 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
December 19, 2012/ 6 Teves 5773
In defense of the DJs
By
Michael Smerconish
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | (MCT)
I still have the album.
It's called "WFIL Is Together," and the imprint on the vinyl credits Lost-Night Records, at 1005 Chestnut St.
The record contains 16 songs from the end of the '60s, including "The Letter" by the Box Tops, "Good Morning Starshine" by Oliver, "Happy Together" by the Turtles, "Venus" by Shocking Blue, and "Wipe Out" by the Surfaris.
But for my brother and me, the target track was the fifth song on Side 1 — "Hello It's Me" by Nazz. I'm not sure why we favored that number. Maybe it was a local homage, given that Nazz featured Upper Darby's Todd Rundgren.
Anyway, here's how the gag worked:
My brother would run his finger through the Doylestown phone book and pick out a name at random. Next, he'd call the person and tell whoever answered that he was a member of a garage band in town and that we were — right now — rehearsing a new song and desperately needed feedback. Then he'd ask, "Would you be willing to listen while we play?" If the person who answered said, "Yes," he'd quickly shout out a faux: "One, two, one, two, three, four ..."
That's when my role kicked in.
Up until that point, I was hovering over our parents' stereo turntable, listening to my brother's pitch. When he gave the signal, my job was to drop the needle right at the beginning of "Hello It's Me," while he held the receiver from our brand-new "push-button" telephone in my direction.
Sometimes I'd get nervous as he dialed the number. My hand would shake and I'd end up putting the needle down in the middle of the song, eliciting that burp that anyone who ever played a vinyl record will remember. Worse, I'd drop into the wrong song and our victim would hear "My Pledge of Love" by Joe Jeffrey or "Hair" by the Cowsills, which didn't have the same feel as a garage band, or so we thought.
The object was to see whether we could get someone on the other end of the telephone to listen to the entire song. Of course, the joke was mostly on us, because as I think back 40 years, I'm sure the only people who hung in that long were the ones humored by our truly elementary phone prank. Nobody got hurt. Just another element of a partly misspent youth, like calling Thrift Drug and asking if they had "Prince Albert in a can." (If they said yes, then you'd tell them to let him out.)
I've been thinking about my hijinks while digesting the tragic suicide of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse at King Edward VII Hospital in London who apparently took her life after receiving a prank call from two Australian DJs who pretended to be Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, calling to check on Catherine, the duchess of Cambridge. The radio hosts, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, have been suspended and their employer is donating nearly $500,000 to the family of the dead nurse. For some, that's not enough punishment.
The case is a tragedy, for sure. But the Aussie joke had about as much sophistication as my old capers. It lacked an evil motive, and the idea that someone would die from their call was about as expected as someone jumping out of a window after hearing me playing Nazz. Greig told Australian TV's Channel 7:
"It doesn't seem real, because you just couldn't foresee something like that happening from a prank call. You know it was never meant to go that far. It was meant to be a silly little prank that so many people have done before. This wasn't meant to happen."
She's right.
Their prank lacked the predictable scare that followed the War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938, when radio listeners across the country were told we were under alien attack. It didn't have the callousness of the 1998 stunt when DJs Opie and Anthony told a Boston radio audience that the mayor had died in a car crash in Florida. And it was nowhere as inherently dangerous as the water-drinking contest ("Hold your wee for a Wii") at a Sacramento radio station that resulted in the death of a 28-year-old woman.
The exchange with Nurse Saldanha was brief:
Greig: "Oh, hello there. Could I speak to Kate, please, my granddaughter?"
Saldanha: "Oh, yes, just hold on, ma'am."
Greig: "Thank you."
That's it. Saldanha then forwarded the call to a colleague. She provided no patient information to the DJs. If anyone had grounds to be embarrassed it was the nurse who then revealed personal details of Kate's condition and treatment when confronted with horrible accents from "the Queen" and "Prince Charles," not to mention their imitation of barking corgis.
