Monthly Archives: November 2004

The London production of The Producers — starring Nathan Lane on short notice — seems to be a smash.

For those of you who are getting bombarded with the idea that most of America is now "red states," here's an entry from a blogger who helps to put things in perspective.

No, I haven't forgotten you, dear POVonliners. I've been busy with a script, and whatever time I can spare for Internetting has been spent writing and designing a couple of new sections I'll soon be adding to the non-weblog part of this site. You'll see them here in a week or so.

I've received a lot of e-mail from fans of Supercar and other Gerry Anderson shows. Dave Hobson wrote to tell me of his new website that's devoted to Supercar memorabilia. Neat.

I've also received an awful lot of forwarded mail and links to pieces asserting that nefarious things were done during the vote count last week, especially in Florida and Ohio, and that John Kerry won or should have won. That strikes me as unlikely but not impossible…and I guess I lack the energy to get too immersed in such charges. These kinds of things depress me in how the evidence — whatever there is — gets processed not on its merits but as just another partisan response. There may be enough proof to convince those who really, really don't like George W. Bush but there can never be enough to convince those who want him in the White House…and probably not enough to get the major news outlets to cover it like a real story. Which is why it'll never amount to much.

Lastly, a couple of folks have asked where they might see the next round of the popular Quick Draw! game that I host at conventions, usually with Sergio Aragonés, Scott Shaw! and another cartoonist or two drawing challenges that I throw at them. At the moment, the next outing looks to be at the Wondercon in San Francisco, next February 18-20. Details are not yet posted at the con website but you can register online there, and you may want to begin making plans to be there.

Michael Kinsley on the post-election posturing. I'm not linking to a lot of political articles these days because I'm not seeing many that strike me as substantive. But I'm linking to this one.

The Writers Guild of America, in which I used to be rather active, is often wracked by divisive elections and issues. We often do not do more for the betterment of TV and movie writers because we're too busy attacking one another's wisdom and integrity. I will resist the impulse to compare this to the American political situation except to say it's way too similar.

Recently, we had a particularly contentious vote that re-elected Daniel Petrie, Jr. as our president with a pretty decisive 70% of the ballots. The loser in that contest was Eric Hughes, a gent I don't know at all, who followed the now-common tradition of our Guild and promptly filed a complaint with the Department of Labor. I have no idea what the complaint was but it has just been dismissed as lacking merit, the election has been certified and the Guild can now get on with the pressing business of ratifying what I think is a pretty crummy new contract.

This press release will tell you a little about the new contract and how we arrived at it. It will also tell you it's a great deal with breakthrough terms for our members…and while I like and respect a number of members of the Negotiating Committee, I think the offer before us is not a very good one. It may be as good as they could do without wielding a strike authorization. In fact, it probably is…and it may also be true that if they'd asked the membership for a strike authorization, they either would not have received one or it would have passed by such a tepid margin as to weaken our position. Still, none of that changes the fact that the terms we will soon be asked to accept are pretty lousy. As but one example, there has been a long tradition — one our predecessors fought hard to establish — that when you write a TV show and it's rerun, you are entitled to residual payments. That has been a vital component to the income of writers for decades, but we are now about to begin the precedent of making exceptions. The new contract specifies that any two of the first three episodes of a new TV series can be reaired within 60 days without payment to the authors. I think that rollback is reason enough to reject this contract and start painting picket signs but I doubt most of the membership will feel that way.

There are some gains in the new deal but not many. The minimum script rates are raised 3%, which is about the lowest percentage rate they ever get increased by in these contracts. There are a number of areas of concerns to writers that have been either totally ignored or dismissed with the promise that a committee will be convened to discuss the matter. The latter is generally just a way of cushioning a "no," and making it look like the Guild got something when, in fact, it got something that will lead to nothing. DVD compensation, which many had said was in dire need of improvement, is among the topics unaddressed.

Unlike some who are decrying this offer and lobbying against ratification, I do not think it represents a failure of resolve by the Negotiating Committee and Board of Directors. A common criticism in such situations — unfair, I think — is that our guys weren't "tough enough." In fact, I think that in most walks of life, being "tough" is a sham; not unless there's some genuine threat to back it up. Our negotiators rarely go into battle with much in the way of weaponry. The folks with whom we negotiate believe that the WGA lacks the solidarity to strike, and that whenever we do muster some energy, they can pretty much count on us to expend it on internal bickering. Given our past behavior, it is not an unexplainable view.

