Monthly Archives: May 2004

For about two weeks, the Internet has been full of "reviews" of Michael Moore's new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. Some have praised it. Others have dismissed it as inaccurate tripe. A surprising percentage of folks in both camps have not seen the movie but they know what they think of George W. Bush and/or Michael Moore. Because of that, they are able to not only formulate opinions of the film but to set them in concrete.

We are now starting to get articles by people who seem to have actually viewed the film, if not before deciding what they think of it then at least before writing about it. Here's Frank Rich on what he thinks of the film. I think he saw it. I think he generally likes it. I think I am not going to go see it and unlike so many, I'm actually going to let that little omission stop me from expressing my view of it.

A number of folks have asked questions about the stage configuration at the play I saw last night, and the questions have convinced me I didn't explain it very well. So I drew the above diagram. Got it now, everyone?

Eric Alterman discusses how many hawkish Republicans have big problems with how the Bush administration has handled things in Iraq.

In the meantime, National Review has offered up a four-part article by two military men who make the case that the situation over there can be turned into a smashing success. Here's part one, here's part two, here's part three and here's part four.

The New York Times ran an editorial the other day that essentially lambasted the Bush administration for believing the Iraq-related info and predictions of Ahmad Chalabi. The editorial is probably on-target except for one teensy detail. Nowhere in it is there some line like…

We know that Bush was taken in by Chalabi because so were we. A spectacular amount of disinformation on Iraq has appeared in the Times because Chalabi fed stories to our reporters and we foolishly printed them. This is not the first time we've fallen for leaks from a supposed insider. We allowed ourselves to be planted with our Whitewater coverage, which was filled to overflowing with bogus "facts" from Clinton's enemies. We did it again with our coverage of the wrongly-accused "spy," Wen Ho Lee. And now we've again let someone eager to feed false information to the world use the Times as his conduit. Remember when we used to stand for something?

Aside from that little omission, it's fine.

At a lovely luncheon this afternoon, the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters paid tribute to Mickey Rooney…so this afternoon, I reached my fill of jokes about people being short and often-married. In what turned out to be a very nice event, The Mick was honored by a dozen or so of his friends including Ann Rutherford, Margaret O'Brien, Frank Gorshin, A.C. Lyles, Gene Reynolds, Fayard Nicholas (the surviving member of The Nicholas Brothers), Hal Kanter, Johnny Grant and Red Buttons. I keep seeing Red Buttons speak at local functions and parties and I am amazed how incredibly funny and even topical he is. I wish someone like Jay Leno or David Letterman had the guts to let an 83 year old man come out and do stand-up because the man is an absolute treasure and I think he'd score with all ages.

Mickey was pretty good, too. The last two times I've seen him speak, he was rambling and lacking in coherence and he seemed to be imitating the Dana Carvey parody of him. This afternoon, he was crisp and sincere and told a couple of lovely stories that might have been a wee bit exaggerated (like the one about Mr. Walt Disney naming a certain mouse after him) but they entertained a crowd that loved and respected him dearly. He spoke warmly of his friends and of his spouse, Jan, with whom he currently tours in a one-man/one-wife show. They're playing the Cinegrill in Hollywood in June — a fact that did not go unmentioned. I think it's terrific that at age 84, he's still performing, and that so many turned out to honor him.

Here's an e-mail that I thought was worth answering in public…

I've enjoyed your blog, and your other work, for some time and I just wanted to ask, how long ago was your article about how difficult things are in the comic book industry written? I ask, not because I'm a wannabe creator myself, but because I'm a wannabe consumer. I've been hearing for years about how bad things are in the industry and well, has there been any sign of recovery at all? And if not, is the day approaching when comics simply won't exist anymore? This is something to be frightened of. I know I should be more frightened about the War on Terror, but honestly, what are we fighting for?

Maybe we can get Halliburton into the comic book business. No, forget I said that. The answer to your question is that my piece was written a few years ago and the business is slowly recovering in some ways and not in others. I suspect that if tomorrow a law was passed that said comic books could not be made into movies or TV shows, about two-thirds of the business would go under because so much of comic book publishing is now in the nature of loss leaders for movie/TV deals. From my own perspective, I don't think I'll say the comic book publishing business is healthy until I see some actual profit in just publishing comic books..

I don't believe there's a danger of the form ceasing to exist. There will always be folks who want to create comics and those who want to read them, and those two groups will always find a way to get together. Certainly though, the "comic book industry" has changed and will continue to change. When you go to a comic book convention these days, there's usually a lot in that hall that has to do with movies and animation and gaming and other media. Comics have become less insular and the very definition of the word is changing. Once upon a time, comics were things that were printed on paper. Now, it's becoming a style of art and story in almost any medium, much as "manga" and "anime" have evolved into more expansive terms that denote a genre more than a specific product.

