Fresh Loaf

Is Ted Turner the real Captain Planet? That’s what he says in Lizz Widdicombe’s hilarious “Talk of the Town” segment of this week’s New Yorker (“Born Green”), in which she catches up with the man who claims to be the one who beat Al Gore to telling the world an inconvenient truth with his now-defunct TBS cartoon, “Captain Planet and the Planeteers.” (Sounds like a bad ’70s funk ensemble.) The story comes from an Atlanta fundraiser for Turner’s Captain Planet Foundation. In the article, he boasts that he was his own inspiration for the Captain Planet character, who does battle with all the earth-unfriendly nasties out there.

Here’s a sample from the article:

With the show, Ted Turner is fond of saying, he invented a television genre that he called “edu-tainment” — a noble endeavor but one that has taken a lot of grief over the years. Critics of “Captain Planet” have pointed to the broadness of its allegory (characters include “Kwame from Africa” and “Gi from Asia”), and the heavy-handedness of its plots (battles against a villain named Hoggish Greedly and a Pollution Syndicate), to suggest that it’s less entertainment than a vehicle for “left-wing propaganda,” as one watchdog group put it. But Turner remains unfazed. “In terms of programming, it’s the best thing I ever did,” he said the other day.

Really, Ted? As opposed to, um, non-programming? Whatev, it definitely struggles to stand the test of time, as this clip demonstrates. But there is a kitschy charm about the whole thing. See for yourself, Planeteers!

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Ted Turner was walking kind of gingerly and holding his midsection after he finished lunch today at Ted’s Montana Grill on Luckie Street, but I don’t think it was the burger.

He was wearing a jacket over hospital scrubs and was with his daughter Laura Turner Seydel, and her husband. Folks at various tables applauded as he left (presumably to head back up to his apartment, which is upstairs). He waved.

I didn’t get a chance to ask him, but did I miss something? Did my favorite Atlanta billionaire just have surgery? (Didn’t see anything in a web search, but I have asked his people.)

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PEABODYS: Winners of the 67th annual media awards are announced at UGA, including “60 Minutes,” “The Colbert Report,” “Planet Earth,” and CNN, ABC News, CBS News and NPR. Not among the winners, as Spacey Gracey notes at Peach Pundit, is FOX News.

TED TURNER: Tells PBS’s Charlie Rose that global warming could kill “most of the people” in 30 or 40 years, and “the rest of us will be cannibals.”

DOG WILD: Screaming Chinese schoolchildren swarm visiting Georgia poultry official when he pulls out a photo of his dogs.

YELLOW JOURNALISM: WSB-TV Action News covers the pollen onslaught, including this insightful “explanation” from meteorologist Karen Minton: “The skies are filled with pollen as we move into spring.”

GUNS: Bill to allow guns in public transit and restaurants passes the state Senate.

SANCTUARY CITIES: House passes bill outlawing “sanctuary cities” for illegal immigrants in Georgia, even though none exist.

CLAYTON COUNTY: “Bleeding,” according to school board Chairwoman Ericka Davis, who, along with board Vice Chairman Eddie White, announced Wednesday that they’re stepping down in June.

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The September issue of Portfolio magazine reports that Ted Turner is behind on his payments to the United Nations. According to the Huffington Post, Turner promised to wipe out the $1 billion debt owed by the United States to the United Nations in $100 million increments.

According to the magazine, Turner gave $83 million the first two years of his pledge, then only $48.9 million last year. But he still pledges to contribute the full $1 billion by 2015.

Hey, give the guy a break: Much of his fortune was tied up in Time Warner/AOL stock. Remember how the companies lost $99 billion in 2002, the largest one-year loss ever in American business?

Show Ted your solidarity by buying a buffalo burger today.

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Robert Olen Butler and Elizabeth Dewberry are popular writers and scholars at Florida State University in Tallahassee. They were also married — until Atlanta’s billionaire bad boy, Ted Turner, stole Dewberry’s heart. Now Dewberry, 44, is leaving her husband for Turner, 68.

Butler, 62, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for a collection of stories. Butler informed five graduate students via e-mail, assuming they’d keep things confidential. They have informed the world about the love triangle.

Butler’s e-mail states:

She will not be Ted’s only girlfriend. Ted is permanently and avowedly non-monogamous. But though he has several girlfriends, it is a very small number, and he does not take them up lightly and he gives them his absolute support when he does.

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OK, baseball fans, the last-place Chicago Cubs (5-8) begin a two-game series with the division-leading Braves (9-4) tonight, so I thought a small comparison of the team histories was in order — that is, considering they are so drastically different.

Being a Braves fan has been easy. It’s like being a baby: Every time we open our mouths, someone shovels more food in; when we take a shit, someone else cleans it up. There are no curses, no bad joo-joo, nada. The only thing difficult, it would appear, about being a Braves fan is showing up to the games! This is not true for Cubs fans.

All of that said shit has been dumped on the Cubbies, those lovable losers from the North Side of Chicago. Not since 1908 have the Cubs won a World Series — the longest dry spell in all of baseball and of every major sport in the United States. I’d list the huge events that have occurred since the last time the Cubs won the championship, but you are probably planning on going to bed tonight before 3 a.m. (If not, well, maybe you should get a job.)

(more…)

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