Word: albertism
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...mean, surely you didn't expect a champion headlinemaker like Francis Albert (as he always insisted I call him--or would have, I'm sure, had we ever met) to stop making headlines just because of a minor matter like death. Being dead doesn't mean you can't go right on being controversial. Look at Tom Jefferson, 172 years without a twitch, but he's in hot water. And the FBI hasn't even released his file...
Allegation 1: that Francis Albert dodged the draft. Ridiculous. Everyone knows he was in both the Army and the Navy during World War II. You've seen him singing and dancing in a sailor suit while on shore leave. And you saw the tragic fight he waged while trying to defend Pearl Harbor against Ernest Borgnine. Some may say, "But those were just movies," but that's the point! It was Frank's obligation as a celebrity to keep morale high on the home front. That is what we ask of our stars during wartime, not to become cannon fodder...
Allegation 4: that Frank offered to "snitch on lefties for the FBI," as an unsavory tabloid put it. Again, the baselessness of this charge can be quickly deduced from its failure to jibe with what we know of Francis Albert's character. Leaving aside for the moment the question of how the Rat Pack may have gotten its name, consider: If Frank Sinatra had been angry at communists, would he have sneakily tattled on them? Of course not. He and his pal Jilly Rizzo would have headed for the nearest saloon where the dirty reds hang out, picked...
What then do we conclude about Francis Albert? Two things. One, that he sinned frankly and naturally, which is why he was called Frank Sinatra. Two, our dead celebrities are too valuable a resource to be squandered. As currently constituted, the FBI is not up to the job. Louis Freeh must be replaced immediately--by Matt Drudge...
...DIED. ALBERT GORE SR., 90, former Tennessee Congressman and Senator and father of the Vice President; in Carthage. A key mover behind the interstate highway system and a Southern liberal who took unpopular stands against segregation and the Vietnam War, he once advised his son not to settle for the No. 2 spot, calling it a "dead-end street...