Monthly Archives: February 2004

George W. Bush has come out in favor of a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriages…and it's interesting that everyone today, including his supporters, seems to be presuming this was done for political reasons. I guess this year, every time Bush or Kerry exhales, it will be presumed to be for political reasons. But no one seems to think Bush is really as "deeply troubled" about this issue as he is about shoring up his support among Conservatives who are irate about the deficit and certain immigration-related issues. I tend to think this proposed amendment won't do for this Bush what that hollow campaign to bar flag-desecration did for his father. Remember when that was the, no pun intended, burning issue of the day?

Yeah, a lot of Americans think marriage should only be boy-girl. But I wonder how many of them think a law will do anything but deny gays the word "marriage" and a few of the social benefits (health insurance, for instance) that everyone is currently worried about being without. More of the point, I wonder how many Americans really want to see the government come down hard on people for loving one another and wishing to commit to one another. Wishing there could be no gay marriage is not the same thing as being eager to see that amendment pass. Ultimately, though Americans may tell pollsters that they are opposed to gay marriage, which would put them in lockstep with Bush's position, I suspect a lot of "swing voters," the kind Bush needs to win, won't be comfortable with actually bespoiling our beloved Constitution this way. I think they'd prefer to see this issue fudged, which would place them closer to Kerry's position.

I know this may not be the Conventional Wisdom…but then, I've come to think Ralph Nader won't do the Democrats as much damage as some are bemoaning/hoping, either. First of all, unless Republicans circulate petitions for him, he won't be on a lot of ballots. Secondly, people know. Few who want to see Bush defeated are going to think a vote for Ralph "says" something so important that they can risk helping Bush win their state. Last time, voting Nader said you were disgusted with the two major parties and wanted to see others become viable. This time, Nader doesn't even have a third party behind him.

Lastly, if running for prez gets Nader visibility during the election — and he must think it will or he wouldn't be running — he could do a lot to point up the failings of the present administration. Call him a narcissist or a demagogue or a relic of the sixties or whatever but he has a commanding presence with many when he speaks about government pork and corporate crime. He can and will say things that Kerry (or Edwards if it's Edwards) can't without looking radical or unpresidential. Like his father, Bush likes to run a dirty campaign with others hurling the mud and him keeping his hands clean. Whoever the Democratic nominee is, he's (sadly) going to need people out there doing likewise for him. Nader could be valuable in that regard. And like I said, no one who wants Bush out is going to be dumb enough to not vote for the Democrat.

I thought this was so funny it deserved wider exposure. This is a real letter from Michigan Congressman John Dingell (it's on his website) to one of the Bush advisors who has lately tried to lump McDonald's employment in with real manufacturing jobs in order to suggest there has been no downswing in the work situation out there.

Dr. Gregory Mankiw
Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers
Executive Office of the President
Washington, DC 20502

Dear Dr. Mankiw:
I noticed in the recently released Economic Report of the President that there was some consternation in the defining of manufacturing. It could be inferred from your report that the administration is willing to recognize drink mixing, hamburger garnishing, French/freedom fry cooking, and milk shake mixing to be vital components of our manufacturing sector.

I am sure the 163,000 factory workers who have lost their jobs in Michigan will find it heartening to know that a world of opportunity awaits them in high growth manufacturing careers like spatula operator, napkin restocking, and lunch tray removal. I do have some questions of this new policy and I hope you will help me provide answers for my constituents:

Will federal student loans and Trade Adjustment Assistance grants be applied to tuition costs at Burger College?

Will the administration commit to allowing the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) to fund cutting edge burger research such as new nugget ingredients or keeping the hot and cold sides of burgers separate until consumption?

Will special sauce now be counted as a durable good?

Do you want fries with that?

Finally, at a speech he gave in Michigan this past September, Secretary Evans announced the creation of a new Assistant Secretary for Manufacturing. While I understand that it takes a while to find the right candidate to fill these positions, I am concerned that five months after the announcement no Assistant Secretary has yet been named. I do, however, know of a public official who would be perfect for the job. He has over thirty years of administrative and media experience, has a remarkable record of working with diverse constituencies, and is extraordinarily well qualified to understand this emerging manufacturing sector: the Hon. Mayor McCheese.

With every good wish,
John D. Dingell
Member of Congress

Unless I get a better offer for Sunday night, I will attempt some Live Oscar Blogging here at news from me. This means I'll be watching right along with the rest of you…something I haven't done in years. I usually TiVo the thing (or before TiVo, tape) and then speed from highlight to highlight, assuming there are any, with mankind's greatest invention, the Fast Forward Button. This year for some aberrant reason, I feel like watching, so let's all watch together. I'm not going to predict winners but I will predict jokes and interesting moments in the broadcast. Already though, I'll bet we're in for at least two acceptance speeches that will make people angry the way Michael Moore's did last year. (Billy Crystal will probably also have a joke about having Michael bound and gagged in the back, or something of the sort.) Early on, there will be a joke about Michael Eisner and then later, Roy Disney will accept an Oscar and provide the implied punchline. If Bill Murray wins, he will get up there and hijack the broadcast. And there will be an oppressive number of tributes to those who've died in the last twelve months. I'll have more as we go.

