Monthly Archives: August 2004

Back when Richard Nixon was fighting to keep his tapes private, there was a wide, understandable assumption that he wasn't just afraid of Watergate-related revelations. Even a lot of Nixon's friends assumed there were "other matters" on those tapes; that somewhere on them, we'd hear him allude to some murder or other crime he'd ordered. I remember one "talking head" on TV — and I don't think it even belonged to one of Nixon's more outspoken critics — saying, "Once those tapes are in the hands of investigators, we'll have a dozen more scandals on our hands."

That did not happen. As I understand it, not every single one of the infamous White House tapes has been examined, even at this late date, but those that have been examined have yielded a lot less dirt than anyone probably expected. There's a lot of coarse language and one can reportedly hear Nixon trashing a lot of folks he praised in public…but at no point does he say anything like, "Let's just hope the press never finds out about the guy in New Orleans we had pay off Oswald." (In the late seventies, when I briefly delved into the world of Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy Buffs, that was a very active fantasy; that a Nixon tape would prove he'd been involved and would serve as the Rosetta Stone to unlock a vast plot.)

Those who are disappointed can perhaps derive some comfort from this new revelation that just before the '72 election, Nixon decided that South Vietnam was likely to fall. In a newly-transcribed tape, one can apparently hear him discussing with Henry Kissinger how the timing of that would affect him politically.

This is not a huge surprise. Tapes that have already made it to public scrutiny already have Nixon discussing how to time the bringing-home of troops to help him in the election. (You can hear part of one over on this page.) Still, it is significant if as reported, Nixon in mid-'72 is saying, "South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway." If you'd suggested at the time that was possible, Nixon and his pals would have called you a spineless, America-hating Commie and defeatist. If you'd suggested Nixon was letting election concerns impact his conduct of the war, they would have said that was a horrible thing to suggest about an occupant of the Oval Office. Some folks still say that except that now they pretend they never said it about Bill Clinton.

In the meantime, today is the 30th anniversary of Nixon's resignation, which my father thought was the best thing he ever saw on television. In fact, he wondered why the networks couldn't make a weekly series out of it…you know, bring Nixon out every Tuesday night at 8:30 and have him quit again. Maybe put him in a dunk tank or dress him as Mae West or something like that. I never felt Nixon was quite as bad as my father did but I did think there was a good object lesson in the downfall of the 37th President of the United States. Not everything his enemies said about him was warranted but almost nothing his partisans said in his defense turned out to be true. And an awful lot of things we all thought no American President would ever do, he did.

So to mark the day, how about if we all enjoy my father's favorite TV show?

Hey, remember those "Billy Bass" gizmos? You know…there's a stuffed fish mounted on a wall plaque and when you get near it, it comes to life and starts singing to you. How do those work?

Quietly and over the objections of the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Football League, the F.C.C. has approved "TiVoToGo," a new service that all us TiVo users will soon be putting to good use. Here's the TiVo press release but I can summarize it for you: "TiVoToGo" is a way to interface your TiVo and your computer so that you can record a show on the TiVo and then transfer it to your computer's hard disk. The "To Go" part of the name comes from the assumption that the main usage of this service will be when you move a show to your laptop and then take your laptop on vacation or to your place of work…and you watch the show there. If your computer has a DVD burner, you might also transfer the show to a DVD.

There's some sort of security key feature that's supposed to limit your ability to transfer the shows over the Internet but it sounds very easy to defeat. For that matter, it's pretty simple to just record a TV show to your harddisk without a TiVo and send it to as many people as you wish. Someone is going to have to face reality here. We will soon see websites where if you miss last night's Letterman or yesterday's General Hospital, you'll be able to log in and download it. I'm guessing the networks are already quietly preparing to open their own web services for this purpose. Just another way broadcast television will be changing.

