Latest news with #NormPeterson
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
George Wendt's mistaken jabs at John Boehner link 'Cheers' and Ohio politics
There was no mistake when the beloved but forlorn accountant Norm Peterson chugged his way into the fictional TV bar "Cheers." "Norm!!!" hollered the regulars in unison, ranging from mail carrier Cliff Clavin to "Mayday" Sam Malone, the former Major League pitcher-turned barkeep. If only former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, or late Rep. Buz Lukens, R-Ohio, had been as recognizable to George Wendt, the actor who played Norm on the sitcom. Remembering Rep. Charlie Rangel — And A Voicemail I'll Never Forget Wendt died last week at age 76. The portly, everyman, "Willy Loman" character Wendt created was one of the most iconic in the history of comedic television. Wendt's portrayal of Norm earned him six consecutive Emmy nominations for Best Supporting Actor in a primetime series. But during Boehner's first race for Congress in 1990, Wendt inadvertently manufactured a bizarre and permanent connection to the future Speaker of the House. Read On The Fox News App In 1989, Lukens represented Ohio's 8th Congressional District. But WSYX-TV in Columbus, Ohio, secretly recorded Lukens at a McDonald's speaking with the mother of a teenage girl. Lukens talked to the woman about getting her a government job. He hoped to keep her quiet about his sexual activities with her daughter. Lukens denied any wrongdoing in public. He was charged and later convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The House Ethics Committee launched an investigation. But Lukens declined to step aside. That teed up a three-way Republican primary between Lukens, the former congressman who represented the district, the late Rep. Tom Kindness, R-Ohio, and Boehner. Boehner was a state legislator at the time. The scandal embroiling Lukens created a rare opportunity to head to Washington. As strange as it seems now, Boehner was the least-known of the three Republican candidates in what turned out to be a brutal primary. But Boehner's innate political acumen shone through – decades before he would ascend to the Speaker's suite. Despite the scandal, Lukens remained popular in the district. He had served as the congressman decades earlier and returned to the House when Kindness ran unsuccessfully for the Senate against late-Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, in 1986. So with the Lukens scandal, Kindness wanted his job back. And Boehner hoped to capitalize on the opportunity. By Dawn's Early Light: Battles Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' Will Face In The Senate Can you top a name like that? "Congressman Kindness." No wonder it was such a challenge for the upstart, future Speaker with the unpronounceable, Teutonic surname. But Boehner won. And even though he felled Lukens and Kindness, it was not a done deal that Boehner would win the general election. Boehner ran against Democrat Greg Jolivette, the mayor of Hamilton, Ohio, the biggest city in the 8th Congressional District. Jolivette was best known for changing the name of "Hamilton," to "Hamilton!" in the 1980s. He also ran Jolly's Drive-Ins in Hamilton. Imagine 1970s hamburger joints where you can order from your car, bedecked in orange. But we're talking about "Cheers" here. Not "Happy Days." Wendt was at the height of his popularity during the summer of 1990 as Boehner and Jolivette barreled toward a general election faceoff. So Wendt appeared on late-night TV on "The Arsenio Hall Show." Look him up, kids. Hall's syndicated show was never going to beat NBC's "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" in the ratings. But the program scored major headlines in 1992, when future President Bill Clinton played saxophone on the show in an effort to appeal to a younger demographic, which gravitated to Hall rather than Carson. Clinton's appearance was a seminal moment in American politics and may have helped him win the election. Certainly the most important political event on Hall's show. Wendt's appearance proved to be the second-most important. Jolivette was Wendt's brother-in-law. He periodically parachuted into Ohio's 8th District to campaign for Jolivette and against Boehner. So Hall asked him about Wendt's political involvement and Jolivette. Wendt proceeded to essentially libel Boehner on the air. Wendt never mentioned Boehner by name. But Wendt mixed up Lukens and his sex scandal with Boehner. On national TV, no less. "The guy he's running against had some problems a while back," said Wendt, referring to Jolivette's opponent, but mixing Boehner up with Lukens. "The guy from the 8th District had some convictions, some felony or a misdemeanor or something. So I think it's time for a change. One thing's for sure, I know, Greg's not going to be a criminal." Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' Faces Crucial Hours As Johnson Courts Freedom Caucus Hall is an Ohio native. But he was apparently not versed in the Lukens scandal – even though it was a national story and commanded daily headlines. He didn't inquire further or correct Wendt. After all, this was a late-night comedy and variety show. Not "Meet the Press." A publicist for Hall blamed the issue entirely on Wendt, saying the host has no control over "what (guests are) going to say." Things then turned nasty when Boehner's team put out a statement. "We, like a lot of viewers, are confused about the conversation last night. We don't know if they were talking about Congressman Lukens' problems or perhaps the theft complaint filed with the Hamilton (Ohio) Police against Greg Jolivette," said the Boehner campaign. Jolivette's campaign argued this was an old allegation and it wasn't true. They then demanded that Boehner fire Barry Jackson, Boehner's campaign manager. Jackson called the episode "cheap gutter politics." Boehner himself pinned the case of mistaken identity on Wendt. He believed the actor should have been more responsible for what he said on national TV. Boehner didn't fire Jackson. Jackson worked with Boehner for years and later served as his chief of staff when he became House speaker. Wendt's gaffe was not fatal for Boehner. Even though there were nearly as many Democrats as Republicans registered in the 8th District in those days, it had elected Republicans for years. And Boehner vanquished Jolivette 61-39 percent in the general election. The rest is history for Boehner. Fast-forward to today. Boehner took to X after the actor's death. The former Speaker explained how Wendt was the brother-in-law of his opponent and "went on a late-night TV show and said some tough things." Boehner said that Wendt was "confusing me with someone else. He called later to apologize and we had a great conversation. Raising a glass tonight to the man America will always remember as Norm." Or, as they might say on the show, "Cheers."Original article source: George Wendt's mistaken jabs at John Boehner link 'Cheers' and Ohio politics
Fox News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
George Wendt's mistaken jabs at John Boehner link 'Cheers' and Ohio politics
There was no mistake when the beloved but forlorn accountant Norm Peterson chugged his way into the fictional TV bar "Cheers." "Norm!!!" hollered the regulars in unison, ranging from mail carrier Cliff Clavin to "Mayday" Sam Malone, the former Major League pitcher-turned barkeep. If only former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, or late Rep. Buz Lukens, R-Ohio, had been as recognizable to George Wendt, the actor who played Norm on the sitcom. Wendt died last week at age 76. The portly, everyman, "Willy Loman" character Wendt created was one of the most iconic in the history of comedic television. Wendt's portrayal of Norm earned him six consecutive Emmy nominations for Best Supporting Actor in a primetime series. But during Boehner's first race for Congress in 1990, Wendt inadvertently manufactured a bizarre and permanent connection to the future Speaker of the House. In 1989, Lukens represented Ohio's 8th Congressional District. But WSYX-TV in Columbus, Ohio, secretly recorded Lukens at a McDonald's speaking with the mother of a teenage girl. Lukens talked to the woman about getting her a government job. He hoped to keep her quiet about his sexual activities with her daughter. Lukens denied any wrongdoing in public. He was charged and later convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The House Ethics Committee launched an investigation. But Lukens declined to step aside. That teed up a three-way Republican primary between Lukens, the former congressman who represented the district, the late Rep. Tom Kindness, R-Ohio, and Boehner. Boehner was a state legislator at the time. The scandal embroiling Lukens created a rare opportunity to head to Washington. As strange as it seems now, Boehner was the least-known of the three Republican candidates in what turned out to be a brutal primary. But Boehner's innate political acumen shone through – decades before he would ascend