Free Republic

BOSTON — Longtime WCVB-TV personality Frank Avruch has died at the age of 89, according to his family. During more than 40 years on the air, Avruch wore many hats including, "Good Day" contributor, host of "The Great Entertainment" and WCVB's "Man About Town." Avruch, a Boston University graduate, started on radio before making the transition to television. Perhaps most famously, Avruch played Bozo the Clown from 1959 until 1970. “A lot of people when they talk to me now, they are sort of hesitant to bring it up. How could this suave, somewhat sophisticated man be this guy with...

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz will be in Phoenix Friday evening for a rally with conservative talk show host Glenn Beck. The rally will be held Friday at Arizona Christian University in north Phoenix.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Alan W. Livingston, the music executive who created Bozo the Clown and signed the Beatles during his tenure as president of Capitol Records, has died. He was 91. Livingston died Friday of age-related causes in his Beverly Hills home, said his stepdaughter, Jennifer Lerner. Livingston began his multifaceted career in show business as a writer and producer of children's read-along record albums for Capitol Records. He came up with the Bozo the Clown character for the 1946 album "Bozo at the Circus," which became a hit and spawned a cottage industry of merchandise and the television...

Larry Harmon, the man credited with making Bozo the Clown the icon he was, died Thursday of congestive heart failure. He was 83. Harmon wasn't the original Bozo, but built up the character and eventually licensed it to television stations across the country. Born in Toledo, Ohio, Harmon became interested in theater while studying at the University of Southern California. "Bozo is a star, an entertainer, bigger than life," Harmon once said. "People see him as Mr. Bozo, somebody you can relate to, touch and laugh with."

<p>JACKSON, Miss. -- During a campaign swing through Mississippi yesterday, Senator John F. Kerry excoriated President Bush from the lectern of a black church, insisted that New England has much in common with the Deep South, and decried the "crucifixion" of the young gay man Matthew Shepard as he compared civil rights for blacks to gay and lesbian rights.</p>