James Hirsen
Tuesday, March 30, 2004

We might soon get to see how well Al Franken fares against Tucker Carlson and Peggy Noonan in a battle of wits. The venerable quiz show “Jeopardy” is set to host the three familiar faces in May.

Tim Russert, Tavis Smiley, Anderson Cooper, Ari Fleischer, Bob Woodward, Maria Bartiromo, Aaron Brown, Kweisi Mfume, Keith Olbermann, Christine Todd Whitman and the recently Donalded Ashleigh Banfield are some of the other “power players” scheduled to participate.

Taping will occur in April at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington. The daily winner will acquire $50,000 for the charity of his choice.

The Left Coast Report wonders if the game board will have special categories for the liberal power players, such as “Faces of John Kerry,” “Ways to Rig Elections” or “Lying RINO Authors.”

‘Champagne Socialist’ Chris Martin’s Capitalist Father

In addition to touring with Coldplay and tending to wife Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Martin is making a name for himself on the celebrity green scene.

He indicated in the past that he wanted to use Coldplay’s fame for political causes. He referred to himself and his band mates as “champagne socialists.”

Last year, along with Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters and 3-D of Massive Attack, Martin assisted in saving the world from global warming and the like by planting trees in Bangalore, India.

On another part of the globe, Chris’s father, Anthony, applied to build 160 houses on a protected environmental site in Exeter, England.

Exeter locals temporarily stopped the development using legal maneuvers, but to keep his construction on track, Anthony Martin is going to the British High Court.

The Left Coast Report is curious as to how a champagne socialist could spring from a caviar capitalist.

Booting Ashleigh Banfield

She was once a rock singer.

She underwent an extreme makeover of the hair and glasses kind, dyeing her blond tresses brown and putting on librarian spectacles.

As the point person for the war on terror, she was emblematic of MSNBC’s effort to lure Gen-X viewers.

She’s Ashleigh Banfield, and she’s been working without a contract since late January.

Banfield courted controversy when she criticized news departments, including her own at NBC, for TV’s coverage of the Iraqi war. Rumors run rampant of the reporter’s diva-like demands. Now NBC has formally given her the Trump treatment, and she’s purportedly looking at syndication and other possibilities on network and cable television.

The Left Coast Report thinks Banfield might make a good addition to “Life With Bonnie.”

Willie Nelson’s Words for the Birds

Willie Nelson, a guy who’s well known for his songwriting skills, has gotten into the letter-writing biz. The country music legend recently penned a note to the president.

No, he wasn’t looking for a gig at the IRS. And he wasn’t offering an apology for his endorsement of Dennis Kucinich, either.

In his letter, Willie asked Bush to weigh in on whether a piece of rural land should become a Navy landing field. To date, two lawsuits have been filed against the Navy to stop the field.

The 33,000 acres in question are in eastern North Carolina. Because the property is mostly farmland, one might expect that the twanging president of Farm Aid was expressing concerns on behalf of the agricultural community. But in this effort, Willie donned an environmentalist hat and went to bat for the birds.

A group of them fly around nearby Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, a winter getaway for thousands of tundra swans and snow geese.

Nelson fears that Navy pilots might buzz some of the birds and maybe even bump into them. So he’s urging the president to tell the Navy to go elsewhere.

The Left Coast Report expected that with all that acreage Willie would have gone to bat for his favorite weed.

Frankie Valli’s Hits Keep on Coming

Frankie Valli is best known as the high voice of a 1960s boy band, which had success with tunes such as “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” “Sherry” and others.

Now he is going to move from doing Four Seasons hits to carrying out HBO “Soprano” hits.

Valli first auditioned for “The Sopranos” creator David Chase a few years ago. At the time, Chase didn’t feel as though the part in question was right but indicated that he’d call when the appropriate role came up.

In atypical Hollywood fashion, Chase actually called Valli four years later. Now the famous falsetto is set to appear in four episodes.

Valli hails from Newark, and while pursuing a singing career in Jersey bars and nightclubs, he had contact with real-life “Soprano”-like characters.

He told the Associated Press, “There’s a lot of familiar-looking people in ‘The Sopranos.’”

Before taking this latest role, he dabbled in acting, including an appearance in the 1998 feature film “Witness to the Mob.”

The Left Coast Report has a hunch that a Mafia musical might be in the works. Can you just smell it – “Walk Like a Hit Man,” “Silencer is Golden,” “Let’s Bang On,” “Big Goons Don’t Cry,” “Can’t Take My Glock off You” …

Paging Dr. Brian Williams

“NBC Nightly News” anchorman-in-waiting Brian Williams surprised the flight attendant and passengers of a Delta shuttle flight from New York to Washington.

The flight attendant’s voice had just gone out over the P.A. system asking if there were “a doctor on board” when Williams responded.

Although he has two honorary doctorates from Elmira College and Providence College, he’s not a medical doctor. In fact, he hasn’t even played one on TV. Luckily, though, he is a former emergency medical technician and volunteer firefighter.

Williams ended up using his paramedical expertise to help a 64-year-old passenger who was having difficulty breathing. The newsman checked the man’s blood pressure, gave him aspirin and water, and remained with him until the plane could return to La Guardia, where a crew of paramedics was waiting.

When the ailing passenger recognized Williams, he had a few choice words about the assistance he was given, according to TV Guide.

“This is a hell of a way to get viewers,” the passenger quipped.

The Left Coast Report believes, if it will help get viewers, NBC execs will dress Williams in scrubs and stick him on “E.R.”

Richard Simmons Slappin’ to the Oldies

Why would 55-year-old, 155-pound, 5’7” exercise guru Richard Simmons pick a fight with a 23-year-old, 255-pound, 6’1” cage-wrestling Harley salesman?

It all started when Richard, whose real first name is Milton, was signing autographs at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. That’s when Chris Farney, a hog seller from Mesa, Ariz., yelled: “Look. Richard Simmons. Drop your bags, let’s rock to the 50s!”

Simmons allegedly sauntered over to Farney and said, “It’s not nice to make fun of people with issues.” Then he allegedly slapped him.

Farney decided not to strike back and called the police instead. The police came and wrote a report, which stated that “Simmons became very emotional and started getting very excited about being placed under arrest.”

Simmons told the police that he hit Farney, but he indicated that it was “more of a playful kind of slap.”

Jed Riding, a Phoenix resident, described it for KTAR Radio as “almost a playful, feminine slap.”

Now Farney is signaling that he intends to sue.

The Left Coast Report is pretty sure that the Simmons slap is not going to do much for Farney’s cage-fighting career.

The Left Coast Report is put together by James L. Hirsen and the staff of NewsMax.

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