to the Speaker's suite. Despite the scandal, Lukens remained popular in the district. He had served as the congressman decades earlier and returned to the House when Kindness ran unsuccessfully for the Senate against late-Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, in 1986. So with the Lukens scandal, Kindness wanted his job back. And Boehner hoped to capitalize on the opportunity. Can you top a name like that? "Congressman Kindness." No wonder it was such a challenge for the upstart, future Speaker with the unpronounceable, Teutonic surname. But Boehner won. And even though he felled Lukens and Kindness, it was not a done deal that Boehner would win the general election. Boehner ran against Democrat Greg Jolivette, the mayor of Hamilton, Ohio, the biggest city in the 8th Congressional District. Jolivette was best known for changing the name of "Hamilton," to "Hamilton!" in the 1980s. He also ran Jolly's Drive-Ins in Hamilton. Imagine 1970s hamburger joints where you can order from your car, bedecked in orange. But we're talking about "Cheers" here. Not "Happy Days." Wendt was at the height of his popularity during the summer of 1990 as Boehner and Jolivette barreled toward a general election faceoff. So Wendt appeared on late-night TV on "The Arsenio Hall Show." Look him up, kids. Hall's syndicated show was never going to beat NBC's "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" in the ratings. But the program scored major headlines in 1992, when future President Bill Clinton played saxophone on the show in an effort to appeal to a younger demographic, which gravitated to Hall rather than Carson. Clinton's appearance was a seminal moment in American politics and may have helped him win the election. Certainly the most important political event on Hall's show. Wendt's appearance proved to be the second-most important. Jolivette was Wendt's brother-in-law. He periodically parachuted into Ohio's 8th District to campaign for Jolivette and against Boehner. So Hall asked him about Wendt's political involvement and Jolivette. Wendt proceeded to essentially libel Boehner on the air. Wendt never mentioned Boehner by name. But Wendt mixed up Lukens and his sex scandal with Boehner. On national TV, no less. "The guy he's running against had some problems a while back," said Wendt, referring to Jolivette's opponent, but mixing Boehner up with Lukens. "The guy from the 8th District had some convictions, some felony or a misdemeanor or something. So I think it's time for a change. One thing's for sure, I know, Greg's not going to be a criminal." Hall is an Ohio native. But he was apparently not versed in the Lukens scandal – even though it was a national story and commanded daily headlines. He didn't inquire further or correct Wendt. After all, this was a late-night comedy and variety show. Not "Meet the Press." A publicist for Hall blamed the issue entirely on Wendt, saying the host has no control over "what (guests are) going to say." Things then turned nasty when Boehner's team put out a statement. "We, like a lot of viewers, are confused about the conversation last night. We don't know if they were talking about Congressman Lukens' problems or perhaps the theft complaint filed with the Hamilton (Ohio) Police against Greg Jolivette," said the Boehner campaign. Jolivette's campaign argued this was an old allegation and it wasn't true. They then demanded that Boehner fire Barry Jackson, Boehner's campaign manager. Jackson called the episode "cheap gutter politics." Boehner himself pinned the case of mistaken identity on Wendt. He believed the actor should have been more responsible for what he said on national TV. Boehner didn't fire Jackson. Jackson worked with Boehner for years and later served as his chief of staff when he became House speaker. Wendt's gaffe was not fatal for Boehner. Even though there were nearly as many Democrats as Republicans registered in the 8th District in those days, it had elected Republicans for years. And Boehner vanquished Jolivette 61-39 percent in the general election. The rest is history for Boehner. Fast-forward to today. Boehner took to X after the actor's death. The former Speaker explained how Wendt was the brother-in-law of his opponent and "went on a late-night TV show and said some tough things." Boehner said that Wendt was "confusing me with someone else. He called later to apologize and we had a great conversation. Raising a glass tonight to the man America will always remember as Norm." Or, as they might say on the show, "Cheers."
