Monthly Archives: January 2004

Andrew Sullivan attacks Bush's domestic agenda. What's interesting but only mentioned briefly in this piece is that Sullivan is a (generally) conservative pundit who has been a huge supporter of Bush's foreign agenda. He even swoons over the macho posturing. I link to this article not because I agree with most of it (though I do) but because I think it's significant that Bush has aroused such contradictory feelings in some conservatives.

Here's another one of those cases where the headline may not quite match the content of the story…

Howard Dean Says Iraqis Worse Off Now
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

MANCHESTER, N.H. – Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean said Sunday that the standard of living for Iraqis is a "whole lot worse" since Saddam Hussein's removal from power in last year's American-led invasion.

"You can say that it's great that Saddam is gone and I'm sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone," said the former Vermont governor, an unflinching critic of the war against Iraq. "But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before."

If you punctuate the quote that way, it's at least a little arguable that the last part refers to all Iraqis. But I suspect Dean meant that the Iraqis whose standard of living is a whole lot worse now are the dead ones. The "whole lot worse" part is the key that there's a little sarcasm intended and the structure of the sentence suggests that what he's saying is that you have to weigh the sentiments of some live Iraqis against the fate of the dead ones who cannot express an opinion. Whoever transcribed Dean's remarks could have done what my teachers always told me to do — never start a sentence with a conjunction — and made the last two sentences into one. If they'd done that, it would have been clear that's what he meant.

I may have mentioned this before but on the campaign trail during the '64 election, Barry Goldwater gave a speech where he accidentally got his words confused and wound up coming out in favor of the spread of Communism. It was just bad phrasing, a flaw that every public speaker displays on some occasion. Back then, everyone — reporters and his opponents — just gave him a pass on it. They knew what he meant to say and the press reported what he meant to say, not what he actually said. Today, it's almost like they look at every utterance and wonder if there's some way to strip-quote or punctuate it to make it a hotter news story. Unless of course, it's George W. Bush and they've decided that awkward sentence structure is part of his charm.

While everyone's looking at Bush's approval ratings, I find it more interesting to look at his disapproval ratings. I think politicians are not elected these days so much as others are defeated. The latest Newsweek poll has Bush at 50% approval which is not great but not fatal. At this point in their respective first terms, Carter had a 52% approval rating and lost badly, while Clinton had a 47% approval rate and won easily.

If I were Karl Rove, the only part of that poll that would worry me is where 47% "strongly" want to see Bush defeated and I'd want to know how strongly. I get the feeling that what will be different about this election from the others I've lived through is that we will see Democrats become more emotional and fervent than usual. In the 2000 election, I never felt that one single person I spoke with or even heard on the news was that passionate to see Al Gore in the White House. I didn't think the other side cared any more about George W. Bush, but they did care about electing a Republican, if only to end The Clinton Era. In fact, the only real fervor I sensed in that whole contest came from those who wanted to repudiate Bill Clinton.

Clinton's disapproval ratings were no higher than most presidents'. At this point in his first term, it was around 40%. Still, based on nothing more than my own reading of the news and chatting with friends, I got the feeling that the 40% who disapproved of him really, really disapproved of him. Reagan, at various points in his presidency, had a pretty high disapproval rating but the folks who comprised it never seemed to feel that the future of mankind depended on the defeat of Reaganism. Similarly, I never felt Clinton supporters hated Bob Dole or the last George Bush as much as their supporters hated Bill and Hillary. (And in '88, as in 2000, I didn't think anyone was particularly passionate for Dukakis or that Bush, but the latter had people on his side who were adamant about not seeing The Reagan Years end. One might argue that neither Bush got elected on his own positives; that the first coasted on good feelings about Reagan and the second on bad feelings about Clinton.)

As I look over the Democratic contenders, I don't see anyone who looks like they can arouse any significant amount of passion in a positive sense. If it's Kerry-Edwards or Dean-Clark or whatever, most people who fight for them will merely be passionate to defeat Bush-Cheney. Given the way a lot of Democrats (and even some Independents and fringe Republicans) are coming to view Bush not just as a poor president but as someone who's genuinely destroying America, that may be enough.

