Posted on 06/01/2010 4:42:27 AM PDT by Puppage
The son of legendary TV newsman Ted Koppel died early Monday after a night of drinking that ended in the seedy Manhattan apartment of a pub crawl acquaintance.
Andrew Koppel, a 40-year-old attorney with the New York City Housing Authority with a history of alcohol problems, was declared dead around 1:30 a.m., according to the New York Post. Police sources told the newspaper Koppel had stumbled two and a half hours earlier into the Washington Heights apartment of Russell Wimberly, a waiter he had met 12 hours earlier in a Hell's Kitchen bar.
A roommate of Wimberly, Belinda Caban, told the Post Koppel was extremely drunk and that they put him to bed, only to find him dead hours later. Wimberly, 32, said they met at a bar on 44th St. and Ninth Ave., striking up a conversation after each noticed the other wearing a similar straw hat.
"He said, 'Nice hat, man,'" Wimberly told the Post. "We got to talking and he started buying me drinks."
Wimberly said Koppel drank straight whiskey, and when he suggested bar-hopping around the city, he sipped from a pint bottle of Jameson as they walked.
"There was a lot of alcohol," Wimberly told the Post.
Koppel was the third of the "Nightline" anchor's four children and their only son. In 1993, he was convicted of punching a senate aide and ordered to undergo alcohol treatment. In 1990, he was in an alcohol-related fender-bender in Maryland.
True enough. However, it happens to be a program of WANT, not need.
New Prime-Time Sitcoms Kill the Family Hour
The TV networks have announced their fall lineups and two upcoming shows will be serving up some highly offensive material: the Twitter-inspired CBS sitcom titled “$#*! My Dad Says” and the NBC comedy “Friends with Benefits.”
During what used to be called the family hour (8:30 p.m.), “$#*! My Dad Says” will feature former “Star Trek” Captain William Shatner as a profanity-laden, modern day Archie Bunker.
Groups and individuals, including the Parents Television Council, are considering filing complaints with the FCC over the show.
The series is adapted from a Twitter page called “Sh** My Dad Says.” CBS plans to advertise the program by having the announcer instead say, “Bleep My Dad Says.”
Meanwhile, NBC is moving beyond the amorality of the now-syndicated “Friends” show to a new sitcom that celebrates friends engaging in lots of sex together with the not-so-subtle title “Friends with Benefits.”
The network’s synopsis reads: “Ben, Sara, Hoon, Aaron, and Riley are a group of close friends who do just that. After a bad date, they turn to each other for moral (and sometimes physical) support. Hey, what are friends for?”
“Friends with Benefits” is expected to premiere sometime in 2011.
Guess the family hour is officially dead.
What you sow, so shall ye reap.
I’m the mom of an only child. There is no day in my life that I’m not on my knees thanking God that he doesn’t drink a drop or do drugs. It’s such a crapshoot. I’ve seen the most decent and able parents end up with a substance abuser child, and I’ve seen total loser parents wind up with a teetotaler.
I wouldn’t wish anything like this event on my worst enemy.
Dear God, please watch over all involved in this terrible thing.
Addictions tear apart the best of families, even God loving Christian conservatives.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the Koppel family, which probably spent years and years living through the agony of having an addict in their mist.
Unfortunately, they are all accessed on a voluntary basis.
(Just to be clear: yes, I am a firm advocate of involuntary help for addicts and the mentally ill.)
Television and radio outlets have approached former New York x. Eliot Spitzer about hosting a news show, according to published reports.
Speculation about a media move by Spitzer, a Democrat who resigned in March 2008 over a prostitution scandal, was touched off when the Washington Examiner reported Tuesday that CNN had spoken with Spitzer about taking over the 8 p.m. time spot soon to be vacated by Campbell Brown.
“The network is even considering bringing in disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer,” the Examiner stated.
Spitzer told the Examiner there had been no talks with CNN, and CNN declined to comment on the report.
“People close to Spitzer said the CNN job would fail to offer Spitzer the platform he is looking for,” according to the Washington Post, which reported on Thursday that “several” media outlets have approached Spitzer about a job.
A source said: “He’d want to be unburdened to say what he thinks.”
One consideration weighing against a move to CNN could be the stiff competition he would face in the 8 p.m. time slot. Brown’s show attracts an average of 591,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Co. ratings, while MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann draws 1.03 million and Bill O’Reilly pulls in 3.34 million on Fox News.
But a move to MSNBC could be in the works for Spitzer. He appears often on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and recently filled in for anchor Dylan Ratigan on the network, “where the left-of-center politics are more amenable to his analysis about regulation reform, Wall Street abuses or other issues he is asked to comment on,” the Post reported.
And a source told the Post: “Spitzer has been courting MSNBC, and they have been courting him.”
But Spitzer could have greater ambitions. Asked by a New York television news show if he would consider a return to public office, he responded: “Am I ruling it out? No.”
More evidence that network TV is the vast wasteland, providing more evidence of why television is called “the idiot box”.
If one wants an education, important and true news and entertaining programming let me offer the following cable TV outlets: TCM FOR MOVIES, FOX NEWS CHANNEL FOR NEWS, THE HISTORY CHANNEL AND THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL FOR HISTORICAL AND OTHER ENTERTAINING PROGRAMMING, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK FOR BUSINESS NEWS and TVLAND for great old TV show reruns.
True enough.
But the vast majority happen to liberals and their families.
I believe that is due to the kind and type of lax parenting and value systems that liberals teach their kids.
That may sound cruel and uncaring but I believe that is the whole unvarnished truth.
What a waste. Very sad.
Condolences to the Family.
Very sad event.
Sad, I’m glad for all the alcohol and drug abuse education in school now days. The DARE IMO is a great program. Neither of my kids drink alcohol at all, much less abuse it. I will always remember Ted Koppel during the Iran Hostage crisis. His Nightline news was the best one on covering that during that time.
If “they” wonder why their networks are dying, that would be a good place to start.
Am I dating myself to note that the highlight of my brother and sister’s weeknight TV viewing was Gilligan’s Island? My parents were smart; they used it to their advantage. LOL
“Ok, let’s clear the table, do the dishes, make your lunches for tomorrow, we would HATE for you kids to have to miss Gilligan’s Island!”
:)
Celebrities are no different than the general population-addictions, self centeredness, family problems—the only difference is we hear about in the news.
That is the only difference.
I’m very sorry to hear this. Prayers for him and his family.
Probably not the best time or place to express these sorts of thoughts. Let the dead rest.
My condolences as well.
I believe Bill Moyer has a son who admitted adiction. Not sure if he is alive.
Brit Hume lost a son as well.
He sounds just like my brother who died at age 62 from many, many years of drinking. It’s sad....a waste of a life and yet with all the help and support out there....you have to want to become sober and stay that way. My brother had a million reasons why it was impossible to stay sober...he died years ago and yet I still cry for him and others who find it too difficult to stop drinking...........
Yes, it is.... Very self-destructive.... 40 years old and barhopping?
He probably knew it was only a matter of time before it killed him, too.
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