Telegraph
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Don't fall for Waitrose's mega wine sale – go to the pub instead
It's a temptation more alluring than that of Saint Anthony, more bewitching than the sirens of the Odyssey. Waitrose is offering 25 per cent off its wine and champagne. There's a very decent muscadet for £5.25, an aromatic rosé for £6.75, a seriously posh champagne for £30. Right now, as my metaphorical ship sails within touching distance of the shores of Britain's leading upscale supermarket, I'm breaking free of the ropes tying me to the mast. To misquote Withnail and I: 'I want these bargain wines, I want them here and I want them now.' Yet, to give the metaphor a final push, as I near those shores I spy the jagged shorelines that will break my ship to pieces. And they are the rocks that are wrecking a cornerstone of our hospitality industry. Each glass of moschofilero rosé 2024 that I sip at home is a glass that I won't be sipping at a bar. And it doesn't take too many bargain booze hunters to land a deal, invite friends around for drinks, then literally empty the local tavern. The personal economics are not hard to fathom. For the cost of a single glass at the pub, we can drink a bottle at the kitchen table. For the price of a decent steak, chips, salad and a pud for one – £25 to £30 – we could feed some four people at home. Faced with the logic of these costs, why on earth would we go to the pub? Well, I'll tell you why. The Waitrose offer comes in the week that George Wendt died. You'll remember that Wendt played the barfly Norm Peterson in the sitcom Cheers and the character was loved, simply because there are aspiring Norms in every decent pub around the world. The pub provides a Norm with a place of refuge, the Norm provides the pub with character. The random conversations struck up with Norms, the casual quips, the banter between landlord and the Norm is what makes a pub special and what turns a pint into a soul-nourishing experience. Shut the pub and the Norms have nowhere to go. Loneliness goes from sadness to tragedy, human society diminishes. And that's without making the obvious remarks about the livelihoods that are inevitably lost when pubs close. And they are closing, as I write, at a rate of some 23 per month. In the first half of 2024, in England and Wales, it was over double that number. And one of the reasons behind this obliteration is the affordability of supermarket booze. The latest Waitrose offer has been purposefully dangled before this Bank Holiday weekend, a three-day vacation during which Britain's pub landlords are hoping to make some hay, albeit while the rain pours. But faced with a relentless marketing campaign to stock up on great-value booze from a leading supermarket, how on earth can they compete? Firms like Waitrose can afford to unleash these offers. They have deep pockets, healthy marketing budgets and clever ways to fund such schemes. See that Austrian red Lentsch zweigelt 2022 selling for £7.50 as part of a mixed six-plus bottle deal? You can bet your bottom dollar that the producers themselves are being pressured to fund it. A place on a supermarket shelf may seem like a golden ticket but it comes with listings fees, compulsory marketing spend and sleep-depriving contractual obligations to achieve a weekly sales target. These being some of the dirty secrets of the supermarket industry I learnt during nearly two decades of producing magazines for supermarkets, including Waitrose. That is until I had an unseemly spat with a vegan and had to scuttle off and become your restaurant critic. I remember spending time with a passionate and earnest producer of my favourite Greek assyrtiko wine in Santorini. I recall the pride he had of his Waitrose listing. I shan't forget his despondency when he was told he had to reduce his prices to fund a money-off wine event. And will I succumb to the Pied Piper of Waitrose? Well yes, actually. But also, this Saturday, the landlord of our local pub, The Bear, is willing us in with his annual Mussels Festival. And so to assuage my guilt and because I love his pub, we'll have lunch there and sip some of his in-house brewed Black Bear ale. I urge you to do the same. Head to your local pub, order a drink and strike up a conversation with your local Norm. You, and the world, will be a better place for it.
