Posted on 12/08/2004 1:34:49 PM PST by Conservomax
WBZ'S David Brudnoy is saying good-bye to his friends. After living with AIDS for years, David’s cancer, merckle cell carcinoma has spread to his liver and kidneys and his prognosis at Mass General Hospital is not good.
All too often in the news business, its not good news we have to report and this is one of those stories. WBZ's Gary LaPierre had an extended conversation today with a very prominent member of our family here at WBZ, Dr. David Brudnoy.
David Brudnoy asked to have this conversation so that he, a nationally prominent radio talk show host, could say farewell to you... his listening public, his family.
Simply put and to the point, David Brudnoy is looking death straight in the eye today and is saying to his family... his listeners, I’m ready. It was very apparent when I stepped into David’s room at the Mass General today that one of the giant survivors of this sometimes very unforgiving business is talking to his family that’s you... for the last time.
10-years ago I talked to David, a mere skeleton of a man, fighting back from death by full-blown AIDS. This tough guy won.
A little more than a year ago, a deathbed struggle ensues again for David Brudnoy, merkel-cell carcinoma. He launched another 15 round battle with a rare deadly disease and won... until now. David told us today, he's losing this one. I asked him how its different this time.
David "it's gone below the waist. It’s in the liver and kidneys."
While at times, struggling a bit for the breath to speak, David Brudnoy is always, the open book and I couldn't help by ask why, while standing at deaths door he wants to share it all.
David “You go through a couple of days of that… more pain… pointless. No end.”
Gary: “What you are saying to continue would be just to continue your being for a few more days?”
David: “With morphine and a little oxygen and food. I am not starving myself. I am not asking my doctors to do anything illegal. I wish I could but they won't. I will make it through. My head is completely excepting of this. I am absolutely ready.”
David Brudnoy, as only David could do it, gets the chance to say his final farewells to the world.
David: “I think we in the media often times want everybody else to be frank about themselves but want to be covert about ourselves. My life is truly an open book.”
Gary: “It always has been.”
David: “It has been but more so as I contend with these diseases.”
So tonight, he'll be heard in a bed-side interview with WBZ's Gary LaPierre in what will be his final farewell.
All of us here at WBZ have David Brudnoy in our thoughts and prayers today.
Why are you so filled with hate? A man is dying. We shall all die from something some day.
Wonder what folks will send to this board when you are dying and need prayer?
Go ahead and wonder for the rest of your life. And enjoy.
What did they send to this board when Yasser Arafat lay dying and needed prayer ?
What will did they send to this board when Udai and Qusay Hussein lay dying and needed prayer ?
What will you send to this board when Osama Bin Laden lies dying and needs prayer ?
If you're going to compare Brudnoy to Arafat, the Husseins and bin Laden, your credibility is gone.
Almost a million people in American have been diagnosed with AIDS. Half a million people in America have already died of AIDS. We only wonder about how many are going to be infected and die.
What a childish and pedantic point to make.
By that standard, a teenager who lies about going to a beer party is just as evil as Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin.
There are gradations of evil, your sophomoric protestations notwithstanding.
It is possible to say Brudnoy's queer behavior is wrong without revelling in how EVIL he is.
It is possible to say Brudnoy's queer behavior is wrong without revelling in how EVIL he is.
Apparently not or you would have said it.
You've got seven juicy reasons to hate him and relish his painful demise. Who am I to interfere?
Your compulsion with this issue speaks volumes.
I infer you have seven reasons to support him.
You cared enough to post in support of the homosexual agenda.
A false dichotomy.
The Incredibles
I thought this was B quality when I wrote the quick flick last week, then I saw it again the other day and realized I was being niggardly with the grade, so I've upgraded it to A-. Since flip-flopping is in fashion these days, or was until Election Day showed its limitations, I throw myself on your mercy for having flip-flopped with a grade.
