Bucky backs Trump to the Hilt on the Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show

Click to hear Fox ride the Trump Train on Jesse Lee Peterson's show

Trump is a Stand-up Guy on the Stump, and his Throngs Love It

Americans are crazy about Donald Trump.

As am I, so nutty I listen to just about every Trump speech on my long California commute.

Nothing on the air is more entertaining.

Aside from Build The Wall and We’re Gonna Knock The Hell Out Of ISIS — which ignite seismic cheers — Trump’s lines lasso fans with the levity of a stand-up comic.

“Folks, what’s more fun than a Trump rally?” he likes to bark while a disrupter gets hauled off.

The answer is in the numbers. Over 30,000 fans have jammed venues in Alabama, with 20,000 packing Mississippi, Oklahoma, Florida and Texas and 10,000 in Ohio, Vermont, New Hampshire, Iowa, Illinois, Georgia, Arizona, South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada, Michigan and Missouri.

Why do so many like him? Because Trump speaks nationalist — the language of America first. Stop illegal immigration. Hold off the Muslim/terror flood. Treat veterans right. Lower taxes to keep companies in this country. Rework trade deals to bring back jobs.

City Cracks

Trump speaks New York, full of his trademark “that I can tell you.” He mixes gut with gag:

“I was watching the news a little while ago and one of the commentators, who I’m not particularly fond of — but these are minor details.”

“I don’t care if you’re dying. I don’t care if your wife just said she’s leaving you. Get out and vote.”

“I carried all the groups: tall people, short people, fat people, skinny people.”

“I’ll have the toughest people make our deals, guys who are so disgusting you’d never want to have dinner with them. Who cares?”

“First of all, I don’t believe anything Telemundo says.”

“Obama better be glad I didn’t run last time. He would’ve been a one-term president.”

“You know why we didn’t build the wall before? We couldn’t get environmental approval. Woulda hit a toad, maybe a snake. You think China got an environmental impact statement before digging up the South China Sea? I don’t think so.”

The Trumpet belts it all out without a script. Without teleprompters. He takes to the podium amid the hysteria, pulls out a piece of paper with notes, says “Oh wow” and riffs.

Comedic, Caustic Candidate

Other highlights on the Trump Trail of speeches and press conferences that started in June and will climax with his presidential victory Nov. 8.

Cutting off a long question from a radio guy: “No one’s listening to you.”

Dealing with his ground game: “We’re working hard on our ground forces.”

Answering a New Hampshire pacifist’s whine about our atom-bombing of Japan: “Do you remember this thing called Pearl Harbor? It turned out we were stronger, meaner and smarter.”

On a business backing from months before: “Carl Icahn endorsed me the other day.”

On a laudatory cover story from two months before: “You really have to read this week’s Time magazine.”

On the budget: “President Obama is a lousy negotiator with everybody except when he deals with the Republicans. Then he gets everything he wants.”

On Ben Carson: “How many people has he hired, a couple of nurses?”

On Mexican leaders bashing his border plan: “The wall just got 10 feet higher.”

On the crummy Iran deal: “The ayatollah would never be called the supreme leader by Trump. That I can tell you.”

On the past two elections: “McCain lost, Romney lost. I said, ‘The next time I’m just gonna do it myself.’ ”

“Sometimes there’s just no better word than the word stupid.”

“Most politicians want your money. They say: ‘I’ll take anything. Give us an undershirt!’ ”

“If you’re not gonna vote for me, don’t vote!

Chris Matthews: “What are your tools (to get things done)?” Trump: “Me.”

“Who’s gonna pay for the wall?” Crowd: “Mexico!”

Praising Ann Coulter’s best-seller “Adios, America”: “You have to go out and buy her book ‘Adios, Amigo.’ ”

On hitting Hillary with Bill’s philandering: “Believe me, they had a rough weekend after that. If they were even together.”

Analyzing Marco Rubio’s ragged try at trashing Trump: “Hostility is not for everyone.”

Prime Time For Primaries

The March 15 Trump Show turned into the funniest victory act since Costello beat Abbott.

“Nobody has ever, ever in the history of politics received the kind of negative advertising that I have. … By the way, mostly false. I wouldn’t say 100%, but about 90%.”

“Then a commercial comes on. The worst commercial, and I’m with these wonderful people from Cadillac and all these top executives, and I’m saying, ‘Look over there! Look! Don’t watch it. Don’t. You don’t want to watch it.’ I’m saying, ‘Isn’t the grass beautiful? Look! Look! Don’t watch.’ ”

The genteel Palm Beach audience howled and stood with fervor. Trump towered again.