The old business model for comic book publishing has become obsolete, as all business models eventually do. It's evolving more into graphic novels and to conveying comic-book-style material in other media. In the future, I think most publishers of comic books will think of themselves as multi-media companies that market concepts and a style in a variety of formats, one of which will sometimes resemble what you and I now think of as a comic book. Some of them are already halfway there.

Max Boot, who is usually so conservative that he works for The Weekly Standard, says it's time for the right wing to accept Gay Marriage as inevitable. This is pretty much how I feel. They may be able to delay its formal legality. They may be able to make a lot of folks miserable in the process. They may even be able to raise a lot of campaign contributions from people who think they're going to stop it. But they cannot stop it.

I get a lot of e-mail from folks asking me how they can get a job writing comic books. Boy, do I get a lot of these inquiries. I get more of them than I get ads for non-prescription Vicodin, and I get a lot of ads for non-prescription Vicodin. I usually refer such folks to this article I wrote on the topic but I think I may start sending people to this article by my friend Steven Grant.

This is an old column, as evidenced by the fact that in it, Steven says the Comic-Con International in San Diego has an annual attendance in the 15,000-20,000 range. Today, it's more like 75,000 and the ratio of wanna-bes to available positions is about ten times worse and everything he says is at least as true as it was then, if not more so.

My old high school buddy Bruce Reznick (who wasn't drafted, either) sent me this link to a heartbreaking article about David L. Lander, who is best known to the public as Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley. Actually, it's also heartbreaking that the public knows Lander only from that since he was a very talented comic actor, as anyone who ever heard or saw The Credibility Gap (his old comedy troupe) is well aware. Being known only for one role is probably not as tragic as having Multiple Sclerosis but it still bothered me that his other performing successes weren't mentioned.

Here's a newspaper obit on writer-artist-editor Gill Fox, whose passing we reported here a few days ago.

Jon Stewart (of The Daily Show With…) graduated The College of William and Mary in 1984. Twenty years later, he returned there to deliver this commencement address.

Here's a message from Larry Boocker…

I can't help adding something to your recent views on the debate about the military draft. I was also of draftable age when the political debate was fought over whether to extend the draft. Naturally, I paid close attention. In my opinion, that debate was the high point for political discourse during my lifetime. As you said, draft supporters tended to be conservative and Republican while draft opponents tended to be liberal and Democrat. But to everybody's amazement, the leader of the fight against the draft was Barry Goldwater, the most conservative politician in Washington. The fight for the draft was led by Ted Kennedy, the extreme leftist. Each of these guys was willing to go against their constituents, their friends and their image because they believed in certain principles. Goldwater's conservatism was based on individual freedom which was in conflict with the draft. He believed that if young Americans were unwilling to fight for their country, we didn't deserve to continue as a nation. Kennedy's liberalism was based on egalitarianism. He believed that a volunteer army would consist mostly of the poor and disenfranchised. A draft was most likely to treat people equally. Nowadays, when politicians march in lockstep and never surprise us with independent thinking, it's hard to believe that courage and principle were once seen in Washington. It's been about 30 years and we may never see them again.

Barry Goldwater was a pretty amazing guy, at least after he lost the presidency. He was one of the few politicians I saw place principle over partisanship. One night, he went on Johnny Carson's show and launched into a surprising defense of gay rights, essentially saying that conservatives needed to work towards smaller, less obtrusive government and that this was inconsistent with encouraging the government to police sexual relations between consenting adults. It was quite a speech and the next day on some TV news talk show — it may have been Crossfire — it was quoted to a number of prominent Republicans for their reaction. They all mouthed respectful words about Goldwater's great past service to his country, then suggested that he had gone senile.

I did not recall Ted Kennedy being on that side of the debate but very little surprises me about Ted Kennedy. I certainly never viewed The Draft as being particularly democratic. If it weren't five in the morning — what the hell am I doing posting on a weblog at this hour? — I'd write about my own experiences in 1970, investigating draft deferments and other means of escape. I found, at least around U.C.L.A. where I was then going to school, that being white (which I was) was some help in avoiding conscription and being from a wealthy family (which I was not) was an even greater help. I am not proud that this was the case and I thought it was a horrible injustice, even though I benefited from it. I'll write more about this when I'm awake…

That stapler was here just a second ago. Did you take my stapler? I left it on my desk and then — oh, wait. Here it is!

I've been helping the publisher get my new book, Superheroes in My Pants, off to press so I've fallen way behind in answering e-mail and doing other things in my life. Please forgive me. You can order a copy of this wonderful book here. Just remember that your purchase will entitle you to ignore all the plugging and badgering that will appear on this page in the coming months.