Hearne: Will AMC Theatres Survive?

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

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.”

Posted in Jack Poessiger | 3 Comments

Hearne: Remember The Good Old Days When KC Had Iceland Air Service to Europe?

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

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 | Leave a comment

Hearne: Movie Critic Jack Poessiger Contemplates ‘Retirement’

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

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 →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Hearne: Sports Talker Kevin Kietzman Poised for Comeback

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

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 →

Posted in Hearne_Christopher | 6 Comments

Hearne: Anatomy Of An Embattled Kansas City Police Chief

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

Baker

Hard 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 →

Posted in Hearne_Christopher | 4 Comments

Bob Zuroweste: KC’s Proud Indian Heritage Reflected In Chiefs

Posted on July 22, 2020 by admin

“The Chiefs will remain the Chiefs. Stop arguing that point. It’s a straw man.”

                                      Sam Mellinger Kansas City Star

The 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.

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Hearne: July Movie Theater Openings in Doubt

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

Things are looking pretty shaky again in the movie biz…

How shaky?

“I still don’t think the movie theaters are going to open up at the end of this month as planned the way the virus is going now,” says KCC movie maven Jack Poessiger. “If they have to open without California theaters and maybe New York, Florida and Texas, it doesn’t make sense financially.”

Somewhat obviously, Kansas City has a big stake via KC-based AMC Theatres.

The movie theater biz was already on uncertain ground with Netflix. Amazon Prime and pay-per-view services nipping at AMC’s heels before the dreaded coronavirus sidelined theaters in March.

However even with AMC and other exhibitors poised to reopen July 30th, some of the larger movie releases have been dialed back again and may not be available…indefinitely.

“I don’t think Disney is going to release Mulan which all the movie theaters have been banking on,” Poessiger adds. “The new Christopher Nolan movie Tenet just said it would delay its planned August release and may decide to open in Europe first or later in the fall. And everybody was looking forward to it as the start up movie, so it will be interesting to see if AMC delays its July 30th opening. I have a gut feeling that it may affect Mulan which is slated to open August 21.

“There are other movies, but those two were the big ones. I think they’ll move them again, but as to when they do open, depends on the virus. Originally Mulan was set to open March 27th.”

Why not just release them on pay-per-view like Universal has done? Continue reading →

Posted in Hearne_Christopher, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Hearne: Star Subscribers ‘Horrified’ By Bogus Police Chief ‘Hit Piece’

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

How much longer will the powers that be at what’s left of the once vaunted Kansas City Star put up with lame, over-the-top editorials and biased reporting?

If that sounds like a mouthful, trust me it is.

The once-thoughtful, local news organization has veered so far left – in a market that as one comments section person noted is at the very least, equal parts middle-of-the-road to conservative – that even free thinkers like longtime movie critic Jack Poessiger can’t stop scratching their collective heads.

“Did you see the editorial today that they want KC police chief Rick Smith to resign?” Poessiger says. “I tell you what, if you read that editorial – and it’s a long one – it’ll make you want to throw up. It’s so anti-everything that most traditional Americans stand for. It’s almost anti-police – even though technically it’s not -although it reads that way.”

Not only is it wrong-headed, it doesn’t bode well for a dying newspaper in a dying industry, struggling to remain afloat and coming out of bankruptcy and a dozen years of hemorrhaging readers, news staff and revenue.

“It’s going to piss a lot of their longtime readers off,” Poessiger nuses. “It’s so very, very hard to the left. I would say it’s too left wing for the paper’s own good.”

Aside from laying waste to the tenets of traditional journalism, the Star’s new extreme political views and style of “reporting” has cost it dearly in terms of readership.

“I would certainly think so,” Poessiger says. “Especially with the older demo which is their bread-and-butter, because people that are younger don’t read the newspaper.”

Westport entertainment spark plug Bill Nigro couldn’t agree more. Continue reading →

Posted in Hearne_Christopher, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Hearne: Kansas City Star Braces for New Owner Tribulations

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

Hard to imagine things getting much worse at the Kansas City Star…

Then again, between coronavirus, bankruptcy, declining readership and revenue, an over-the-hill readership, and finally, a new hedge fund owner almost certain to lay waste to what’s left of its already diminished news staff –  how could it not?

Make no mistake, the past 10 or 12 years have been brutal on newspapers and the Star.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 percent of the 2,000 plus bodies that worked at the newspaper prior to publisher Art Brisbane bailing for the corporate wilds of California in 2006, are long gone.

