Robert Osborne, RIP
By 
The much beloved host of Turner Classic Movies is dead at the age of 84. Osborne is the kind of person no one can really say anything bad about. TCM is probably Ted Turner’s second greatest gift to the world (outside of his massive conservation efforts in the West). It’s certainly a better gift than the Wolf Blitzer News Network. But Osborne became the real face of TCM, bringing great movies to the broad public without commercials and in an always classy style. He provided great knowledge and great love to the films.
It’s also interesting to me that he came out of Colfax, Washington to become what he became. Colfax is a pretty awful town in southeastern Washington that mostly subsists on wheat farming. It’s true that it is probably the only town in the United States that is presently festooned with flags showing the face of Grant’s corrupt Vice-President Schuyler Colfax, so that’s exciting. But these stories of individuals escaping the deepest recesses of rural America to live these incredibly urbane and interesting lives is interesting.