Rest Easy Miss Lucille

Missing B.B. King this day! Also missing Miss Lucille! 

Glenn Peppers

Surviving the Riot of 1967

“After the Riot of 1967”

(Where are all the food stores?)

By Glenn Peppers                                                    April 29, 2015

Having lived through a major riot in Detroit back in 1967, the one thing I remember was that days after the fires died down was this constant smell of smoke, and the quiet! That awfully strange quiet! I was almost 11 years old, and I was old enough at that time to know that things weren’t quite right. Yet too young to put things into full perspective! 

There was another odd thing that I noticed just after the riot stopped in 1967. A great many food stores and corner stores were now closed, and no one seemed to be driving anywhere much, as I saw almost no traffic a lot of the time! Maybe this was because two gas stations nearby were destroyed! The Clark gas station at Mack and Mt. Elliot was blown up completely, and the Standard station was out of order for some reason. 

Some time after the riot, I remember the city of Detroit cutting and trimming down greatly all those beautiful tree branches that once hung over into the middle of the street on both sides of Mt. Elliot where we lived!

I remember that little man who ran a small furrier shop up the street from us, closing it down and packing up his stuff to move away! It became a beauty shop soon afterwards. But the one thing I remember most is there were no food markets open in our area that were open just after the riot, except for maybe Food Fair! The A&P on Gratiot was closed briefly (I don’t know for how long), and it eventually moved further west of Mt. Elliot, yet still on gratiot, near the Faygo Pop and bottling plant! I don't know if the Farmer Jack chain of supermarket stores had come to Michigan as yet. But what I do remember was my dad having to drive up into Hamtramck, a few miles away to a store called Great Scott, and one called BiLo to buy food! 

The National Guard. 101 Airborne 

There were some meat markets about, but some of them wouldn't let certain people (black folks) in for fear that they would be robbed, looted or burned out, again! Our corner store on Forrest and Mt. Elliot had even closed for a bit for repairs! If you had the means to do so, you could go to the Eastern Market on Saturday’s and buy fresh fruit and vegetables! Capitol Market inside the Eastern Market was swamped with folks from all over trying to buy meat, and poultry! But most of all I remember that strange quiet in my once very active neighborhood! Just after the riot, there was this droning sound of sawing and nailing, and the sound of a jack hammer, and then later in the afternoon, the lack of traffic noises on a once busy street like Mt. Elliot! 

Along with these new changes came a new addition to our nighttime state of being! Police Helicopters constantly flying over our houses and neighborhoods with a new item. A super bright spotlight called, "Daylight!" This was the reason they trimmed the trees down so far, so they could re-con inner city areas wherever, and whenever they wanted; 24/7! Gone was my once peaceful racially mixed, working class neighborhood with the friendly cops who walked the beat that said hi to everyone (black or white), three to four times a day!

Stress officer 1967

We still had that 1950's police unit called STRESS in our area. Yet they were an anomaly to me, because I never really saw them, until just after the riot. Combine the old STRESS police unit with a newer version of those older white guys in black suits and ties that we barely ever seen with a new police unit called, The Big Four and STRESS! And man were they mean! Believe me when I tell you, they'd hurt you. and for no reason at all! After the Riot in 1967, in my neighborhood, you had to really be careful where you went if you were alone! If the Big Four caught you by yourself, they just might kill you as opposed to arrest you on bogus charges! There are stories of the BIG FOUR beating black men and boys to death with their black jacks and night sticks! Or they’d just assume blow you away with their riot shotguns! Many a day, we saw young men laying in the back parking lot of the old A&P. Some claimed to have been jumped by the Big Four! I had no clue! I didn’t stick around to find out!

Not long after the riot in 1967, our Jamaican family up the street from us moved away! Those nice elderly spinster sisters who spoiled us kids with chocolates and cool stories as we sat drawing superheroes on our front porch moved away. They lived in an upper flat, three doors down! The grouchy lady near Garfield street with all her dalmatians and other show dogs packed up and left as well before the end of 1968! Even the deaf mute German junkman with his wooden trailer, drawn by an old beat up mule stopped coming around. This man picked up everybody’s junk, and bulk metal and copper, and pop bottles, then all of a sudden, not long after the riot, he stopped coming around to pick up junk!