Vince Waldron corrects me on something: Amazon only has to charge sales tax in some states, and ours (California) is not one of them. Unless you live in Kansas, North Dakota, or Washington, The Complete Far Side should cost $91.80 if you order it from them with their free "Super Saver Shipping," which in my experience always comes sooner than they predict. If you order the book from Costco, the $79.99 book becomes $97.26 with shipping and California sales tax. So here once again is the link to buy it from Amazon.

To thank Vince for his catch, I will again plug his "Totally Looped" improv show, which has a performance this coming Thursday evening in Hollywood. A team of talented vocal magicians will again do live, unprepared dubbing of film clips they've not seen before. I have no reason to think they will not be at least as funny as they were the last time I went when, as I describe here, they were pretty darned funny.

Let me preface this by emphasizing that I do not believe that any one poll is an inarguable, accurate reflection of the electorate…and that even if one is, a lot can change between now and Election Day.

That said, polls can also have an impact on the election and I think this one [WARNING: PDF file] will. It has generally poor news for Bush, showing Kerry equal or ahead in most categories. There are a number of those out but they can be dismissed as "biased," which always seems to me like a silly charge to level against a poll from a major news organization. They might be inept and inaccurate, but I don't think they're ever intentionally skewed.

But this is a Fox News Poll. Kind of hard to dismiss that as biased against Bush-Cheney. A lot of folks will pounce on this to justify the claim that the Republican ticket is in free fall.

I don't know that it is. But there's an old saying in politics that even when you're ahead, you should always run as if you're five points back. And if everyone starts saying the Bush campaign is five points back, they'll have to run as if they're ten down…which means throwing everything they can think of at the opposition.

We all knew this election was going to get dirty. I think we're all going to be stunned at how dirty it will get. And how soon.

The Onion has a good interview up with Robert Smigel, a great comedy writer and the human presence behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

One of those "must-buy" books for fans of clever cartooning is The Complete Far Side by Gary Larson…a two-volume, 1,272 page extravaganza that contains over 4,300 single-panel comics. About a fourth of them did not appear in those paperback Far Side collections that we all enjoyed way back when.

The set came out a little less than a year ago with a $135 sticker price which was quickly discounted to around a hundred dollars. It's now down to $91.80 at Amazon (click here to buy it there) but that may not be the best price you can get. It's now eighty dollars at Costco. At least, that's the mail order price to which you'll also need to add a $9.85 shipping and handling fee, bringing it close to the Amazon price. (Both stores will also hit you up for sales tax.) But if you're visiting a Costco and they have it there for eighty bucks, you may want to grab one. If you can lift it.

Actually, it's the perfect Costco purchase. Eighteen pounds of Gary Larson cartoons will go just fine with your 40 lb. vat of Smucker's Apricot Preserves and your hot-tub-sized drum of Kirkland-brand Hydrogen Peroxide. I'm always afraid when I go into that store and see them giving flu shots. I figure that's got to be, like, a 30-gallon flu shot.

As a gift to him, I won't mention the date…but a certain amount of years ago on this day, a kid named Stanley Freberg was born in Pasadena, California. The son of a Baptist minister, he went into a different line of work (entertainment) but somehow managed to retain his father's moral balance. Stan got into radio, got into cartoon voice work, got into early television. Bob Clampett's Time for Beany, starring Freberg and his frequent partner Daws Butler, may have been the first truly "hip" TV show. Then he started making some of the best comedy records ever made and became the nation's foremost maker of funny advertising and did a lot of other things in TV, movies, radio and more records. As I wrote here, I discovered Freberg when I was a small lad and the impact was enormous. He not only taught me about writing comedy but about looking at the world with a healthy skepticism. That's half the lesson. The other half is that when you encounter something that outrages you, you try to channel that outrage into something constructive…in his case, a lifetime of smart, snappy satire.

I don't think there's anyone who has ever encountered the work of Stan Freberg who doesn't join me in wishing him…(DA-DA-DA-DAH!*) a happy birthday.

*French horns.

Here's an interesting chat with one of the better editors of comic books, Mike Gold.