Bucky Fox is an editor, author and columnist in Southern California.

Trump Towers Over Presidential Field

Let’s take a rare journalistic moment to answer definitively:

Will Donald Trump win the presidency?

Yes.

Good. Got that out of the way. No dialing a focus group. Tell it straight.

Like Trump at the Houston debate earlier this year, when asked whether Hispanics’ negative opinion makes him unelectable: “No.”

Like Trump recently on if he would consider David Petraeus as veep. “No.” The billionaire spotlights the general as unfairly hammered vs. what Hillary Clinton is skirting. Still, the Iraq War hero has too much legal baggage.

Regarding that vice presidential pick, would Trump seek a fellow biz type or go with a politician? “Politician.” The tycoon knows he has to close deals with Congress.

How about dunking terrorists to make them talk? Again, Trump gets to the point. As opposed to every other prez contender.

Mideast savages are “chopping off heads and they’re saying to themselves, ‘Can you believe how weak and pathetic the Americans are?’ So they’re asking Ted Cruz: What do you think of waterboarding? ‘Uh, uh, what do I say? I want to be politically correct. Waterboarding is so terrible … even though they’re chopping off heads,’ ” Trump taunted in Las Vegas in February, the day before nailing down Nevada. “He couldn’t answer the question. He was a mess. Then they said to me, ‘What do you think of waterboarding?’ I said I think it’s great, but I don’t think we go far enough. It’s true.”

Bold, Brash, Beloved

Answers. Trump rattles them off fearlessly. He doesn’t consult pollsters. He goes with his gut. Which is one reason he’s wildly popular — dominating the Drudge debate poll with 57% — and on the way to delivering the inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2017, as the 45th president.

As Ann Coulter says, President Trump will be halfway through that speech as the Republican Party keeps debating his viability.

Don’t limit that hedge to GOP bureaucrats. Throw in 99% of TV pundits: Karl Rove, Brit Hume, George Will, Bill Kristol, Rich Lowry, Steve Hayes, Charles Krauthammer, S.E. Cupp, Mike Smerconish, Ben Ferguson, Jeff Toobin.

They share a maddening trait — smug, glib and handsomely paid while belittling Trump’s odds of winning. Even though that’s all he’s done while building a titanic real estate empire.

The Right Side

About the only media types who had it right from the start last summer were Coulter, Jeff Lord, Charles Hurt, Michael Savage and Joe Scarborough. Let’s also not forget Fox Sports Radio’s Andy Furman, who sounded the Trumpet on his morning show, with sidekick Mike North lauding him: “If I bet on all those other guys who said Trump had no shot, I’d be broke.”

The smart ones see a runaway Trump Train, with Los Angeles radio host Doug McIntyre — hardly a Don fan — conceding after Nevada’s rout, “Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination.”

No “maybe.” No “very well could.” Trump will claim the GOP trophy in July in Cleveland. And win it all in November.

Why?

1. Issues. Trump owns immigration, trade, Muslim terror, self-funding his campaign to ignore special interests. As CNN’s sharpest panelist, Kayleigh McEnany, said after Tuesday’s Vegas jackpot, “Donald Trump isn’t so much ideological as America first.”

2. Moxie. Trump has it in spades.

Responding to ex-Mexican President Felipe Calderon saying his country wouldn’t pay for the Trump Wall: “It just got 10 feet taller.”

Lauding his supporters: “68% would not leave under any circumstances. I think that means murder. I think it means anything.”

Analyzing Nevada’s sweeping triumph: “I won with tall people, I won with short people, fat people, skinny people. I won with highly educated, OK educated and practically not educated at all.”

Hitting back at a protester: “I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried off on a stretcher, folks. … I’d like to punch him in the face.”

The Trumpet

Juxtapose all that with Tim Pawlenty, whose wilting beside Mitt Romney in the GOP’s 2012 debate cycle finished the former Minnesota governor. Pawlenty just endorsed Marco Rubio. Enough said.

Then there’s John Kasich, whose benign line about “many women who left their kitchen” to volunteer for him decades ago caused a tiny PC tremor – for which the Ohio governor APOLOGIZED. Even Trump detractor Matt Lewis said, “This is exactly why Trump is so popular. This is political correctness run amok.”