The other day, I set up an e-mail address for folks to send messages to the great comic book editor, Julius Schwartz, telling him we value him and hope his health improves. You might be interested to know that close to 100 messages appeared in the mailbox before this one arrived…

I am Chief Otumba Adedeji the chairman of Contract advisory board of the Nigeria Department of Petroleum Resources (D.P.R) I am contacting you based on the esteem recommendation from a high ranking officer of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry, This business proposal I wish to intimate you with is of mutual benefit and its success is based on trust, cooperation and a high level of confidentiality. I am seeking your assistance in the Utilization of the sum US$18.5M (Eighteen Million Five Hundred Thousand U.S.Dollars). This fund came about as a result of a contract awarded and executed on behalf of my ministry the department of Petroleum Resources (D.P.R).

…and it went on from there. I was kind of impressed that the e-mail address was only operative for about 36 hours before the Spam Robots found it.

It may lead to an increase in such mail but I'm going to ask you all to spread the e-mail address around the Internet. Post it to newsgroups and on comic-related message boards. Let every comic book reader know that they can get a message to Julius Schwartz by sending it to schwartz@newsfromme.com.

And yes, when I send the packet of messages to Julie, I'm leaving in the letter from Chief Otumba Adedeji. Who knows? The Chief may have had a subscription to Justice League of America.

NBC's early A.M. reruns of old Saturday Night Live episodes are finally reaching back to seasons not produced by Lorne Michaels. Tonight, they're running a 1983 show hosted by Robin Williams and featuring the cast that included Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, Jim Belushi and others. Next week's is supposed to be the one that followed, hosted by Jamie Lee Curtis.

This change in programming may be related to the fact that the E! Network recently secured what has been described as the entire SNL library, none of which they are currently running. NBC probably held back the right to run their one episode per week but if so, there's probably a contract provision that restricts them to certain seasons, or perhaps it rotates. Either way, I appreciate the chance to see some of the older episodes that aren't run as often. And the nice thing is that NBC All Night (or whatever they call it) airs the full shows instead of the hour cutdowns.

Every few years, the contract expires between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The former represents those who write TV shows and movies. The latter is the group that represents the major studios. The AMPTP makes deals with the talent unions of Hollywood and then the smaller studios abide by the same terms. Each contract is usually for three years, sometimes four. Sometimes, when a contract is nearing expiration, a union will make what is called a "quick and dirty" or "fast track" deal. This means that both sides agree not to open up major areas of the contract to negotiation. They just bump up the pay scales to reflect cost-of-living increases, and perhaps adjust a few minor points…then, the contract is extended for three more years.

But sometimes one or both sides feel it's appropriate to conduct a full negotiation and open up the entire contract to modification. They prepare overreaching wish lists of what they want to get from the other side, and weeks are spent arguing over these points…or not. Sometimes, the WGA walks into bargaining sessions with many items they wish to discuss and the AMPTP negotiators simply refuse to discuss them. Sometimes, the AMPTP guys have a list of changes they want in the contract and their position is, "This is the deal, take it or leave it." Sometimes, it all leads to a strike. I've been a member of the WGA since 1977 and I've been on strike, I think, four times. Maybe five. Another would seem to be looming ahead of us when the present contract expires on May 1.

WGA strikes are like few other strikes in the pantheon of Labor Relations. The WGA represents a pretty wide range of income levels and career satisfaction. You have members who make thousands of dollars a day and who are successful beyond their wildest imaginations. You also have members who have sold very little (or at least, very little lately) and who are either bitter or terribly afraid. Oddly enough, some of the most militant members can be found on both ends of the financial spectrum. Some of the hard-line members who want to crush Management in each negotiation are among the Guild's most affluent members and some are the ones who barely make a living by writing. The converse is also true. In any case, the wide disparity of incomes and egos leads to a certain instability. Every so often, the WGA erupts in enough infighting to render itself pretty ineffectual at the bargaining table.

