Shana Alexander &Paul Winchell, gone but not forgotten

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.
— Shana Alexander

Shana Alexander died on Thursday and was inadequately eulogized by the news media on Sunday. That's not surprising of course. The news media, or as they should more accurately be known, "the devil's minions", are never happy to publicize intelligent women who also happen to have integrity as their key word. Of course, the minions are happy to publicize women who are members of their 'upside down society', such as Hi[t]lery Clint[slime]on, because those women are already 'signed sealed delivered'. But women like Ann Coulter, or Barbara Olson, well, the only place you can learn anything useful about them is on newsmax.com and then only if the women are still so newsworthy that their names can 'sell ads'.

Sure, I admit occasionally reading email-blasts from newsmax, (particularly if they put down Hitlery or her fast-food scarfin' pseudo-hubby, Bill "I didn't swallow, err, inhale"), but I don't 'buy it at the news stand'.

The best eulogy for Shana comes from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, from which I quote:

A 1945 graduate of Vassar College, Alexander worked as a freelance writer for Junior Bazaar and Mademoiselle magazines and had a stint as entertainment editor at Flair magazine before going to work at Life as a $65-a-week researcher in 1951.

After becoming Life's first female staff writer, she wrote the magazine's award-winning column "The Feminine Eye" in the 1960s.

In 1969, Alexander became the first female editor of McCall's, where she was known for restyling the magazine to appeal to women's interests beyond domestic issues. She quit the post in 1971 and later described it as a token job in a sexist environment.

"Here was this magazine selling all these products to women, and it had no women in any level of photography or editing," she told the Chicago Tribune in 1990. "I was a figurehead. So I went around trying to bring them into the modern world."

She was a columnist for Newsweek magazine in 1975 when she was teamed with James J. Kilpatrick, the conservative Washington Star columnist, on the "Point/Counterpoint" segment on CBS' "60 Minutes."

Over the next four years, the duo debated the topics of the day and famously traded barbs and phrases such as "Oh, come on, Jack" and "Now see here, Shana."

Alexander once called the "60 Minutes" segment the news magazine's "modern reincarnation of Punch and Judy."

Shana, I learned a lot from you and though I was never particularly of a 'liberal' mindset (except for how I view sex), your magazine articles and your wit as evident on "Point/Counterpoint" always made me think outside the box, and for that I thank you. May you rest in peace, Ms. Alexander, and may you enjoy long leisurely angelic strolls with Jesus and his mom.

Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger, and so much more...

Paul Winchell, an entirely different sort of person from Shana and yet so alike. Both Paul and Shana lived the lives which they imagined, to paraphrase Emerson. Paul was not only an accomplished ventroloquist, but an inventor par excellence (like my own father, who invented the first zig-zag sewing machine and a number of other inventions, but I'll tell that true story another day).

Paul invented and patented the first artificial heart, the flameless cigarette lighter, battery-lighted key case (a very handy tool as many of us know), a garment to prevent hypothermia, and finally the retractable fountain pen (click, click), plus many more I don't feel like mentioning here, except of course for the disposable razor).

Paul, I'm sure you are enjoying repartee with Shana and maybe Barbara Olson too, but I think maybe you were a male chauvinist, so perhaps you are over in the Fundamentalist section of heaven, as most surely Shana and Barbara are not.

P.S. Barbara Olsen was one of the souls on Flight 77. I've been wanting to get involved in the Flight 77 debate for some time now. But since I cannot substantiate anything, except that I 'have read a lot of conspiracy theories about Flight 77 on the internet', I've finally concluded that I should stay out of the discussion. But, there must always be a but[t], "don't you think it is strange that there weren't any arab folks on Flight 77 and don't you think it is possible that the flight was shot down by our own missiles or one of our fighter jets? Well I think it is possible, and so will you in a couple years when Hollywood makes that movie (you know it's coming.)"

nuff said.