CNN’s Brianna Keilar is supposedly so shocked by Trump’s takes, she wondered, “Does this pay off, this kind of language?”

Yes.

Bucky Fox is an editor, author and columnist in Southern California.

Ron Baskin, The Regal Lion

The sad call came from my buddy Brett Miles.

He was crying over the loss of a fellow pal and Heidelberg High Lion for the ages:

Ron Baskin.

If Billy Joel sings it right, that only the good die young, Ron fits the ONLY tag. He was good and young at 60.

Good man.

Good dad.

Good athlete.

Make that great sportsman.

Brett recalled how Ron quarterbacked the Patrick Henry Village Browns to dominance in youth football.

And how once they pulled on the Lion blue & gold, Ron shifted to halfback, with Brett calling signals.

And so it continued with the Gold Dust Twins, as Ben Abrams cheered in Stars & Stripes, the GI newspaper covering the American military community in Europe.


Baskin and Miles turned HHS' varsity into a football juggernaut from 1970 to 1972, with Ron returning and rushing the Lions to a Hall of Fame triumph over Frankfurt in their sophomore season.

Baskin-Miles trumped Baskin-Robbins with ice-cold precision on the basketball court.

Ron & Brett made the Defense Department school system's cinder their personal track.

The memories overwhelmed Brett at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., a marathon from Ron's Dallas but steps from the mental picture of glory days.

Others from Heidelberg High weighed in. Karen Kalina, down the road from Ron in Austin, wept over her dear friend. Debra Ford-Robertson wrote endearing thoughts from California.

Also by the Pacific, I'm reminiscing about a wonderful day in our wonderland - Heidelberg, Germany - where Ron married HHS sweetheart Clivia. The couple killed it on that wedding afternoon in the Holy Ghost Church three decades ago - groom snappy in Army officer dress blues, bride in a gown straight out of Vogue.

You knew they would produce gorgeous children, and they did: Margeaux and Tai.

Now Lions hither and yon are flooding Facebook with their tears upon Ron sister Monica's shocking news.

It came on Friday the 13th, when Paris also died.

Not an easy time.

The least we can do is salute the Rock that was Ron.

Bucky Fox is a Heidelberg American High School loyalist, class of 1973, who writes, edits and suns in Southern California.

Pat Buchanan, A Hero In Nixon's Moon Shot

Pat Buchanan takes no prisoners.

His aim is to defend America's greatness. And if blacks, Jews, Muslims, Mexicans, queens and Bush backers (I'm one of them) get their feelings hurt during his riddling, tough.

Such shots got Buchanan fired from MSLSD (Mark Levin's twist on the lefty network), which was fine news for Pat fans. Now he ended up on my namesake channel, Fox News, where we could catch the deepest, cleverest commentator in the biz. All is good in righty land.

Here's the truth among libs: They pay attention to him. Why? Because Pat Buchanan can flat-out write. His prose is entertaining like no one in the newspaper, magazine, blog arena. Period. Paragraph.

Those last two words are stolen from Pat. Along with a grasp of geography, names, politics and history like no one else in the arena (check out his appearance on Peter Robinson's online show "Uncommon Knowledge" for dead-on analysis you can't turn off), Buchanan has old-school lines that make his columns and books sing. Such as: "headed for the tall grass." Meaning pussed out.

No wonder Richard Nixon hired him. He found a thoroughbred and rode his speechwriting and brilliant ideas from 1966 all the way to the presidency two years hence.

The stunning gallop is captured in Pat's new book, "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority."

Being the Nixon and Buchanan cheerer that I am, I bought the tome the minute it went on sale. And a ticket to see the man who in his 20s had the guts to join the former vice president when all anyone else saw was a loser of 1960 and '62.

During what Nixon called his wilderness years pretending to be a lawyer in New York, Buchanan was just about the whole staff. And he talked all about it in a riveting speech and Q&A at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., 20 minutes from my home, on July 21.

I could've listened to Pat for a week straight. The man is Mount Rushmore compelling. As it was, I had his ear and fun delivery during the book signing. Told him my sister lives in his McLean, Va., neighborhood. And asked what he thought of Ted Agnew the man. Pat said he got along great with him, only it was too bad the vice president took cash in the basement. Ah, well. Let others wallow.

So the book. Just finished it and gotta say it's right up there with fellow Nixon scribe Bill Safire's "Before the Fall" as the coolest political productions you could ever read.