There were black families in and around the area who were moving away as well. They headed further north and west, toward 7 and 8 mile roads! Little did I know that we'd soon join the ranks of those who would move further away from the lower east side of Detroit as well in 1969. It broke my heart when White Tower Hamburgers closed down on Gratiot. Great burgers! That really cool appliance shop with all the windows on Gratiot and Mt. Elliot closed as well! It was quite a while before some of the food stores opened nearby, and became business as usual! My dad could once buy his sunday paper at the Rexall drug store up the street on saturday evenings. Or he’d buy his sunday newspaper from the paper-man on the corner of Mt. Elliot and Gratiot. As a child, I remember this small man had a prosthetic hand that reminded me of a giant plastic GI Joe doll hand! 

Since the riot had temporally burned out, or shut down the Rexall drug store, and the paper-man was no longer up on the Gratiot corner anymore. My dad had to now drive to downtown Detroit, to Michigan Ave. and Woodward to this rather large Paperstand on the corner and buy his sunday paper on a saturday night! Which was cool with me and my siblings because we kids got us a nice lil’ ride around the city Detroit before bedtime in dad’s big green Impala, and an ice cream cone each from Dan's Dairy Dip ice cream shop. Dan’s Dairy Dip was an Ice cream dairy-mart with some really great soft ice cream. A place that my father’s elderly friend, (Dan Frencher) our next door neighbor owned over on the west side of Detroit! Not far from The 20 Grand night club, where a lot of Motown recording stars supposedly hung out!

Such a shame though, Mr. Dan (as us kids called him) hadn’t been opened for more than 3 or 4 years when some thief killed Dan Frencher in his shop one night. Shot him right there in a back area of his beloved dairy mart, in 1968! Mr. Dan was my father’s mentor, and was true father figure to my dad! It was certain that we were sure to move, and move away quite soon after this incident! That late summer of 1969, my dad moved us away from the Mt. Elliot and Gratiot area! 

Sporting a better job after getting his degree from Wayne State, my father relocated our family north of Hamtramck, near the 7 mile area of Detroit! In this area of the city, there were meat markets (two in fact). And an A&P and even a fruit ranch! There were no burned out buildings, or the smell of smoke! One thing I was glad of, and it was this!... There also was no longer that strange quiet, and folks constantly leaving our once decent little neighborhood in droves just after the riot! 

There were food markets and a bank, just like we had use of down on Mt. Elliot, within walking distance. And there was best of all, new people to meet. It was in the Conant Gardens area where I’d live and make a rich treasure of Lifelong Friends, and develop new interest, and a life away from Mt. Elliot street. Best of all I had time to think, and time to separate bad memories from the good ones about Mt. Elliot, and the Riot of 1967. 

Summing it all up in my head. I had to come to grips with the fact that I’d experienced losing my mother while living in that big old creepy house. They say that if you were alive, you will always remember where you were when Kennedy was assassinated! Well, I was on the front porch, playing with a Tonka Truck on the steps when my father came rushing out of the house to tell me that the President had just been shot! As if me -- a mere 7 year old could comprehend the serious nature of what he had just conveyed to me! 

Yes, Mt. Elliot was where I was when Kennedy was killed! This is also where I was when Martin Luther King was murdered! This was the house in which I lived when I first saw Batman in living color at my friend Michael’s house three doors down, on their floor model Color TV! This was where I ran to the street like a mad man at the sound of the Mister Softee Ice Cream Truck. I belonged to Little league with the Greater St.Peter church two doors down from me. Mt. Elliot is where I flew fresh new kites and bought and worked new yoyo’s every spring. It is where I witnessed most every week, the many funerals for many a fallen Vietnam Vet on any given saturday! Just about every other week or so, I had to relive seeing a flag draped coffin, like Kennedy's be placed into a waiting hearse as a widow or grieving mother cries! In 1967 on, I made it my mission to be up and gone out of the house and to the movies most every saturday so that I would not have to see and hear this awful drama play itself out most every weekend!

