Free Republic

Ken Shapiro, a former child television actor whose hit 1974 film, “The Groove Tube,” anticipated “Saturday Night Live” by a year with sketches that wickedly satirized TV, died on Nov. 18 at his home in Las Cruces, N.M. He was 75. His daughter, Rosy Rosenkrantz, said the cause was cancer. Mr. Shapiro’s film, with a cast that included Chevy Chase, a future “S.N.L.” star, and the comedian Richard Belzer, was simultaneously inspired by Sid Caesar and Ernie Kovacs’s TV comedy shows of the 1950s and invigorated by the nudity, profanity and raunchiness commonplace in 1970s movies.

I'm Chris Matthews, let's play Hardball. Tonight; startling new allegations that the Bush administration knew well ahead of the attack on Iraq that Saddam Hussein did not possess WMD's.  My first guest tonight is one of the stars of the hit TV drama Law and Order, legendary comic Richard Belzer. Richard, welcome to the show.  Thanks for having me on the show, Chris...

On March 17th's episode of Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, actor and comedian Richard Belzer claimed he is more educated about the war in Iraq than our troops who have been there. And claiming that our troops don't really know anything about the war in Iraq was not the only insult Belzer cast at the troops. (See Newsbusters.org) "You think everyone over there is a college graduate? They're 19 and 20-year-old kids who couldn't get a job", he said disparaging the troops, to Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R Fla) on Maher's show. In a condescending way, Belzer claimed he...