Favorite takes:

* Quoting Murray Kempton of the New York Post: "One finally decides that he must have manufactured a splendid car at American Motors. You got to have a great product for George Romney to sell it."

* "The cruelty of the commentary on Romney continued unabated. Gene McCarthy was quoted as saying that in Romney's case a full brainwashing had been unnecessary, as 'a light rinse would have sufficed.' "

"Years later, after I had dropped off a speech draft in the Oval Office, the President read it and muttered, 'For God's sake, Buchanan, get some lift into it!' As I reached the door, he said loud enough to hear, 'Why can't I get speechwriters like Wilson's?' Not until I was outside the Oval Office did I retort, sotto voce, 'Wilson wrote his own speeches.' "

* "Rockefeller said he had written an affidavit to have his name removed from the Oregon ballot. 'It is my complete conviction that this is the truest service I now can give to my party and my country.' Dwight and I rushed to the bedroom. 'He's not running!' 'It's the girl,' said Nixon." Meaning a Rocky affair.

* "(Martin Luther) King had moved so far out of the mainstream that black columnist Carl Rowan had penned an attack on him in Reader's Digest. Bill Buckley wrote that King was becoming 'the Harold Stasson of the civil rights movement.' That there would be a national holiday for King was unimaginable in that spring of 1968, as would the claim by 21st-century conservatives that Dr. King was somehow one of us."

* "The pattern was set. Violence by whites resisting integration merited national coverage and thunderous condemnation. Black-on-white violence called for reticence and perspective, an understanding of the 'root causes.' "

* "Nixon's advice went down to the minutest detail. When on the road, 'never pass a men's room without going in,' he advised me, which I found to be sage counsel. Once when a congressman put in the Congressional Record remarks insulting Nixon, I wrote a letter that was just short of challenging him to a duel. Nixon told me to drop it. 'Ignore him,' Nixon said. 'He's congressman.' What he meant is that an ex-vice president does not engage a congressman. That would diminish us and elevate him."

* "Among his finer performances in 1968 had been the one before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, where Nixon had opened himself up for questioning by the editors after Governor Rockefeller bored them with one of his ponderous speeches on more money for the cities."

* "On the plane back, the writers were called up to the front. Nixon seemed relaxed, confident, fatalistic about the outcome. After the previous evening's jolting remark on the telethon about down to the 'nut-cutting,' he went into a disquisition on 'sheep fries' and 'lamb fries' — testicles, how they were obtained, and how delicious some folks thought they were."

Marvelous stuff from Pat. Now the man who led the Buchanan Brigades through his own primary runs of 1992 and '96 has new marching orders: a book on the Vietnam War-ending, all-volunteer-Army-starting, Israel-rescuing, moon-landing Nixon presidency of 1969 to '74.


Bucky Fox is an author and editor in Southern California.

Finally, Fox TV Follows Fox (Me)

It's on!

Fox Sports 1 kicked off over the weekend. Nine years after I pushed for it in my very first effort for TheColumnists.com.

OK, so it's a decade late. But who's counting? Now flabby ESPN has competition. Another network is going round the clock with sports. And you better believe Fox will live up to our name. Just look at Fox News. It's No. 1 on the cable front. I'll bet Fox 1 carries that number right past the Mother Ship, as its old mate Dan Patrick calls it.

Here's what I predicted in January 2004:

If Fox television were related to me, I’d offer brotherly advice: Give ESPN a fight.

Right now, Fox’s sports channels look like twerps against ESPN’s muscle.

It’s an embarrassing mismatch. In the blue corner: Fox Sports Net’s lightweight graphics, jingles and broadcasters. In the red corner: ESPN’s slick logos, tunes and talent.

The Fox picture looks even weaker when its Fox Sports Net2 takes on ESPN2 and ESPN Classic.

It’s a rout. Fox hardly puts up its dukes against ESPN’s barrage.

I’m speaking for America’s fans when I say: Enough. It’s time to rumble.

ESPN is simply too big for its britches. It needs a good, clean clocking to give sports TV a healthier look so we fans can twist the Fox News creed into good use: You Report, We Decide.

We have no decision these days. It’s all ESPN all the time: covering baseball, football, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, soccer, boxing, bowling, cheerleading, darts, pool, poker. It could squeeze in bridge if it weren’t for motocross.

When it catches its breath, the network features historical athletes and games. And to make sure you know ESPN is everywhere, Chris Berman surfaces at every event from the Super Bowl to the Stanley Cup Finals to golf’s U.S. Open to the World Series.

