Monthly Archives: September 2003

Here's an L.A. Times article on why their polling results differ so from the Field Poll. As they note, when you factor in the margin of error, their poll says that the recall is supported by between 47% and 53% of California's likely voters whereas the Field Poll says it's between 50.5% and 59.5%. Thus, the two polls are not really in conflict, at least on that question.

Mark Fiore has a wonderful animated Flash political cartoon about 9/11.

Here's a link to an obituary for Jay Morton, who was a writer for Max Fleischer's cartoon studio, and who is said to have coined the opening of the Superman cartoons where they said, "Faster than a speeding bullet…more powerful than a locomotive, etc."

I don't know if that's true but Mr. Morton had another achievement in the world of comic books. Those of you who read my history of the Fox and Crow comics (reprinted in my new book, Wertham Was Right) saw the name of Jay Morton in the following context. I was writing about how cartoonist James F. Davis moved down to Florida to work for the studio. There, he began moonlighting for a company called Editorial Art Service that was run by two men named Sangor and Hughes and which produced comic book material for various publishers…

A writer at Fleischer's named Jay Morton had a connection with Sangor and Hughes. He wrote stories for them and enlisted others at the animation studio to write and/or draw for E.A.S., the work appearing mainly in Standard books like Coo-Coo Comics. Most would moonlight, doing their work evenings and weekends, but a lot of it was done during working hours in the Fleischer studio. Davis became one of many who would hide his comic book pages when a supervisor came by, and hurriedly return to animating Popeye cartoons.

Then in 1941, Paramount Pictures, which released the Fleischers' output, did the same thing to them that Columbia had done to Charlie Mintz. Max and Dave were severed from their own studio and Paramount took control of it, eventually renaming it Famous Studios and moving it back to Manhattan…James F. Davis moved back to New York, but Jay Morton did not, electing to remain in Florida where he became, it is said, enormously wealthy in the real estate trade.

Back in Manhattan, Davis found a scarcity of animation work. But he reasoned that, with the dissolution of the Fleischer/Famous studio in Florida, and Morton's exit from the field, the Editorial Art Service might be getting desperate for material. He approached Richard Hughes and found this to be true. An arrangement was formed whereby Davis would act as go-between, receiving a commission whenever he could enlist animation talent to write and draw for E.A.S.

Davis soon moved out here to work for the animation studios of Hollywood, where he ran the same kind of moonlighting "shop" that Morton had run while at Fleischer's. It was very successful and filled hundreds of comic books with wonderful cartooning. And the idea should be added to Jay Morton's list of accomplishments.

Yeah, I worked with John Ritter…once. But once was enough to see that he was a very nice guy who oozed professionalism. It was a silly, unimportant project for ABC for low money, and he was doing it as a favor to someone. Still, he was on time and prepared, and even though the producer had told him he'd be done in two hours, he didn't complain one bit when the taping ran twice that. That was my strongest impression about him and it stuck with me when I watched him on TV. Three's Company was a silly, unrealistic show but it worked, and I think the main reason it worked was that no matter what he was called on to do, Ritter was a pro, doing it about as well as a person could. He got every laugh in the script and then some, and when it was someone else's turn to get the laugh, he supported them with his reactions. Thereafter, he seemed to have an unerring knack for picking the wrong script. For a time, Penn and Teller once had a "bad movie" film society in New York that would convene every Saturday night in Times Square and go en masse to see the worst thing playing for several blocks around. It was always decided by majority rule except if "The John Ritter Rule" applied, meaning that if anything was playing with Ritter in it, no vote was necessary. The movies may have been bad but I doubt John was ever bad in any of them. Still, his career suffered for a time and it's good to remember that it didn't end there; that he had made a successful comeback with 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter.

The one afternoon I spent with him, he got to talking about some of the guest roles that had preceded his stardom on Three's Company. For a time, he was on everything. Most folks remember him as the minister who married Ted and Georgette on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but he was pleased I recalled a Bob Newhart Show in which he played a waiter in an ice cream parlor, and a M*A*S*H in which he was a soldier who went crazy. He told me that whenever he did a few days on some series, he would envy the actors who were on the show every week and wish they'd make him a regular. On Three's Company, which he was then doing, he knew that every actor they hired for one episode was thinking the same thing, and he told me he sometimes made a point of telling them, "I felt that way when I was in your position. And someday, you'll have a series and you'll be telling the same thing to your day players." I thought that was pretty classy. In fact, he struck me as a pretty classy guy. Still, as I followed his career thereafter, I often thought of the old line about Sammy Davis, Junior: "You wish someone would tell him that you're allowed to turn things down."

Disney unveils DVDs that self-destruct in 48 hours. So how long before someone comes out with the technology to copy them onto regular DVDs?

