Monthly Archives: September 2004

The electricity was out for seven hours yesterday here. Today, I reset all my clocks and timers (I have a lot of things with timers on them) and then I threw out much of what was in my refrigerator, went to the market and restocked. I finished this around 2:00 in the afternoon and an hour later, the power went out here again…and stayed out until just before 9:30. Could it be more fun?

But you know what I kept thinking about through it all, while I was sitting and reading books by flashlight? I kept thinking this was a microscopic fraction of what some folks in Florida have been through lately…and may be about to experience again. It also dawned on me that compared to what happened to some other people not that long ago on this day, two long power outages is like luxury.

Let's find out. Last November, I posted this simple message on this site…

Is the economy really on a rebound? I'll believe that when more people start using Paypal to donate money to this site.

As I admitted here then, it brought in an awful lot of money. Alas, lately, things have changed. I've only received one Paypal donation here in the last six weeks…which suggests to me that the American economy is slowing down. So I am hereby soliciting contributions from those who enjoy this site and want to prove to me that the Bush tax cuts and other moves have improved the financial situaiton in this country. I'll report in a few days. This is at least as accurate as anything Alan Greenspan ever said.

Not much posting here today. Not much electricity at my house, either. Lights went out around 3:00 in the afternoon and only came on around seven hours later. Add in the time I now must spend resetting clocks and figuring out what in my refrigerator is still edible, and that doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging.

But I did want to mention that I attended a lovely memorial service at the Writers Guild Theater this evening to remember a brave and funny man named George Kirgo. Everyone said the same thing: The only thing missing was George, who would have loved the event and been a wonderful host for it. In fact, writer-director Phil Alden Robinson (Field of Dreams) channeled George and tried to imagine what he would have said at the event. He — George, not Phil — was the best speaker of the evening. So I guess that means Phil got it right.

Animation World News, a fine site, has just posted this article on the 2004 Comic-Con International, complete with comments from Yours Truly. Apart from the fact that they think I moderated four panels there (actual number: 13), it's a good report.

William Saletan offers the clearest, simplest argument I've seen yet against the Bush-Cheney Iraq strategy. This is what Kerry ought to be saying.

They've set stud fees for Smarty Jones at $100,000. I've been undercut again.

People often say that Fox News is biased towards Republicans and that CBS News is biased towards Democrats. I don't think either of those charges is all that valid with regard to their pure news functions. It may have some merit with regard to interview shows and programs on which issues are discussed but I don't think, for example, it's inarguably true of the headlines and polls.

So I have to note that today, the Fox News Poll [CAUTION: PDF file] says the presidential race is a "dead heat." They have Bush two points ahead in a poll of likely voters that has a margin of error of three points. At the same time, the CBS News Poll has Bush seven points ahead of Kerry among registered voters…again, with a three point margin of error.

I don't think either poll means much more than a sampling of one group of voters at one moment. Still, it's kinda interesting that these sources are coming to these results.

Franklin D. Roosevelt once referred to the Supreme Court of his day as "the nine old men." This prompted Walt Disney to start referring to his nine key animators by the same phrase. One by one, Walt's Nine Old Men have reached the stage where they're old enough to not be around any longer. Less than three years ago at a tribute to Walt, only three were still around: Ward Kimball, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson. That was in December of 2001. The following July, we lost Ward…and now Cartoon Brew is reporting the passing of Frank. I don't suppose we should be shocked at the death of a 92-year-old man, but we can certainly be sad that we are nearing the end of an era.

I was privileged to meet Frank on several occasions. He was charming and polite and very encouraging to those who would follow in his footsteps. And like so many of his generation, he was still amazed and delighted that work that he'd expected to be in and out of theaters and then forgotten was still studied and loved. I remember someone asking either him or Ollie if they'd dreamed that their animation would be remembered forever. Whichever one answered said, "We were just hoping Walt would remember it when it came time to hand out bonuses."

I was going to write a piece here explaining at greater length why I think the "Bush was AWOL" story is the kind of distraction John Kerry doesn't need. But this weblog post summarizes my feelings as well as anything I could whip up…plus, linking to it saves me time.

Bill Sherman is a very smart guy.

Looks like we're in for another round of news stories about Bush's days in and/or out of the National Guard. I'm all for developments that hurt the man's chances at another four years but I don't think this will. Those who are strongly for Bush will never believe he didn't serve honorably. or figure that even if he didn't, he's still more their kind of man than Kerry. Those who are strongly against Bush will either never believe he did, or figure that even if he did, they still don't want him in the White House. And the Undecideds have far more important things to think about.

