Monthly Archives: December 2004

Poynter Online is a journalism-oriented website that, among other pastimes, likes to publish internal memos from news media companies. They just came up with a juicy one from The Daily Planet. [Thanks, Bruce Reznick]

I probably won't dwell on this topic past today so don't send anymore…but I thought I'd share a few more e-mails I've received on the topic. This first one is from Cecil E. Newsom…

I personally thought Donald Rumsfeld's answer to the troops was very close to telling them to go screw themselves.

When you are attacked by someone else, you go to war with the army you have. But when you had over a year to plan and are surrounded by experts on the subject of waging war, you create a plan, get what you need, and go to war. This guy didn't do that. He went to war with a configuration of men and machines created to prove a point. He had been told that to secure the peace would take about 300,000 men, and he chose to go with less than half that.

And lastly, he topped it off with a bit of blatant lying. Armor sure as hell does stop a vehicle from being blown up. Newsmen have commented repeatedly about shells bouncing off tanks and other armored vehicles.

And this one is from Jim Atkins…

I just read your comments about Greg Cox's reply to your previous blog. I teach junior high here and about half of my students are from Marine families (the major industry here is the Marine Air-Ground Combat Center, the largest Marine training ground in the world). Do I support our troops? You bet I do. Those men and women are some of the finest people I have ever met, all of them willing to lay down their lives for the United States. Duty and Honor aren't just words to the Corps.

Do I support the war? Not anymore, not after finding out Bush, Powell, Rice and Rumsfeld lied to us at every turn; about Al Qaida ties, about WMD programs, about nearly everything. At this point, Iran and North Korea are really making WMD and we can't do anything about it, because we are tied down in a mess of our own making. Osama is running around loose because all our forces are cleaning up insurgent psychos in Iraq. Arrogance, hubris, whatever; they got it, and we will be paying for it.

I haven't yet had to deal with a kid losing a parent; most of the casualties from our units have been younger men without families. It's kind of in the back of your mind all the time.

Lastly, here's another one from Greg Cox…

Thanks for your comments to my comments. We did prep for this war. We're getting things done; we're making some mistakes, and we're correcting those mistakes. Regarding 'what if the mistakes were ten times worse,' well, the obvious answer is we'd need to make ten times the effort to correct what's wrong. Because we're committed to accomplishing certain goals. Goals that were set out before we went into Iraq. Goals have certainly been adjusted some, but probably not too much.

I think it's very much worth remembering that before we went into Iraq, there was (we thought at the time, as well as other countries) solid intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons situation.

Some questions:

Okay – you've just been given the job of Secretary of Defense. Regarding where we are now in Iraq – what things do you think the coalition and the U.S. forces must get done before moving the majority of the troops out? How long do you think it should take to get those things done – about when would you, SecDef Evanier, estimate you'll be able to pull out the majority of the troops?

Lastly, after we went into Iraq, of course, it was a whole different situation. What things have been accomplished by coalition forces that you supported and/or saw as positives?

I don't think I'd agree that we're correcting mistakes at a speedy-enough rate compared to how rapidly we're making them. We're certainly not admitting mistakes at any sort of decent clip. One of the things that scares me about this Administration is that no matter what happens, the official line seems to be either, "Yes, that's just what we meant to do" or "It was somebody else's fault." (They also have a related propensity for losing court battles and then claiming victory. See this article in Slate for a good example.) There's this sense that it's vital to look "on track" even when you aren't, even if that means soldiering on in the wrong direction.

I think goals have been adjusted a lot since we went into Iraq. The big goal, and the reason we didn't wait a few more months and prep our troops better, was that Saddam had those Weapons of Mass Destruction and might use them at any moment. Remember back when people like Hans Blix and Scott Ritter were fools for thinking he didn't have them? When Colin Powell went before the U.N. with charts and graphs and the best intelligence the United States could muster and "proved" they were right where we knew they were? In almost any other field, you'd be shamed into another line of work for such a monumental screw-up and you'd have to go sell snow tires at Walmart for the rest of your life. In the Bush Administration, you just change the rationale for invasion, say that's what it always was, fire no one for incompetence and barrel right on with the war. I'm still amazed there wasn't more outrage over this bait-and-switch, even if it was an honest mistake.

As for what I'd do as SecDef…well, if I were Bush's Secretary of Defense, I think I'd get up and say we've made a lot of mistakes there and we're going to bring in better miltary strategists and start listening to them instead of trying to prove Rumsfeld's silly theory about how it was possible to win on the cheap. And then I'd go back to my office and type out the letter of resignation that will be demanded of me within the hour. (I'd probably make up some lame excuse about how I might not have paid the proper taxes for a nanny I'd employed.) How long might it take to withdraw our troops? I dunno. Rumsfeld recently said four years which, since he said it, probably means eight. Maybe more competent leaders could manage it in four.