Mt. Elliot was Church car washes with the teenagers as “Dancing in the Street” played loudly over the church PA speaker system! This was also the place where I first experienced the smell of fresh peanuts and popcorn at the S.S. Kresge store around the corner from my house, and next to the movie theater that I practically lived at every weekend. Especially if they were showing a new James Bond movie! Living on Mt. Elliot, I became accustom to smelling the aromas of, and tasting the same type of buttered popcorn and fresh candies whenever we’d visit the Sears store, further north on Gratiot and Van Dyke. 

Sure I had fun there at Mt. Elliot as a child. Yet at the same time, Mt. Elliot held some bitter sweet memories for me! But freshest in my mind during the August of 1969 was my summer of 1967 and the riot! The barricades! The 24 hour news reports with ABC channel 7‘s Bill Bonds Anchoring. The hordes of tanks, and the many troops and police all milling about outside our door and in the street; and the sound of sniper fire overhead! The faint sound of police radios, and gun play seemingly everywhere. For 8 days, I remember people screaming, fighting, and bleeding and running. I remember explosions, and the smell of gasoline and looting, cars burning, and our crouching down on the living room floor in the dark as the national guard and the police ran through our yards, and up on our porches with M-16’s and pistols, chasing and shooting at people! 

Some two years after the riot of 1968, we had moved away from Mt. Elliot and left a world of memories good and bad behind. It was and is the memories of my mother that is the salve of my mind and soul! It settles that whole thing, good and bad about Mt. Elliot! It took some getting use to, my not living on a noisy, big busy street. But after about a year or so I got use to it. Heading into the 1970‘s, for me there was peace! Whenever there is new life and hope, there is always peace!

Glenn Peppers

President Obama‘s Speech at Selma’s 50 year Commemoration and Anniversary

President Barack Obama giving a monumental speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama

President Obama‘s Speech at Selma’s 50 year Commemoration and Anniversary

(Reminding us that, as a matter of fact!..... WE Matter)

By Glenn Peppers                                               3-7-2015 9:52pm 

Picture this! It is around 3:15pm Saturday afternoon, March 7th 2015, and normally I would be doing something completely different during this time of the day, but for some strange reason, I was compelled to watch CNN and MSNBC! Well of course it was the 50th year anniversary, and commemoration of Bloody Sunday in Selma Alabama was taking place, Live! 

Well of course, none of the networks carried or showed any segment of the President’s visit there, let alone broadcast his speech, or the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge! Neither did any of the local news outlets (that I notice) mention anything about the President's monumental speech! I sound as if I'm shocked, don't I? I'm really not!

As a child, I remember the quiet and hush in my household, and in my vicinity of Detroit as this event unfolded on that uncomfortable Sunday! On top of all that had happened so far in America at that day and time, no one knew what to expect in Detroit, or in Nashville (my dad's hometown); or anywhere in this country for that matter. 1965 was an odd time in america, for it was snuggly nestled and shrouded in unrest! John Lewis was there! 

Congressman John Lewis' impassioned speech at Selma 2015

As I sat down to watch the President speak, John Lewis spoke first. This battle hardened solider for Civil Rights in america during the civil rights era of america spoke impassionedly about the time he encountered National guardsmen and other officers of the law, while traversing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the name of freedom and justice at age 25, back in 1965. 

John Lewis at age 25 in 1965 crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama

Spry and spirited. Congressman Lewis is still viable agent of change, and a symbol of freedom through his ability to stand up, fearlessly for what he believed, to be the a task done for the betterment of all!

Watching Congressman Lewis calmed me down, as I quickly became settled and fairly at ease as I was only moments ago up and about and restless doing things around the house. Believe me, I was not quite ready to sit down and watch some long drawn out speech. Yet something felt different about the urgency of it all! It was as if I was being held captive! 

This was something I clearly had to hear! Well in fact it was not only something I  had to hear. It was something I needed to hear!

President Obama Hugging John Lewis after Lewis' speech

President Obama's speech was by far the most riveting and most moving speech I've heard since the "I Have a Dream Speech!" His words flowed like explanatory manna from the palate of someone who has settled in his mind, just how he feels about America and all its potential and good done thus far! How 'bout that Giuliani! Here’s your "How President Obama feels about America!" In a nutshell - 101! And all in just about 40 minutes or so. 