We also have the recurring problem of the Directors Guild undermining our bargaining. I wrote about that problem in this post, and the more I hear about what went down this time, the more I think it's our main obstacle.

I intend to vote against the new contract and urge other WGA members to do likewise. It's just about certain to pass, but it might give our negotiators a teensy bit of help next time if this deal passed 60-40 instead of 90-10. And then, once it's ratified, we can get back to our main pastime in the Guild, which is the attacking of each other and the Guild staff.

If you have a TiVo, you probably take what they call Season Passes" to all your favorite shows. A Season Pass means, "Record every episode of this program." Here's a list of the 100 most frequent Season Passes among TiVo users.

I'm just now watching — or trying to watch — the Cat in the Hat movie with Mike Myers. I like Myers and I like everything Dr. Seuss ever did. Alas, the book doesn't translate into a whole movie and the make-up they have Myers in is just too freakish to accept him as a character. Art direction's great and the screenwriters came up with some very clever gags…but it's all built on a very bad idea to begin with.

John Kerry's concession speech sounded to me like every other concession speech given by anyone who loses an election, regardless of the situation. I don't think I want to ever see a candidate come out and yell, "The voters are idiots," but there are other things that could be said in what should be a moment of candor, not political niceties. I didn't catch the Alan Keyes concession speech — if, indeed, he's even given one — but I have a hunch he didn't talk of linking arms and working together with people he thinks are destroying America.

My friend Shelly Goldstein phoned me just before the speech and said, "No matter what he says, everyone will say it was his finest moment and "Why couldn't he have spoken like that during the campaign?" Given the few moments of post-concession analysis I caught on MSNBC, I'd say she was right. But really, it was the same Kerry and the same speech everyone else gives.

One other thought I had during Kerry's speech: I'm sick of people talking about fighting for me. No one who ever promised to "fight for me" has ever won anything for me and some have done me damage. What I want is a guy who'll promise to fight people who want to fight for me. And then I'll probably have to get someone to fight the guy who's fighting the guy who's fighting for me. And then…

I want to quote this paragraph from the Zogby Poll website, just so I can link back to it easily in the future…

"We feel strongly that our pre-election polls were accurate on virtually every state. Our predictions on many of the key battleground states like Ohio and Florida were within the margin of error. I thought we captured a trend, but apparently that result didn't materialize. We always saw a close race, and a close race is what we've got. I've called this the Armageddon Election for some time — a closely-divided electorate with high partisan intensity on each side."

Okay, he's right about that last part. But if a pollster can say, "X will win big" and then X loses and the pollster is still to be considered accurate…well, then that poll wasn't good for much of anything, was it? A saner view would be that he called a lot of states for Kerry that were within the margin of error and so should not have been called for anyone.

Couldn't sleep. Got up about an hour ago to see if somehow America had suddenly realized last night was a huge miscount. Instead, I heard someone calling on all Americans to "get behind our President."

I never know what that means. Seriously. When someone says "support the President" (whoever it is), I never know what they're expecting me to do or not do.

The only thing I can think of is that they don't want to hear negative comments or criticism. This is generally for their own benefit, not the country's. The right to say you think any elected official is a liar or a cheat or an idiot is one of our most sacred rights in America. It's much more important than any right they may have, or think they have, not to hear words that distress them or call their views into question.

Honestly, I can't think of any other thing that "support the President" means, other than to shut up about him. And let's be honest. People who didn't like Bush yesterday will, if anything, like him less today. And they won't shut up about him any more than all those people who loathe the Clintons have ever shut up about the Clintons.

A friend this morning wrote me that he thinks I understated how much Democrats are still questioning the legitimacy of the Bush election of 2000. Yeah, maybe. But it mostly came down to little snide comments about "Our Commander-in Thief." This time, I think the anger is going to be such that it will have to turn into something more palpable. This is not necessarily what I want…just what I think is going to have to happen with so many Americans out there feeling that we have a very bad man (bad in terms of values but also in terms of competence) in the White House.