Forbes
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
There Will Never Be Another Norm Peterson, Because There Are Few Norms
CHEERS — "Cliff's Rocky Moment" Episode 16 — Air Date 01/26/1984 — Pictured: (l-r) John Ratzenberger ... More as Cliff Clavin, George Wendt as Norm Peterson (Photo by NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images) Who was Norm Peterson? You're aging yourself if you know the answer to the question. More realistically, you aged yourself by clicking on an opinion piece with 'Norm Peterson' in the title. About what's been written so far, rest assured that none of it is meant to tell readers about a show that they already knew and loved (again, you clicked on a piece about a fictional individual), and none of it is meant to rehash Norm's many great lines. Others have and will do all this much better. Instead, the purpose of this opinion piece is to make a case that Norm doesn't solely resonate with older readers because of the years when Cheers aired. The speculation is that only older people could and did get Norm in the way that young people simply could not. To see why, think again about Norm's character. The bar where everyone knows his name is his refuge from the day-to-day drudgery of his job as an accountant. Some will say Cheers was a refuge from Vera (the wife we never saw) too, but for 'The Peterson Principle,' the episode in which Norm defended Vera's honor. Norm loved Vera, but not his job. He wasn't a Formula 1 driver, an executive for the Red Sox, or a professor in a city filled with them, Norm was an accountant. He was in a job about which he wasn't passionate. Which is no insight. At the same time, it's not unreasonable to point out that a younger watcher of Cheers wouldn't get Norm in the way that people got him from 1982-93. That's because Hollywood, however imperfect, is a mirror. Which requires a brief digression. Likely more than a few who knew and loved Cheers either read The Great Santini, or saw the film. One reason it resonated is that readers and moviegoers understood Robert Duvall's character. Either they had fathers like him, their fathers had fathers like him, or perhaps both. Fast forward to the present, and while it's no reach to say that young people would really enjoy the novel or film, they wouldn't know Bull Meacham. There's no context. Fathers are nice, and getting nicer by the day. The view here is that the kindness of fathers today is not unrelated to the likelihood that young people today wouldn't get Norm. What they wouldn't get about Norm is his lack of passion for his job. Again, Norm came to Cheers to get away from a job that was work. The view here is that Norm made sense as a character in the '90s, and by extension made sense to viewers, exactly because he didn't like his work. Norm wouldn't make sense today because as I wrote in my 2018 book The End of Work, the nature of work has changed so much, and is set to rapidly change even more. See AI. Precisely because it will render so much of today's work redundant, AI will free exponentially more from work that has to be done in favor of work that people can't not do. There's a huge difference, and the view here is that the misery of past work explains difficult fathers of the past in much the same way that rapidly improving work explains the much easier fathers of today. Which is a comment that there will never be another Norm Peterson not just because George Wendt played him so perfectly. More optimistically, there will never be another Norm because the Norms of the past are more likely to be found happily working than escaping it at the bar.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Paul Sullivan: George Wendt's ‘Super Fans' character endures in a long tradition of on-screen Chicago sports nuts
CHICAGO — George Wendt didn't just play a rabid Chicago sports fan on TV. He was one, albeit not nearly as deluded as his 'Saturday Night Live' character, Bob Swerski, of the 'Super Fans' sketches. Wendt, who died Tuesday at age 76, gained fame for the iconic role of Norm Peterson on the 1982-93 sitcom 'Cheers,' before his popular caricature of Swerski, a Chicago sports fan who enjoyed beer and sausages with his friends while lauding 'Da Coach' Mike Ditka and the Bears and Bulls franchises. Advertisement But Wendt also was an old-school Chicago fan from Beverly who grew up watching the Bears, White Sox and Notre Dame football, the sports pyramid of almost every kid on the South Side or in the south suburbs. When I was the Sox beat writer back in 1996, I met Wendt at a game at what then was called new Comiskey Park and interviewed him for a story on the team's attendance woes. 'I wish I could come up with some cute little sound bite that could explain it, but it's sort of inexplicable,' he said. 