See you here Sunday evening. Unless I get a better offer.

We who own TiVo refer to its unique remote control device as "The Peanut." Here's an article on how they grew that Peanut.

Tom Stewart calls my attention to this article in The Washington Post about Hal Holbrook, who is still (amazingly) touring with his one-man show, Mark Twain Tonight. I didn't realize it but Holbrook started his Twain act in 1954 when he was a 29 year old actor playing a 70-year-old man. Now he's older than the Twain of his act and almost the age Twain was when he died.

I've never seen Holbrook do Twain in person. I saw the 1967 TV version (which you can order on DVD) but that was long ago and only 90 minutes. Holbrook has hours and hours of Twain material and reportedly varies the show every performance for his and the audience's amusement.

I wanted to post a link to a site that listed where he'd be performing it in the future but I can't find one. If you can or if you hear about him heading out west with the show, let me know.

No, not Michael. There's a nice piece on Will, the Eisner everyone likes, in The New York Times. Here it is.

In twenty years of going to Las Vegas, sometimes several times a year, I've never driven there and never rented a car. I do a lot of walking and when it's too far to walk, I take cabs. Vegas cabdrivers are the best I've encountered in this country but of course, there are exceptions. If you seem clueless about how far apart places are, a tiny but pernicious fraction will engage in a practice called "long hauling." This is when you tell them to take you someplace two miles away and they get there by way of Tucson. This recent article will give you more info.

I was pointed to that piece by a reader of this site who works in one of the major hotels there. He wrote, "This is the number one complaint I get at my job about cabs from all our out of town visitors. I hate to see people's vacations tarnished before they even get checked into the hotel. This is primarily done on the trips from the airport." He's right. The only times I've ever had a driver try to swindle me was coming out of McCarren Airport. There are several routes from there to the Strip but the undesirable one involves the Interstate 215 tunnel, which usually gets you there sooner but always adds $5-$10 to your fare. Drivers are allowed to use it if you agree so what some of them do is say, "You want to get there the fastest way, right?" They don't tell you it's longer and therefore more expensive. Here's an article by an undercover reporter who investigated this delightful practice.

And here's what a trip should run you. All of these are without tip…

• From the airport to any of the hotels around the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and the Strip (The Excalibur, Tropicana, MGM Grand or New York, New York) should be around nine bucks.
• From the airport to the mid-Strip area (The Mirage, Harrah's, Caesars Palace, The Venetian) should be around eleven dollars.
• From the airport to near the North end of the Strip (Riviera, Circus Circus, Stardust) should be about fourteen.
• And from the airport to downtown could be twenty bucks or a bit over.

It also helps to not get into the cab and advertise that you're a newbie. Most drivers, even the honest ones, start by asking you, "Business or pleasure?" and/or "First time in Vegas?" "Business" means you're probably on an expense account and not that worried about getting swindled out of ten bucks. And announcing it's your first visit, or your first in a long time, is like admitting you won't know the difference if the ride is twice as long as necessary. I usually answer, "I come here all the time to gamble," even though I stopped wagering long ago. That alerts the driver that I know the town, that I'm not a wide-eyed tourist, and that I probably pay good attention to where my money goes. You can also just get in, give your destination and tell them not to take the tunnel, thereby alerting them that you know about such tricks.

Like I said, crooked cabbies are a tiny minority. I'm surprised the undercover reporter got taken as much as he got taken. Still, you've got to keep your eye on them. Don't let them cheat you out of ten dollars you can throw away in a slot machine.

I just surfed through a mess of news reports on Ralph Nader announcing his candidacy today. I was struck by how many of them, like the Associated Press in all its photo captions, identified him as "Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader." (There's an example here if they haven't fixed it by now.) No, he's not. Someone else will be the Green Party nominee and Nader, if he gets on any ballots, will be on as an Independent. Odd mistake for them to make, especially since that matters an awful lot to the candidacy.

Calvin Trillin reconsiders Dan Quayle.

