Latest news with #BlazingSaddles
Wall Street Journal
6 days ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
The ‘Knowledge Class' Needs a Reality Check
Jukka Savolainen's op-ed 'The Alienated 'Knowledge Class' Could Turn Violent' (May 22) reminded me of the scene in 'Blazing Saddles' when Gene Wilder advises Cleavon Little not to confront Mongo. 'Don't do that,' he says. 'If you shoot him, you'll just make him mad.' As I see it, American universities are getting their just deserts. To say that the Trump administration should take its foot off the gas in its showdown against Harvard and its peers means these universities wouldn't receive the free-market discipline they badly need. Advanced-degree holders in political science or philosophy aren't filling a market need. This signal would normally lead fewer students to pursue these fields. This doesn't happen because taxpayers subsidize this inefficient employment pipeline through guaranteed student loans, tax-free endowments and government grants.
New York Times
24-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Steve McMichael, Hall of Fame Tackle for Champion Bears, Dies at 67
Steve McMichael, a Hall of Fame defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears with a theatrical personality and a ferocious intensity who helped anchor what might have been the most predatory defense in the history of the N.F.L. during the team's 1985 Super Bowl-winning season, died on Wednesday in Joliet, Ill. He was 67. The Bears confirmed his death, in hospice care. The team said he had struggled for years with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the degenerative disease of the nervous system more commonly known as A.L.S. or Lou Gehrig's disease. McMichael played 15 years in the N.F.L., 13 of them with Chicago and none more rapacious than the 1985 season. The Bears lost only once that season while rampaging through the league with the so-called 46 defense, orchestrated by the team's boisterous defensive coordinator, Buddy Ryan. Placing eight defensive players near the line of scrimmage, Chicago hounded, outmuscled and intimidated opponents. No victory was more thorough than the Bears' 44-0 dismantling of the Dallas Cowboys on their own field on Nov. 17, 1985. It was the worst defeat in the team's then-26-year history. That afternoon, McMichael collected one of the 92 ½ career sacks he accumulated with the Bears, placing him second in franchise history to his teammate Richard Dent. In the view of many, Dallas simply gave up. Tom Landry, Dallas's coach at the time, called the defeat 'an old-fashioned country licking.' 'I call it the piranha effect,' the Chicago defensive end Dan Hampton told reporters afterward. 'We start getting on somebody and we smell blood. We seem to go into a frenzy.' Chicago's only loss that season came against the Miami Dolphins. The Bears dominated the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX, 46-10, played on Jan. 26, 1986, in the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. Though somewhat small for a defensive lineman at 6 feet 2 inches and 270 pounds, McMichael possessed immense strength and slippery quickness. He starred on a defense that included three other future Hall of Famers: the defensive ends Hampton and Dent and the linebacker Mike Singletary. He played in 191 consecutive games for the Bears and 12 more in the playoffs, a franchise record. 'He was a defensive tackle taking on double teams and triple teams and leg whips and this and that,' Hampton told The Chicago Tribune for its obituary about McMichael. 'To then essentially defy the physical reality of it is mind-boggling.' McMichael reveled in an exaggerated, untamed persona. His nicknames included Ming the Merciless, after the tyrant in 'Flash Gordon,' and Mongo, after the dimwitted ruffian who punches out a horse in the Mel Brooks comedy 'Blazing Saddles.' In a 2019 speech recounted by The Associated Press in its obituary, McMichael joked that his brief and inconsequential stay with the Patriots, who had chosen him in the third round of the 1980 N.F.L. draft, ended after a season because he was considered 'the criminal element in the league.' But the Bears readily accepted him in 1981. McMichael described walking into the office of the Bears' founder, George Halas, and being told: 'I've heard what kind of dirty rat you are in practice. Don't change, Steve.' After a final N.F.L. season, with the Green Bay Packers in 1994, his blustery guise helped ease McMichael into five years as a professional wrestler, who used a pile-driver move on opponents as if they were footballs with the 'Mongo Spike.' McMichael was born on Oct. 17, 1957, in Houston. His parents divorced when he was a year old. His mother, an English teacher born Betty Ruth Smalley, later married E.V. McMichael, an oil company executive. Steve, who took his stepfather's last name as a toddler, declined to discuss his surname at birth. His mother died of breast cancer in 2018, and his stepfather