Word: nicholsons
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...next Secretary of Veterans Affairs will have an easy act to follow, according to those for whom the job-holder serves. Jim Nicholson resigned the post Tuesday amid widespread criticism by veterans groups of his 29-month tenure. They urged the President to replace him with a strong advocate who has knowledge of the vast VA bureaucracy, health care and the growing complexity of the military. "We hope for somebody who knows their primary allegiance is to the veteran and not to the Administration or anybody else," said Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America...
...Nicholson's resume had raised allegiance issues from the start. As Republican National Committee chairman during Bush's 2000 election and later as his ambassador to the Vatican, he had less experience in veterans' affairs than most predecessors. In office, Nicholson defended budgets that turned out to be billions of dollars short of wartime needs, grossly underestimated the numbers of soldiers returning with post-traumatic stress disorder and oversaw a backlog of claims that has swelled to nearly 400,000. On Capitol Hill, during a House veterans' affairs committee hearing in May, he was forced to respond to stories...
Bush commended the departing secretary for "innovative efforts," and his department flacks put out a statement that said he "transformed the VA health care system to meet the unique medical requirements" of returning troops. And not all of the VA's critics placed direct blame on Nicholson. "He was a victim of real misplaced priorities of this Administration," said Rep. Bob Filner, a California Democrat who heads the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. "Like every aspect of the war, they didn't plan for the veterans." His defenders point out that the VA, which cares for 5.8 million former military...
...signature eccentrics does not automatically endear Herzog to Hollywood. Though estimable actors from Claudia Cardinale to Tim Roth have graced his films and though in the late '70s he had a project (Fitzcarraldo) that was to be produced by Francis Ford Coppola and star Jack Nicholson, Herzog knows that in the U.S. the big-money guys are as averse to risk as he is addicted...
...keeps doing it, and keeps demanding nearly as much of his actors as of himself. He hypnotized the actors in Heart of Glass. He cast Bruno S., who had spent decades in mental institutions, as the star of The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Stroszek. When Nicholson backed out of Fitzcarraldo, Herzog got Jason Robards, who contracted amoebic dysentery and was forced to quit the shoot. (Mick Jagger, another member of the cast, also had to leave.) Herzog wound up with Klaus Kinski, an actor so extreme and unruly, he was his own volcano. They made five films together; Herzog...