Free Republic

"Mike Lupica is being blamed for the cancellation of “The Sports Reporters” after the show’s run of nearly 30 years on ESPN. The Daily News columnist was a panelist for many years on the Sunday morning show, on which he and other print reporters such as the Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan and the Detroit Free Press’ Mitch Albom discussed the week’s hot-button issues in sports. When longtime host John Saunders unexpectedly died at 61 in August, Lupica jumped at the chance to replace him. “He was a total diva,” one insider said. “He was abusive to people, and mean to...

“That was really an accident,” Mitch Albom recently called the publication of his first nonfiction book, “Tuesdays with Morrie. .” At the time, the sports columnist was just trying to help pay his former professor’s medical bills. However, when the book was published, it became something more. An international sensation. It also changed Albom’s life. Next Sunday, the television movie based on “Have a Little Faith”-- Albom’s second nonfiction book-- will air on ABC. I recently had the opportunity to interview Albom about his new film, his career path and finding his glory in life. “Faith” tells the true story...

In explaining why it was OK to sock a new 5.4 percent tax on the highest earners in this country — to pay for health care reform — President Obama's press secretary. Robert Gibbs, said this: "The President believes that the richest 1 percent of this country has had a pretty good run of it for many, many, many years." Ah. So that's it. The old "You've had it good enough for long enough" policy. That's why a family earning a million dollars a year should now cough up $54,000 of that — in addition to all the other taxes...

We crucify the man who paid for sex. The woman who charged him, we turn into a star. Go figure. In America, it seems, we like our characters prepackaged. And the prepackaged version of the Eliot Spitzer saga is this: Powerful Man, undone by hubris; Vulnerable Girl, caught up in something bigger than her. So he's gotta go. She can get rich and famous. Sorry. I don't buy it. If paying for sex is a crime, then it's a two-party crime, same as buying and using drugs. There is no reason that Spitzer, the now former governor of New York,...

Her son was dead. He died serving our country. At this point, you're thinking "Iraq." But this young man never wore a helmet. He never carried a gun. His name was Andrew Goodman. A white college student. Forty-one years ago, he went from New York City to Mississippi after hearing the Ku Klux Klan firebombed a church. He tried to help.

Will the Real News Fabricator Please Stand Up? May 19, 2005 By Debbie Schlussel The Detroit News and its star reporter, David Shepardson, got caught with their pants down. They ran a fake story. But no-one noticed. No-one, except me—which lead to Detroit News Editor and Publisher Mark Silverman and his minions racing to hush the story and bury it, looking for some silent way to cover-up their very large, very exposed rears. They printed Shepardson’s phony story about a terrorist, and I exposed it, last week. Shepardson ran with it, without even a modicum of fact-checking (easily done with...

SAF CALLS FOR ‘WAITING PERIODS’ ON PRESS FOLLOWING FATAL NEWSWEEK DEBACLE For Immediate Release: 5/16/2005 BELLEVUE, WA – More than 115 dead or injured, and now a lame “apology” from Newsweek; maybe it is time for the press to accept waiting periods before exercising its First Amendment rights in the same way the press has backed waiting periods on law-abiding Americans before exercising their Second Amendment rights. That’s the observation from the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) now that Newsweek has acknowledged its report about the desecration of the Koran by soldiers at Guantanamo Bay was bogus. “I wonder if Newsweek,...

No one's defending renowned journalist Peers, educators critical of Detroit's Mitch Albom for reporting something that didn't happen By Michael Hirsley, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Ed Sherman and columnist Mike Downey contributed Published April 10, 2005 Mitch Albom, one of Detroit's most prominent figures, is a one-man multimedia entity as a nationally known sports columnist, radio and TV personality, best-selling author and playwright. He added another role this week--one no journalist wants. Albom is making news rather than reporting it, under suspension from the Detroit Free Press until the newspaper completes an investigation of a fabrication in an...

Albom Column Suspended While 'Freep' Investigates By Dave Astor Published: April 11, 2005 2:15 PM ET NEW YORK Mitch Albom's work will not appear in the Detroit Free Press while the newspaper investigates his past-tense column about something that hadn't happened yet. John X. Miller, the Free Press' public editor, told E&P today that not publishing the work of an under-investigation staffer is standard practice at the paper. "His salary will continue to be paid," he added, noting that this is also standard practice at the paper in these situations. Miller said the investigation -- being conducted by a Free...