died after being shot in 1976. In 1964, the family moved to tiny Freer, Texas, south of San Antonio. McMichael lettered in football, baseball, basketball, track, tennis and golf at Freer High School. He played football at the University of Texas, where he was an All-American in 1979. In 2010, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. In the N.F.L., he was named All-Pro in 1985 and 1987. He is survived by his wife, Misty (Davenport) McMichael; a daughter, Macy McMichael; two sisters, Kathy and Sharon McMichael; and a brother, Robert. His first marriage, to Debra Marshall in 1998, ended in divorce. In 2020, McMichael began experiencing tingling in his arms. A year later, he was diagnosed with A.L.S. He kept his humor when he revealed his illness to The Chicago Tribune in April 2021, saying that it 'will sneak up on you like a cheap-shotting Green Bay Packer.' As the disease progressed, McMichael lost the ability to move and to speak. He was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Aug. 3, 2024, but he was too ill to attend the ceremony. The bust and gold jacket awarded to inductees were presented to him earlier that day at his bedside at his home in Homer Glen, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, where he was surrounded by former Bears teammates. 'It's a cruel irony that the Bears' Ironman succumbed to this dreaded disease,' George McCaskey, the Bears' chairman, said in a statement on Wednesday. 'Yet Steve showed us throughout his struggle that his real strength was internal, and he demonstrated on a daily basis his class, his dignity and his humanity.'
Daily Mirror
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Steve McMichael dead: NFL legend who played for Chicago Bears for 13 years passes away at 67
Steve McMichael - an NFL great who won the Super Bowl with Chicago Bears - has died aged 67. The sporting legend's career across NFL, and then professional wrestling spanned decades, during which his larger-than-life personality enticed new fans into American football. The defensive tackle won the 1985 Super Bowl with Chicago Bears during his 13-year stint with the side. McMichael, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2024, died on Wednesday at a hospice in Chicago, following a journey with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of motor neurone disease, diagnosed in April 2021. Known as "Ming The Merciless" and "Mongo" after the character in Blazing Saddles who knocked out a horse, McMichael will go down as not only a Chicago Bears cult hero, but a legend in the Windy City itself. Years after retiring from the sport, he and fellow 1985 Chicago Bears alumni Dan Hampton and Otis Wilson performed in a rock and roll oldies band called the Chicago 6 in the city. The sport you probably don't know which Kylian Mbappe, Sebastian Vettel and more invest in The athlete's ALS diagnosis diagnosis rocked the NFL and wrestling worlds; McMichael had ventured into the latter for nearly five years until 1999. Speaking in 2021, he told local media: "I promise you, this epitaph that I'm going to have on me now? This ain't ever how I envisioned this was going to end." And, in the four years since, photos posted on social media by friends and former teammates captured McMichael's sad decline. Once a 270-pound giant who used to blast through linebackers and drive wrestlers headfirst into the mat, the star became rail-thin, bedridden and hooked up to machines. Weeks after Grey's Anatomy and Euphoria star Eric Dane, of San Francisco, California, opened up about his ALS diagnosis, McMichael's publicist confirmed the sports professional's death. And Ric Flair, with whom McMichael used to battle in the wrestling ring, was one of the first in the sports circuit to express his condolences today. He posted online: "The world just lost the incredible Steve 'Mongo' McMichael! He was my best friend through it all! An amazing athlete and human being!" ALS, a type of motor neurone diseas, affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing loss of muscle control. Dad-of-one McMichael had been experiencing tingling in his arms for some time, which he figured was a neck or spine issue stemming from his playing days or his work as a wrestler. But the NFL ace, born in Houston, Texas, deteriorated, and he became "scared to die," according to wife Misty last year. Misty, who married the athlete in 2001, said: "He's scared to die and he shouldn't be because he's the most badass man I've ever known inside and out. He's a good man. He's gonna be in heaven before any of us, so I don't know what he's afraid of. But I've told him to please hang on 'til the (induction) and then, you know, I don't want to see him suffer anymore. He's been suffering." McMichael played in the NFL for 15 years, 13 with Chicago Bears. He fought ALS with the same tenacity he showed for years on the pitch, during which the athlete became one of the most feared players on arguably the greatest defence ever assembled in the game.
