Tag Archives: obit

Reverend Billy Graham Dead at 99. What The Mainstream News Is Not Saying

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Evangelist Billy Graham, deemed “America’s Pastor,” has died at the age of 99 reports the Associated Press.

Graham’s giant Southern California tent revivals in 1949 would become widely recognized as the beginning of the modern Evangelical movement. 

Since his ministry began in 1947, Graham conducted more than 400 crusades in 185 countries and territories on six continents. The first Billy Graham Crusade, held September 13–21, 1947, in the Civic Auditorium in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was attended by 6,000 people. Graham was 28 years old. He called them crusades, after the medieval Christian forces who conquered Jerusalem. He would rent a large venue, such as a stadium, park, or street. As the sessions became larger, he arranged a group of up to 5,000 people to sing in a choir. He would preach the gospel and invite people to come forward (a practice begun by Dwight L. Moody). Such people were called inquirers and were given the chance to speak one-on-one with a counselor, to clarify questions and pray together. The inquirers were often given a copy of the Gospel of John or a Bible study booklet. In Moscow, in 1992, one-quarter of the 155,000 people in Graham’s audience went forward at his call. During his crusades, he has frequently used the altar call song, “Just As I Am”.[

Billy Graham while not as rabidly homophobic as others evangelicals of his time like Jerry Falwell, (Graham refused to join Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority in 1979, saying: “I’m for morality, but morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice.”) Graham was nonetheless deeply opposed to homosexuality.

In 1974, a young woman wrote Graham saying that she was attracted to another woman. He wrote back, “Your affection for another of your own sex is misdirected and will be judged by God’s holy standards,” and also told the woman she could be “healed” of her same-sex attraction through belief in Christ.

In 1993, Graham also callously said  that AIDS was punishment from God. “’ls AIDS a judgment of God” he said while preaching in Columbus, Ohio. “l could not be sure, but I think so.” He quickly backtracked, telling Cleveland’s Plain Dealer newspaper two weeks later, ”l don’t believe that and I don’t know why I said it. I remember saying it, and I immediately regretted it and almost went back and clarified the statement. …  God stands in judgment of all sins, but AIDS is a disease that affects people and is not part of that judgment. To say that God has judged people with AIDS would be very wrong and cruel. I would like to say that I am very sorry for what I said.”

In 2012, he endorsed an anti-marriage equality constitutional amendment in his home state of North Carolina. “At 93, I never thought we would have to debate the definition of marriage,” Graham wrote in a full-page advertisement. “The Bible is clear — God’s definition of marriage is between a man and a woman. I want to urge my fellow North Carolinians to vote FOR the marriage amendment on Tuesday, May 8.” Voters approved the amendment, which was nullified by a federal court ruling in 2014 but remains part of the North Carolina constitution.

He also once said, “Let me say this loud and clear, we traffic in homosexuality at the peril of our spiritual welfare,” as quoted by the U.K.’s Pink News.

Graham died at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, a spokesman for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

Legendary Female Celebrity Impersonator Jim Bailey, Dies at 77 – Video

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Jim Bailey

 

Legendary female impersonator  illusionist Jim Bailey who did spot-on re-creations of such iconic female entertainers as Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand and Peggy Lee, has died. He was 77.

Bailey performed in nightclubs around the world and in such celebrated venues as the Palladium in London, Carnegie Hall in New York and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.

His first impression was of comedienne Phyllis Diller, whom he was introduced to in the late 1960s, and he hit pay dirt after he heard Garland on the radio and decided to impersonate her. When Garland came to see Bailey’s show, she jumped on the stage and asked him to sing a song with her: “Bye, Bye Blackbird.”

She became his mentor, and Bailey landed a gig on CBS’ The Ed Sullivan Show, dressed and made up as Garland and singing like her. After that performance, the Las Vegas hotels came calling.

The showman also guest starred on The Carol Burnett Show, where he and Burnett sang “Happy Days Are Here Again” with Bailey appearing as Streisand.

Bailey was approached by Lucille Ball in 1973 after she saw him at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and asked him to guest star on her popular television show, Here’s Lucy. Ball was so impressed by Bailey and his performance, she titled the show Lucy and Jim Bailey, and she also threw a party for him after the show’s taping. The two remained close friends until Ball’s death in 1989. Bailey also became very close friends with Ball’s daughter Lucie Arnaz. The two remained close friends doing benefit performances in honor of her late mother and father at the Lucy Desi festival in Jamestown, New York.

Also in 1973, Bailey teamed with Liza Minnelli, daughter of his mentor Judy Garland, in Las Vegas at The Flamingo. The two put together a concert recreating the performances by Minnelli and her late mother in London, with Bailey standing in as Garland. The “Judy and Liza Concert” met with great success, they opened the show with Jim as Judy singing “Well, Hello Liza” just as they had done at the Palladium years earlier. Later, Minnelli made a gift to Bailey of one of her late mother’s treasured pearl rings.