What positives do I think have emerged from all this? I thought the early efforts in Afghanistan were for the better. Recently, I've read so many conflicting reports that I'm not sure if things have improved there or gotten as bad as they've ever been. In Iraq, I think the downfall of Saddam is a positive, though he clearly was not as great a threat as we thought. I suspect in hindsight, history will judge his removal as a good thing, though one for which America paid way too high a price in terms of lives, money and resources that should have been put to more pressing matters.

One last thing about the Rumsfeld Q-and-A that launched us into this debate: According to this article, "Army officials were meeting late yesterday to decide whether to ask Armor Holdings Inc. to increase production from 450 Humvees to 550 Humvees a month at its O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt plant in Cincinnati after the firm claimed it could expand production." Do we think they would have met late yesterday on this topic if that soldier hadn't asked Rumsfeld that question? Planted or not, it did some good. The Administration has been embarrassed into doing something they should have done months ago.

Thanks for the interesting discussion, Greg. The next thing I post here will be something happier and will have nothing to do with people dying or politics or any other depressing subject.

One more memory of Bob Haney. In early 1963, DC added a super-hero strip to an anthology comic called My Greatest Adventure. It was called The Doom Patrol and the feature bore an uncanny resemblance in many ways to Marvel's concurrently-introduced comic, The X-Men. My conclusion is that the similarities were just coincidence, but it certainly brought to DC Comics a bit of the freshness and depth that fans were then discovering in Marvel's books. Personally, I preferred The Doom Patrol, a fine strip which eventually took over the entirety of My Greatest Adventure. While Drake was clearly the strip's guiding hand, he got some aid on that first story from Haney and, as mentioned here before, the two of them established themselves as the DC writers of the day who best understood that super-hero comics could and should have more personality and depth.

Upon hearing of Haney's passing, Drake sent the following as an e-mail to someone else who, with Arnold's permission, forwarded it to several other folks, including me. I just phoned Arnold (who I'll be interviewing at next year's Wondercon, by the way) and got his okay to post it here for everyone…

Dreadful news. Bob was a very talented and decent man. We were extremely close for several years. Spent the summer of '65 (I think it was) working on a thriller-satire called The Assassinator. (The word didn't really exist. But we were turned on by its freshness.)

In the Spring of '62, I think it was, [editor] Murray Boltinoff asked me to come up with a new superhero to try and save My Greatest Adventure. Overnight, I had most of The Doom Patrol shaped up: a scientific genius in a wheelchair leads a pair of superheroes who don't like being "freaks." He cajoles/ taunts them into shaking off their self-pity and using their fantastic qualities to build a better world. When I brought the concept to Murray, Elastigirl and Robotman were well developed. Murray flipped over it and said, "Write it!" But I was convinced I needed one more character. And I had only a weekend in which to find the character and write a 16 page origin story.

Coming out of Murray's office, I met Bob in the hall and told him a bit about the DP. He also loved the concept. He had no weekend assignment so he asked if he could help find the third superhero. He was always a pleasure to work with and time was breathing down my neck. I said, "Okay!" So we sat down and began the search that eventually produced Negative Man. He was, I think, the most unique of the trio. And when I later developed that ghastly glowing figure under the bandages, he really became something else. But Bob was there when we midwifed Neg Man into being.

We wrote a storyline, "tore" it in half and went to our respective homes to write the script. I did the first half and he the second. Back in the city (he lived in Woodstock) we performed minor surgery to make the pieces fit neatly together. I wrote every story on my own after that. But Bob was there on day one and I've spoken of that countless times.

This is a great loss. There was no one I was closer to in the field. Though we saw each other only once ( '99 San Diego ComCon) after he moved to Mexico, I am going to miss him. This has been a bitch of a year for me. And it doesn't help much to say, "It comes with the territory!"

I think Arnold may be a bit off with Spring of 1962. It was probably later that year. Also, I believe Haney said he also co-authored the second Doom Patrol story…but from there on, it was definitely all Arnold's and he did a superb job. Maybe at the Wondercon, I'll get him to talk more about Bob Haney.

Greg Cox sends the following in reply to my post about "supporting the troops." I'm going to interrupt a few times here to respond to what he has to say. Note the difference in margins to distinguish him from me.

If that reporter was coaching troops, as it seems he was, that is an integrity issue, and I think most people would find his actions very inappropriate.

The reports I've read sound like minor coaching. But even if it's inappropriate, the gentleman still posed a valid question. I think what's happening right now is that pro-Bush folks who are embarrassed by Rumsfeld's answer are trying to shift the focus from that answer to a Red Herring: Let's not talk about Rumsfeld's competence or insensitivity. Let's talk about the slanted press and how all bad news is because of their bias. It's a slight variation on the old Nixon trick: If you don't like being asked the question, attack the questioner. I think it's worth noting that all the press reports, even the ones in the Conservative press, said that a lot of the soldiers present cheered the question.

