Monthly Archives: August 2003

What we need in Sacramento is a good comic book dealer! Barry Short of 21st Century Comics is trying to get on the ballot.

I know Barry and he'd make a much better governor than some people I could name.

As you've probably heard, he passed the approval process. If you want to see how ridiculous the charges against him were, here is a copy of the investigation into them. Thanks to Steve Meyer for sending the link.

I'm dueling with deadlines today so I don't have time to write a lot of outraged comments about this. A comic book store proprietor in Texas was found guilty and sentenced to 180 days in jail, a year probation, and a $4,000 fine. His crime? Selling an adult comic book to an adult. The dynamic behind the conviction seems to have been the prosecution's claim that there was a school nearby, and the comic book form is by definition for children; ergo, the accused was almost selling pornography to children and the court had the obligation to stop him now while they could. The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to intervene.

Eventually, this kind of prosecution will be a thing of the past, and we'll shake our heads over it the way we now can't believe you once couldn't say "pregnant" on television. But a lot more damage will be done and lives ruined before we get to that point.

A candidate for governor that all Californians can agree upon!

As you'll see when you visit his website, Jay Stephens is a versatile, creative guy. One of the things you might want to browse there are some pages he's done recently for DC for a Teen Titans comic. It was written by veteran scribe Bob Haney, who wrote Teen Titans back in the sixties. According to a message Jay posted on the Comics Journal message board, DC has decided not to publish the completed book because it's "weird and uncommercial." I was looking forward to getting something new by Haney and the fact that DC considers it "weird and uncommercial" makes me all the more eager to read it.

A fellow named Kevin Boury sent me a long e-mail that raises some good points I'm seeing discussed on the Internet. I'm going to excerpt a chunk and then respond to them below…

Bob Hope never made me laugh. Ever. And that is what I consider to be the best judge of whether someone is funny, not a roomful of grinning audience members who don't want to shout that the emperor has no clothes. After all, McDonald's is a popular eatery, but I would not call what they serve "food" (let alone good). People don't want to admit that what they paid money for is, in fact, a substandard product.

Anyway, just had to chime in because I actually found this Hitchens article to be right on the money. I have never read his work before, but what I read in your blog seemed to dismiss his current work based mostly on his older pieces. I would like to see a Bob Hope fan such as yourself answer his question "What is your favorite Bob Hope gag?"

I think a line could be drawn for a comic between material they deliver well and whether or not they write their own material. Even the article you cite in Mr. Hope's defense indicates that he was never far away from his writers. His appearances with Johnny never seemed to indicate that he was able to make humorous off the cuff remarks. Extemporaneous he was not!

If you didn't find Bob Hope funny, fine. I'm not out to argue with you or anyone that he was; only that I think it's wrong to not recognize that to a lot of people of the last century, he was. It's just like — to invoke another of these unavoidable food analogies — I can't stand cole slaw. I think it's the most repulsive thing human beings put voluntarily into their mouths. But if you want to enjoy the stuff, be my guest. It in no way threatens me to admit that others do. My main problem with the Hitchens piece was that its subtext was, to convert it to the cole slaw analogy, "I hate cole slaw so anyone who thinks it's good is just plain wrong." I could respect and perhaps even write a detailed criticism of the many ways in which Bob Hope was deficient as a performer and maybe as a human being, as well. But that's not what Hitchens did, nor does it take into account that in the pantheon of show business, Hope was a little more than just another stand-up comedian to be judged wholly on his monologues.

I'm afraid I don't buy your McDonald's comparison. For good or ill, McDonald's has a helluva lot of steady customers. They don't go back over and over again rather than admit they're buying a substandard product. They like Big Macs and cheap burgers and drive-thru convenience. And people did not feign laughter at Bob Hope for 70-some-odd years because they didn't want to admit he wasn't amusing them. Too many other comedians fell by the wayside during those decades because at some point they stopped amusing audiences. You can't sustain a career or even a fast food joint for any length of time unless in some way, people are genuinely satisfied with what they're getting.