The Los Angeles Times poll on the California recall says that the removal of Gray Davis is favored by 50% (boot him) to 47% (keep him). Since the margin of error on this poll is plus or minus three points, it's a statistical tie. On the second half of the poll, they have Bustamante at 30%, Schwarzenegger at 25% and McClintock at 18%. Here's the whole thing.

Meanwhile, the Stanford University/Knowledge Networks Survey has the recall winning 62% to 38%, Schwarzenegger at 40%, Bustamante at 28% and McClintock at 8%. This poll (here are the details) has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 points.

Meanwhile, another poll (the one local station KABC is using) has Davis being dumped by 62% and kept by 37%, Schwarzenegger at 39%, Bustamante at 29% and McClintock at 16%. This one is plus or minus 3.7% and here's the full thing.

And the Field Poll has the recall passing 55% to 40%, Bustamante at 30%, Schwarzengger at 25% and McClintock at 13%. Margin of error: 4.5 points. Here's that one.

So which one is right? No one knows, but if you cruise the political discussion boards, the answer's simple: The one that says that what you want to have happen is likely to happen.

Only two things interest me about these totals. One is that their wide variance ought to remind us how approximate polls are. If two people do the same math problem and come up with two different answers, the logical reaction is that at least one of them is wrong. But we often believe polls in spite of that.

Secondly: The Field Poll says that if McClintock drops out, almost all his votes will go to Arnold. If McClintock is really 32 points behind him (as per the second of the above surveys), then he might as well. If he's seven points behind him, he probably won't. So one of these polls, suspect as its accuracy may be, could influence the election. That's above and beyond the fact that polls have a certain self-fulfilling tendency, energizing this or that group to turn out, donate or stay home.

My pal Buzz Dixon just sent me a link to the online version of the cover story in the current Esquire. It's called "The Falling Man," it's by Tom Junod, and it's about the attempts to identify a certain victim at the World Trade Center who was caught in one haunting photograph. The article is also about what that photograph symbolizes and about our own complex feelings for the people who died that day and in that way.

Here is a link to the article but I want to warn you: It's a long piece and after you read it, you'll probably be in a very odd mood…not necessarily good or bad but odd. As I am at this moment. Part of me wants to move past the horror of what was done to so many people that day. And part of me doesn't. The "move on" part will inevitably win because it has to, because grief is such a non-constructive human condition and to triumph over it is constructive.

But every so often, you can't help but pause and remember. And shiver.

Here's David Corn on how little has been done in the cause of "homeland security."

What I find interesting about this issue is that, apart from a few broadside assurances from folks like Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft, I don't see any rebuttal to this point of view. It's one of those topics where if you confront a Bush supporter with it, they kind of change the subject, cough, attack the messenger and wave the flag for victory in Iraq.

Seriously, I'd love to be convinced this is an erroneous viewpoint. If anyone out there comes across an article not clearly by an administration flack that says we're doing enough to secure chemical plants, nuclear facilities, airports, etc., please send me the link so I can post it.

This article in The Philadelphia Daily News asks some simple but largely-ignored questions about what occurred in this country on 9/11/01 and in its aftermath. I think a few of these questions probably have easy, non-controversial answers and to think that they don't is to descend into the crazier conspiracy theories. But I think some of them are good questions, deserving of better responses than we've gotten from the current administration or from the media. And I think we'd all be better off if all of them were answered in full, even the screwier ones. (Thanks to Jim Keegan for the pointer.)

Here is a website devoted to the nearly 3000 people who perished on 9/11/01. If nothing else, you might want to just scroll through the list of names to remember just how many human beings that is.

The cover of just about every monster magazine ever published except for Famous Monsters of Filmland can be viewed here.

Many of the covers for Famous Monsters of Filmland can be found here.

The covers for Life Magazine can be viewed here.

The covers for a great many issues of TV Guide are over here.

The covers for Time Magazine can be viewed here.

Did you like those little Bazooka Joe comic strips that come wrapped around Bazooka Bubble Gum? Then this is the website for you.

Did you like Wacky Packages, those little stickers that came with gum and parodied well-known products? Then this is the website for you.

Did you like Garbage Pail Kids, those cards depicting gross monster kids, many of whom were drawn by the great John Pound? Then this is the website for you.

Do you like trading cards with pictures of monsters on them? Then this is the website for you.

Over on Slate, Jack Shafer raises an issue that has interested me: How much of our current reporting, especially about Iraq, 9/11 and the Saudis, is based not just on anonymous sources but on anonymous sources of extremely dubious merit.

And also on Slate, Daniel Gross notes some of the economic predictions made in the aftermath of 9/11 that have proven faulty.

Tab Hunter comes out of the closet for the nineteenth time.

David Plotz itemizes a number of popular misconceptions about 9/11.