Patt Morrison

Every day, Patt posts her thoughts on day's broadcast of Patt Morrison. You can post questions or comments about any of the day's topics. We may quote selected comments on the air.

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Latest Entries
The New LAPD Chief, and Finding Love at the Animal Shelter

Nov. 5, 2009|Patt Morrison|1 comment

Police chief-designate Charlie Beck won't officially become the next chief of the LAPD until the City Council votes on November 19, but as council president Eric Garcetti told me earlier this week, he wouldn't be surprised if the vote is unanimous.

Chief Beck joined me in what I hope will continue the tradition of ''Ask the Chief'' segments we began with Chief Bill Bratton. Chief Beck is an LAPD ''lifer,'' and his family has three generations in the department. He talked about being a bottom-up kind of chief, and certainly he's worked his way up through the ranks, in the busy South Bureau, among other assignments, and undertaking a cleanup of the Rampart Division after that scandal.

He talked about the value of transparency, about the changes wrought by the federal consent decrees the department had operated under, about his love of his championship Motocross pursuits, and his wife's love of horses, in which his role mostly involves a ''one-wheeled'' implement -- a wheelbarrow -- and mucking out the stalls. Good preparation, he joked, for his job.

The Nobel laureate novelist Orhan Pamuk waxed lyrical -- of course! -- about his love for storytelling, both when he heard them recounted by his grandmother as he was growing up in Istanbul, and the stories he now writes. He also had thoughtful things to say about how even writers of literary fiction find themselves expected to address political issues -- something he's done, even in the face of criticism, in his native Turkey, when it comes to sensitive topics like the treatment of Kurds and the Armenian genocide.

For National Animal Shelter Appreciation week, I asked you for your stories about creatures you've rescued from shelters -- and who have turned out to be wonderfully enriching in your lives. Our engineer and I couldn't meet each other's eyes when we heard from Lorena in Burbank, who started talking about her own beloved rescue dog and was so moved she began crying. We were afraid we would, too!

Loads of you called with other pet-testimonials, and as a dog rescuer, I still want to hear them all -- cats, dogs, birds, horses, snakes, pigs. Please blog your November valentine to your little loved one on the Patt Morrison page.

Next time: maybe you were in Berlin in 1989 for the fall of the Wall. I was. Let's share some stories, shall we? My photos from that world-changing event will be on our website on Friday. [Yes, I know, you can see my shadow in my pictures; what can I say? I'm no Ansel Adams. I'm not even Weegee.]

''Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me'' is pitching its tent here in Los Angeles, and Peter Sagal and Carl Kasell will be here with me at KPCC. Got limericks?

-- Patt Morrison

Sheriff Joe and Senator Max -- hot stuff

Nov. 2, 2009|Patt Morrison|3 comments


Max Cleland is the former U.S. senator from Georgia, a Vietnam vet who lost three of his four limbs at Khe Sahn when a green private didn't secure the pins on his grenades. And he's the politician whose supporters say he got swiftboated two years before John Kerry, when Republicans ran an ad with his picture alongside Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's, implicitly impugning his patriotism; an enraged John McCain called the ad ''reprehensible.''

As Cleland himself explained the election to me, ''Georgia had a senior moment.'' His book, ''Heart of a Patriot,'' isn't just about the 2002 election, but about his early commitment to politics -- lettering Stevenson-for-president signs with his mother's lipstick -- and to military service.

The youngest-ever head of the VA is still working on behalf of better treatment for his fellow veterans, and isn't hesitant about sizing up U.S. interests at home and abroad, like the Afghanistan war, in which, he says, we shouldn't be trying to turn Afghanistan into the 51st state.

Just as lively was Joe Arpaio, the elected sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, since 1993. He's the man who put jail inmates in pink underwear, cut them back to two meals a day, put them on chain gangs and has ardently gone after finding illegal immigrants. A new Justice Department rule would, by most interpretations, confine the sheriff's hunt for illegal immigrants to those who come through his jail system -- but he says other laws are on his side.

