MEDIA ACTUALLY LOVE CRIME

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Note something else about the media please: they don't merely love criminals, they love CRIME --especially when it means profiling anotherAfro-American pioneer of this-or-that.


The daily in my town had room last Thursday for a 1500-page article about Doris Payne, with a 5x8" color picture -- but for not a single word about Ernst Zundel or the Minutemen.


A 75-year-old woman's remarkable career as international jewel thief


http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/11/17/jewel.thief.ap/


LAS VEGAS (AP) - When Doris Payne went to work, she stepped into her fancy dress, high heels and donned a wide-brimmed hat. Her creamy, mocha skin was made up just so, her handbag always designer. Sometimes a pair of plain gold earrings would do. Always, she looked immaculate, well-to-do.


It was a lonely job. She worked by herself and few people knew what she did.


New York. Colorado. Nevada. California. They all beckoned, and so did Greece and France, England and Switzerland as she plied her trade over five decades.


She is 75 now, and she remembers the things she has done with amusement. Yes, she says, that was me, and she throws back her head and laughs.


There was the February day, eight years ago, when she strolled into the Neiman Marcus store on the Las Vegas Strip.


Employee Linda Sbrocco showed her several diamond rings - this one . . . no, this one . . . how about that one? Soon Sbrocco was swapping jewelry in and out of cases at a dizzying pace. Payne slipped rings on and off, and had Sbrocco do the same.


Then Payne was gone. And so was a $36,000 US marquis cut, 2.48-carat diamond ring.


This was how Doris Payne went about her work as an international jewel thief.


She glided in, engaged the clerk in one of her stories, confused them and easily slipped away with a diamond ring, usually to a waiting taxi cab.


She is, says retired Denver Police Detective Gail Riddell, like a character from a movie - a female Cary Grant, smooth and confident.


And she has been very, very successful. Every month or every other month - no one knows how many times over more than 50 years - she strolled into a jewelry store and strolled out with a ring worth thousands of dollars.


*********Doris Payne is again behind bars, this time in Las Vegas' Clark County jail on charges that she stole a diamond ring from one of her old haunts - a Neiman Marcus store, this one in Palo Alto, Calif. - and sold it in Las Vegas. She also faces charges of stealing another ring from a Las Vegas jewelry store, violating parole in Colorado and skipping town while out on bail from a previous Las Vegas theft at a Neiman Marcus.


It's been a long journey. It was fun dressing up, fun forging this career all on her own. It was never about making money or spending it. It was about the game.


"I don't know," she said. "I think the whole thing just got out of hand. It kind of went amok."

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13507115/


Soap opera mixes suds, financial lessons for immigrants
DURHAM, N.C. - After a successful first season, the creator of a unique Spanish-language soap opera that mixes educational themes for immigrants with the more traditional telenovela plots of love and betrayal hopes to start production on a second season in August. "We kind of stepped in on something that was getting ready to happen," producer and director Dilsey Davis said of Americans' burgeoning interest in telenovelas. "We kind of came at the right moment."
An actress who also has a master's in public health, Davis came up with the idea for "Nuestro Barrio" as part of her job at a community advocacy group in Durham that is producing the show. A pilot focused on fair housing issues aired in April 2004 on cable stations in North Carolina, and the response -- combined with the wild success of telenovelas in the United States on Spanish-language networks such as Univision and Telemundo -- convinced Davis the format could become an excellent financial classroom for first-generation Hispanic immigrants.
"You have your cute girls," Davis said. "But our show is more family focused. Hopefully, people will appreciate that. As one of our tag lines says, 'Nuestro Barrio: Not your typical soap opera,' and it's not. We do have girls that look cute ... but we hope it's the story line that draws you in and not necessarily seeing someone naked."
In season one, lessons about fair housing and how to open a checking account were mixed in between the tales of jealousy and romance between restaurateurs Manuel and Marisol Diaz, and their archrival, bar owner Salvador. Davis worried about every script of "Nuestro Barrio" -- or "Our Neighborhood" -- wondering if she'd found the right balance of teaching moments and the fun stuff: love, deceit and betrayal.............