I was away longer than I'd expected today so I didn't get to repost here that the Antenna TV Johnny Carson rerun was the episode with Richard Pryor and Rod Hull that I wrote about here. Hope you caught it. The second airing of it is occurring even as I post this.
The show originally aired June 9, 1983 and I wrote about it from memory for an article that was first published in May of 1999. I got a lot of it right but I think my recollections compressed two appearances. This was actually Pryor's second appearance with Johnny following the "accident" in which Richard suffered severe burns but since everyone was talking about his recent plastic surgery on the set, I guess I remembered it as his first and recalled him talking about the accident. He actually discussed it on the earlier appearance, which I did remember and I kinda combined those two.
I got the segment with Rod Hull and Emu pretty much right except that the point where the bird puppet attacked Pryor came later, just before the show ended. Anyway, it was all pretty funny. This Saturday, they're running a 1978 episode with Don Rickles and Ray Bradbury that I do not recall at all…but doesn't that sound interesting?
I see a lot of folks on the web who are furious about today's Supreme Court decision striking down certain abortion restrictions in Texas. Kevin Drum points out what a sham the law was. It required doctors who performed abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. That sounds like an attempt to protect women's health but in reality, even the people defending the law in front of the Court admitted that there was no record of any clinic needing have a woman admitted. In fact, hospitals wouldn't even grant admitting privileges to doctors performing that procedure because it was so safe.
Lastly for now: Earlier today, I cautioned everyone about taking too seriously the polls that show Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by double digits. Those were polls, I noted, that ask voters which of the two they'd prefer…but the actual ballots will have more than two names. Today, some more polls came out that do show Hillary having a double-digit lead even when other candidates are listed. Let's see if that's the case with future polls. She might be that far ahead…now. There's still a long time 'til we vote for real.