Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 26, 2009

roland may be smarter than he looks

yyyguy: I agree, he’s not so clueless here.

THEDRIVER said, a while back: just like Ted baxter on the old mtm show. or that news reporter on wkrp in cincinnati.

Les Nessman! “Chai-Chai Rodrigueeze.” “Oh the humanity!” “Godless communist tornadoes!”

oh, man! everybody’s so litigious.

speculate…speculum.

roland’s no shmoe when it comes to self interest.

news reportage is an innocent by-stander.

not for nothing has the ghost of geraldo been conjured

through this thread.

Go for it Roland. Young punks taking over the news.

Les was a great character on WKRP….still like the reruns.

bleeep straight

o.k.

i give up.

dern straight

Remember the WKRP Thanksgiving episode when Les and one of his coworkers dropped live turkeys from a helicopter onto the parking lot at a shopping plaza? Turkey’s don’t fly. That was a good one. Oh yes, Roland. Since he is a cartoon character I really like him.

Wild turkeys CAN fly – but the fat farm-bred variety can’t!

“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could FLY!”

So how much do wild turkeys fly? Don’t remember seeing them overhead migrating. They must hang around all year. Still, don’t remember them in the air. Look! It’s a bird! It’ s a plane! It’s a turkey!

I can report factually that wild turkeys fly high enough to take out a car windshield.

They’re sort of like pheasants… they live on the ground, but they roost in trees and don’t migrate. They can fly short distances… short, but long enough to make it real hard to find the flock again after your first shot spooks the bunch!

And yeah, that’s the most intelligent thing I’ve heard Roland say in literally years! Didn’t know he had it in him.

Great! I want to know about the firey headset too. When did that happen?

I think it was during Desert Storm.

Don’t fall for the bait! Axe him now!

worked for Abercrombie and Fitch. Learned that the ugly are not a protected class. Fire away!

Consider the cost of the settlement a small price to pay to get rid of him!

i don’t remember roland’s engulfed war wounds either.

insofar as the turkeys flying debate,

i picture a lawyer standing next to an ostrich

intoning’your honour,my client is not a flight risk.”

hahahaha.ha?

The WKRP turkey drop stands out in my mind as the funniest scene on a TV series, ever.

The best part is they did it the old fashioned way, without a bunch of CGI special effects turkeys - it was just voices over the radio, if I recall

The coworker was Mr. Carlson, the station manager, whose mother was the station owner.

I thought the dropped turkeys were frozen.

no, they were live turkeys. Herb Tarlek and Arthur Carlson did the drop and Les Nessman did the remote report from whatever mall it was. The voice over mentioned above was the other characters back at the station listening to his remote describing the carnage and, yes, i agree that it’s the funniest sequence i’ve ever seen on a tv show. what i miss about it is how they had to strip out most of the music because of licensing issues, ruining a large part of a lot of the episodes

Turkeys do indeed fly short distances, but not out of helicopters from any sort of height. Don’t even think of interrupting my reruns of WKRP, the Honeymooners or Sgt. Bilko.

SilverScream: As I remember it, the line was “Good morning fellow babies.. this is Dr. Johnny Fever coming to you with more music, and Les Nessman” And then two beats before the light bulb goes on, and Les frowns at Johnny.