We watch it all because ESPN does it better than anyone. It obviously spends a mint to make every presentation look and sound professional, Berman’s hideous comb-over notwithstanding.

Take a typical morning in the college football season. ESPN broadcasts Northwestern-Purdue, and ESPN2 has Utah-Air Force. Both football games look and sound like major events.

The options? Fox Sports Net has women’s college volleyball, Fox Sports Net2 some puff piece on Pac-10 women’s basketball. Both have the feel of a high school class project. It’s as if Fox threw in the towel: We can’t do it like ESPN, so let’s not even try.

Enough. Buck up, Fox. Get in shape and give ESPN the battle we fans want.

We want good old American competition, which always makes for better men and products.

McDonald’s has Burger King. Nike has Reebok.

Derek Jeter has Nomar Garciaparra. Donovan McNabb has Rush Limbaugh.

They’re all better because of the heat.

Without a race to be best, you get stagnation. Which is why you stand in line forever at the post office.

If Microsoft really had another firm breathing down on it, you’d see computers turn on as quickly as TVs. If Shaq had to face serious centers every game, he’d get in shape and whip the Lakers toward 70 wins.

It took Fox’s leap into the NFL in 1994 to spark changes in TV coverage. The network’s fresh thinking produced the constant score block in the corner of your screen. Later, TV came up with running scores from around the league and the yellow first-down line.

Remember the old days when you’d ask the guy watching the game what the score was? Without competition, CBS would still be keeping the score to itself until it went to a break.

ESPN looks like it’s doing everything new and improved. But without a lean and mean network across the street, ESPN can only get fat and happy — and easily dismiss changes that would help fans.

ESPN once faced a contender. CNN’s “Sports Tonight” had top talent in Fred Hickman, Nick Charles, Vince Cellini and Jim Huber and gave fans a fun alternative to ESPN’s “SportsCenter” in the ’80s and ’90s. But no longer.

A Fox jab at ESPN would jar the Disney baby into smarter decisions, such as get out of the pompous drama (“Playmakers”) business and replace college football color man Mike Gottfried with a live body.

Fox can do it. Its main network proves it can stand up to anyone in sports. Fox’s NFL pregame show is No. 1 because James Brown’s team is sharp and funny, Jillian Barberie gorgeous and the whole package electric. Fox’s World Series coverage clicked because of edgy graphics, fine camera work and the Joe Buck-Tim McCarver combo. Buck is the brightest announcer this side of Bob Costas. McCarver says something you never thought of every inning.

So what must Fox do to compete with ESPN every day?

Brother, do these and you’re off the ropes:

. Rename the sports channel Fox Too. The current loser, Fox Sports Net, is too cumbersome. What is that Net? Probably Network, but it could be a tennis Net for all we know. Fox Too is short and fun. So the franchise would involve Fox, Fox News Channel and Fox Too.

. Shift Fox News boss Roger Ailes to sports. He’s the George Steinbrenner of TV. A tough winner. Ailes made Fox News Channel exciting to watch. That’s why it miraculously decked CNN. Now have Ailes pull a Roone Arledge, who three decades ago masterminded ABC’s “Monday Night Football” and then turned ABC News into a heavyweight. If Ailes worked in the sports corner, Fox Too would come out swinging.

. Hire Suzy Kolber back from ESPN. And make her the face of Fox Too. She’s the quickest and most screen-friendly broadcaster at ESPN, yet way underused since they hired her away from Fox. That’s what happens when you have a monopoly. Steal her, jack up salaries, and the talent will flow Fox’s way.

. Fix the sets. Not to mention the aforementioned logos, graphics and music. Fox Sports Net’s “National Sports Report” died because it lacked in all those categories. Its follow-up shows look and sound just as sophomoric. This is an area Ailes would fix faster than a Roy Jones uppercut.

Get off the canvas, Fox. Honest TV sports competition — not to mention our name — depends on it.

OK, so Fox Sports 1 hasn't corralled Kolber. Yet. It does feature Erin Andrews, the knockout of Pac Man proportions. The photo above clinches it.

Uh, we can live with that.

Good for you, Fox.

Bucky Fox is an author and editor in Southern California.

Infatuated With TV's 'Loving Leah'

The old Catskills comedian Milt Kamen had a routine about Western movies. He loved them. You could kick back, relax. The good guy was killing the bad guy. End of story. 