'Has it ever been a hot ticket, really? … Maybe you could put it on the free TV versus cable TV thing a few years back (when the Sox moved to pay channel SportsVision in 1982), but now they're on WGN, so I don't know. 'It seems emigres to Chicago, the postgraduates who settled here in the suburbs, north or south, become Cubs fans. It seems like to be a Sox fan, you have to be born and raised on the South Side.' Advertisement Wendt starred in a commercial for the Sox in which he huffed and puffed his way to first base, slid headfirst and was handed a beer. He also narrated a documentary on the old ballpark in 1991 called 'Eighty Years of Celebration — Old Comiskey Park.' The Sox honored Wendt with a tribute on the video board Tuesday night at Rate Field, and team executives acknowledge he was perhaps their third-most famous celebrity fan behind former President Barack Obama and the new leader, Pope Leo XIV, aka 'Da Pope.' Wendt never really spoke like his character on 'Da Bears' sketches, but his succinct delivery of an exaggerated Chicago accent, along with the funny scripts written by fellow 'Super Fan' Robert Smigel, who played Carl Wollarski, have endured for more than three decades. Many forget that the image of the meatball Chicago sports fan was panned by some cultural elitists at the time. Former Chicago Tribune critic Blair Kamin wrote in 1992 that 'the low-brow repartee is bugging Chicago's high-brow temples of culture, perhaps because they feel it indirectly associates them with the blue-collar argot of Mayor Richard Daley's Bridgeport.' Advertisement 'People are going from Al Capone … to 'Da Bears' and 'Da Bulls,' ' Susan Lock, deputy director of the Mayor's Office of Special Events, told Kamin. Lock complained that the success of the Michael Jordan-led Bulls was 'eclipsing all these other wonderful programs that are going on in the city.' Another spokesperson for an organization that promoted Chicago architecture and design complained that 'Da Bears and Da Bulls' skits showed 'Chicagoans to be really dumb. … Our point is that there really are a lot of smart people in Chicago.' Some people clearly lacked a sense of humor in the '90s. Few fan bases from other cities have been portrayed on screen as much as Chicago's, including cameos during director John Hughes' movies, such as Ferris Bueller taking in a few innings of a Cubs game with friends Cameron and Sloane in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' or Hughes adorning the bedroom of John Candy's 'Uncle Buck' with a framed Chicago Sun-Times front page from the Cubs' loss in the 1984 National League Championship Series. The headline simply read: 'OUCH!' Advertisement An episode of 'The Conners' featured actor John Goodman and the Conner family trying to explain their loyalty to the Bears to a smug Green Bay Packers fan. Local sports themes are an occasional topic in 'The Bear,' the most Chicago show of them all. In one episode Oliver Platt's Uncle Jimmy character explains to Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) the scapegoating of Steve Bartman during the Cubs' Game 6 loss to the Florida Marlins in the 2003 NLCS. Bartman was widely ridiculed, but Uncle Jimmy fingered the true culprit: former Cubs shortstop Alex Gonzalez. Another episode of 'The Bear' featured Richie, a White Sox fan, ripping Carmy's brother-in-law Pete (played by St. Charles' Chris Witaske) for 'probably' being a Cubs fan. The age-old narrative of Sox fans accusing Cubs fans of being poseurs who don't know baseball was explored when Richie challenged Pete to name the Cubs first baseman. 'Alfonso Rivas,' he correctly replies, to Richie's chagrin. Maybe no one outside of Chicago got the joke, but we did. The all-time Chicago sports fan character on TV was Bob Newhart's Dr. Bob Hartley in the 1972-78 sitcom 'The Bob Newhart Show.' Hartley and his buddy, Jerry the orthodontist, always were trekking to Bulls, Cubs or Loyola basketball games, or driving to Peoria to watch a closed-circuit telecast of a blacked-out Bears-Packers game. I once referred to Newhart in a 2021 column as 'the indisputable godfather of celebrity Chicago sports fans,' a title he did not take lightly. Advertisement 'I will wear it proudly, until of course it is eclipsed by someone else,' he wrote in a letter. Wendt followed in Newhart's footsteps, popularizing the stereotypical loud, opinionated Chicago sports fan who always seemed assured of victory while ignoring the team's storied failures of the past. Wendt's Bob Swerski had nothing in common with Newhart's brainy psychologist, other than their passion for Chicago's teams. But you can picture them watching a game together, cocktails in hand, while voicing optimism that things eventually will get better, despite evidence to the contrary. It's a Chicago story that never grows old.
