St. Peter’s Cloud has a Silver Lining

Or
Fortune Irrevocably Reversed
(Accolades for Phil)

Or
What's that smell in Veronica's Closet?
(More merit for Phil)
Ron Silver, wannabe politician, has died of cancer at the age of 62. On The West Wing, Silver played Bruno Gianelli, who helped orchestrate Josiah Barlet’s successful re-election campaign over Florida governor Rob Richey, an unengaged politician not too subtly based on George W. Bush. Later, he worked on the unsuccessful campaign of Republican Arnie Vinick to succeed Barlet. This mirrored his real-life switch, from a Dukakis-supporting Democrat to his post-September 11 attack support for Bush and appearance at the 2004 Republican National Convention, a flip-flop that somehow went unnoticed that year. At his day job, he was the senator who headed the Time Enforcement Commission in Timecop, Jean Claude Van Damme’s finest film to date, Det. Mickey McSorely, an incompetent and impotent cop on the trail of a man-eating alien, the director who hires and fires Buddy Young, Jr. on Mr. Saturday Night, Allen Dershowitz in Reversal of Fortune, defending Claus von Bulow in the trial where he was accused of killing his wife Sonny, who died earlier this year, Angelo Dundee in Ali, Veronica’s arch-nemesis on Veronica’s Closet. The West Wing also was a chance for him to reunite with his former co-star on The Stockard Channing Show. He also played the father of the girl who dated the boy whose FATHE R WAS THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY in the porn-ified Romeo and Juliet update Skin.