As I was writing the above, someone called to say Kerry had phoned Bush to concede and will soon make a public statement. Not surprising, of course, and I'm sure he will be gracious and say things intended to bind wounds. I don't think it will help. I think there are too many people out there who were once unfairly accused of being "Bush-haters" who will now embrace that label; who will feel that the way to win elections in this country is to lie about the other side as egregiously as they think the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" lied about John Kerry; who will think not that every Bush supporter was stupid but that the Republican margin of victory consists of people who believe we found Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was the mastermind of 9/11, and that there was something "French" about John Kerry.

When Bill Clinton won, there was a lot of rage at him…people who felt that even though he might have won by the rules, he had not won in a moral sense. To them, he lacked any higher entitlement to the presidency. That rage had to come out in some form, and it came out in books and talk radio hosts claiming he'd had people murdered or was running a cocaine-smuggling operation. It came out as a large chunk of America saying, "He's not my president." It came out as an impeachment that, whatever you think of its merits, sure did a lot of damage to a lot of this country. Today, you have what is probably a larger group of citizens who have a rage at George W. Bush, and also the very real fear that a guy who's driven up the deficit to record proportions, harmed the lives of folks at the bottom of society and made the whole world a more dangerous place will now feel he has a mandate to do a lot more of all these things.

I'm not saying all those fears are justified but they're there, and so is the rage. It's got to manifest itself somewhere, and it won't be pretty.

Assuming Ohio goes the way it's likely Ohio will go, we're going to be reading articles for months on why John Kerry lost. There'll be dozens of reasons, most of them probably valid to some extent. But I suspect the conventional wisdom will boil down to two reasons, one being that Kerry was not a very appealing candidate to most people. Even supporters found him long-winded and he somehow managed to sound inconsistent even when being consistent. To a lot of voters, he was just a skinny Ted Kennedy: Massachusetts Liberal. Rich kid. Thought he was better than all of us. That he was also a war hero didn't resonate with a lot of voters who considered Bill Clinton unfit for the presidency due to supposed draft-dodging. Somehow, Bush — though born into privilege — convinced a lot of people he was a down-home Texas rancher…and one of them.

The other reason, I'm afraid, will be that the Democrats weren't mean enough. I know a lot of Republicans think the Dems were plenty rough on Bush but it was not as bad as it could have been. Next time, I'm afraid, it will be.

As I think I said here a few weeks ago, it was always destined to be a sad election, no matter who won. No matter who it was, we were going to wind up with a president detested by about half the nation. In 2000, I think Democrats were better sports than the Republicans would have been if their guy had lost with a minority of the popular vote and so many very real questions about uncounted ballots and suppressed voters. This time, Bush's win seems cleaner but I think this country will wind up more divided than ever…and to the extent that happens, we all lose.

Presidencies have a way of not going the way we expect. No one who voted for Bush four years ago thought he'd drive up the deficit and get us deep into "nation-building" in Iraq. His second term may be equally full of surprises for all. At the very least, he's the one who got us into debt and Iraq and now, he's the one who's going to have to figure out how to get us out of both. I sure hope he succeeds.

Well, it looks like Mr. Zogby's projection of 311 electoral votes was way off the mark. Let's all remember that the next time pollsters tell us who's going to win in some election, month after next. Zogby blew it after the voting had already started.

Needless to say, I'm not happy about how things have gone tonight. I don't have any feelings worth posting here…just the obvious unhappiness. More later if I think of anything.

Ralph Nader just gave a very sad, rambling speech which I guess was a concession (I didn't hear it all) but he did not look well. I don't mean he looked like a man who was depressed at losing. He looked like a man who was ill. He was talking about how the American people will not stand for the kinds of injustices they presently endure, especially in terms of health care and folks living below the poverty level. I'd like to think he's right but he sure didn't sound like the kind of person who can help make that happen.

One question that I wish some interviewer had put to Ralph Nader is: "If we asked John Kerry and George W. Bush what they'd consider a failure on November 2, we know what they'd have said. They'd have said, 'Losing the presidency.' What would you, Ralph Nader, consider a failure on November 2?"

He probably would have denied any outcome would be a failure but, of course, that option does not exist in politics. If there's something to be won, there's something to be lost. An honest answer would probably have been that a "loss" would have been such a poor showing as to lessen the credibility of all independent candidates, and especially his own for the future. That's pretty much what's happening. He hit 2.7% last time and he'll be lucky to make 1% this year. Remember when he used to be a force for good?