One of my favorite political sites on the Internet — because they give it to both sides and play fair — is Spinsanity, run by Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer and Brendan Nyhan. In their spirit of utter honesty, I should confess that Ben has become a pal of mine but I was praising his site in my weblog before we ever met. I am only continuing that praise as I recommend a new book by those three folks, All the President's Spin, which is subtitled "George W. Bush, the Media and the Truth." It's a meticulously-researched, non-hysterical examination of statements that have been made by or about the current administration. As you might expect from the title, there are hundreds of examples where the authors quote Bush, Cheney, Powell or someone of that sort, then offer what seems like pretty solid proof that the statement is at least misleading and perhaps utterly wrong.

But this is not exactly a hit book on Bush — though anyone who wants to believe that he and his staff are honorable will probably think as much. There are plenty of places where Ben, Bryan and Brendan correct misstatements and misquotes of what Bush said, or point out the factual inaccuracies of his opponents. The cumulative effect creates a book that, to me, makes a pretty strong argument that no one who is currently front and center in the political world is above mangling the truth, and that the press does a spectacularly poor job of catching them when they do. (Equally appalling are the many cited instances where reporters either misquoted or excerpted a real quote in a way that distorted its meaning.) Since I like the website and agree with the premise of this book, I am happy to give it a glowing recommendation. Hell, I'll even go so far as to post this link via which you can order it from Amazon and — again, making full disclosure — give this site a small commission on the sale. This is a book with more integrity than anyone quoted within its pages.

I must add that it fueled an amazement that I have had for a long time about politics and the media. There's a saying in show business that some flops hurt you and some don't. In the same way, in the game of running for or serving in public office, there are some misstatements that harm and others that never embarrass their speakers. When Bill Clinton said that he'd tried marijuana but "didn't inhale," or when Al Gore said something that could be misinterpreted as "I invented the Internet," those quotes stuck. They went into the public vocabulary and were cited by their opponents not only as lies but as proof that there was something fundamentally, pathologically wrong with the men.

I thought those statements were, at worst, sloppy phrasing, something every public figure is guilty of from time to time. (You all saw Bush the other day saying, "Our enemies…never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." He didn't mean exactly what he said and Gore wasn't making the claim that his foes were able to convince many that he'd made.) I think political figures do lie or deceive, more often that we like to think…but somehow, Clinton and Gore got nailed for more-or-less accurate statements, and a lot of outright fibs went unreported. The Spinsanity book chronicles a lot of them, all more significant and clearly untrue than Gore's supposed "lie" that he was the model for the character in Love Story. Why do some untrue statements hurt and others don't? Beats the heck outta me. Anyway, order All the President's Spin and see if you can figure it out.

As you may well be sick of seeing me assert here, I think the smartest, cleverest show currently on television is The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. In the past, I have directed many of you to the Comedy Central website to view clips from the show…which I do despite the fact that said site is difficult to navigate and filled with banner ads that try to leave invasive cookies on your computer. It's also not easy to link to specific clips. When the site was shut for a while the other day, I hoped they were installing a new, more user-friendly layout but it was not to be. The main change they made seems to have been to switch most of their online videos from Real Player format to Windows Media Files…and it's still awkward to get to a clip and hard for me to send you directly there.

Nonetheless, I recommend making the effort for several clips from The Daily Show and its show-within-a-show election coverage, which they call "Indecision 2004." Many of the segments featured on this page are "web only" features, including a couple of pretty funny Lewis Black tirades you'll see nowhere else. A lot of so-called "real" news people seem to be increasingly uncomfy with the sentiment that a satire/spoof news show does a better job of covering things than they do. But in some ways, it's true.

Speaking of Lewis Black…one of the funniest things I've seen on TV in the last few weeks was his diatribe against government officials who want to criminalize the use of "certain words" on the airwaves. I can't figure out an easy way to link directly to it so go to this page and view the clip entitled "F.C.C. Crackdown." It's worth the trip.

