Friday Night at the Morgue

Obituary:  David Horowitz's partner in crime, er, collaborator on some sleazy books about rich families the pair didn't like, Peter Collier, has died.  He was 80 years old.  According to his wife, he had acute myeloid leukemia.

Like Horowitz, he made a pile of money carrying water for the right, but unlike Horowitz, he did write children's books and other types of books that weren't trashing public figures in order to make an ideological point.
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Another obit:  Maria Perego, 95, a woman not that well known, but she created a puppet or whatever you want to call it that became iconic on the Ed Sullivan Show, Topo Gigio, has died.

Topo, despite being a puppet, was much less wooden than Sullivan:

Ms. Perego and two other puppeteers were on hand to impart the movements, and a fourth provided Topo Gigio’s voice — but, Mr. Ilson wrote, Mr. Sullivan had not realized that someone would also have to serve as the puppet’s straight man. Mr. Sullivan, who was famously wooden on camera, stepped into that task for the initial appearance, figuring he would arrange for a professional comic to take over for later ones if the bit caught on.


“It was evident from the very first appearance, however, that the chemistry between Sullivan and Topo Gigio worked extremely well,” Mr. Ilson wrote. “The exchanges between Sullivan and the mouselike puppet revealed another side of the host, a warm and humanizing element.”

Believe me, this was quite an achievement.
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