Also, Secretary Rumsfeld, in my opinion, nailed it on the head – you do go to war with the army you have. You get things rolling to get the equipment in place, of course. But you'd mentioned you haven't seen anyone denying that the troops haven't had what they need – well, put me on that list — the troops have what they have. They can always use more. And, yes, there still may have been errors made, and there may be obvious shortcomings. And of course those issues should be brought to light, and corrected. But they should be corrected — so that the troops can do their job.

My problem with Rumsfeld's reply was that it was a glib non-answer. I mean, if you were a soldier and I sent you into battle with defective weaponry and compasses that point East and spoiled rations and inaccurate maps, I could say, "Well, you go to war with what you have." There is such a thing as a soldier who has been insufficiently equipped. It doesn't save that soldier's life to say, "Well, they have what they have." We are fighting a War of Choice here. There was plenty of time to prep for this war, there could have been more…and it's fair to ask if we've done everything feasible to provide troops with armor and equipment since it began. Clearly, a lot of those on the ground in Iraq don't thnk so. (Here's a piece from The Army Times)

Speaking of doing the job – the thing I'd most like to run by you is this: To me, supporting our troops is tied to supporting their success. (Lots of people, of course, agree or disagree on whether we should have gone into/invaded Iraq; and I think that's related to all this, but very separate from "supporting our troops.")

Personally, I support what we're doing in Iraq, and in the larger war on terror. And I have no problems with someone who doesn't share my opinions. But — to vocally advocate our not finishing the job – that for certain isn't beneficial. The troops have a mission, you know?

When it comes to whether people support or don't support that mission – I think the the same distinction I mentioned before applies – if someone doesn't support the job we're committed to – hey, fine. But supporting the troops? How could that NOT include wanting to see them succeed? How does it add up? Do people with that point of view want the troops to be safe, but not successful? How confusing that must be.

It's still less confusing than the people who say they "support the troops" but don't seem to be bothered if the equipment is sub-standard, if military pay is cut and if we skimp on veteran's benefits.

Actually, a lot of this comes down to costs, primarily human costs. It's one thing for people to support a mission in the abstract; quite another for them to support it when it becomes clear that it will cost X American lives…to say nothing of the number wounded and the dollar cost. Supposing those costs tripled? Or were multiplied times ten? Your support for the troops themselves would not change. You'd still want them to be safe. But your belief in the mission could sure diminish.

I think you always have to look at the principle you're applying and ask yourself if it works if and when our leaders are incompetent or misguided. You may think Bush, Rumsfeld, et al know what they're doing but what if someone in their position was just plain wrong? Military leaders of the past have made errors, sometimes horrible errors, and it removes any sense of accountability or "checks and balances" to restrict criticism of them. I am not wholly convinced but I've read some semi-convincing arguments that the current U.S. efforts in Iraq are making things worse, not better, and putting the U.S. in a much worse position vis-a-vis the "War on Terror." If that's so, one could well decide the mission should be aborted or altered. That would not indicate any lack of affection or respect for the troops.

What I think is disrespectful is when someone uses soldiers as Human Shields in the debate over policy; when a criticism of the leaders is deflected by scolding the critic, "You don't support our brave men and women fighting overseas." It's like a crooked politician wrapping himself in the flag. The folks who have been deficient in getting soldiers the needed armor and the ones who oppose better pay and post-war care for veterans…they're the ones who literally are not supporting our troops.

As I've probably mentioned before here, I've never quite understood the admonition to "support our troops." What is it that I might do that would constitute non-support of the men and women fighting over in Iraq? Mock their haircuts? Every time I've heard someone accuse someone else of showing disrespect or a lack of support for "the troops," it seems to be code for "Don't dare suggest that their leaders are not running the war properly or are getting anyone killed needlessly." This was true back in the 'Nam days. It's true now.

The only real, meaningful definition I can come up with about supporting our troops is that we should make sure they have the best possible equipment and protection, that they're not sent into battle needlessly, that they're paid decently, that the wounded receive proper medical care, and that no man or woman returns from service to a life of poverty. These things are not happening, at least not to the extent they should. The exchange one G.I. had the other day with Donald Rumsfeld about body armor is suddenly getting diverted into a debate over the propriety of the question and whether it was "planted." That's a small matter. The larger matter, which no one seems to be denying, is that our troops have not had the best-possible protections in a war that was started on our timetable, not the enemy's. To me, that's a much greater example of "non-support" than anything a guy with a picket sign might commit.