"The Incredibles" grew in my estimation with viewing it, noticing little side jokes I failed to glom to earlier, observing how costuming and settings are even more gorgeous than when I first saw it, and comprehending that this is not just an exceptionally funny, well-wrought animated tale of virtue besting greed, jealousy and evil; it's also a morality play about the tendency of demoralized societies to settle for mediocrity and become antsy at best, vindictive at worst, about superiority. Our national illusion is manifested in inanities like "no child can be left behind," as if all children can, in fact, learn, and other baby talk that flows with the same thoughtless fluidity as does much of what our pandering leaders tend to say. "The Incredibles" is the kind of world that a fly speck like Denmark has become: one in which superiority is disdained, conformity and the humdrum is regarded as national spirit, and being demonstrably a harder worker or a greater achiever is considered bad form.
In the world of this movie, superhumans have become tiresome to the populace. When a society requires a superhero protection program for the superior ones among us, thoughts of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" leap to mind. The self-adoring Garrison Keillor's smugly wry "Prairie Home Companion" has its Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average, meaning they're all quite average indeed, an inflation of expectations like grades at places besotted by their own wonderfulness, such as Harvard, which expunge the reality of differentness, of better and worse.
The Parr parents (Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter), and their three kids, have had to tuck their wonderfulness into the cupboard and pretend to be ordinary. Bob Parr, once Mr. Incredible, has bloated out, and the Mrs., once Elastigirl, hides her flexibility from the goyim, so to speak, and the kids have to abjure their powers, like Clark Kent in "Smallville" when playing sports. But when a vile little wannabe who calls himself Syndrome (Jason Lee), and who only wanted, as nerdy jerk Buddy Pine, to tag along with Mr. Incredible but was rebuffed, sets out to show 'em, to be all that he can be in the world of super abilities, he sets off on a path of evil. Mr. Incredible, as Bob Parr, and his buddy, Lucius, in super-guise as Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson), can only do fly-by acts of super-heroism, so their frustration festers. Then, at last, focusing on the dangers Syndrome poses - he'll so undermine super-heroism that everyone will be super, meaning none will be - we're back to a Pixar-ish Denmark, the good guys must act.
Edna Mode (Brad Bird, the director, with a feminized voice) is the couturier who fashions new outfits for our out-of-shape heroes - what won't a life of mediocrity do to the midsection! - and revs up their engines of commitment. The battles between good and evil are hysterical, even if when the film rounds the bend, things reduce to the expectable frenzy of end-of-film confrontations and the film loses muscle as it gains razzle-dazzle. Nice to see that as some animated films tank, and others, good ones, like "Shark Tale," don't do so well, owing to the lack of interest too much of a good thing can bring, these well-wrought animated items must continually rev up those old traditional attributes like clever screenplays, ingenious word games, the occasional pun and the two-level approach to humor: slapstick for the moppets, something more meaty to chew on for the adults.
If you need a second viewing, as I did, that might be a good sign, that some of us took it for granted the first time - hey, nice movie - and required another shot of it to see how enveloped in a philosophy of, maybe we can call it, compassionate Nietzcheanism. Anyone for whom the words "all people are not identical, not equally worthy, not capable of the same achievement" chokes in the mouth will either dislike the movie or not get it. The fantasy of identical merit in all folks is lunatic, if acted upon it is a prescription for national mediocrity. Look at Old Europe's tumble so rapidly from a repository of civilization into grumpy left-behinds imagining they amount to something and that sneering at cowboy America is the same as achieving anything other than envy on a platter of, oh, snails.
Is this guy really Gay or is that an assumption?
He could have gotten AIDS through a blood transfusion.
Anyone know what the truth is here?????????
As the day is long.
He really is gay. He's been open about it since he collapsed and almost died about 10 years ago. The secret was out by then anyway. He's a smart, engaging man who called himself a Libertarian. Some of his views were very liberal however.
It's so sad that a wife and children will not be present when he goes to his deserved reward, but many others that he has touched will remain for a while longer and keep his memory alive.
Ah, Larry Glick. I earned myself not one but two Glick University T-shirts. When people ask me how I am, I say let me check and whistle.
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