In particular, Kamen applauded "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral": "I saw it before, but that's why I went. Because a lot of times I want to know what's coming. I don't want any strain, nothin'. I just want to sit, you know. Because the world is changing all around us, and at least that stays steady." 

Exactly my sentiments with Hallmark Channel. Its movies are as predictable as a first-date rejection. And I devour them.

No torture. No treachery. No complications. Just a kiss at the end with understood married bliss forever.

You can take the terror of "A Clockwork Orange" and repugnance of "Pulp Fiction."

Give me "The Magic of Ordinary Days" and "Loving Leah."

Both are Hallmark landmarks living off the channel's formula: Man and woman hook up, don't realize how great they have it, then wake up in time for happily ever after. 

Hey, I'm 58.  I don't need a heart attack. 

So I watch these two favorites ad infinitum.

I'm so into "The Magic of Ordinary Days," I get a kick out of the little country tune when Keri Russell's Livy character drives off with her antique find.

I'm so hooked on "Loving Leah," I can't get enough of the kitchen kissing, the hottest scene of all time. 

And here I am laughing at my sister Pam for once watching "Leave It to Beaver" reruns on a loop. And my wife, Maria, for focusing on The Filipino Channel. At least they catch variety. I'm on a broken record. And reveling in it. 

Hallmark's "The Magic of Ordinary Days" is tops enough — yet just below the book.  The show made me check out Ann Creel's novel, and it's a doozy. It packs American, Colorado, European and WWII history alongside real people issues and the forced-marriage-yields-to-ardor theme into a wonderfully written book. The metaphors alone are worth turning the page. Seriously, Kreel's work left me with one adjective: jealous. You can only look up at her talent. 

Then there's "Loving Leah."

If I watch it anymore, it'll pass "Dr. No" on my DVR replay run. To say I'm addicted makes a mockery of monthly pancakes. I watch "Loving Leah" once a week. And can't recall what life was like before the flick filled our living room flat screen in late June.

It's so bad, I'm consumed by Jeff Beal's music setting up scenes. His effort landed an Emmy for a reason. The melodies capture each moment — the memorial, the comedy, the sorrow, the romance — with perfect pitch. I'm not sure whether he used a clarinet to transition to the Jewish burial near the opening, and I asked him about that on Facebook, but the tone is spot on. 

That alone reflects my obsession with "Loving Leah." How many nonmusical comedies leave their melodic impression on you? None. With me, I'm into the "Lawrence of Arabia" score, but figured that was it. Until now.  

"Loving Leah" came out years before I became aware of it. Its first TV showing was in January 2009. Where have I been? Watching the Lakers, Jets, Mets, Mizzou, Bond. Really just got fixated on Hallmark this year. Comes with age. 

Besides Beal's music, what's the hook of "Loving Leah"?

The cast. Lauren Ambrose (the "Six Feet Under" redhead) should've landed an Emmy for her kissing approaches alone. If chicks did that all the time, dudes would never get out the door. Ambrose's facial expressions also spark, but what really flashes is her overall look. Her Leah starts as a dowdy widow and ends as a pillar of sophisticated beauty. Adam Kaufman, as her beau Jake, comes through with funny faces and lines. Also on target are Susie Essman (the Larry David screamer) as Leah's Jewish-to-the-hilt mama, Mercedes Ruehl as Jake's joyous mom, Natasha Lyonne as Leah's cool sister and Ricki Lake as the equally guy-named Rabbi Gerry. 

The religion. When "Loving Leah" isn't maneuvering through its title, it's spotlighting Jewish life. My dad was a Jew, but he knew more about Army helmets than yarmulkes. We kids grew up Protestant under our mom's tutelage. Now I'm back in the Catholic fold that Mom's way-back-when Italian relatives no doubt practiced. Part of me wonders what it would've been like to take the Jewish path of my cousins Rusty, Ronnie, Stephie and Ira. 

"Loving Leah," thanks to P'nenah Goldstein's brilliant script, spells out the Jewish culture that so many of us don't know. She has Leah and her sister uttering vayzmeer, Yiddish for oh, brother. The playwright also shares the observant and shrugging Jewish sides, with Leah and Jake landing in the middle. When Goldstein is done, she's left a gold stone of a treasure. 

I could go on a few more paragraphs. I know this flick by heart. But you don't want the plot ruined. The only thing left to add is a note to Goldstein and the penetrating producer Michael Besman: Please make a sequel. And call it "Lasting Leah."

Bucky Fox is an author and editor in Southern California.