Tina Dupuy

This is from the March 2011 issue of Editor and Publisher.

By Rob Tornoe

An irreverent yet unassuming humorist, Tina Dupuy, syndicated by Cagle Cartoons, has been making waves in newspapers across the country since starting her weekly column back in 2010. An obsession with famed San Francisco Chronicle satirist Art Hoppe led Dupuy down the path of journalism, and her experience as a stand-up comedian has infused Dupuy’s strong liberal viewpoints with a sharp sense of humor.

What’s the appeal of writing a weekly op-ed column in an age of instant news and analysis?

I think the op-ed page is where discourse still has a chance. It’s not barking heads on TV or snarking heads on blogs. It’s still a place where you have 700 words to make your case about a current issue. Readers who wouldn’t otherwise identify with your political party will still spend the time to hear you out. I get tons of emails telling me they like my writing and never agree with me, which makes the op-ed page a place that transcends all the artificial polarization we’re led to believe in.

What types of columns usually garner the largest reaction from your readers?

I just did a column about how government workers are being treated like illegal aliens. Their salaries and their pensions are being portrayed as a drain on the economy as opposed to the banksters who caused the crash. The response from people who’ve faithfully worked in the government, some for 30 years or more and now feel like President Obama has thrown them under the bus, was heartbreaking.

You had an interesting column following the Arizona shootings calling out Sarah Palin for acting in her own interest. What caused you to take that angle with your column?

I woke up at 4 a.m. and I was angry. I was on Twitter as the shooting was being reported and Palin was the second or third public figure to release a statement about it.

The worst part about having a public platform is being accountable for everything you say. I have the constitutional right to say it and you have the constitutional right to challenge me on it. But Palin thinks her free speech means immune speech and nothing she ever says is fair game for criticism. She’s been using the language of violent revolution. The people she endorsed during the midterms were, too. Then someone takes a legal gun – literally takes up arms against the government and she becomes a generic politician giving her condolences passively on her Facebook page. It was cowardice. Either stand up and say, “Yeah! That’s what we’re talking about!” Or, “I’m horrified to think my calls for shootings were taken seriously.”

With emotions running so high, what type of reactions did you receive after the piece ran in newspapers?

Ninety-seven percent grateful and positive: Mostly from women, conservative and liberal, who feel all the attention given to Palin is condescending to them. Of course, every time I’ve written about Palin, someone inevitably writes me and says that I’m just jealous because Palin is prettier than I am. Which less of an insult to me and more of an insult to Palin’s “assets” as a public “intellectual.”

One constant theme in your columns is a takedown of the cable news industry, and Fox News in particular. Why is it such an important subject for you?

It stems from my extreme disappointment with the medium. We now have the most cable news channels ever in our history, and yet we have the least amount of investigative journalism possible. Instead it’s just the same five moderately informed people talking over each other 24-hours a day. Don’t call it news – it’s just topical entertainment. It’s chatting about the day’s events. If you’re leading with a Kardashian – or a Snooki – it’s not news.

What’s the most important thing happening in the country that you feel is completely overlooked by the news media?

The poor. Since the middle class saw a lost decade during the Bush Administration, we’ve stopped talking about the people below the middle class. We were almost able to talk about homelessness when a man with a golden voice was panhandling. Instead, TV news decided to try to find other homeless people with undiscovered talents as if that was the point of the story. The solution to homelessness suddenly became a Lana Turner at Schwab’s Pharmacy fantasy.

We have 43.6 million people living in poverty in what is still the richest country in the world. That’s a large group of silent and forgotten citizens. And the media treats them like they’re a curiosity – like a street person who can sing – instead of nearly a sixth of the population.

Tom Ferguson was an actor. You’ve never heard his name. You wouldn’t have recognize him if you sat next to him at a restaurant. He was a B-movie character actor. I used to introduce him as the consummate redneck sheriff in at least five movies with “bikini” in the title. It was an exaggeration, of course. He was only in two: Bikini Hoe-Down and Bikini Drive-In…only one of them as the sheriff.

I also used to tell a story about when Tom was broke and delivering pizzas in the Valley. With their order in hand he asked the Blockbuster clerks to type his name into the computer. “Do you have any of my movies here?” He asked in that distinctly southern American Spirit baritone of his. The clerks said they did, in fact, have some movies Tom was in. In my version he autographs the pizza box after they’ve refused to tip him well. In reality, he just announced he was shocked his movies – the kind of movies he was in – would be at Blockbuster. This gave him a twinge of satisfaction and then he left.

He liked my version better. He never repeated it but he never stopped me from telling it.

He worked in independent films made with action footage “lifted” from other films. He starred in Biohazard: The Alien Force…a sequel. He did direct-to-video movies that were hits overseas. He acted in features with budgets a quarter the size of low-end Super Bowl spots.

And he loved every minute of it.

Born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1946, Tom was one of the first in the tsunami of Baby Boomers to follow. His parents had three children; Tom was the youngest. His mother was plagued by depression in a time before Paxil. She killed herself when Tom was 7 years old. He often wondered if this traumatic event didn’t somehow trigger to his own manic depression.

