Mary Tyler Moore, WJM, and the NFL

Her smile turned the world on, her accessibility proved that love is all around, and her personality made nothing days worthwhile more suddenly than Marcia Brady saying something came up in order to break a date with nice guy Charlie for Doug Simpson, the big man on...

A New Era in Chavez Ravine

Los Angeles suffered a divorce worthy of soap opera status when the controversy of Dodgers ownership became public—Frank and Jamie McCourt engaged in a matrimonial battle that brought disgrace upon the vaunted Dodgers brand and disgust among the team’s loyal fan...

Rob Reiner and Baseball

Baseball is a never-ending source for popular culture storytellers whose tales tap a range of emotional veins in fans of the National Pastime. We cry when Gary Cooper reenacts Lou Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man” speech in The Pride of the Yankees. We cheer...

Doctors in the Windy City

Chicago has been the setting for two television shows set in emergency rooms.  ER and E/R. Both had multi-racial casts, unique characters arriving for medical attention, and humor as a defense mechanism to guard against emotional pain of working in a trauma situation....

My Favorite Hero

Everybody has a favorite movie star.  For some of us, it’s an everyman, like Tom Hanks or Jimmy Stewart.  For some of us, it’s a sex symbol, like Marilyn Monroe or Jennifer Lopez.  For some of us, it’s an action hero.  The 1982 movie My Favorite...