But to paraphrase the band Bachman Turner Overdrive, they ain’t seen nothing yet. 

Take a look at what’s been happening at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Continue reading →

Posted in Hearne_Christopher | 18 Comments

Bob Zuroweste: Let Voters Decide Andrew Jackson’s Fate

Posted on July 14, 2020 by admin

Jackson County Legislators are leaving the decision whether to remove the statues of Andrew Jackson to Jackson County voters…

Their decision was 6-2 in favor of putting it up for a vote – with both black county legislators against putting it up for a vote and the white legislators in favor of letting locals decide.

County Executive Frank White’s take: “The people elected us for these decisions”

That said, I think that the elected legislators should not make these kinds of decisions, as they tend to bow to social pressure.

It should be left up to the people to vote.

My argument is supported by the erroneous decision of the Kansas City Council last year to change the name of The Paseo to Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard. Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Hearne: Is Lawrence Journal World On Its Last Legs?

Posted on July 8, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

The jury’s out…

Can so-called newspapers survive on internet advertising alone?

That’s question is looming larger by the day, especially as organizations like the Lawrence Journal World and Kansas City Star approach the point of no return as paid print advertisers fan out in different directions in search of customers under the age of 65.

At this point in time, daily newspapers seem to be surviving largely on the basis of advertising inserts – primarily grocery stores on Wednesday and sundry retailers such as Target, Walgreens and the Franklin Mint on Sunday.

In terms of what are known as display ads, it’s not what one would call a pretty picture.

In today’s Star for example, most of the ads range from retirement communities, walk-in baths and erectile dysfunction ads for oldsters, bank ads and classifieds for pets and death notices.

Not exactly what appeals to prime audiences like adults 25 to 54 years of age.

For the Journal World it’s far worse.

Aside from ads for the Senior Resource Center, a local mortuary, a local retirement home and a smattering of car classifieds and help wanted ads, the 12 page newspaper is surviving on fumes.

And it’s not much better online, where the rates  are presumably far lower.

The $64 million question: Can newspapers make it on internet ads alone?

Uh, the jury’s out on that one. Continue reading →

Posted in Hearne_Christopher, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Hearne: Ex Journal World Sports Editor Takes Bullet in Boston

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

Tom Keegan:
Goes job hunting on Facebook

It’s not easy being a print journalist….

Not these days and not that anybody much is grieving for them, given the quality of what passes for reporting in the current idiom.

So it comes as little surprise that not two years removed from his gig as sports editor at the Lawrence Journal World, Tom Keegan bit the dust again going into the 4th of July weekend – this time out at the Boston Herald.

“Really enjoyed writing (a) column for the Boston Herald while it lasted,” Keegan lamented on Facebook. “Such a great sports town, so many great Herald teammates. Laid off Wednesday morning. Would like to stay in the business, so any leads appreciated.”

Easier said than done these days, although some of Keegan’s fans here in Lawrence are hopeful that he can land some sort of online sportswriting  gig.

That said, it wasn’t like Keegan set the world on fire here in Jayhawk land.

How could he?

The list of critical reporting sins anybody could get away with in Lawrence is infinitesimally small.

Not to restate the obvious, but it goes without saying that the 11th Commandment – Thou shall not criticize Bill Self or KU basketball is high atop the list of journalistic no-nos.

In fairness, Keegan did get off a few faint-hearted shots on his way out the door.

“Does Kansas have a clean basketball program?” read the headline atop Keegan’s October 16, 2018 column.

‘It’s reached the point where the issues that need to be addressed with the Kansas basketball program have grown beyond what’s provable and what may or may not lead to an NCAA violation,” it begins.

“It’s bigger than that. It boils down to a central question: Does Kansas believe it has a clean basketball program? Not are they just doing what everybody else is doing. Not can it stay out of trouble. Those are separate, smaller issues.

“Does it believe it has a clean basketball program? Not does it want to believe it has a clean basketball program; rather, does it believe it has a clean basketball program?”

The unwritten, unstated obvious answer being, hell no. Continue reading →

Posted in Hearne_Christopher | 7 Comments

Lefsetz: How to Save the American Way…

Posted on July 5, 2020 by Bob Lefsetz

…Which came first, Trump or the internet?

