A Mucker and a Grinder

Spencer for Pyre

Or
The John Spencer Blues Expiration
(Props to Craig)
After a live episode and a White House wedding failed to pump up flagging ratings on The West Wing this year, NBC hypemeister John Wells, who had previously converted ER from a thoughtful drama to a disaster-a-week thrill ride including a tank and not one, but two helicopter accidents, may have gone too far. John Spencer, an original and still prominent star of The West Wing, died of a heart attack Friday at the age of 58. “John was the consummate professional,” Wells said. “He made sure we had enough tape in the can to get us through January, and enough time to write a kick-ass, but moving, tribute episode for February sweeps.” Spencer’s character Leo McGarry ironically survived a heart attack last season as White House chief of staff, and as a vice presidential candidate, had jokingly asked if Democrat colleagues trying to get him to take over as campaign manager were trying to kill him in the last episode to air before his death. McGarry brought a wise, steady hand, gruff demeanor and wry sense of humor to the White House as one of the most popular characters on the show. Like his character, Spencer was a driven recovering alcoholic, and he was nominated for an Emmy in each of the show’s first five seasons, winning once. Spencer had previously appeared as Tommy Mullaney in the post-shark jump L.A. Law years, as a vindictive federal agent in The Rock, as arrogant NBA ref Jack in Forget Paris, the skittish airman in the missile silo in the opening scene of WarGames and in his first acting role, Henry Anderson, boyfriend to British cousin Cathy Lane on The Patty Duke Show.

NBC has not discussed how the death of the vice presidential candidate will affect the storyline for the rest of the season, and there isn’t much in terms of historical precedent. In 1912, James S. Sherman, sitting vice president to William Howard Taft, died 6 days before the election, but still received 4 million votes in the election. In 1972, Thomas Eagleton was the original vice presidential candidate, but was forced to withdraw his nomination after it was revealed he had undergone electroshock treatments for depression.

And They Couldn't Stop Jack From Being Wormy
(Joe Wright)
Jack Anderson, the last of the muckrakers who spent a lifetime afflicting the comfortable, has died at the age of 83. Hired to work for legendary newspaperman Drew Pearson in 1947, Anderson took over the column after Pearson’s death in 1969. Two years later, he won a Pulitzer for his investigative reporting on secret American foreign policy-making that suggested the U.S. favored Pakistan in its war with India. Other highlights included breaking open the Reagan Administration plan to sell arms to Iran as a means to fund the Contras in Central America and the Justice Department’s decision to settle an antitrust suit with ITT in exchange for a pledge to spend $400,000 to underwrite the 1972 Republican convention. Along the way, Anderson didn’t make a lot of friends, and ended up on the official Nixon enemies list, prompting G. Gordon Liddy and others to contemplate poisoning his medicine as a means to silence him. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover also didn’t appreciate the fact that Anderson was more aware of the threat of organized crime than he and his G-Men, and called him "lower than the regurgitated filth of vultures." The powerful Hoover kept Anderson’s home under surveillance, leading Anderson to send his 9 children out to take pictures of them in their “undercover” car, and, for good measure, let the air out of their tires.