The Speech of a Lifetime

Barack Obama's impassioned speech took everyone within earshot of his words on a timeline adventure to excellence, and elegance thru eloquence and articulation! This speech was the thing I needed to hear! 

John Lewis and other marchers in 1965 crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge 

With my ever fading faith in my countries ability to fairly treat all of its citizens fairly and with respect and honor, especially under the guise of what was written and deemed livable for all americans, crafted and enacted hundreds of years ago by men who they themselves didn’t fully understand the veracity of what they had written! It was as if God himself was making me sit through this one, as a matter of urgency! 

Never have I been so moved, and so awestricken by a speech and a mission to consciousness! Remembering Ferguson and in New York, and all the many people growling and howling and clamoring that all those people protesting the murder of an unarmed child, and a man in surrender mode gasping that he cannot breathe were somehow was unjustified, so reminded me of what happened on that Bloody Sunday 50 years ago! 

Back then millions of whites and other people intolerant to change and other cultures thought too that those peace loving ministers and average everyday people and marchers and protesters were hooligans and thugs as well! 

The sentiment then was much like it is today! "How dare they challenge the status quo! All they do is burn down their own neighborhoods!” Well, people burning up things and rioting aren't marching and peacefully protesting!

  

Peaceful march and protest. hand in hand. Arm in arm!

In 1965, these were people who quietly, and non-violently went about speaking against injustice and mistreatment of innocent people and the conditions thereof. And in so doing, they were beaten and battered that awful Sunday, just as they are today! And all anybody wanted (Then and now) is justice and right standing!

I feel that Barack Obama's speech will go down in the annals of history as one of the most engaging and encouraging, and most uplifting and factually sound speeches since King's "I have a Dream" speech! If it doesn't, that would be a shame! (You can read the transcript to the speech by clicking on the Link right here!... http://time.com/3736357/barack-obama-selma-speech-transcript/)

C-Span, American Heroes Channel and CNN and MSNBC carried it. None of the major networks carried it. I didn't bother to check FOX network, as I was too enthralled at the splendor and golden chain of knowledge and historian intelligence being imparted to millions like myself (who needed to hear this speech) by the President to hear anything negative uttered by Fox's divisive and insulting rhetoric! 

Barack Obama's speech reminded me that through all the hardships we've gone through and endured in america, only one thing really matters, and remains top priority in and about this America that we live in, and it is "WE!" We? We who you say? Who, is we?... 

The President at the Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Statue in Washington D.C.

"We the People!" Check it for yourselves and see that on most any document or paper and/or declaration that speaks about the rights and fair conditions of the many peoples of this great nation, and it has always referred to any and all of us as, "We!" Not black, not white, not red, not yellow or brown. Its "We!" 

When the President touched on this! My lightbulb filament reignited! 

Since day one, and after all! Its always been about only one group of people here in America. And that is We!... Or in other words, "Us!" Every living breathing human being that makes up this great nation called America! Yet the nay sayers and the separatist and race-baiters and hate-mongers will always tell you different! Well let me warn you people! Be ye not Fooled! We are the prize! Yes YOU!

It is true! And by far, the work is not finished! Just like maintaining a home!... The work is never done! There is always something left to do! Yet through it all, Hatred, Greed and Intolerance clouds the mission and the mind, and slows the progress! 

Selma March across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, March 7, 2015

Building a better America is something We All have to do. Until everyone understands this. We'll have to reflect of the Selma's and the Marches on Washington, and will forever after always have to remember Birmingham in order to remind us that it is all about Us! “We Matter!”

Glenn Peppers 

George Zimmerman to not face Civil Rights Charges! Will Walk Free!

George Zimmerman

George Zimmerman to not face Civil Rights Charges! Will Walk Free!

(is there Freedom in the Mind of a Killer?)

By Glenn Peppers 2-25-2015 1:34pm

Did anyone reading this really think that that long drawn out waiting process (to let things blow over) would end up equaling out to justice at all? We live in a place where the laws that protect and safeguard whites were not meant (or written) for people of color! The air is such that in recent years we are being shown just that, everyday in stark living color. In full HD on your television set everyday. And when you are being confronted by law enforcement, these days (Be you innocent or not), abuse is likely depending on where you are, and what kind of mode the officers are in. 

