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Federal Appeals Court Confirms: Kevin Trudeau Is One Big Fat Contumacious Liar

By Steve Rhodes

“An appeals court in Chicago has upheld a 10-year prison term for a best-selling author whose name is synonymous with late-night TV pitches,” Tribune news services report.
“Its Friday opinion says Kevin Trudeau ‘spent his career hawking miracle cures . . . of dubious efficacy’ and that his ‘bag of tricks contains something to relieve almost any ailment.’
“The unanimous decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ three-judge panel says his sentence for criminal contempt wasn’t excessive given ‘the size of Trudeau’s fraud and the flagrant and repetitive nature’ of it.”
Indeed. Let’s take a look at the highlights of the court’s pretty awesome decision, written by judge Diane Sykes.

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Posted on February 9, 2016

What I Watched Last Night: The Commercial Bowl

By Scott Buckner

On Sunday evening (or all damn day, depending on your rabid dedication to the sport), America paid homage to Super Bowl 50, a football game which has rocketed to such a ridiculous level of pomp and circumstance simply because we need an excuse for something, anything. That’s because when it comes to large public events that promote mass consumption of food and alcohol, the calendar’s a desolate place between January and March 17 if you’re not in New Orleans for Fat Tuesday.
It’s an event that, even if you do have $20,000 to shell out for a seat mid-field, you’d still stay home and watch the thing on TV instead because the beer is cheaper, the bathroom’s only 50 paces away and usually unoccupied, and your car’s already parked a lot closer. In that sense, it’s become The Super Commercial Bowl for the million-dollar ads alone, mostly because your team (or a team you despise and would love to see their teeth get bashed in) isn’t in it, and the halftime show always features someone overexposed or irrelevant, or bands whose music you never could stand anyway. So now we’re basically reduced to an audience of eleventy billion people waiting to see if Snickers’ ad agency can top last year’s commercial.

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Posted on February 8, 2016

24 Hours With Pop TV

Breast Side Up

“A channel filled with optimism, passion, funny and excitement.”
5:30 a.m.: Perfect Cooker.
6 a.m.: Try Total Gym for $14.95.
6:30 a.m.: FREE UPGRADE to the NutriBullet Pro Whole Food Nutrition Extractor!
7 a.m.: Retire in Style!

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Posted on February 5, 2016

Revisiting Yummy Sandifer

By Steve Rhodes

The latest newscast from the Free Spirit Media teens included a comic/song montage about the horrible story of Robert “Yummy” Sandifer.
Now the good folks at MediaBurn have uploaded an episode of “Weekend TV” from September 1994, from the Fund for Innovative TV, about Yummy.
The description:
“Andrew Jones goes to the South Side of Chicago to investigate the murder of 11-year-old Robert Sandifer, who had been accused of killing 9-year-old Shavon Dean in their gang-infested Roseland neighborhood. Two brothers, Cragg and Derrick Hardaway, were arrested for the murder of Sandifer. Jones talks to family and friends about the tragedy of two murders of teenagers and how it reflects on our society.”

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Posted on January 27, 2016

T.J. Hooker: The Chicago Connection

By Steve Rhodes

Season: 4
Episode: 3
Heather Locklear: No
Release date: May 4, 1985
IMDB plot summary: “Hooker is sent to Chicago to pick someone who’s being extradited. But upon arriving a streetwise detective who needs the prisoner to help get a criminal he’s pursuing convinces Hooker to let him use the guy before he leaves. But something goes wrong and Hooker offers to help him get the criminal. Written by rcs0411@yahoo.com.”
IMDB rating: 6.7

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Posted on January 12, 2016

Fight The False Holiday Travel Narrative!

By Steve Rhodes

Long-time readers (see the item Turkey Story) – and listeners – have read/heard me tell the story before of when the Tribune assigned me to cover the Thanksgiving traffic snarl at O’Hare one year and I feared for losing my job because there was no such thing. Well, the same thing happened to this WGN-TV reporter over Christmas. And probably most reporters given this ridiculous assignment most years.

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Posted on January 5, 2016

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