At times, so does the AMPTP. It is, after all, made up of ostensible competitors who are allied for the common good. When they function that way, they're an awesome, powerful force that has been known to batter a union into near-oblivion. But the common good for Disney is sometimes at odds with the common good for Paramount, and there are also some tremendous feuds and personality conflicts between certain studio heads. The inner-squabblings of the AMPTP are kept within the organization, but it is widely believed that some of the longer Hollywood strikes have occurred, not because a union couldn't agree with the Producers but because the Producers couldn't agree with one another. Most of their decisions are not subject to simple majority rule; the vote among the studios has to be unanimous. So if all the studios but one want to give the union a better offer, that one holdout can add weeks or months to an impasse.

I don't know what's going on within the AMPTP at the moment but the WGA is certainly looking like a Banana Republic…and I don't mean the clothing stores. Our President, a lady named Victoria Riskin, was recently forced to resign. Riskin won a resounding victory in the last election but a movement erupted on behalf of the losing candidate, Eric Hughes. It charged, apparently with some accuracy, that Riskin did not meet eligibility requirements to remain a Current Member and therefore was not eligible for the office to which she had been elected.

She recently resigned and her post was promptly assumed by Charles Holland, who had been Vice-President. Holland is an energetic, colorful gent who has claimed among other fascinating life experiences that he attended college on a football scholarship and later worked as an intelligence officer in an elite Army Special Forces unit. A group that is demanding that Eric Hughes be installed as WGA President is now charging that these and other Holland claims are blatant lies. This has been alleged in the L.A. Times and elsewhere. An open letter to Holland is being circulated, mostly via e-mail, that says in effect, "Do the honorable thing and resign your office or we will expose more of your lies and shame you out of the business." At the same time, these folks are demanding to know which WGA staff members might have tried to protect Riskin and/or Holland by covering up their respective problems. We will shortly see calls for major resignations and firings at the Guild office.

I have no idea who's in the right on all this. In fact, I tend to think no one is, and that it's a horrible thing to have happen just as we are about to enter into what already promised to be a contentious contract negotiation. The AMPTP clearly wants to roll back the already meager share that writers receive when their work is sold on DVD…and it isn't just us. Hollywood operates under a concept called "pattern bargaining," which acknowledges that the three main unions (Directors, Actors and Writers) will remain at a rough parity. If one gets something, the other two get it. This applies to losses, as well. The producers feel that if one union can be forced to accept a rollback, that cut can then be imposed on the other unions. Since actors consume a lot more of the budget of a project than writers, it further multiplies the numbers and things play out something like this: If the WGA takes a $10,000,000 cut then the Directors Guild will have to accept the same $10,000,000 cut and when the same principle is applied to the Screen Actors Guild, it becomes more like a $40,000,000 cut for them. If the cut can be extended to other unions, it can multiply even further.

What's going on in the WGA with the leadership coming unglued is no secret. I've told you nothing here that hasn't made it into Variety. So the AMPTP must be figuring this would be a dandy time to stick it to the WGA. Back in 1985, they thought we were in disarray and they were right. The result was maybe the worst deal in Hollywood history. Before that, we had a terrific deal for the then-blossoming fields of home video and cable programming. The producers demanded a major cut and the Guild ruptured into two factions. One wanted to fight for the old terms, even if it meant a strike. The other felt that a strike of any length would be too devastating to them so we should just accept the rollback and go on. (Many of the latter expressed the viewpoint that there would never be a viable industry in things like HBO or video cassettes. By the way, the leader of the anti-strike forces was Lionel Chetwynd, who recently produced that TV movie that portrayed George W. Bush as a macho hero on 9/11.)

The Guild fractured and our leaders began attacking one another, so the whole thing collapsed. I think to this day, the WGA is in denial about what a rotten deal we wound up accepting. Three years later, we had a long strike that I believe was an extra price we paid for our '85 collapse. The AMPTP assumed they were dealing with the same weak union and offered us another package of rollbacks. Thanks to better leadership, we refused and held together…though it took 22 weeks for the members of the AMPTP to agree among themselves on a more reasonable offer.

It's way too easy to imagine a rerun with one of two endings, both bad: They see our present chaos, offer us another rotten deal (with an eye towards then forcing it on other unions) and we either fold quickly, as per '85. Either that or we're forced into a long strike that hurts everyone, including innocent bystanders, as became sadly necessary in '88.

Boy, do I hope I'm wrong.