This is becoming more and more evident each day, as if time has shifted back before the civil rights movement! George Zimmerman's constant convenient escape from any sort of penalty despite whatever crime he does is no magic trick! The explaination is simple!

Haven't you gotten it that this is meant to rile you! Anger you and set you off! Forget Man's law! Think above that sort of thing! From the outset, George Zimmerman's time was at hand! For day by day his sentence is being meted out to him in small doses! They show themselves as little shards of prickly glass in his fractured mind! His prison is set and sure in that for every waking hour, he is always on guard! Always constantly running! He life is in shambles! No one wants to get or stay close to him for fear that they will be in his midst when and if he does snap again and does something else really stupid to challenge the law and end up in jail again or worse!

As time passes, and George Zimmerman (pushing 40) is getting older and fatter, and grayer. He one day will be less likely to move about. Real soon ole' George will begin to wear down, even more than he has just these past few years! Zimmerman could start to become even more combative, and abusive in times to come! Still he will continue to drive too and fro, and here and there, looking for acceptance and a place to call home. Yet in the back of his mind he knows that this will never happen!.. Not for very long! He cannot stay one place for too long. His hatred and Fear, and the scourge of what he has done guarantees this!

So, as I've said so many times before. Run! Run George Zimmerman! From Place to Place! Town to Town! Hotel to Hotel! Yet all the while constantly watching your back George Zimmerman. Your fears will always make you wonder, "Who is just around the corner?" George Zimmerman! 

Look around you Mr. Zimmerman at the many 18 year old black and hispanic males walking among you each day! As fear grips you, you will drive yourself crazy thinking, "Which one of those kids wearing a hoodie is really carry have a gun?" Which one will one day be your Huckleberry Mr. Zimmerman? 

Your escaping man's law does not exclude you from the laws of the universe! The price of an unrepentant, cold blooded murder of a child is far too great and horrible of a price to pay because of un-repentance. You could Free Yourself George Zimmerman, but you won't! Your pride and your hate is too big for that! Yet the laws set and sure, and they say simply, "Do the Children no harm!" These are words handed down to humanity, and therefore written into life's handbook for governing and helping humankind along while on planet earth! You must pay that price Mr. Zimmerman! But first you shall live! You shall go about living and suffering!

You shall have the curse of being able to walk among those you've judged and hated. But be careful Mr. Zimmerman for as you walk among them and judge them, know that you have now become them! Just like downtrodden black men in america and the world over, you now have to watch everything you do and be mindful of where it is you go! For you are now in a manner of speaking are also a marked and hunted man, just like men of color. Marked in a sense if not only by your own fears alone! 

Run George Zimmerman!... RUN!

Glenn Peppers

“Did Whitney Houston Deserve Better than a Lifetime Biopic”

“Did Whitney Houston Deserve Better than a Lifetime Biopic”

(When will we Cinematically begin to speak for Ourselves?)

By Glenn Peppers                 1-19-2025

We live in such an exploitive and vicious world! For me saturday night was a night of relaxation and healing for me. In my quest for relaxation, I first thought to watch the Whitney Houston Biopic on Lifetime. Then I thought to myself. Why? I'd read all the literature about how Whitney's family did not sign off on this film! It was clear that the producers (including director, Angela Bassett) had no real technical guidance from anyone in the Houston family while making this film. 

No one in Whitney Houston's camp granted or consented to re-create any life situation, or divulge any information played off as real and true, as portrayed in this film about Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown or anyone in their family! Cissy Houston replied to Entertainment Tonight with this reply below!... 

"Lifetime has chosen to go ahead with the movie about Whitney in spite of my family's objections. No one connected with this movie knew Whitney or anything about her relationship with Bobby," she said in a statement to ET. "In the two years since Whitney's death, many people have stepped forward to speak about their close relationship with her. I find it difficult to believe people who knew and supposedly loved her would participate in a movie about her done by folks who didn't know her. We are exhausted by the continuing misinformation and comments offered by people who did not know her. Please please let her rest." 