Once again, music was the canary in the coal mine for digital disruption.

Music has been disrupted, we’re at the end of the line of technology, we’ve got an on-demand system where you can get everything in the history of recorded music for one low price.

(As for those quibbling about availability, these are the same people buying tracks and talking about the minor tweaks to technology yet to come…IGNORE THEM!)

So, now it’s about software, about the music.

And what have we learned?

A hit is smaller than it’s ever been in our lifetimes.

The media still trumpets the Top 10, but most of the audience, the public, has not heard these tracks.

We have a codification of what is supposedly successful, the Spotify Top 50, but it does not comport with the listening habits of the public at large.

What big media says – newspapers, TV outlets – also means less than ever before and has less impact upon the populace than ever.

Even though those involved deny this, if they’re even aware of it.

The internet has turned us into a Tower of Babel nation.

In the ’80s we lived in a monoculture. One story for everybody. MTV. Reagan. There was a distinct narrative, and unlike in the 60s, there were no contrary voices, none that got any real traction.

No one was prepared for the internet and the blowing up of the paradigm, where everything became granular instead of singular.

At first only college students had high speed connections.

The public at large was on AOL. And then everything splintered into a zillion factions and it hasn’t been the same since.

Sure, Trump was built by television, a paradigm that cannot be replicated, but he spread because of the internet.

Not that platforms are unimportant. Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Hearne: ‘Notorious Madame Red’ On Canceling 2020 Ren Fest

Posted on July 3, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

Denise Groason aka the Nortorious Madame Red

Skin tight corsets and bodices aside, it ain’t easy being a sexy wench these days…

Take Denise Groason – aka Renaissance Festival’s Notorious Madame Red – who is sitting out this year’s, whether it goes down or not.

“If the pandemic had not happened, I would have been performing for my 40th season,” she says. “But I have opted – along with my performance group – to not be involved.”

Groason’s bottom line:

“Not only do I not wan t to die, I don’t want to die the way Covid takes people,” she says. “Until there is some kind of effective treatment for this, I don’t have a life. Everything I loved about my life I don’t get to do now.

“This is a disturbing nightmares Hearne. It’s insane and it’s going to get worse. It’s going to be New York City everywhere.”

Renaissance Festival officials did not return repeated phone calls for this story but…

“They’re trying to open the show safely and they have a general plan on how to do that,” Groason says. “I personally would like to see the show not run. The thing I would like to see happen is 2020 needs to be a wash. There just needs to be a pause. And hopefully by 2021 they can come up with medical treatments and a vaccine.” Continue reading →

Posted in Hearne_Christopher, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Hearne: Renaissance Festival Playing ‘Chicken’ Selling Advance Tix For Uncertain Fest

Posted on July 3, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

To be or not to be…

That is the question in regard to this year’s 2020 Renaissance Festival in Bonner Springs.

With everyone from the Kansas City Chiefs on down wrestling with if and how their seasons might go down in light of Covid-19 conditions, this year’s Ren Fest is full speed ahead in offering discounted advance tickets.

So will this year’s fest go down?

Good question.

While the Ren Fest website has a Covid-19 “overview,” it’s majorly promoting advance ticket sales with a $4 savings on adult tickets over  gate admission prices.

The Covid warning:

“With the safety and well-being of our patrons, participants and staff at the forefront of our preparations, we are eager to welcome you to the 2020 Kansas City Renaissance Festival. Please review this page for our latest opening information.”

Followed by an asterisk sentence that reads:

“In the event the 2020 Festival can not occur, all tickets and passes will be forwarded to the 2021 Festival.” Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Sutherland: ‘The Necessary Murder’ — Nelson-Atkins vs KC Cops

Posted on July 1, 2020 by Dwight D. Sutherland, Jr.

“So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.”

George Orwell

The English poet W.H. Auden went to Spain in 1937 at the outbreak of the civil war there.  He intended to volunteer his services as an ambulance driver on behalf of the left-wing government (the “Loyalists”), fighting against the right-wing insurgents led by General Francisco Franco (the “Nationalists”).

He was not accepted in the ambulance unit – he claims because he was not a Communist- and spent a couple of desultory months there before going back to England.  He then wrote a poem, “Spain, 1937”, which suggested that as a politically committed author one must be prepared for the “conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder.”