If you really want to know what's going on in the Democratic primaries, the best coverage you can get is over at Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo. Marshall is one of the best political webloggers around and his readers chipped in to send him along the campaign trail. It's an interesting wrinkle in news reporting: A writer who is beholden to no one (no editor, no publisher, no advertiser) reporting directly to his readers without a middle-man. Take a look.

The Disney folks have lost another round in the big Winnie the Pooh battle. Here are the details. This thing will not end without some major changes in the Walt Disney Company.

As sick as I am of writing about the recently-deceased, I have to write about Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo. I don't know if the formal obits will make it clear but Mr. Keeshan, with whom so many of us grew up, was an extraordinary individual. He had a capacity to talk to (not "down to") children and to host a very difficult live TV show…and this was a man who, when he first got into television, was by his own admission largely devoid of talent. As is well-known, his first role was as Clarabelle the Clown on the original Howdy Doody show. Less well-known is that he started there as a kind of go-fer/errand boy for the show's star, "Buffalo" Bob Smith. Among his duties was to herd the kids in and out of the show's Peanut Gallery and to get them to shut the hell up during the live broadcast.

In this capacity, he occasionally got on camera and when some NBC exec suggested it looked wrong to have a guy in a sport coat on the show, Keeshan was sent off to work up a clown costume. He started at the public library where he learned what he could about clowns, then he rummaged through the wardrobe and make-up departments and soon, Clarabelle was born.

Clarabelle did not speak, partly because clowns were traditionally mute but mainly because Keeshan couldn't. By his own admission, he was too untrained and untalented to utter an on-camera word. By trial and error though, he managed to develop a pantomimed personality for his clown that the kids loved. It was mean, petulant and often quite nasty but it was Clarabelle. The only one who didn't love him was "Buffalo" Bob, who lived for the musical segments of his show and who was frustrated that the clown couldn't play an instrument. They tried giving Keeshan lessons but he had a tin ear and no sense of rhythm: He couldn't even play a triangle on the beat. At one point, Smith fired Keeshan and put a trained musician in the Clarabelle make-up…but the trained musician failed to capture the popular Clarabelle personality and they had to hire Keeshan back. That happened at least once, maybe twice.

After many years of Smith getting very wealthy off Howdy Doody, several cast members, led by Keeshan, made a stand and demanded better pay. They were fired and it looked like Bob Keeshan's TV career was over. But after failing in some non-television jobs, he made an amazing comeback with two different local shows on which he actually spoke. He had to, since he was the entire cast and mime wouldn't have worked. Eventually, it all led to Captain Kangaroo, which he did on CBS for thirty years. For much of that time, the show was live and it had to be done twice each morning, back to back. Keeshan and his small stock company (often, just Lumpy "Mr. Green Jeans" Brannum plus one puppeteer) would do an entire hour telecast live and then, after he said good-bye, they'd have sixty seconds to reset everything and do the entire show again for a different time zone. Somehow, it worked.

I actually watched the first telecast of Captain Kangaroo in October of '55. I was three and a half years old but I still remember it. A few years back when I worked with Mr. Keeshan, I of course told him this. He was very polite about it but I had the feeling that lots of people around my age told him that and he tended to not believe it.

The project was a show called CBS Storybreak, which we taped over at Television City on Stage 33, the home of The Price is Right. Keeshan had retired Cap'n Kangaroo by then and he hosted our show as Bob Keeshan. The network wanted him because of his enormous credibility in the area of children's programming and the fact that his hosting would help endorse a show they wished to have viewed as enriching. Mr. Keeshan, having learned well from "Buffalo" Bob, charged CBS what they felt was an exorbitant fee…but they paid it. One of the Business Affairs guys grumbled that the last few years Captain Kangaroo was on the network, as they kept cutting back his show and moving it to worse and worse time slots, he held the network up for vast amounts of cash. He kept threatening (they claimed) to go public and tell America that CBS didn't care about programming for children, and they essentially paid him off to let them phase out his show without a huge protest.

