Show name	Mister Sterling
Format	Political serial drama
Runtime	60 minutes
Creator	Lawrence O'Donnell
Starring	Josh BrolinAudra McDonaldWilliam RussDavid NoroñaJames WhitmoreChandra West
Producer	Bernadette JoyceGarry A. BrownSandy FrankAndrea NewmanChip VucelichWilliam Bradley
Executive producer	Michael DinnerJim HartJeff MelvoinLawrence O'Donnell
Country	United States
Network	NBC
First aired
Last aired
Num episodes	10

Mister Sterling is an American television serial drama created by Lawrence O'Donnell that ran from January to March in 2003. It starred Josh Brolin as an idealistic United States Senator, and featured Audra McDonald, William Russ, David Noroña, and James Whitmore as members of his staff. Despite mostly positive reviews, the show, which aired on NBC on Friday nights, was cancelled after 10 episodes after the show only ranked 58th in the yearly ratings (9.83 million viewers, 6.7/12 rating/share)

Although it had numerous similarities to The West Wing in style and tone (especially the show's idealistic attitude towards politics), it was not set in the same universe as O'Donnell's other political show. It is unknown if a cross-over would have ever occurred had Mister Sterling not been cancelled; however Steven Culp played presidential aspirant Sen. Ron Garland on Mister Sterling and House Speaker Jeff Haffley on The West Wing, and Democrats appeared to be in the majority in the US Senate on Mr Sterling, while in The West Wing consistent Republican control of both Houses of Congress was a key plot point.

James Whitmore was nominated for a 2003 Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for playing former Governor Bill Sterling, the senator's father.

The series was produced by Bernadette Joyce, co-producer; Garry A. Brown, co-producer; Michael Dinner, co-executive producer; Sandy Frank, co-producer; Jim Hart, co-executive producer; Jeff Melvoin, co-executive producer; Andrea Newman, producer; Lawrence O'Donnell, executive producer; Chip Vucelich, co-producer; William Bradley, consulting producer.

Characters

References

"Testing Our Mettle", review by Andrew Stuttaford, National Review, January 31, 2003

"Mister Sterling", reviewed by Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly, January 17, 2003

"Sterling silver" by Heather Havrilesky, Salon.com Magazine, February 27, 2003

* "Nielsen's TOP 156 Shows for 2002-03" Google, May 20, 2003

External links

Category:2000s American television series Category:2003 American television series debuts Category:2003 American television series endings Category:NBC network shows Category:Television shows set in Washington, D.C. Category:Political television series

Name	Stirling Moss
Caption	Moss in 2008
Nationality	British
Date of birth	September 17, 1929
Years	1951 – 1961
Team(s)	Mercedes-Benz, Maserati, Vanwall, Rob Walker Cooper & Lotus
Races	67 (66 starts)
Championships	0
Wins	16
Podiums	24
Points	185.64 (186.64)
Poles	16
Fastest laps	19
First race	1951 Swiss Grand Prix
First win	1955 British Grand Prix
Last win	1961 German Grand Prix
Last race	1961 United States Grand Prix

Sir Stirling Craufurd Moss, OBE FIE (Fellow of the Institute of Engineers) (born 17 September 1929 in London) is a former racing driver from England. His success in a variety of categories placed him among the world's elite – he is often called "the greatest driver never to win the World Championship".

Education

Moss was educated at two independent schools: at Clewer Manor Junior School, a preparatory school linked to the senior school Haileybury and Imperial Service College, and then to the senior school, both of which were for boys (but are now co-educational), and located at Hertford Heath, near Hertford in Hertfordshire.

Racing career

Moss, who raced from 1948 to 1962, won 212 of the 529 races he entered, including 16 Formula One Grands Prix. He would compete in as many as 62 races in a single year and drove 84 different makes of car over the course of his racing career, including Lotus, Vanwall, Maserati, Jaguar, Ferrari and Porsche. Like many drivers of the era, he competed in several formulae—very often on the same day.

He retired in 1962 after a crash left him in a coma for a month as afterwards he felt unable to continue driving at a professional level. In spite of this early retirement he has remained a well known figure.

Moss is the son of Alfred E. Moss, who was placed 14th at the 1924 Indianapolis 500 in a "Fronty" Ford and Aileen (née Craufurd). His younger sister, Pat Moss, also took part in rallying; her widower is rally driver Erik Carlsson. Moss was one of the first customers of the Cooper Car Company when he persuaded his father, Alfred Moss, to get him one of the new Cooper 500 cars. He quickly demonstrated his ability with numerous wins, at national and international level, and continued to compete in Formula Three, both in Coopers and Kieft cars long after graduating to the senior categories.

Moss was a pioneer in the British Formula One racing scene and placed second in the Drivers' Championship four times in a row from 1955 to 1958.

