.First off, as most serious Chiefs fans know, the Chiefs name was selected to honor former KC mayor H  Roe Bartle, who helped convince the Dallas Texans to choose Kansas City as their new home.And branding elements like the chop, Warpaint, the war drum and arrowhead seemed fitting to help solidify the Chiefs in the hearts and minds of Kansas City sports fans.Speaking of Kansas City and the surrounding area, there are any number of other examples of honoring Native Americans in the area.Let’s review a few.Shawnee Mission: named after an Indian mission just west of the Plaza (FYI, there are some horrendous stories about the man who started the mission).The Kaw River: Named after a local Indian tribe:Kansas City: Named after the Kansa Indians (another name for the Kaw Indian tribe).What about grade schools like  Cherokee, Apache, Indian Creek and Indian Valley?Should we tear down the landmark Indian Scout statue that overlooks Penn Valley Park?We have Tomahawk and Indian creeks and Indian Hills Country Club.Had.enough?The point being that much of Kansas City’s heritage is tied to Native American Indians. 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