Yes. Tom was “crazy.” That’s what he called it. He was even certified by the state. Shock treatments and everything. Crazy. He wrote about it in a one-man show he titled Reverend Tommy’s Electroshock Revival. “There are worse things than being crazy. It beats being a starving child in Ethiopia or a transvestite in an Italian family,” he quipped. He talked about his alcoholism. He bragged that he was the only person in the entire state of Alabama to ever get arrested for drunk jogging. “When I quit drinking they quit locking me up,” he used to testify.

In spite of his mental illness, Tom had a normal-from-the-outside life. He was a natural salesman. He worked at a bank, introducing the South to credit cards in the ’70s. He owned a car lot, an ice cream parlor and later an arcade named Fergie’s Fun House. He was Florida’s Chamber of Commerce ambassador for the state. He had two failed marriages. Two accomplished children.

Tom always wanted to be an actor. Once his children were grown, he moved to Los Angeles. Yes, he’d been in some movies already in Florida. But like scores of others he wanted to be in Hollywood. And so he was.

“I just want to finish good,” he’d say as his dark brown eyes became dewy with emotion.

That happened a lot. “I cry at card tricks,” he’d say.

I met Tom at a coffee shop when I was 20. He was 52. We just had a rapport. We shared a sardonic sense of humor like it was telepathy. We called each other “best friend” even though he looked like and was often mistaken for my grandfather. I can’t explain it. We just were. The last time I was able to talk to him, Tom had suffered a brain injury from a fall. He’d been in a coma. He was awake in the hospital but his mental faculties were in and out. I asked him if he knew why we were best friends.

“No. Why?” He asked.

“Because I think I’m 40 and you think you’re 40 – so we’re the same age.”

Tom stopped. His eyes became wide. “That’s fucking PROFOUND!” And then he went back to muttering about ice cream.

It was, indeed, profound. And love is profound. As is friendship.

As I write this, the world has been without Tom Ferguson for nearly 12 bleak hours. His heart gave out this morning while in the hospital after his fall. Grief is like a rake I keep stepping on. It hits me in the face and I’m stunned.

We cry and mourn for actors we’ve never met all the time. There are montages and remembrances for those whom we are not in any way personally involved with. We feel loss and sadness at their passing. They were actors in things we’ve seen. I’m tempted to name drop in an annoying Hollywood way that would surely irk Tom just to make his death seem more monumental – more jarring to strangers. He was a stand in for Donald Sutherland. His roommate was Brittany Murphy’s father. He befriended Brett Butler. He was in a film with Flashdance’s Jennifer Beals. He was in the cast of Dolly Parton’s short-lived variety show.

There’s one story – a Hollywood tale that sums up the humanity of Tom Ferguson: A couple years ago Tom was at a 7-Eleven. A homeless guy offered to clean his windows for some spare change. “They usually just smear the dirt around. So I said, ‘I’ll give you five bucks not to wash my windows, how’s that?’” The two struck up a conversation. The homeless man was Ron Turbeville. He wrote the film Buster and Billie in the 1970’s. It allowed him to work steadily as a script doctor for many years until booze and eventually crack took it all away. The two men became close. Ron used Tom’s address to receive his WGA pension and social security checks. Tom was not grandiose about this. He didn’t think he was going to save Ron from the streets. Ron had emphysema, Hepatitis C, no teeth and had resigned to sleep in a freeway adjacent park – Tom believed he was just spending time with an old guy awaiting the inevitable call from the city morgue.

Scientists should study how Turbeville is still alive – how it’s possible he outlived Tom. They should go find the bridge he’s under and cart him off to a lab.

Anyway, in that relationship are two Hollywood sagas much more common than the ones leading Entertainment Tonight: Ron’s is one of luck and loss, his penance being obscurity. Tom’s is one of quiet redemption, love and simply “finishing good.”

Tom Ferguson was a brilliant actor and embodied what’s best about our species. His death means the world’s median level of compassion has declined. It’s a loss for us all.

I seem to be getting a lot of traffic from the wikipedia page about the Children of God and I just figured out why – there’s a documentary about it on MSNBC right now.

Anyway, how does one come into this world in a fanatical religious cult and then end up a humorist? I ask, how can you be brought into this world in a fanatical religious cult and NOT end up a humorist? My choices were that or a mental patient. Not that the two are mutually exclusive. And not that there’s anything wrong with being a humorist.
I wrote a press release in case you’re curious.

Cheers.

Okay, this site was down due to some unspecified tech issues.

I blame it on gay marriage in California. That and the spike in tux rentals. It’s an epidemic.

Anyway, the site is back up. I am diligently blogging daily at Mediabistro’s FishbowlLA. Feel free to stop by and say hi.

The AMPTP has launched a new site explaining their side of the conflict with the Hollywood writers.

Stand tough brass. Don’t let the little guys pick on you!

Heya Folks!

I’m now blogging…sometimes at The LA Daily News’ blog Friendly Fire. Stop by and have a look.

Cheers.

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