National Society of Newspaper Columnists President Suzette Martinez Standring today called an April 3 column by Mitch Albom "bogus" and an "egregious ethical lapse." Columnists, she added, "do not fabricate events or characters and pawn them off as truth." In an e-mail to E&P, she also quoted NSNC past president Pete Rowe of The San Diego Union-Tribune as speculating that Albom, "despite the take-time-to-smell-the-roses message of [his best-selling book] 'Tuesdays with Morrie,' is over-committed. He writes columns and books. Last I heard, he was still hosting radio shows and showing up regularly on ESPN. Maybe he's pressed for time and...

c By Dave Astor Published: April 08, 2005 2:10 PM ET NEW YORK National Society of Newspaper Columnists President Suzette Martinez Standring today called an April 3 column by Mitch Albom "bogus" and an "egregious ethical lapse." Columnists, she added, "do not fabricate events or characters and pawn them off as truth." In an e-mail to E&P, she also quoted NSNC past president Pete Rowe of The San Diego Union-Tribune as speculating that Albom, "despite the take-time-to-smell-the-roses message of [his best-selling book] 'Tuesdays with Morrie,' is over-committed. He writes columns and books. Last I heard, he was still hosting radio...

Mitch Albom apologizes to readers for error in column 4/7/2005, 11:55 p.m. ET The Associated Press DETROIT (AP) — Best-selling author Mitch Albom apologized Thursday to readers of the Detroit Free Press for incorrectly reporting that two former Michigan State players attended Saturday's Michigan State-North Carolina NCAA basketball game. He said he wrote the column before the game took place. Albom said he based the column on what former Michigan State players Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson told him they planned to do. He said he wrote the column in the past tense, as if the events already had happened,...

Some things in life are not meant to be shared by men and women. Hair curlers. The Three Stooges. Picking a prom dress. The Super Bowl. Oh, I know it's fashionable to make the Super Bowl a coed experience. It is also wrong. The annual overhyped NFL championship game, which is played tonight, should be one of those times when a woman looks lovingly into her man's eyes, lets her voice drop to a sexy whisper, and says, "Go downstairs." Now, don't misunderstand. I am not saying women can't appreciate football. Women can appreciate football fine. Women can appreciate it,...

It has literally been nearly twenty years since last I sat down to intentionally watch a broadcast television event. The occasion? Mitch Albom’s book-turned-movie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. It may become for the pagans what It’s a Wonderful Life has been for Christians – a ritual holiday event. Christians in general, and Catholics in particular, have been raging for years about the Hollywood elite and their stranglehold on the culture. Nearly 20 books have been written on the slanders propagated by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code alone (and I must say, I contributed to that particular...

And I am now a geek. So this is what it feels like. I never thought as a geek before. I never embraced geekdom. But I cannot deny it. During the Academy Awards, while others rooted for serious dramatic fare - serial killers, abuse victims, lonely salesmen - I was rooting for orcs, elves and dwarfs. I will be wishing for wizards. Hoping for hobbits. "Lord of The Rings" geek? Guilty. Let me purge right here and right now: I have seen them all. I have seen them many times. I have actually purchased the short DVD versions and then...

There aren't many great movies about sports but there is one about baseball and it's called "Bull Durham." It was made in 1988 and people today still swear by it. It was funny and warm and acerbic and crazy, much like the game itself. So beloved is this film, that the Baseball Hall of Fame had a 15th anniversary celebration scheduled for it later this month at Cooperstown, N.Y. I say "had" because the event was just canceled. The reason it was canceled was because the president of the Hall of Fame, a Michigan native named Dale Petroskey, didn't like...

<p>When suicide bombers attacked America last September, nothing could stop our retaliation.</p> <p>Yet when suicide bombers attack Israel, week after week, Israel is told -- even by Americans -- to back off.</p> <p>When we bombed Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda was organized, it was a mission to "smoke them out."</p>