Bad girls

Anne Francis has died. (Thanks to Barbara on Facebook for alerting me to this cultural milestone!)

Many of us baby-boomer girls remember her as HONEY WEST, private eye with a pet ocelot, who could beat up men with her superior karate abilities. We never missed her! I even had the Honey West doll, if you can believe it. (Luckily, she wore Barbie-issue clothes.)

There was no other woman on 60s television who came close, actually allowed to kick men's asses, until Batgirl and Barbara Stanwyck (on THE BIG VALLEY; she didn't blink an eye when she drew her gun on evil interlopers). [NOTE: Beware, annoying 60s violin-laden TV music at the link.]

Sci-fi fans will certainly remember Anne Francis from the great 50s cult movie FORBIDDEN PLANET (with Leslie Nielsen), where she swims naked (on another planet, of course, where the rules were different). She was also the star of the famous Twilight Zone episode titled THE AFTER HOURS (where the PR-photo is from). In THE AFTER HOURS, she plays a department-store mannequin come to life, who has forgotten that she is a mannequin. Creepy and melancholy, all at once, as the Rod Serling-written episodes tended to be.

Few of us children who saw that particular Twilight Zone, could ever pass a store-mannequin again without thinking of it.

Do they come to life at the end of the day?

She was wonderful, and beautiful. Goodbye Anne.

~*~

And... speaking of mannequins (yes, that was mean)... she hasn't even taken office yet, but governor-in-waiting Nikki Haley has put us all on notice that she intends to make sure nobody in South Carolina will have government-supported health care... isn't that a comfort? She has appointed one Tony Keck, to go after poor, sick and disabled people with gusto:

Nearly 2.3 million residents covered by private insurers would face lifetime limits on their coverage.

New insurance plans no longer would be required to cover preventive services, such as mammograms and flu shots

As if the state wasn't poor enough.

On the plus side (see, I'm not mean all the time), Haley has appointed Lynne Rogers to head South Carolina's Department of Probation, Pardon and Parole Services.:

She is the first African-American named by Haley to lead an agency.

At the same time Haley announced Rogers’ selection, the governor-elect unveiled a plan to merge the missions of Department of Corrections, the Department of Juvenile Justice and the Department of Probation, Pardon and Parole Services.

Such a coalition will create efficiency in incarceration-related issues to save taxpayers millions, Haley said.

Haley said she will support a proposal of Rep. Bakari Sellers, D-Bamberg, to make the probation agency a division of Corrections. She has promised to seek consolidation of some agencies.

According to non-stop Tea Party Movement/talk radio propaganda, South Carolinians are gonna save SO MUCH MONEY after Haley takes office, we will be virtually rolling in dough.

Oh yeah.

I can't wait.

~*~

Beep beep! Uh-huh!

Bad Girls - Donna Summer (1979)