Arpaio, who revels in the description someone gave him as ''America's toughest sheriff,'' disputes an Arizona newspaper's Pulitzer Prize-winning findings that the illegal immigrant effort has lengthened lawmen's response times and left some violent crimes unsolved -- his language on this is a lot saltier than mine. And he will indeed be running for reelection in 2012, he assured me -- he'll be 80 years old.

Next time, the governor of Maine is with me, on the day that state votes on whether to repeal a same-sex marriage law he signed, and the author of a new book about the operations of the Secret Service shares some secrets and assesses how the forces is coping with a 400% increase in threats, now that Barack Obama is president.

I have to share one of many dear and funny moments from the memorial service at the Wilshire Ebell on Sunday for my friend, the actor and poet Henry Gibson. ''Laugh-In'' stalwarts like Gary Owens and Jo Anne Worley were there, along with friends from virtually every part of his life, including the vet who looked after his and his wife Lois' beloved dogs.

Henry, who died in September, let on to very few people how sick he was. One of them was his friend Charlie Adler, who recounted how he and Henry were driving down Wilshire Boulevard right after Michael Jackson had died, and the mourning was still at its height.

''I want my memorial to be at Staples,'' Henry said. ''Really?'' Adler asked. ''At Staples?'' Henry, deadpan, repeated, ''I want my memorial to be at Staples,'' and then he made some kind of gesture out the car window, to the edifice they were just passing: a Staples office supply store.

He was as sweet as he was funny; they don't make many like that.

-- Patt Morrison

Meg Whitman In, Gavin Newsom Out -- and Our Halloween Monster Mash-Up

Oct. 30, 2009|Patt Morrison|0 comments

About two hours after you heard Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman talking with me [in what I gather is a rare radio interview for her], there came the news that Democratic gov candidate Gavin Newsom is dropping out of the race, pretty much leaving that side of the field to former governor and current attorney general Jerry Brown.

I'm trying to imagine what Antonio Villaraigosa is thinking right now -- he decided not to run for gov in part because of the Newsom challenge, which is now ... pffft.

Anyway, Meg Whitman talked a great deal about applying her CEO skills to the governor's job, much as Arnold Schwarzenegger touted his own approach to the position. She talked about cutting another 20% of state jobs, and about her very spotty voting record, as well as positions like pro-abortion rights that run in line with general election voters but are not likely to endear her to hard-core Republican primary voters.

Carla Marinucci, the swell San Francisco Chronicle writer, pointed out that the Republicans haven't yet nominated a woman for governor or Senate. the one GOP woman's name who came to Carla's mind is Ivy Baker Priest, who was state treasurer in the 1960s and '70s, after she served as U.S. treasurer under Eisenhower [the U.S. treasurer signs the paper money, although I expect those with her signature have pretty much worn out or been taken out of circulation by now.]

She was also the mother of Pat Priest, who played Marilyn Munster on ''The Munsters,'' which is a perfect transition to tell you about the ''monster hour.'' In the second hour of the program we heard from the woman at the National Academy of Sciences whose job is to help TV and film creators get it right when Hollywood puts science on screen, from robots to DNA.

Dr. Robert Smith? [his name is indeed spelled with a question mark] gave us the skinny on zombies and epidemiology. Instead of tracking how disease spreads by using a real disorder, like the H1N1 virus, he and his co-author jazzed it up a bit by using zombies -- how they spread zombieism [and it ain't by sneezing] and how that model is useful to those studying how actual diseases behave. B-R-A-A-A-I-N-S!

And just for the heck of it, we invited in three investigators of the paranormal; one was inspired to this pursuit after he was working at an amusement park and said he saw an apparition, a little girl who had died because of one of the park rides. Another paranormalist detailed her work at Alcatraz, and at an empty house in Nevada, where pebbles dropped out of nowhere as she asked questions of whatever might have been there.

Pasadena Paranormal's therapist and case manager, Jason Carrasco, says he is careful to sort out people who may have some mental disorder or psychiatric problem from among those who report paranormal phenomena, the better to discern what may be happening. James Underdown of the Center for Inquiry-West and the Independent Investigators Group brought his scientific take to bear -- and had never turned up anything to substantiate paranormal activity. Still, 68% of Americans told Pew pollsters they believe in angels and demons, and perhaps other things that go bump in the night.