Many interpreted this to be a glib rationalization of the atrocities committed by the Loyalists’ side, e.g. 12,000 churches burned, six thousand Roman Catholic clergy executed, including 12 bishops and 283 nuns (some of whom were tortured and raped before they were killed). 

One person who took particular offense at this phrase was George Orwell, who actually did fight for the Loyalist cause, being gravely wounded in the process.  To add insult to injury, Orwell and his wife barely escaped Spain because the Stalinists in the Loyalist government wanted him executed as a political apostate, i.e. supposedly a “Trotskyite”. 

Orwell, who knew a thing or two about totalitarian regimes, said the reason Auden could speak so flippantly of the acceptance of murder is because:

“He has never committed a murder, perhaps never had one of his friends murdered, possibly never seen a murdered man’s corpse.”

He goes on:

“Personally, I would not speak so lightly of murder.  To me, murder is something to be avoided.  So, it is to any ordinary person.  The Hitlers and Stalins find murder necessary, but they don’t advertise their callousness, and they don’t speak of it as murder; it is “liquidation,” ‘Elimination,’ or some other soothing phrase.

Mr. Auden’s brand of amoralism is only possible if you are the kind of person who is always somewhere else when the trigger is pulled.”  Orwell’s Essay, “Inside the Whale”, excerpted in Welded Vertebrae, March 2013.

Someone who should understand exactly why this sort of sophistry is so dangerous is Julian Zugazazoitia, the current director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. 

Julian’s grandfather and namesake was a journalist and Minister of the Interior of the Loyalist government in Spain at the end of the civil war, which Franco’s Nationalists won in 1939. 

(Zugazazoitia was a long-time member of the Socialist Workers Party, a Marxist entity but one opposed to the Stalinist faction that worked to liquidate fellow leftists like Orwell in the waning years of the regime.) 

Zugazazoitia went into exile in France after the civil war but was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940 and handed over to Franco to be shot.

You would think his grandson would shy away from supporting any kind of authoritarian ideology, left or right. 

Imagine my dismay when I learned that Zugazazoitia ordered all Kansas City Police off the grounds of the Nelson the weekend of May 30 & 31st at the height of the rioting in midtown Kansas City

Zugazazoitia explained that having a police presence on the museum property sent a message “exactly the opposite of what we stand for.”  Continue reading →

Posted in Dwight D. Sutherland, Jr. | 22 Comments

Hearne: Speaking of Sports…KU, T-Bones Make ‘Fake News’

Posted on July 1, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

A pair of riveting announcements, certain to thrill sports-mined types…

First, the Kansas City T-Bones “baseball team” will not be playing the 2020 season.

Shocker.

Frankly, it would have been a bigger surprise if they announced they would play.

Indeed, KC’s most inconsequential professional sports team has accomplished little over its 17 year lifespan other than ducking out on rent payments to KCK and praying for the Royals to  return to their last place ways or a Major League Baseball strike.

All of that said, let’s give the Bones a moment of silence and move on to…

Vaunted KU basketball coach Bill Self, who after spending the past year or so on what amounts to death row – as in being booted out of coaching for a year or more – has decided that his best defense is to go on offense and threaten to sue the NCAA.

And hey, why not? Continue reading →

Posted in Hearne_Christopher | 8 Comments

Hearne: Murphy’s (Leftridge’s) Law Interrupts Honeymoon, Takes Down Site

Posted on June 27, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

Can’t a guy get married, leave town for a bit on a honeymoon without the site getting taken down?

Ridiculous as that may sound – not the getting married and going on a honeymoon part – but out of the clear blue sky, somebody dug up a column Brandon Leftridge wrote in 2012, filed a complaint with KCC’s website host and down we all went.

Something about running a couple of pics with underage minors.

But don’t ask me, the pics are now gone and not having looked at them for like eight years, I have no clue. And how nice of Bluehost to – allegedly – shoot me an email about taking them down – which if I got it, I never saw it – and then tanking the entire site. Then not getting it back up until like three days after the pics in question were deleted.

So as I site here in my tiny room at the Elk Mountain Lodge in Crested Butte, Colorado making up excuses, the question its, now what?

I’ve got it!

How about I resurrect Leftridge’s “controversial” column – which kinda sorta has a tie in to life today and you guys make the call.

Here tis:

How to Win Friends & Influence People (by Joining a Street Gang)

Regardless of the reason, it’s come down to this: you need a family composed of violent strangers whose main concern is territory and biggest threat is the encroachment of law enforcement and/or gentrification.

