I was on my way to completing Part 3 of the series on My Family, when I instead thought I would rather today tell the story of Tony Bennett. About that title, he actually passed away in 2023, but if he lived, he would have turned 100 last month. Was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in New York City in 1926. Father ailed, so the family grew up in poverty. Began singing at the age of 10, the year his father passed away. At 13 was a singing waiter in Italian restaurants in New York City. Drafted into the army near end of World War II, and spent some time in the European front line he would later described as a front-row seat in hell. Several times escaped death. Left the military as a Private First Class. Pearl Bailey and Bob Hope helped Tony get started in 1949, with Hope suggesting a shortened name, Tony Bennett. At the age of 24, signed to Columbia Records in 1950, with Mitch Miller producing and Percy Faith providing the orchestral arrangement, released in 1951 was Bec...
The major television networks-- ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC --agreed today to suspend pooled coverage of President Donald Trump after the White House yesterday refused to allow CNN entrance. This is an incredible and extraordinary escalation of the showdown between Trump and the White House press corps. “Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Bryan Boughton, the Washington bureau chief at Fox News, wrote in a note to television pool members today, which was obtained by The New York Times. (Boughton is the acting chair of the television pool consortium; the networks rotate the chairmanship on a quarterly basis.) Here is how pool coverage has previously worked : They share the news, splitting, financial costs and distributing footage among themselves carried by news organizations worldwide. ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX News and NBC rotate covering all White House activitie s. CNN was today supposed to follow Trump to...