>Bailey continued performing his characterizations, including benefits for AIDS research charities around the world. In July 2008, Bailey was slated to appear in Hollywood, London, New York and San Francisco, marking 40 years since he first performed as Garland in 1968.

Bailey died Saturday of cardiac arrest from pneumonia complications at Pacifica Hospital of the Valley in Sun Valley, Calif., his manager of 27 years, Stephen Campbell, told The Hollywood Reporter.

“Heaven is getting a fabulous show tonight with standing room only! Rest in Peace Our Sweet Prince,” reads a statement on Bailey’s website.

 

New York Times Updates Ed Koch’s Obit To Include AIDS Criticism And Rightfully So

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The New York Times revised its obituary of former NYC mayor Ed Koch after receiving many complaints of Koch’s handling of the AIDs crisis in New York City in the 1980s.

Koch died of congestive heart failure yesterday at the age of 88.

The new additions are here:

Mr. Koch was also harshly criticized for what was called his slow, inadequate response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Hundreds of New Yorkers were desperately ill and dying in a baffling public health emergency. Critics, especially in the gay community, accused him of being a closeted gay man reluctant to confront the crisis for fear of being exposed.

For years, Mr. Koch was upset and defensive about the criticism. In a 1994 interview with Adam Nagourney, a New York Times correspondent and co-author, with Dudley Clendinen, of “Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America,” Mr. Koch said that New York had done more than San Francisco for people with AIDS. “But that never got through to the gay community,” Mr. Koch said. “They were brainwashed that they were getting shortchanged in New York City and in San Francisco they were getting everything. And it wasn’t true, but you could never convince them.”

Last fall, Koch reviewed David France’s AIDS documentary “How to Survive a Plague,” calling it “superb” and saying, “I urge President Obama to do so by presenting them and other leaders recognized by Act Up [sic] with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.” He never mentioned that ACT UP was founded in New York City during his own tenure, or that it came about because of “outrage” at “the government’s mismanagement of the AIDS crisis.”

Larry Kramer has said, “I had to try to get Ed Koch on the telephone to get an office for Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City, and I was made to feel like, just who the hell are you? It made me very angry, and it was actually that anger that propelled me more than anything.”

Four years after the AIDS epidemic began  in January 1984, New York City under Koch’s leadership had spent a total of just $24,500 on AIDS.  San Francisco, a city one tenth the size of New York, spent $4.3 million, a figure that grew to over $10 million annually by 1987

By 1989, the year Koch left office, nearly 30,000 New Yorker’s had been diagnosed with AIDS

Ed Koch cared only about  one thing and that was: Ed Koch. The entire gay community in the 1980’s could have DIED of AIDS for all he cared rather than tarnish his political reputation and lose support with the Catholic Church.  Koch’s strategy to stop AIDS was persecution.  He stepped up plainclothes entrapment of gay men, close down bars, nightclubs and bath houses rather than do something substantial that could actually help.   Koch didn’t care one bit — as the death of Richard Nathan the lover Ed Koch tossed out to climb to the top who later died of AIDS and alone proves.

Meanwhile, THE HUFFINGTON POST has published several columns giving Koch the hero-worship treatment, and its moderators are blocking every post that doesn’t agree. But you know what?  THIS AIN’T THE HUFFINGTON POST.  And the TRUTH shall be written and recorded for history.

Ed Koch was a selfish, politically motivated closet-case, who went to his grave with the blood of thousands of young gay men on his hands and he should always be remembered that way.

THAT is his TRUE legacy.

‘Thunderbirds’ Creator Gerry Anderson Dies At 83

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Gerry Anderson Lady Penelope

“Thunderbirds are go!” became a catchphrase to generations thanks to Gerry Anderson, puppetry pioneer and British creator of the UK sci-fi hit “Thunderbirds” tleevision show.

Anderson passed away peacefully in his sleep on Wednesday at a nursing home near Oxfordshire, England, after being diagnosed with mixed dementia two years ago.

Anderson introduced the use of “supermarionation” _ a puppetry technique using thin wires to control marionettes.

He forever changed the direction of sci-fi entertainment,”son  Jamie Anderson told the Associated Press. “Lots of animation and films that have been made in the past 20 or 30 years have been inspired by the work that he did.”

He said the TV show was perhaps his father’s proudest achievement _ along with the cross-generational appeal of his body of work, which also included TV shows “Stingray” and “Space: 1999,” among others.

“He was very much a perfectionist and was never happy with any of the end products although he may have been happy with the responses,” Jamie said, describing how his father would involve himself in every aspect of production. “He wasn’t just someone who sat in a chair barking orders, he managed to bring together great teams of great people and between them with a like mindset produced some real gems.”

In recent years, Anderson and his son had become active supporters of Britain’s Alzheimer’s Society.  He was determined, despite his own recent diagnosis, to spend the last year of his life speaking out for others living with dementia to ensure their voices were heard and their lives improved

Rest in Peace Gerry Anderson

“Thunderbirds are go!” FOREVER!