Next time, Vietnam veteran and former senator Max Cleland, who lost his reelection after opponents characterized the triple amputee as unpatriotic, and Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio, who makes inmates wear pink and charges women prisoners as much as $600 for transportation to get abortions; he's not running, as he has said, a taxicab service.

-- Patt Morrison

Matthew Shepard's Mother, and Enviro-Futurist Stewart Brand

Oct. 26, 2009|Patt Morrison|0 comments

With President Obama set to sign a hate crimes law on Wednesday, the mother of one of the two men whose names are on that legislation came in to talk about the law, and her son's life and death.

The bill bears two names: one is James Byrd, the black man who, in 1998, was chained to the back of a pickup truck in Texas and dragged to his death by being driven for three miles. The other is Matthew Shepard, the gay Wyoming college student who was beaten and left to die three months after James Byrd was murdered. He was found near death, his hands lashed to a fencepost, outside of Laramie. His mother's book puts real life to her son's name -- not an easy life, but one that's always been important to his family long before it became a watchword for the toll of homophobia. If you missed the interview with his mother, Judy, I would really suggest that you take a chance to listen to it here on the website.

Stewart Brand, is a ''founding green,'' and one of the minds behind the seminal Whole Earth Catalog. His new support for nuclear energy as a cleaner alternative to coal, and his endorsement of genetically modified foods, has put him at odds with some environmentalists, but he's okay with that. At 70, he's trying to think in terms of centuries, not decades.

My interview with him followed a slightly puzzling segment about how Americans' belief in global warming has slipped dramatically even in the course of 18 months. The Pew Center pollster made the point that people's political priorities often shift -- the economy versus the war in Iraq or Afghanistan versus the environment -- but what that doesn't explain in why fewer people should put credence in global warming, period. There's been a lot of playing around with numbers and dates by those wanting to undercut the campaign to slow global warming, and maybe that's having an impact. And if people are merely judging by the weather outside their front doors, they may dispute the findings of scientists whose business it is to track the temperature of the entire planet.

Hot enough for you?

Next time, President Obama's senior adviser and longtime friend Valerie Jarrett, and the decline of the deli.

-- Patt Morrison

A Historian Puts His Money Where His Mouth Is, and the Dog Whisperer Speaks Up

Oct. 22, 2009|Patt Morrison|1 comment

Can you beat that moment? A few moments after I wrapped up my interview with historian Taylor Branch about his book ''The Clinton Tapes,'' Molly Peterson and David Lazarus were making their pitch to listeners to pitch in to contribute to KPCC, and the award-winning writer opened his wallet right there in the studio and slapped down a double sawbuck -- twenty bucks, and the newest KPCC member!

On top of that, he was one terrific interview, so I can imagine what kind of interviewer he must have been, in those 79 sessions with Bill Clinton throughout the Clinton presidency. The switcheroo is that Clinton kept those tapes -- in his sock drawer, as it turned out -- and Branch, who had first met Clinton during the 1972 McGovern presidential campaign, recorded his own impressions on his way home from the interviews. I thought Branch's storytelling about those sessions made for a more engaging book than just reprinting big hunks of Clintonian transcript would have been.

The first hour was the province of that top dog, Cesar Millan, the ''dog whisperer,'' answering your calls about dog misbehavior, most of which he traces to people giving dogs all the wrong cues and letting the dogs become the leaders of the family pack. We could have spent the rest of the day taking your calls and concerns and hearing his answers about your nervous Jack Russells, too-submissive border collies and leaping German shepherds. Maybe we can persuade him to come back again -- if we behave ourselves.

Next time, health care for illegal immigrants was a matter of controversy long before the latest round of health care reform legislation. Let's hear how both sides can make their cases for and against delivering any health care to anyone in this country illegally.

Know anyone who got the H1N1 flu? Did doctors test for it? Or are they overdiagnosing the H1N1 virus? Not every case of flu gets tested – so are the medical honchos assuming wrongly that most flu is H1N1? We’ll test that premise.

-- Patt Morrison