As body counts of murdered victims go — at least 13, in their case — Bonnie and Clyde surpassed the likes of David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz and Chicago nurse-mutilator Richard Speck, and, as has lately been recalled in these parts, the perpetrator of the LIRR massacre, Colin Ferguson.
Regardless, the entertainment industry, for a third time, has demanded that we recall Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker as one of the all-time American glamour couples, so gloriously in love as to make Steve and Eydie have seemed irreconcilable.
That they were narcissistic, psychopathic killers? Well, so what? It’s easy to nit-pick.
We’re now three-for-three. In the 1967 movie, the 1992 TV movie and the new A&E TV miniseries, Bonnie and Clyde appear as beautiful people, the most handsome couple to have ever attended the Duchess of Richmond’s Ball, strolled down the avenue in the Easter Parade or to have emptied submachine guns into the bodies of police officers and bank tellers.
But that’s how our entertainment industry rolls, ya know?
Apparently, because it was the Great Depression of the 1930s and they were born poor, Bonnie and Clyde were entitled to rob a dozen banks — two or three weren’t enough for these poor folk — and murder those who stood or simply got in their way.
Cool!
And, as exceptionally beautiful people — but only as per purposeful casting since the 1967 movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway — they remain entitled to another generation’s rooting interests. Go, Bonnie and Clyde, go! We love you!
One of the most powerful episodes of A&E’s superb real reality series, “The First 48” — genuine homicide detectives tracking genuine homicides — re-aired, last week.
Eighteen-year-old Welester Ulises Lerma- Perez — street name, “Rider” — didn’t look, speak or act like a gang member. He sounded bright, sincere. He dressed neatly and looked clean, too; no visible tattoos or scars. He seemed like a decent kid.
But he was in a gang, one in Houston, Texas. And now — this was in 2011 — he wanted out. His girlfriend was pregnant, he loved her; he wanted to marry her, get a good job and help raise their child.
But the gang wouldn’t let him out, not unless it held something over him, something for keeps — to ensure his lifelong silence. So, in exchange for his freedom, Lerma-Perez was ordered to kill someone.
Lerma-Perez is now serving life for the murder of 17-year-old Noe Ramirez.
The hyperbolic, insulting state of our local newscasts is relentless.
Last Saturday, Ch. 7’s 6 p.m. edition included aircraft footage of a snowstorm that had hit Texas. The snow was plainly seen, as was a highway traffic jam featuring 18-wheelers.
To this video, anchor Rob Powers piped, “Images eerily similar to super-storm Sandy.”
What? What! Not even close. Sandy’s images were of felled trees, destroyed neighborhoods, flooded towns. No snow. What Ch. 7 presented was footage of a snowstorm, a December standard throughout much of the United States.
And the anchor told a New York City area audience that it appeared “eerily similar to super-storm Sandy.” Good grief.
Charles Osgood’s “The Osgood File,” heard here on WCBS-AM, last week picked up on a Wall Street Journal story about the scarcity of well-written, creative fortunes as found in fortune cookies.
A man previously employed as the author of fortune cookie fortunes said he hadn’t written one in 10 years.
“Why?” Osgood asked.
“Writer’s block,” he said.