"What is your favorite Bob Hope gag?" is a somewhat unfair question since Hope was so imitated that quoted lines often sound stale. Moreover, when he was at his best, the joy was in the cumulative effect of his timing and attitude, rather than any one single joke. I mean, I can't name a favorite Laurel and Hardy gag, either. It just amuses me to watch them in action. In the case of Hope, I liked the kind of snotty but cowardly character he played in his best films. I liked the way he'd get up at the Oscars and say something like, "Welcome to the Academy Awards — or as we call it at my house, Passover." But really, I liked the delivery, not the gags themselves. It's like quoting Groucho's "This morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. What he was doing in my pajamas I'll never know" without taking Groucho's delivery into account. The joke itself is just a small part of it. "This is an ex-parrot" isn't particularly funny except when uttered by John Cleese in one specific context. I think my favorite Hope moment on film was the dance on the table with Jimmy Cagney in what was otherwise one of Bob's weaker films, The Seven Little Foys. And no, the scene wasn't funny, nor was it really supposed to be. But it showed Bob off as a great performer, which is what I believe he was.

I thought Hope was usually funny and spontaneous when he was on with Carson and as I said in my piece, I watched one of those spots about eight feet away from the two men. Yes, he was dependent to a great deal on his writers, as were just about all the comedians of his generation. I was surprised to see Hitchens include Berle in any list of better comedians, since Berle freely admitted everything he said was written by others and that he just "remembered well." Would you like to name some great comedians of film and television who didn't spend a lot of money on writers? I sure can't think of too many. The first one who comes to mind is Woody Allen, who has often cited Hope as his hero. One of the things that was different about Hope (and which makes it hard to single out a "best gag") is that most comedians had five routines and they'd do them each ten thousand times. Hope had ten thousand routines and he'd do them each five times.

Bottom line for me is that if he didn't make you laugh, he didn't make you laugh. If you name your 20 favorite comedians, there'll probably be someone on there who didn't make me laugh and that wouldn't mean you were wrong. Within the world of comedy, there's room for the guy who only makes some people laugh. It would be a shame if we homogenized taste in this world to the point where you're only a great entertainer if you manage to entertain absolutely everyone.

Here's a good piece by Joshua Micah Marshall on the charge that it's "anti-Catholic" to block a judicial nominee who happens to be Catholic.

Here's kind of a disturbing story — disturbing because the charges involved sound so utterly phony. The full story from the AP is available here and the opening goes something like this…

Aug. 5, 2003 — A clergyman seeking to become the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church was apparently cleared of 11th-hour allegations of misconduct, a church spokesman said Tuesday. The bishop leading the inquiry into the Rev. V. Gene Robinson will report later Tuesday on the results of his preliminary investigation and a vote will be taken, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold said in a brief statement Tuesday. Allegations emerged Monday that Robinson had inappropriately touched a man and that he is connected to a group whose Web site can indirectly link users to pornography.

That last charge, the thing about the website, is one of those charges you make against someone when you want to attack them and have no genuine evidence of wrongdoing. Any website can indirectly link you to pornography. If I post a link here to Google and you go there and enter a so-called "dirty word," you can be at porn in two hops from this page. On my other site, I used to have a link to a page of movie trivia but the owners of that page let it expire and the web address was bought by a porn site. So for six months, or until someone tipped me off, I had a link that would have taken you to porn had you clicked it. Unless someone posts a direct, deliberate link to another site with something offensive (like this link), it is fraudulent to claim they're somehow involved with it or tainted by the smut. In fact, it's a cynical fraud because it's designed to drum up outrage among people who don't understand how the Internet works.

(To make matters worse, both Robinson and the founder of the website in question deny the accused reverend had anything to do with the website. Even if he'd run it, that would not mean he was connected to pornography…but look how distant the sin is from the accused person. He was connected to a group — actually, he claims to have founded it — which has a website via which someone could indirectly link to pornography. This is the worst thing they could find to say about this gay reverend to attack him?)

Well, actually the worst is the claim that that Reverend Robinson "inappropriately touched a man." That sounds like he grabbed someone's genitalia, probably in private, and if he did, then it's probably a gross miscarriage that he was cleared. But according to this story and others, the alleged touching was of "the man's shoulder, upper back and bicep" at a public event. Bishop Gordon Scruton investigated the claim of a man named Lewis and here, according to this account, is what the investigation revealed…

Scruton said he spoke with Lewis by phone Monday afternoon and Lewis told him that, at a public church event in November 1999, Robinson "put his left hand on the individual's arm and his right hand on the individual's upper back" as Robinson answered a question Lewis had asked. Scruton said the other encounter occurred when Lewis turned to make a comment to Robinson and the clergyman "touched the individual's forearm and back while responding with his own comment."