Moss was also a competent rally driver and is one of only two people to have won a Gold Cup (three consecutive penalty-free runs) on the Alpine Rally. In addition, he finished second in the 1952 Monte Carlo Rally driving a Sunbeam-Talbot 90 with co-driver John Cooper. Cooper ran Moss in Formula One later in his career.

In 1954, he became the first foreign driver to win the 12 Hours of Sebring in a Cunningham, driving with American driver Bill Lloyd.

Moss's first Formula One win was in 1955 at his home race, the British Grand Prix at Aintree, driving the Mercedes-Benz W196 Monoposto for a convincing 1-2-3-4 win for the German marque. It was the first race where he finished in front of Juan Manuel Fangio, his teammate, friend, mentor and arch rival at Mercedes. It is sometimes debated whether Fangio, one of the all-time great gentlemen of sport, yielded the lead at the last corner to let Moss win in front of his home crowd. Moss himself asked Fangio repeatedly, "Did you let me win?" and Fangio always replied, "No. You were just better than me that day."

VW5 with Tony Brooks to win the 1957 British Grand Prix.]]

One of his best remembered drives was in the 1955 Mille Miglia, the Italian 1000 mile (1597 km) open-road endurance race, which he won in the record time of 10 hours, 7 minutes, and 48 seconds, finishing almost half an hour ahead of teammate Fangio in second place. His navigator in the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR #722 (indicating the time of the start) was journalist Denis Jenkinson. As navigator, he supported Moss with navigational notes in the form of a Roller Map, which listed all the details of the long road trip, then an innovative technique. This assistance helped Moss compete against drivers who had a lot of local knowledge of the route. Jenkinson later wrote extensively about the experience.

In 1957 Moss won on the longest circuit to ever hold a Grand Prix, the daunting 25 kilometre Pescara Circuit, again demonstrating his skills at high speed, long distance driving. He beat Fangio, who started on pole, by a little over 3 minutes over the course of a gruelling 3 hour race.

Moss believed the manner in which the battle was fought was as important as the outcome. This sporting attitude cost him the 1958 Formula 1 World Championship. When rival Mike Hawthorn was threatened with a penalty in the Boavista Urban Circuit in Porto, Portugal, Moss defended Hawthorn's actions to race stewards contemplating a penalty to Hawthorn. Hawthorn was accused of reversing in the track after spinning his car. Hawthorn went on to beat Moss by one point, even though he had only won one race that year to Moss's four, making Hawthorn Britain's first World Champion.

in 1961.]]

Moss was as gifted at the wheel of a sports car as he was in a Grand Prix car. For three consecutive years (1958–1960) he won the grueling 1000 km race at Germany's Nürburgring, the first two years in an Aston Martin (where he won almost single-handedly) and the third in the memorable Tipo 61 "Birdcage" Maserati, co-driving with a young American prospect named Dan Gurney.

In the 1960 season, he had a huge accident at the Burnenville sweep during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps and was severely injured in what was to be one of the darkest weekends in the history of Formula One. He missed 3 races and did not race for most of that year. He recovered sufficiently to return to competition late in the year and won the season-ending U.S. Grand Prix at Riverside, California.

For the 1961 F1 season, which was run under the new 1.5-litre rules, Enzo Ferrari rolled out his state-of-the-art Ferrari 156, also known as Sharknose. Moss was stuck with an underpowered Coventry-Climax-powered Lotus, but managed to win the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix by 3.6 seconds, and later also the partially wet 1961 German Grand Prix. Some observers have noted that, while taking nothing away from Moss' superlative performances in these races, there were other factors at play. At Monaco, the tight circuit negated the horsepower advantage of the powerful but heavy and ill-handling Ferraris; and at the Nürburgring, Moss and manager Ken Gregory made a risky but inspired decision to fit super-soft rain tyres on the Lotus after a pre-race shower had soaked the track. Had the skies cleared and the track dried, the decision would have been disastrous for Moss. But when rain returned, Moss was able to drive away from the Ferraris of Phil Hill and Wolfgang von Trips (while nursing rapidly deteriorating tyres) to take the win.

In 1962, Moss was badly injured in a crash at Goodwood while driving a Lotus in the Glover Trophy. The accident put him in a coma for one month and partially paralyzed the left side of his body for six months. He recovered but decided to retire from racing after a private test session in a Lotus 19 the next year. During this session, he lapped a few tenths slower than before, and did not feel he had the command of the car to which he was accustomed. Many racing and medical observers have speculated that Moss simply tried to return too soon — that another six months of recovery and training would have allowed him to regain most of the physical acuity that distinguished him. He made a brief comeback in the British Touring Car Championship in 1980 with Audi alongside Martin Brundle, the BBC's Formula One commentator, and in recent years has continued to race in historic cars, racing his OSCA FS372 during the 2009 season.