I'm with the group that doesn't want the guy in the White House, no matter what he did back then. First of all, I think people do change. Political operatives spend way too much time trying to nail people for what they said or did three decades ago. And so what if Bush did receive special perks because his family was rich and connected? Do we think that doesn't happen in some way for almost everyone who comes from a rich, successful bloodline? We might not like that the world works that way but it does, and it's hardly Mr. Bush's fault that it does. The only reason that I didn't use family influence to get out of going to Vietnam was that I didn't have any. To date, the single perk I've received by being named Evanier is that it's real easy to search for myself on Google.

I avoided military service via that easiest of solutions…a high-enough lottery number. I looked on this not as an act of cowardice but as Fate's recognition that I would have been the worst soldier in the history of mankind. The only way I could have helped the U.S. military effort through combat would have been to enlist in the Viet Cong. Like just about everyone else who didn't serve, I respect the service of those who went into the service, if only because they did what I wouldn't and couldn't do.

All that said, I think past military experience is and always has been of very little importance for the office of President of the United States. I don't think a guy who dodged necessarily would make a bad president and I don't think a guy who served would necessarily make a good one. My uncle had more medals and honors than any recent presidential aspirant except Wesley Clark. I wouldn't have trusted Uncle Henry to drive on the freeway, let alone steer this nation.

While I was posting the previous message, a number of counters notched the 1,000th American casualty in Iraq, and some say that this number was actually reached a few weeks ago. It depends on whether you also count reporters and contractors and a few other "miscellaneous" folks. I don't think the exact number is the issue. I mean, it doesn't leap from Small Tragedy to Big Tragedy when you go from 999 to 1,000. The point is that there's a human cost that is often overlooked. One of the reasons that Michael Moore's film had such an impact on some people is that he devoted an awful lot of it to the simple issue of American soldiers and innocent civilians dying as a result of the U.S. military actions.

And yes, there were innocent civilians dying aplenty in Iraq before the U.S. ousted Saddam Hussein and it may have been manipulative of Moore not to focus a bit on that. But if you put the question to most American voters of how many of our soldiers' lives they'd sacrifice to help the Iraqi people, I suspect the average answer would still be pretty far short of a thousand.

The polls are settling down to the point where, depending where you look, George W. Bush either no longer has a double-digit lead or won't have it much longer. For the last few days though, there's been a lot of panic from Kerry supporters who felt the election slipping away from them. A lot of them used the opportunity to lecture Kerry that he needs to be more negative…to get up there and say that Bush has completely bungled the Iraq War. This may or may not be proper election strategy but in some cases, I think they're lecturing Kerry because they've always felt he was being too nice, and maybe that Democrats too often lose because they won't fight as hard as their opponents. A lot of folks feel that the rationales by which Bush declares the war under control and the economy in recovery are fragile arguments that won't withstand a few tough questions that no one is asking.

Not that anyone who can do anything about it is going to see this but I think Kerry's problem is that he often misses the emotional core of a problem. He's right…but he's not right in a way that fires up voters. Here's a statement he issued today that's as good an example of this as anything…

George W. Bush wishes he and I had the same position on Iraq but wishing doesn't make it so. I have said repeatedly that when it comes to Iraq, I wouldn't have done just one thing differently, I would have done almost everything differently. George Bush's wrongheaded, go-it-alone Iraq policy has created a quagmire, costing us $200 billion and counting. As a result, George Bush is shortchanging America on everything from education to health care to job creation — making it more difficult to meet our needs here at home.

I believe that's all true but I also think Kerry is missing the "money quote," the line that will get folks angry enough at Bush-Cheney to do something about it. You know what's missing in the above statement? Nearly a thousand brave American soldiers dead and countless more injured or maimed for life. The $200 billion is bad but the death toll is what wars are ultimately about. Instead of saying that Bush's inept policies have cost us lives, Kerry's turning the war into a bad domestic economic policy. A lot of our citizens want desperately to believe that something Bush has done or will do makes that next terrorist attack less likely, so Kerry needs to remind America that there are, if anything, more people in the world now who think the killing of Americans is a good thing.

By the time you read this, we may have topped 1,000 U.S. service deaths in connection with the Iraq war — an amazing number of those since Bush declared "Mission accomplished" or since Howard Dean was scolded for saying that the capture of Saddam hadn't made the world safer for us. I think Mr. Kerry needs to stop talking about health care and job creation for a few days and mention all those flag-draped coffins the press isn't allowed to photograph. Yeah, it's the economy, stupid, but a lot of Americans are now prepared to settle for a weak economy if they think the guy in the White House can protect them.