Posted on 03/18/2009 10:41:24 PM PDT by sinanju
"...In fact, as I discovered when we met, he had majored in Chinese and Spanish at SUNY Binghamton, and then taken a Masters in Chinese at St. John’s, followed by a year on scholarship at the University of Taiwan. He spent almost half of that time backpacking through the Golden Triangle. Or, as I would put it to him, “backpacking”. He was too serious to be a tourist; and too smart to be on some Pineapple Express. What else was left but CIA? His reply to my questioning and teasing would always be one of those patented Silverian smiles, half way between smug and inscrutable. (He later told Cindy Adams that he was, in fact, working for the Company: ”I thought it was patriotic. But then time came that life, love and girls distracted me.” But I bet he said it with one of those same smiles.)
He wrote some reviews for us and, for the September 1986 issue, he interviewed China’s foremost female writer — the non-English speaking Zhang Jie. In several hundred words he sketched the history of feminism and popular literature under communism in China. He wrote with real insight and considerable style. (Not to mention that, despite the heavy demands of his day jobs, his print-ready copy was always delivered on time.)"
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewnixon.org ...
Interesting *PING*.
His acting awed them, his conservative streak confounded them, [his brother] Mitchell Silver said.
“Ron’s politics, as far as I know, were not shared by anyone he knew, except for the people he knew because of his politics,” Mitchell Silver said. He paused and added, “He told me that he did vote for Barack Obama in the end.”
Not a man to be pigeonholed.
Hmmm, that’s rather a high compliment these days.
How the hell did I miss the fact that Ron Silver died?
bttt
Probably because he wasn’t a lib, so the networks did have all that much to say.
Had it been Larry King, we would never heard the end of it.
He was not what you would call a physically imposing man...but he had a quality that could be very intimidating somehow...he could switch it on at will, a very special sort of acting magic..... That is a very rare ability for an actor to possess.
The only other actor I can think of that has it is Mandy Patinkin...Mandy is a cancer survivor.
RIP Ron. 
Why would a seeming conservative vote for Obama?
Perhaps he did not...I think we only have the word of his brother on this...who apparently was astonished at Ron's change from Liberal to conservative viewpoints.
If Ron did vote for O...perhaps it was because he found McCain totally unsuitable for the office...even scary.
I admit that I said many many times that I would never cast a vote for McCain for President. Although in the end I did just that, but the prospect of him as President sent chills up and down my spine. It was a strange election for me...I found the whole situation quite hopeless :-(
Same here, neighbor, same thing here.
Bear also in mind that not all Democrats are kooks- my wife of nearly 25 years was one ( think Orson Scott Card, or Zell Miller, or Pat Moynihan... ) until Kerry scared her so badly she switched.
Ah, Zell Miller, what a great guy! :-)
Wish he was the dem president right now instead of O.
Even though he is a bit long in the tooth.
Heck, I could shout hallelujah if Joe Lieberman was pres in place of O.
Sounds nuts, but I’d even rather have Joe the Plumber.
Given your handle of backhoe...is that what you do, backhoe work???
Just wonderin :-)
I think it’s sort of fun to dig with a backhoe....
Thanks GW. Voted for Barack Obama in the end, nice of him to help screw the rest of us on the way out the door.
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As the hunter said when he spotted a leopard in the trees...
"Thereby hangs a tail..." ( tale )
I've done everything from digging ditches with a shovel to running corporations ( small ones ), but I did actually have a backhoe some years ago, and on the day I tried registering here, every damn "handle" I'd used since BBS days was taken...
Tried every screen name I'd ever had, kept getting "in use!" and finally, cussing like a pirate, I typed in "backhoe..."
Tarnation, it went through, and I've been stuck with it ever since.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/jpodhoretz/58672
“...September 11 merely hastened an ideological journey he was already making, and he was without illusion that his plain-spoken support for George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani was going to make his career a more difficult one. It is difficult to say how much injury it did him, since he got sick not long after the 2004 election and was battling cancer for years.”
Ann did a really nice column about him - read it yesterday.
Alec Baldwin, "Mourning the Death of Ron Silver" (on HuffPo)
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