Does that sound like a sexual assault to you? He touched the man's arm while they were having a conversation! If that's true, I was assaulted about fifty times at the Comic-Con in San Diego. Sounds to me like someone is very homophobic and that the earlier newspaper account should have been more explicit. Without that little detail, doesn't the phrase "inappropriately touched a man" give you the wrong impression? Especially as part of a investigation into serious misconduct?

Bottom line here is that someone was trying to smear a gay clergyman who was about to ascend to bishop. They took two utterly harmless facts about him and spun them as offenses serious enough to suggest, as some have the last few days, that he resign and go away. Pundits like Fred Barnes have been out there flogging it as a scandal that demands action. I'm going to take what seems to me like the only appropriate action. I'm going to stop reading Fred Barnes.

And by the way, the website on which you can read Fred Barnes' piece is owned by Rupert Murdoch's company, which also has a controlling interest in the satellite provider, DirecTV. DirecTV broadcasts real hardcore pornography into homes all across America.

I apparently have the 14th most common first name in the U.S. today. How does yours stack up?

If you've been waiting for a heroic and brave leader to come forth and suggest the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, wait no longer. Billy Jack is stepping forward. In fact, he's gone ahead and started the impeachment trial.

This one's by Larry Gelbart, who seems to be still alive.

Better hurry if you want to file to run for Governor of California! Don't delay! You don't want to be the only one on your block who isn't on the ballot!

Among those who follow judicial conformations like the stock market, rooting for their investments to mature, there has lately been a great deal of talk about Catholicism and whether a vote against a nominee who happens to be Catholic is an anti-Catholic move. Here's an op-ed piece on what strikes me as an important facet of this whole matter. An awful lot of folks who drag religion into the political arena only bring along the parts that buttress their personal legislative wish lists.

As we noted here, the main New York Times obituary of Bob Hope was written by its drama critic, Vincent Canby, who died October 15, 2000.

Continuing in this grand tradition, Fred Hembeck informs me, the new Newsweek has a tribute to Hope written by its longtime drama critic, Jack Kroll.

Mr. Kroll died June 8, 2000. I smell a conspiracy.

Not that long ago, a gent named Hans Blix and approximately 250 weapons inspectors went to Iraq to search for Weapons of Mass Destruction. After 111 days and no nukes to show for it, G.W. Bush declared "They've had enough time," and a lot of Americans mocked them as incompetent, inept, etc. The inspections ceased and the invasion began.

Well, then. It has now been 115 days since the U.S. occupied Iraq. Those now searching for such weaponry have considerably more manpower and considerably less standing in their way. Yet, apart from a few pieces of bric-a-brac that Bush and his loyalites have tried to pass off as threatening, no Weapons of Mass Destruction have been unearthed. They weren't even used during the invasion when they might have mattered.

Are there any? I don't know. Like most, I'm skeptical that any will ever be found and also skeptical that if they are, most of the world will ever believe we didn't plant them there. But I'm willing to be convinced Iraq was as much of an immediate threat as some said, and depending on how things go there over the next few years, even willing to agree that the invasion was a good thing. I think it's way too early to say that the U.S. lives and resources were well-invested. That will ultimately have to be judged by those who have no vested interest in spinning the outcome to help or hinder Bush in the next election.

In the meantime, I can only wish we had the kind of political discourse in this country where the folks who said, "Blix is blind. We must invade before Saddam nukes us all" could admit that, however illogical it might have seemed at the time, perhaps the inspectors were correct. This is what happens too often in our politics and maybe in some of our lives: That tendency to take a position and defend it to the death, denying all evidence to the contrary. Alas, politics has gotten so cutthroat in this country that no one dares be statesmanlike enough to admit that maybe the other side isn't or even wasn't full of crap. At best, they occasionally retreat to the passive voice and admit, "mistakes were made," without admitting what they were or who made them. Or they say "I accept the responsibility" after making crystal clear that someone else was really to blame.

My opinion of our so-called leaders has never been high and I'm afraid it's getting lower with each passing month. So is my respect for people who see these flaws, but only in the opposition — for example, people who think Clinton was a liar but Bush is honest. I used to imagine that a politician would come along who could rise above such rhetoric and bridge the partisan divide. I'm not sure I even want that person, if he or she even exists, to emerge nowadays. They'd eat him alive.