I don't know to what extent that's true but if it's completely true, it only adds to my respect for the man. Holding CBS up for money is an admirable skill, and I wish I was as good at it as he apparently was. Beyond that, I found him to be a genuinely kind, soft-spoken man who was everything you'd want Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan to be. He answered all my silly questions about his various TV endeavors, but he also kept asking everyone on the show about our backgrounds, particularly what kinds of training and education had led us to our present stations in life. He talked at length with the make-up lady about her family problems and joked with her about how, all the years he did Captain Kangaroo, he "grew into" the part and required less and less make-up. Eventually, he said, he reached the stage where they had to try and make him look younger than he really was. "That was a frightening moment," he said.

He said that despite turning into the kindly old man he played, he never got recognized in public by the visual. People, he said, only recognized him from his voice. It was a wonderful voice…warm and instantly friendly, and so much a part of so many lives for so many years. It's amazing to think that for so long, that man couldn't even use that voice in front of a camera. And it's sad to think of all the kids who won't grow up hearing it.

Okay, it's set up. If you'd like to convey a Get Well message or a message of respect to Julius Schwartz, send it to schwartz@newsfromme.com. I will print 'em out and send them to the man himself. Tell your friends! Tell your neighbors! I just bought a whole case of paper from Office Depot and will gladly use up most of it for this worthy cause. (NOTE: If you sent a message to that address in the wee small hours of this morning, it might have bounced back to you. Send it again. It works now.)

The great comic book editor Julius Schwartz is back in the hospital again. He was in for pneumonia, then he went home, then he fell in his home and…well, let's just say he's not in great shape but he's still with us. Julie is 88 (here's Don Markstein's bio of him) and had been living alone since his wife Jean passed away some time ago. Apparently, his days of living alone are over and he's going to be moving in with family or some sort of senior residence.

People often write me and ask me to "pass along" their wishes so I've decided to expedite the process. Julie is not on the Internet so I'm going to set up a special e-mail address for messages to Julius Schwartz. Every few days between now and the Super Bowl, I'm going to print all the messages you send to that address and FedEx them to wherever Julie is recuperating. I'll delete any messages that are rude or uncommonly long (say, if someone tries to upload articles they've written) but otherwise, I'll just print it out and ship it to Schwartz. Spread the word that this would be a good time and way to tell one of the great men of our field what his work has meant to you. I'll post the address here tomorrow.

We don't hear nearly enough from Merrill Markoe, one of the smartest, funniest women I've ever encountered. Here she is discussing George W. Bush's proposals to improve the lot of marriage in this country.

Yesterday was a bad day for people who worked with Stan Freberg. Not only did we lose Ann Miller, who starred in his most famous commercial, but death also claimed Stan's long-time friend and musical arranger, The Great Billy May. That's what everyone called him. In fact, when Stan introduced me to him, he said, "Mark, I'd like you to meet The Great Billy May." And later at the party where that occurred, I heard other people saying to him, "I always wanted to meet The Great Billy May." There was not an ounce of sarcasm in that title…only honesty and love.

Billy was one of the great bandleaders and arrangers of American popular music. To please both Freberg and Sinatra, you had to be. He arranged most of Stan's records, including both volumes (thirty-some-odd years apart) of Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America. It represented only a small part of his credits, some of which are recounted in this obit. Many of his albums are still in print, and probably always will be. Listen to any of 'em and you'll know why they called him what they called him.

So far, none of the obits I've seen for Ann Miller have mentioned what was to me her most impressive credit. She was a wonderful star of musical comedy on stage and screen, but she also starred in what was, at the time of its filming, the most expensive TV commercial ever made. In 1970, Stan Freberg wrote, produced and directed a spot for Great American Soups that proved more memorable than the product. Ann played a housewife who broke into a Busby Berkeley style production number when her husband (played by Dave Willock) asked her what was for dinner. One of the costliest parts of the spot came when a giant Great American Soup can came up from below the floor and Ms. Miller tap-danced on top of it.

To accomplish this, they had to cut a hole in the floor of a soundstage at the Samuel Goldwyn Studio and install an elevator…but to Stan, no expense was too great, especially when someone else was paying for it. The sponsor may not have been too happy but Ann later credited the commercial with revitalizing her career in the seventies. She remained a star 'til the end, playing on Broadway and in regional productions. Many of the latter were productions of the musical, Follies, where she often sang Stephen Sondheim's defiant "I'm Still Here," a song which could have been sub-titled "The Ann Miller Story." Sad to say, she's not still here…but what a life that woman had.