                      Cissy Houston

For this reason, and because I am just not ready to see any kind of film that shows this woman's downfall and apparent death so soon after her passing. Lifetime parading Whitney's end of life scenarios across my saturday night television screen was not entertainment for me. Aside from being a movie that I suspected would be badly done, as only Lifetime (seemingly here of late) can do them! 

From there I decided to leave this exploitation of an icon (of whom I love) alone and stuck to watching old movies on DVD that I love, and took a well deserved nap in the process! It was when I saw this graphic hours later that I was inspired to write this blog! 

After seeing the photo above, I'm glad I didn't watch another one of Lifetime's hastily and inaccurately pieced-together biopic's! One other biopic that was done some years ago that I saw, which also  had so serious inaccuracies throughout. Some of which were quite embarrassing, was The Temptation Movie! 

All I can tell you is this! Temptation member, Paul Williams did not die the way they depicted his death in the movie! And David Ruffin did "NOT" die in a crack house! Nor was Ruffin thrown from the back seat of a moving car onto the curb, in front of some hospital emergency room entrance! 

Believe me, I know this certain family member of one of the Temptations (yet for privacy sake, I'll not say which one). This man knows how his father left this world! Don't believe all the foolishness you hear, see and read! 

Yet I know why this movie is so popular. The movie clearly has its moments. The music was great, and the characterizations and likenesses were dead on. The movie does generally depict the Temptations pretty very close to how they were. But its those critical, and important historical inaccuracies that were and are enough for me to not fully support the Temptation movie storyline through and through! 

Cissy and Whitney singing together

The same goes for Whitney Houston's biopic. Had Cissy's Houston's name been all over this project! I'd have been glued to the TV screen, popcorn, cola  and candy in hand! I'm sick of Lifetime, and other movie production companies telling the life-stories of people they really don't know anything about, except for the tabloid hype and the leading headlines!

If world history has proven one thing at all to me, it is this! I think it is oh so very important for people of color to always tell their own stories for posterity sake! For when other people tell our stories, for us, our lives and all of who we are suddenly get lost in the sauce! 

The good gets clouded and muddy, and then all at once all the places and faces and the images are changed. We become minus'ed and lessoned out of the equation as we go along that long dark corridor, through the annals of history and time! And as a result, generations from now, the facts will have changed, and only the lies will remain! 

Singer Songwriter Erykah Badu

The Sphinx showing clearly that in the hands of others through history. "We get our noses shot off!"

In the words of Voltaire — "History is the lie commonly agreed upon!" Yet in a far more personal platitude, I think the words of singer songwriter Erica Bydu are more fitting. For when we let others write our history, she said... "We get our Noses Shot Off!"

Glenn Peppers            1-19-2015

“Will ABC Cancel The VIEW?”

Whoopi Goldgberg and Rosie O'Donnell

“Will ABC Cancel The View?”

(Maybe The View is not so clear these days)

By Glenn Peppers                1-16-2015

Can you believe it? I saw it coming close to two years ago. ABC is considering canceling its longtime daytime talk show, The View! When I read this, that Janet Jackson song, “Control” kept banging around inside my head! You see, for me when The View brought Rosie O'Donnell back this past season, I knew they were done! In my mind when this happened, I knew that it would only be a matter of time. Whoopi is enough to deal with. Putting those two back together and you get nothing but a grey film covering the screen! After all these years, fat cat upper office TV people still don't get it! 

Could this major Cougar Cat Fight bring the View to its knees?

On screen battles are better fought when the two people fighting each other have a mutual respect, and a love hate relationship. Not a Hate HATE relationship! Television audiences are uncomfortable with that kind of thing! People need to be able to like or dislike you. An audience has to have an option to shift their allegiance! To choose either way or person or theme one day to the next! Like watching Wrestling! By leaving your audience no room to choose or move. They in turn will eventually change the channel! 

Its like watching your parents play fight. It embarrassing kinda cute. In fact its harmless! Then one day you see that they have gotten to the place where they are really REALLY fighting, and its vicious! Hair pulling and all bloody and nasty and dirty, and terribly uncomfortable to look at. So what do you do? You leave home!