You’ve come to the right place.

Because, while picking a gang can be as hard as choosing a respected optometrist, it can also be made easier by knowing what each individual club stands for.

And that’s where I come in.

So read, and learn. And with my help, you’re sure to find a crew that fits your specific needs; after all, a gang is like a known vagina. It should fit snugly, but never be a gelatinous, sloppy mess. Continue reading →

Posted in Brandon Leftridge | 2 Comments

Hearne: Star’s Dave Helling Tries to Paint Patrick Mahomes Into a Corner

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

Patrick Mahomes leads crowd with chops at Super Bowl victory rally

Was a time former KCTV firebrand Dave Helling was in a league of his own…

Head and shoulders above most local television news anchors and their stereotypically vanilla ways. Borderline cutting edge even. Enough so that Helling was invited tom write a column for a local alternative news publication.

His “truth watch” busting bogus local political ads set a standard above and beyond the phony, politically-based “fact checkers” of today.

Unfortunately, Helling’s  different drumbeat approach fell short of the mark at KCTV and  they cut him loose. That’s when I stepped in and arranged for Helling to come to KC Star publisher Art Brisbane‘s 2008 going away bash at Knucklehead’s that I had organized. And there I introduced Helling to Star editor Mark Zieman who snapped him up almost immediately and remade him as a columnist.

Unfortunately it proved a bit of a stretch, and despite Helling’s high profile, he withered away.

Turns out being a TV newsie and an actual journalist are two different things.

But with Zieman atop the Star’s management slag heap, until recently, Helling managed to survive, landing a slot on the newspaper’s all-knowing editorial board.

That said, it’s not easy hanging onto a paycheck for a long-in-the-tooth, white-as-a-sheet male at a bankrupt newspaper going through endless succession of layoffs and pay cuts.

What better time to pen a politically correct column kissing up to your editorial board bosses telling KC’s most famous, beloved personality, Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes, to shape up and rid KC and the world of its unbelievably racist tomahawk chop.

Talk about mailing it in…

“Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes makes his voice heard. He should talk about the Tomahawk Chop,” the headline reads.

A little background…

For like decades the Kansas City Star and others have  been chop shaming the Chiefs and Atlanta Braves to get them to stop that goofy football Florida State invented.

And every so many years, someone in the media digs up a Native American or three to explain how disrespectful the cheer is. Followed at times by the Chiefs choking out some cash and digging up some other Native Americans to say it’s no big deal.

To date – forgiver me for what I’m about to say – it’s been a Mexican standoff.

Ah, but now that Mahomes has elected to weigh in on the George Floyd police killing and says he plans to continue to speak truth to power, Helling stumbled onto a genius column idea; use what’s left of the Star’s editorial clout to shame the Chiefs QB into entering into the anti chop fray. Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Hearne: Westport Entertainment Legend Bites The Dust

Posted on June 15, 2020 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

How could I not write about the passing of Dave McQuitty?

For well over 20 years the controversial local entertainment honcho loomed large – for better and for worse – beginning in Westport’s early entertainment infancy.

McQuitty’s United Entertainment managed a number of prominent, local cover bands and ran nightclubs such as the Lone Star, Hurricane, London’s, Shadow and Guitars & Cadillacs. Bands like the Clique, Charlie and the Stingrays and Rampage.

In the 1980s and early 1990s McQuitty was basically the guy in Westport.

“He was,” says longtime area rock promoter and heavy metal kingpin Jim Kilroy.“Here’s what I remember about him when I started out with Banzai magazine. Everybody I encountered in the local music industry said, ‘He screwed me.’ Everyone said, ‘He fucked me.’ That’s how I remember him.”

Did Kilroy ever hear anything nice about McQuitty?

“Well, of course, when he passed away,” Kilroy says.

In the early days when I took over running the Pitch as a record store rag and converting it into an alternative news and entertainment weekly, McQuitty was our biggest advertiser. A position he often leveraged in any number of heavy handed ways to try and bend our writers and editorial slant to his will (mostly unsuccessfully).

Like when we did a controversial “Violence in Westport” cover.

Yet there was another side to Dangerous Dave – apart from his being an entertainment and behind-the-scenes, small time political bully. A side that transcended his garish parading around Westport in a bright red Dodge Viper. Continue reading →

Posted in Hearne_Christopher, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 6 Comments