During his career, Moss drove a private Jaguar, and raced for Maserati, Vanwall, Cooper, and Lotus, as well as Mercedes-Benz. He preferred to race British cars stating "Better to lose honorably in a British car than win in a foreign one".

Honours

In 1990, Moss was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.

In the New Year Honours 2000 List, Moss was made a Knight Bachelor for services to Motor Racing. On 21 March 2000, he was knighted by Prince Charles, standing in for the Queen who was on an official visit to Australia. As Moss drove his Mercedes away from Buckingham Palace after the ceremony, he was stopped by a palace guard who joked: "Who do you think you are? Stirling Moss?" Moss smiled and replied "Sir Stirling Moss, actually."

In June 2005, while appearing at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Moss signed the bonnet of his 1955 Mille Miglia winning Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR which was to be its last year of public appearances it made over numerous years, before retiring to the newly built Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart.

He received the 2005 Segrave Trophy.

In 2006, Moss was awarded the FIA gold medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to motorsport.

In December 2008, McLaren Mercedes unveiled their final model of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. The model has been named in honour of Stirling Moss, hence, Mercedes McLaren SLR Stirling Moss, which has a top speed of with wind deflectors instead of a windscreen.

His 80th birthday, on 17 September 2009, fell on the eve of the Goodwood Revival, Lord March celebrated Stirling's birthday by having the 80/80 parade on each of the three days of the Revival, comprising 80 cars, one for each of his 80 years. Stirling drove different cars on each of three days, the Mercedes W196 Monoposto, the Lotus 18 he had used to win the 1961 Monaco GP, and the Aston Martin DBR3.

On 7 March 2010 Moss broke both ankles, broke four bones in a foot, chipped four vertebrae and suffered skin damage in an accident at his home when he fell down a lift shaft. Moss has now recovered from his injuries and made an appearance at the 2010 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, presenting Lewis Hamilton with his 2nd place trophy on the podium and appearing in a pre-race interview with the BBC pundits.

Moss' biography

In 1963, noted motorsports author and commentator Ken Purdy published a biographical book entitled All But My Life about Stirling Moss (first published by William Kimber & Co., Ltd., London), based on material gathered through interviews with Moss.

Popular culture

For many years during and after his career, the rhetorical phrase "Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?" was supposedly the standard question all British policemen asked speeding motorists. Moss relates he himself was once stopped for speeding and asked just that; he reports the traffic officer had some difficulty believing him. People in Britain continue to use 'Stirling Moss' as a nickname for family and friends who are known to be faster than usual behind the wheel.

As related in the book The Life and Times of Private Eye, Moss was the subject of a less than respectful cartoon biography in the magazine Private Eye. The cartoon, drawn by Willie Rushton, showed him continually crashing, having his driving licence revoked and finally "hosting television programmes on subjects he knows nothing about". It also made reference to the amnesia Moss suffered from as a result of head injuries sustained in the crash at Goodwood in 1962. According to the book, Moss responded by offering to buy the original of the cartoon, an outcome the book describes as "depressingly common" for its satirical cartoons about famous people.

In March 1958, Moss was a guest challenger on the TV panel show "What's My Line?" (episode with Anita Ekberg).

Moss was one of the celebrities who made cameo appearances in the 1967 version of the James Bond film Casino Royale. He played Evelyn Tremble's (Peter Sellers) chauffeur.

Moss is the narrator in the popular children's series Roary the Racing Car which stars Peter Kay.

He is one of the few drivers of his era to create a brand from his name for licensing purposes, which was launched when his website was revamped in 2009 with improved content.

Quotes

"I certainly had an appreciation of the danger which to me was part of the pleasure of racing. To me now racing is - the dangers are taken away: if it's difficult, they put in a chicane. So really now the danger is minimal - which is good, because people aren't hurt. But for me the fact that I had danger on my shoulder made it much more exciting. It's rather like if you flirt with a girl, it's more exciting than paying for a prostitute, because while you know you're gonna get it, the other one you don't. And I think with driving a motor car, the danger is a very necessary ingredient. Like if you're cooking, you need salt. You can cook without salt, but it doesn't have the flavour. It's the same with motor racing without danger. For me."

On older drivers: "You don't know how many years they've driven causing accidents! I'm not quite as urgent as I was... I know that my knowledge of road signs, there's some that I might not know which I should know... The other thing I find as i get older I'm less inclined to check the oil and check the tyres and so on which is very important,"

See also

Mille Miglia

International Motorsports Hall of Fame

Juan Manuel Fangio

References

External links

Sir Stirling Moss - Official Web Site

Grand Prix History - Hall of Fame, Stirling Moss

Alfred Moss - his father racing at Brooklands, Sir Stirling Moss is now the president of the Brooklands Society.