My pal Bob Greenberger is a first-rate editor in the world of comics and a wise presence in many others. For some reason, he has thrown common sense to the breezes and joined the ranks of us webloggers.

Not that I don't think things can't change a lot but I've been eyeing the various "electoral breakdown" maps around the Internet. The two I check most often are this one (which skews a bit Liberal) and this one (which trends Conservative). [WARNING: If you check both, note that the former uses blue for Democrats and red for Republicans, whereas the latter is the opposite.] At this very moment, the Liberal site has Kerry at 280 and Bush at 258, whereas the Conservative count has Kerry at 296 and Bush at 206. Interestingly, that's with the Liberal site putting Florida's 27 electoral votes in the Bush column and the Conservative site putting them in Kerry's. That shows you how arguable some of the polls can be…and how no one can properly count Florida.

I left this out of my previous piece on Ralph Nader. Every poll out there shows him with staggering negatives. The American Research Group survey, f'rinstance, has him with a 10% favorable rating and a 76% unfavorable rating. That's about how Saddam's polling these days.

Now, I certainly think it's possible to be in the right and to rack up a huge unfavorable rating. There's almost something heroic in sticking to your principles in spite of such numbers. I just don't think it's realistic to expect to accomplish much that's constructive.

The more I hear Ralph Nader speak, the less I understand what is driving his current presidential bid, apart from getting attention for Ralph Nader. Four years ago, I could buy the argument that his candidacy was about laying groundwork for a viable third party at some point in the future. I thought that campaign was too much about Ralph Nader and not enough about any larger issue…but there was at least a smidgen of logic to his crusade.

This time, I don't get it. There is no real third party here and to the extent he's crusading for the principle of an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans, I think he's doing damage to that cause. In 2000, Nader got 2.74% of the popular vote and zero electoral votes. In most of the recent polls, he's been there or lower…and in most, he's dropping. The Washington Post-ABC News Poll, for instance, had him at 6% in mid-June, 4% in mid-July and now he's at 2%. He could go lower than that. Folks who admire Nader now have the luxury of being for him without causing their second choice candidate, Bush or Kerry, to lose their state. On Election Day, some of them won't take that chance because even if he's down below 1% nationally, we all recall that 2004 was "decided" by a handful of votes.

So what can Nader accomplish by staying in the race? It sure doesn't look like he's going to build on his 2000 total, so a third party candidate will look less viable than ever. So will his own future candidacy. You don't build a career in politics by getting fewer and fewer votes each time you run.

At one point, I thought Nader might aid Kerry by playing Bad Cop, saying things about Bush that the Democratic nominee couldn't lower himself to say. But so far, when Nader gets on TV at all, it's only because they want him to discuss whether or not he'll throw some state into Bush's electoral column and tip the election. No one is interested in what he thinks about the economy or Iraq or Halliburton. His candidacy is only about his candidacy. Even his own website is primarily about getting him on the ballot and denying claims that Republicans are paying his way on in states where they hope he'll hurt Kerry. And every time he denies that he could be a "spoiler," he loses a certain amount of credibility, and that's a bad thing for him to lose. Those who like the guy generally view him as a refreshing change from the old say-anything-to-get-elected politicos, and Nader is starting to sound like one. (A lot of folks also recall him saying there was no difference between Gore and Bush, which now sounds pretty disingenuous. He didn't exactly say that but he sure came close.)

He's not likely to get into the presidential debates, especially if he's polling below 2% nationally when they're configured. He's not going to win any electoral votes or demonstrate that he has any sort of growing constituency. And he's not going to get much news coverage except to make his lame denials that he could conceivably cause Kerry to lose some key state. That he will be a "spoiler" in one or more states seems to me unlikely but if Bush wins and it's close, Nader will not go down in history as the God of Consumer Rights. He'll be the guy whose ego twice pushed him into a race where he helped elect a man he called "the worst president in history." I don't see what positive thing he has a chance to make happen that's worth risking the downside. It's a shame because he once could have made the kind of difference he wanted to make.