NBC Sports
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC Sports
Hall of Famer Steve McMichael dies at 67
Steve McMichael, Hall of Famer and member of the legendary 1985 Bears defense, has died. He was 67. The announcement was made by Jarrett Payton, who presented McMichael for Hall of Fame enshrinement in 2024. Payton's late father, Walter, was McMichael's teammate. A third-round pick of the Patriots in 1980, McMichael was cut before the 1981 season. The Bears signed him, and he played for Chicago from 1981 through 1993 — appearing in 191 regular-season games. 'The Patriots, yeah, they thought I was a little weird,' McMichael once said. 'And I guess I am. But here they don't care, long as you play hard. . . The town, the coach, the team — it's Steve McMichael. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.' Along the way, McMichael got a little revenge against the Patriots, in Super Bowl XX. He finished his career with the Packers, in 1994. McMichael was a two-time first-team All-Pro, a two-time second-team All-Pro, and a two-time Pro Bowler. He was diagnosed with ALS in 2021. He had entered hospice care earlier today. McMichael was known as Mongo, after the character played by former NFL defensive tackle Alex Karras in Blazing Saddles. We extend our condolences to McMichael's family, friends, teammates, and colleagues.
Yahoo
22-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Melissa Gilbert Remembers Late ‘Little House' Co-Star Jack Lilley: ‘One of My Favorite People'
Melissa Gilbert paid tribute to her 'Little House on the Prairie' co-star Jack Lilley in the wake of his death this week. The actor and stunt coordinator was 91. In a post on her Instagram account, Gilbert – who played Laura Ingalls Wilder in the show – called Lilley one of her 'favorite people on the planet.' Lilley appeared in over thirty episodes of the show between 1974 and 1983 while also serving as the stunt coordinator. 'He taught me how to ride a horse when I was just a wee little thing,' she wrote. 'He was so patient with me. He never said no when I would bound up to him squealing, 'Can we go ride? Please, please, please?'' Gilbert also recalled in her lengthy tribute that her and Lilley ran into each other in 2002 unexpectedly while she was working on a western pilot for ABC. The two fell right back into a rhythm with each other. 'My first day on set was surreal, getting my hair and makeup done, getting dressed, laced into my corset, boots etc. Such a strange déjà vu,' she said. 'Then I walked to the set itself and before I could even focus I heard a familiar voice holler, 'Hey Halfpint, you old rat-ass!!!' It was Jack. He was our wrangler for that pilot and by his side was Denny Allen, who had been our wrangler on 'Little House.' In that instant, I knew I was home.' Lilley died on Wednesday at 91-years-old. His family posted the news on Instagram but chose not to reveal the cause of death. Along with his time on 'Little House on the Prairie,' he also appeared in 'Blazing Saddles.' 'The man who started it all. Figuratively and literally,' the family's post read. 'The card shark, the horse trader, the wrangler, the man with a story for everything, he always knew someone who could help if he couldn't, known to many as friend, storyteller, joker, and a heck of a horseman.' The post Melissa Gilbert Remembers Late 'Little House' Co-Star Jack Lilley: 'One of My Favorite People' appeared first on TheWrap.