Sir Stirling Moss at Silverstone 2009

Sir Stirling Moss at Silverstone 2010

Stirling Moss profile at The 500 Owners Association

Category:1929 births Category:Living people Category:Brighton Speed Trials people Category:24 Hours of Le Mans drivers Category:BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners Category:BRDC Gold Star winners Category:British Touring Car Championship drivers Category:English Formula One drivers Category:English racecar drivers Category:International Motorsports Hall of Fame inductees Category:Knights Bachelor Category:Lotus Formula One drivers Category:Monaco Grand Prix winners Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:Old Haileyburians Category:People from London Category:Segrave Trophy recipients Category:Sports players and officials awarded knighthoods Category:Bonneville 200 MPH Club members

Joe Gray Taylor (February 14, 1920 – December 8, 1987) was a historian of the American South who published fifteen essays and eight books, including Louisiana: a Bicentennial History (1976). A World War II hero, Taylor was affiliated for most of his career with McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Early years, military, family

Taylor was born in Tipton County, Tennessee, located north of Memphis, to Bassil Gray Taylor, who earned the family livelihood as a farmer and carpenter, and the former Lennie Fee Shinault. He was educated in public schools and attended Memphis State University, then Memphis State College, from 1937 to 1939. He taught in a one-room school in Tennessee from 1939 until 1941.

With the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Taylor joined the United States Air Force (then the Army Air Force). He flew seventy missions as bombardier-navigator with the Twelfth Bomb Group in the China-Burma theater. He attained the rank of first lieutenant and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, and three battle stars.

On his discharge from the armed forces in 1945, Taylor married the former Helen Friday (born 1923), of North, South Carolina, a small town near Orangeburg. She was the daughter of the attorney Edward Brodie Friday and the former Ora Barksdale Coleman. The couple had three children, Joe G. Taylor, Jr. (born 1952), Harriet Eva Taylor (born 1955), and Edward Coleman Taylor (born 1959).

After the war, Taylor obtained his bachelor of arts and Master of Arts degrees from Memphis State in 1947 and 1948, respectively. He threafter obtained the Ph.D. degree in history from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1951. He taught at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux (the Junior College) from 1950 to 1953, prior to a four-year commitment as the historian at the Air Force Research Studies Institute at Maxwell Air Force Base near Montgomery, Alabama.

Academic career

Taylor returned to teaching at Southeastern Louisiana University (then College) in Hammond for the 1957–1958 term. Then he returned to Nicholls State from 1958–1963, when he became professor at McNeese, a position that he held until his death twenty-four years later.

At McNeese, Taylor chaired the history department from 1968 to 1983. He was then the dean of the College of Liberal Arts from 1983 until his death.

Books and articles

Taylor produced five monographs and four essays on Air Force history. Otherwise, he concentrated on Louisiana and the South. His works included Negro Slavery in Louisiana (1963) and Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863–1877 (1974), which won the L. Kemper Williams Prize and the Louisiana Literary Award. A later work was his social history on southern hospitality entitled Eating, Drinking, and Visiting in the South (1982). Taylor was one of three coauthors of Louisiana: The Pelican State, a middle school textbook which traces the development of the state from earliest times to the 1980s.

Taylor also authored book reviews in twenty historical journals and thirty reviews in Louisiana History alone. One of Taylor's acclaimed reviews was "The Many Interests of T. Harry Williams" in the March 1984 edition of Reviews in American History. Williams was the preeminent historian at LSU prior to his death in 1979.

Taylor was the president of the Louisiana Historical Association in 1967. He received the McNeese "Distinguished Teaching Award" in 1979. He received the "Award of Merit" from the American Association for State and Local History in 1984. He was a member of the executive council of the Southern Historical Association for the last two years of his life. He was named Louisiana "Humanist of the Year" in 1986. His associations included Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Alpha Theta, the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the Louisiana Historical Association. He was an elder in the Presbyterian Church.

Taylor died in Lake Charles. He is interred in Robinson Cemetery near the Gainsville Community in Tipton County. Taylor's papers are in McNeese's Lether Edward Frazar Library.

References

"Joe Gray Taylor", A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol. II (1988), p. 781; Taylor was also a contributor to the Dictionary.

Taylor obituary, Lake Charles American Press, December 9, 1987

Category:American historians Category:People from Lake Charles, Louisiana Category:People from Tipton County, Tennessee Category:Louisiana State University alumni Category:American Presbyterians Category:University of Memphis alumni Category:McNeese State University faculty Category:1920 births Category:1987 deaths Category:American academics Category:American educators Category:American writers Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:Recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (United States) Category:United States Air Force officers Category:American military historians