Those producers of the View are really one track minded and are so not in tuned to what women are interested in these days. If its cat fighting people want, they can turn to Jerry Springer for that! I’m not referring to guest either. The View has wonderful guest on the panel. Its the group time that is so unnerving! Women want more from The View than what they have been getting! Women are close! They share and lean on each others shoulders! I’m referring to camaraderie!  Women function well as a unit! Much better than men do! Women bond and come in agreement on things, and stick together! And when they fight, boy do they fight. But when woman make up they cry, they talk, and they share how they feel or felt about things! Rosie and Whoopi are not on those kind of terms at all! There’s no girlie making up here! And that makes for some pretty ugly TV! Ugly TV in HD does not mix well in the morning! 

Just think. All these wonderfully talented women in the entertainment industry, and in the business class world of fashion, beauty, media, movies, medicine, music, etc out here and they reached back and dragged Rosie O'Donnell out of the muck! Com'on now!!! The View could have have had a national vote and gone to the public and picked (by way of Skype or something like it) a person from everyday life to be placed on the View panel. But Noooo, they went garbage picking! I know that sounds mean but its true! To me Rosie didn’t deserve to get a chance to sit on that panel again! She had her time there!

To go back to the garbage dump and recycle "anyone" (heaven forbid say the likes of Elizabeth Hassleback) back up onto a nationally syndicated million dollar TV show is programming suicide! But to bring back the one person who almost dragged the show down to hades the first time, and the expect her to come back and shine as if nothing was ever happened was wrong! Excuse my blunt charge but whomever signed off on that deal for The View was not thinking productively, and showed a keen shortsightedness concerning audience demographics! If The View does end up getting canceled, it will be for not keeping their panelist and producers fresh and accountable! 

Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell Feud! 

For me, Rosie's row with Donald Trump would have been the last straw had I been on the board at ABC! That whole thing went on way too long, and was one of the reasons a lot of folks stopped watching The View. The fight between O’Donnell and Trump became almost unbearable and quite annoying even after the first week. Had I been executive producer,  both Whoopi and Rosie would either have had to tame it down; got it together or resign! There are too many beautifully entertaining people out here. Too many young fresh faces with great young fresh ideas on what women of all ages like and want!

The Real

For instance those girls on "The Real!" We all know them from former and even present TV shows! They’re alive and bubbly. And best of all they have a chemistry, and it works really well for them! I feel that this show will only get better as long as they stay as real as they are with one another, and their audience! 

The Talk when Leah Rimini and Holly Robinson Peete was on the show Leah Rimini on the far left and Holly Robinson Peete seated second on the right back at the outset of The Talk's premiere.

"The Talk" (in my opinion) is just about done as well! Its become too much like The View! When they fired Leah Remini and Holly Robinson Peete off of The Talk, that did it for me with The Talk. Even more so with me because I'm partial to Leah Rimini from the old "King of Queens" TV show! We all have our favorite picks. Especially if they were on other shows that we liked! Leah and Holly are favorites of mine! To fire them both at the same time showed a brutal power struggle within The Talk panel cast of characters. That’s all I’ll say about that. Still I thought the firing of Leah and Holly was mean spirited, and controlling! 

The Talk pissed a lot of people off when they fired the two most popular people on the show. All I know is I haven't watched it since! Holly Robinson was the cool factor on the show. And Leah was the piss and vinegar that the show needed! So in that 2pm time slot, I’ve been watching the continuation of The Today Show with Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb. I love them! They’re funny, and naturally quite entertaining together!

Hoda Kotb and Kathy Lee Gifford on the Today Show

In the long run as far as panel shows like The View is concerned, I feel that there'll only be one REAL winner (Real, get it? Hint Hint)! And I feel that The View with Whoopi and/or Rosie on its panel will not be in the running! Their producer and creative staff ideas of what star power as far as panel shows is pretty much out of date, and is a tad bit out of touch with the pulse of new-breed daytime television! 

So will ABC keep The View on is daytime TV lineup with all the Cougar Cat Fighting and Unforgiving Bickering? Who knows!... At this point with so many other options on cable television and on demand and with Netflix and the like, who cares!

Glenn Peppers               1-16-2015