That Saldanha may have ended her life after this episode is terribly sad, but so far there is no evidence to suggest that it was the fault of the DJs.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here. Michael Smerconish writes for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Previously:
12/17/12 Key to election --- stocks, not jobs
12/11/12 United Airlines' post-9/11 commitment to security rescinded?
11/01/12 Good reasons to revive draft
09/25/12 If Romney loses
04/19/12 Christie will get GOP nod in 2016
04/06/12 Romneys not only family with embarrassing stories
03/08/12 Here's an easy fix for King monument quote
02/28/12 Valor-medal lie as free speech
02/21/12 Now we know: Van Halen's M&M rider was just a test
02/14/12 Life inside the (class) bubble
02/09/12 Rethinking paths to wealth
01/17/12 Romney must face his work history head-on
01/11/12 Don't let those gift cards be a gift to retailers or the state
01/03/12 Headlines hoped for in 2012
11/09/11 Romney, beware: Cain may bob through the straits
11/02/11 Where there's ad smoke, there's … what?
10/20/11 After husband is murdered, 30 long years of phone calls
10/13/11 Black women should only marry out of their race?
08/31/11 Some political gaffes really say something
07/27/11 An overture of candidates' theme songs
06/28/11 Where's the app for common sense?
06/02/11 Over-scrutinizing lives costs us potential leaders
04/19/11 Taking a chance to say, ‘Hi’
04/06/11 Race policies should be altered to reflect new demographic reality
11/10/10 Delaware's independent, but short-lived, voice
11/03/10 Papers should leave endorsing to others
10/21/10 Media help to hype perception of bullying
09/23/10 Officer down, killer hyped up
08/04/10 Documents highlight Pakistan's shortcomings as a U.S. ally
07/06/10 On taking back Sept. 11
06/29/10 Name elite corps to develop energy independence?
04/21/10 New account reinforces a serviceman's valor
03/11/10 Medical profession must police itself better
02/18/10 One-trick athletes
02/09/10 Active, retired law officers should be able to carry guns on planes to help stop terrorists
02/04/10 How to bring tech up to speed
01/28/10 Campaign donations must be fully and immediately disclosed online
01/07/10 The flying emperor still has no clothes, and no one is willing to say so
12/24/09 A law to mandate college football playoffs?
12/17/09 Cheney's abuse of freedom of speech
11/26/09 The true cost of freedom from anxiety
10/27/09 If GOP wants to win in 2012, it must reshape its primary process
10/08/09 It's time to get smarter on extended school day
09/03/09 What a summer of eulogizing flawed public figures reveals about society
08/12/09 It's time for cyclists and motorists to reconcile
08/05/09 Faces have changed, but vitriol remains
06/25/09 Fair comment or foul? Warm up the Muzzle Meter
06/08/09 Believability is key in crime-hoax villains
05/14/09 Did Hollywood inspire the meltdown men?
04/20/09 Let's give killers their due: Anonymity
03/12/09 Uninsured who can't afford medical care lose a lot more
02/06/09 My debate with Musharraf on hunt for bin Laden
01/29/09 Torture must remain an option
01/15/09 Making a case for suing Madoff
12/22/08 A difficult but rational chat about ‘plans’
12/17/08 Facebook epidemic: More than 120 million have joined, many too old for this nonsense
12/01/08 The high price of downsizing the news biz
11/14/08 Prescience on greed, arrogance of a system
09/29/08 Closer look at party lines
08/26/08 Obama's pick creates GOP opportunity
08/21/08 Fishing with the Angry Everyman
07/31/08 The perils of e-mail: Ponder, then click
05/22/08 Two very different sides of the Internet
02/12/08 Sublimely ridiculous suits
11/28/08 Cell phones cut out secondary circle of kinship
09/26/07 What do we owe those who have died in Iraq?
08/30/07 A Navy SEAL's gut-wrenching tale of survival
07/30/07 First it was a faux pas, now it's a new word
© 2008, The Philadelphia Inquirer Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
|
|
Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman
Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman
Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|