My TiVo, which now knows what I want to watch better than I do, took it upon itself to record the Cartoon Network Popeye show today. As a result, I just got through watching the 1933 "I Yam What I Yam," the first official Popeye cartoon. Mr. Segar's squinty sailor had previously appeared in a Betty Boop cartoon, then soloed (along with Olive Oyl and Wimpy) in this one…which, by the way, the title card above is not from. You forget how clever some of those Popeye cartoons could be, especially before they fell into the formula of Bluto wooing and/or wronging Olive until Popeye finally, at long last, hauls out the can of green stuff. This one was interesting because it was the only cartoon in the series that did not open with the well-known Popeye theme song. It's heard as underscore…and so is "I'm Against It," the song Groucho sang in Horse Feathers (previous year, same distribution company). But the opening song here was some tremulous bass voice singing, "Strike up the band for Popeye the Sailor." It was also interesting to hear William Costello, the first voice of Popeye, in the role that didn't make him famous.

I keep hearing we're about to get a major DVD release of the Fleischer Popeyes but I'll believe it when I can click on an Amazon link. There's a DVD coming out in April called Popeye – 75th Anniversary Collectors Edition but it's all cartoons from the sixties TV version, and all the others out seem to be bad copies of public domain stuff or the Hanna-Barbera version. So don't be fooled.

My longtime pal Bruce Reznick points out to me an odd convergence of covers this week on Time and Newsweek. Often, they come out with nearly-identical covers and sometimes not about the most obvious current topic. This sometimes prompts folks to speculate that the two magazines consult one another and plan such things…as if there's a reason for two competitors or even conspirators to say, "Hey, let's make it hard to tell our products apart this week." Sometimes though, their covers complement each other and provide an unintentional commentary. This week, we find Time with a cover that asks the musical question, "Are too many jobs going abroad?" I suspect the overwhelming answer to that, even from those who are downsizing employment here and outsourcing to India, is "Sure." The controversy all relates to what, if anything, can or should be done about it.

Meanwhile, Newsweek offers the world according to Donald Trump: "He's back and bigger than ever. Why we love to hear him say 'You're fired!'" As Bruce notes, the "we" in such blurbs never includes him, and it never includes me, either. At a time when even Americans with jobs rarely view them as permanent, do people really love anything about Donald Trump, especially those words? They may watch but, hey, we watched O.J. What these two covers taken together make me think is that we've really come to a day when a "job" is a short-term thing, almost like a sweepstakes, which is what the Trump show really is. If I were a young person entering the job market today, I think I'd read all these articles about low and mid-range positions disappearing and I'd think, "Hmmm…I may have a very short time to earn enough money to last me the rest of my life." We hear a lot about the decline of "traditional values" as they relate to sex. How come we don't hear more about the traditional value that you go to work for a company and try to make such a valuable contribution that you can work there until retirement age, making a good living and establishing a pension?

Mike Rhodes sends me this better link to the political animated cartoons of Mark Fiore. There's also an archive there of many of his past efforts. (Though beware: This website has the dreaded DoubleClick ads that sometimes put noxious, snooping cookies on your computer. If that matters to you, make sure you have a good cookie blocker working.)

I'm going to bed. Sweet dreams, all.

A lot of Democrats are irate at news that Ralph Nader is apparently about to launch another presidential bid. I'm disappointed, not so much because I think it will take away votes that might otherwise go to defeat Bush but because, once upon a time, I liked Nader. Didn't agree with everything he said or did but I thought he achieved a fair amount of good and turned a spotlight on a lot of matters, including corporate crime, that needed some exposure. It's sad to see him turn into a guy who seems to stand primarily for self-promotion. He isn't even out to build a viable third party any more. He's just out for Ralph Nader.

That said, I have a thought…one that is probably not relevant but which I'm pondering, nonetheless.

We have this new rule that says that candidates must endorse their own campaign commercials. Somewhere down the pike, this law will probably be declared unconstitutional but right now, a commercial for John Kerry (for example) must close with Kerry himself appearing on camera and saying, "I'm John Kerry and I approved this message," or words to that effect. The idea is that this way, a candidate cannot play Good Cop and distance himself from his own commercials that insult the other guy. If he wants to say, "George W. Bush is a lying puppet of the oil companies," he can but he has to place his signature on that ad.

So here's my question: If Ralph Nader is an actual candidate with his name on some or all of the ballots out there, can't he in effect run attack ads for someone else? Kerry runs positive, non-attack ads for himself and Nader, who's running against George W. Bush after all, runs the ads that say, "George W. Bush is a lying puppet of the oil companies." And so what if Nader takes the heat for such negative campaigning? He's not going to win one state, anyway.

This is all academic, I'm sure, since Nader is not getting in as a stalking horse for the Democratic nominee. Nader is in for Nader, and will probably attack the Democrat as forcefully as the Republican. But in theory, couldn't it work the way I describe? At least a little?

I'm really enjoying a new website by Pietro Shakarian. It's devoted to the Columbia Cartoon Studios, a much-neglected producer of theatrical animation. Go there now.