Last Week…

Last week, and over the past weekend, Sabrina Salvati’s channel Sabby Sabs had two very interesting topics.

The first was Sabrina’s coverage of a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll which has previous U.S. president Donald Trump leading current U.S. president Joe Biden in a national poll by +6 percentage points. (This was timed closely with Trump’s recent town hall on CNN.)

The second was an interview, at the start of the livestream, with attorney spouses Jared and Elizabeth Beck on the lawsuit against the DNC after their rigged primaries from 2016. (This livestream was on Sunday, May 14, 2023. I anticipate and expect a clip will become published to YouTube. For the sake of meeting this publication date, the entire livestream episode is included here.)

I admit to having submitted some comments in the first video (which is actually a 40-minute clip). I was contributing information to add to some of the points made by Sabrina. It can be considered helpful for understanding some of the context of what that poll suggests.

The attorneys, from the second video, offered some insights worth remembering. There are a number of conclusions which are made, by one or both, with which some Progressives Chat readers may agree.

I will comment, briefly, about that Trump +6 poll: Here in May 2023, I don’t feel like focusing my energy with trying to predict, as if I could feel it is necessary these 18 months out, on what will happen with the United States presidential election of 2024. When thinking about that topic, I realize some people may guess who will be the winning candidate (incumbent or otherwise). I would tend to hone in on which will be the prevailing party. It is much about the circumstances. I would assert that it may be more about the party, and not so much the individual, better poised to win. So, the circumstances matter. They inform.

The videos appear above.

★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★

 

 

I will acknowledge the death last week of actress Jacklyn Zeman (03.06.1953–05.09.2023). 

I used to watch the broadcast networks’s daytime soaps. (I would get around.) As a child, most especially with a stronger memory of my life from the 1980s, they were a thing for me for some years. (I don’t tune in regularly anymore.) In recent years, and with so many of the genre’s series cancellations the last, say, 15 years—due to ABC, CBS, and NBC reducing programming costs—the numbers of productions went from around 15 (in the mid-1980s) to 5 (here in 2023).

Zeman, who was 70 and died May 9 after a brief illness with cancer, played Bobbie Spencer on ABC’s General Hospital. She debuted on the series in 1977 and worked with the genre’s most admired actor, eight-time Emmy winner Anthony Geary. (He played Bobbie’s brother, Luke Spencer, one-half of what is perhaps the genre’s most famous supercouple, with actress Genie Francis as Laura, and retired in the mid-2010s.) For a time, Zeman’s character was romantically paired with singer-songwriter Rick Springfield, playing a doctor named Noah Drake, coinciding with his becoming a pop sensation in the 1980s and winning a Grammy for “Jessie’s Girl.”

Zeman was first wed to Murray Kaufman (1922–1982). He was known as a popular New York City disc jockey named Murray K. He was posthumously inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1997. Zeman was also married and divorced from Glenn Gorden (to my knowledge, he is not in the business) and is also survived by two adult daughters, Cassidy and Lacey. 

Zeman, who also was a Playboy Bunny at the Playboy Club, in 1972, received four of her five Emmy nominations for her work on General Hospital. 

There have been, regrettably, numerous actors from the daytime dramas who have died (nearly all from a form of cancer) over the last, say, 18 months. One of them is fellow General Hospital cast member Sonya Eddy (06.17.1967–12.19.2022), who played nurse Epiphany Johnson, from an infection following non-emergency surgery. Eddy received a posthumous 2023 Emmy nomination (outcome is currently pending).… Among the others are four cast members from the former CBS series As the World Turns: Lisa Brown (08.02.1954–11.24.2021), who played Iva Snyder (and Nola Reardon on CBS’s Guiding Light), an actress who benefited greatly from one of the industry’s most-respected head writers, the late Douglas Marland (1935–1993, who created both roles for Brown as well as Zeman’s).… Kathryn Hays (07.26.1934–03.25.2022), who played longtime lead character Kim Hughes from 1972 until its last episode and final scene in 2010. Hays was married, during the late-1960s, to big-screen idol Glenn Ford. One of her onscreen children was played, during the 1980s, by a pre-Oscar winner Julianne Moore. Hays also had a memorable turn working directly with William Shatner in “The Empath” episode of NBC’s TV classic Star Trek… Marnie Schulenburg (05.21.1984–05.17.2022), who played Alison Stewart, received a single Emmy nomination, and who was only 37 and a recent mother of a young daughter when died from metastatic breast cancer.… Elizabeth Hubbard (12.22.1933–04.08.2023)—one of the most acclaimed actors in the genre’s U.S. history—who was the inaugural Best Actress Daytime Emmy winner in 1974 (for the past NBC series The Doctors). She played corporation owner Lucinda Walsh (a role which garnered her eight more nominations). Hubbard was a graduate of Radcliffe College and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in London, and she was the first American to receive its silver medal and graduated in 1957.… John Aniston (07.24.1933–11.11.2022), who was active as an actor for roughly 60 years, was even better known as the father of Emmy winning actress and star Jennifer Aniston. He played Victor Kiriakis on NBC’s/Peacock’s Days of Our Lives and received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 2022.… Jerry ver Dorn (11.23.1949–05.01.2022), who combined nearly 35 years with two memorable runs as Ross Marler on CBS’s Guiding Light (for which he won two Emmys on that series which signed off in 2009) and Clint Buchanan on ABC’s One Life to Live (until its cancellation, by the network, in 2012 and its unsuccessful Internet reboot in 2013).… Add to this two actresses from the former NBC series Another World (which ended in 1999). One was Robyn Griggs (04.30.1973–08.13.2022), who played Maggie Cory, and was fired from the series in 1995 due to her relationship—which Griggs said was not romantic—with the scandalous John Wayne Bobbitt. The second to mention, and the biggest headliner, was Anne Heche (05.25.1969–08.11.2022). She won a 1991 Emmy, for playing twin sisters Vicky and Marley Love, and followed her daytime run with a successful film career (for a time)—including being on the 1997 Oscar radar for Wag the Dog (which won her, along with her performance in Donnie Brasco, the National Board of Review’s prize for Best Supporting Actress)—and Heche received a primetime Emmy nomination and a Tony nomination. She also had a highly-publicized relationship with then-coming-out Ellen DeGeneres.

Time certainly moves along. This reminds me of something my late father used to say. It was his response to some periods in which actors (or anyone else in another area of the performing arts) died in relatively short time from one another. This has more to do with a connection to oneself—like from one’s own childhood, one’s own early adulthood, etc.—for years and years. To paraphrase: We are all getting up there. It was my father’s way of being a little less taken by surprise. (He did genuinely like Doris Day. So, to him, her death in 2019 was a hurt.) But, from time to time, a name would come up which he did not anticipate. This is my reaction to this recent death of Jacklyn Zeman. (I didn’t anticipate it. And I have had this very reaction, from time to time, to some other names as well.) I used to watch her on General Hospital. She had a persona which reminded me of actress Marilu Henner, from one of television’s best-ever series, ABC’s and NBC’s Taxi. Bubbly. Fiery. Relatable. And good acting chops. It’s too bad.

The above videos are a report of the actress’s death and an interview she did in August 2022 with publicist Alan Locher on his YouTube channel The Locher Room.