Meanwhile, according to this article, veterans are starting to show up at homeless shelters in this country. This article [Record Online, registration intermittently required] details the financial struggle of one man who lost an arm in Iraq and this piece says that while by some methods of counting, the death rate in Iraq is lower than some past wars, loss of limbs is occurring at a higher-than-usual rate. We have an unfortunate tendency to count the "human loss" of war only in terms of folks who actually die. There are also great costs in those who are injured and emotionally-scarred, and those people are too often hidden and neglected.

Except for a few extreme nutcases, everyone in this country — whether they're for the war in Iraq or ag'in it — wants to see the soldiers return home safely and to be properly compensated for their service. I'd like to see "support our troops" turn into a demand for the government to make that the norm. Too often lately, it's used as a club against those who criticize Bush, Rumsfeld and all the rest who are actually running the war that's getting some of those we support killed and driving others to homeless shelters.

As a couple of comic news sites have reported, About Comics has cancelled its series reprinting DNAgents and Crossfire after one volume of each. The marketplace is so screwy these days, especially for small publishers, that I'm not surprised. I was very happy with the job that my pal Nat Gertler did in packaging and publishing the material, and I'm sorry for all of us that it didn't work out. Maybe another time…

As a couple of folks (including Stan Tychinski and Fred Hembeck) have informed me, the full list of The 100 Most Memorable TV Moments is not a grand secret. It was printed in full in the current issue of TV Guide. I rarely read past the first few pages of that magazine unless the checkout line at the market is unusually long.

I know it's silly to quibble with any list of this sort, but I could only think of two "moments" that surprised me in their omission. One was Walter Cronkite announcing the death of President Kennedy. The other was President Johnson surprising the nation and newsmen alike with his announcement that he would not seek a second term. The entertainment ones are too subjective to weigh, but Kennedy's death and Johnson's abdication were actually instances where, on live TV right before your eyes, you could feel the world change.

And of course, I'd have tossed in my first screen credit. That is, if historians haven't bulk-erased all the old tapes of The McLean Stevenson Show.

TV Land and TV Guide have teamed for five hour-long specials this week that countdown The 100 Most Memorable TV Moments. Like all these lists, the picks are arguable, especially when one considers the many ways to define "memorable" and the simple vagaries of personal experience. Many aren't memorable to me because I never saw them in the first place.

The specials are well-produced and someone deserves a lot of credit, if only for obtaining so many "talking head" interviews to comment on and describe the memorable moments. There are a lot of nice sleight-of-hand moves in evidence. In many cases, they were unable to obtain (or unwilling to pay for) actual footage of the memorable moments in question. So they switch between a lot of different folks discussing it and intercut still photos…and in many cases, you barely notice that they didn't actually show you the moment. I'll bet a lot of people will watch these specials and think they saw footage that wasn't there.

Tonight's show counted down #21-40 with things like Bill Clinton playing sax on The Arsenio Hall Show, Henry Blake's death on M*A*S*H, Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl, Hank Aaron's home run record and Eddie Murphy doing James Brown on Saturday Night Live. In fact, if you want to see the whole list, they have it up on their website. Here's #81-100. Here's #61-80. Here's #60-41. And here's #40-21.

They're counting down #1-20 on the installment tomorrow night and to keep America in suspense, they haven't posted or released that list yet. However, it's hidden on the website without any active links to it, which means that you can read it if you know where to look. All five hours rerun a couple times on Saturday.

Sounds like a joke but it's true: To tie in with the new Monty Python musical, Spamalot, the Hormel company is putting out a special "golden honey grail" can of Spam. It comes out in February — when the show will be opening on Broadway — and they say it'll be available just in New York. I have a feeling this will be a collectible only, which is to say no one will actually open the can and consume its contents. Which if you must buy a can of Spam is always a good idea.

Here's a press release about this monumental event. Here's an announcement about the pre-Broadway pre-cast album of the show, which sounds like a CD of the demos Eric Idle recorded. And here's a link to the official website for the show, which is full of all sorts of silliness. If you just load the site and listen, you can hear an awful lot of the score. [Thanks to Roger Ash for the tip.]

We're thinking good thoughts this evening for Dick Clark, who earlier this week, suffered what is being described as a "mild stroke." I worked for Dick on a few occasions and apart from his well-known aversion to paying high salaries, I liked him tremendously.

I can't help think about a problem that Dick's crew and his network may be discussing at the moment. As everyone knows, a fixture of every December 31/January 1 transition is the annual Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve special, with Dick reporting from a rooftop in Times Square. What some folks may not know is that the rest of the show — everything except Dick's live cut-ins — is recorded some time before. It's tough to book top musical acts on New Year's Eve, especially for the kind of money Dick Clark Productions tends to offer.

I dunno when they did this year's but back when I worked for Dick, the music portions were all taped in October with the hosts saying, "And now, let's go to Dick Clark in Times Square!" This year, the broadcast takes the form of two programs — one before and one after your local 11:30 newscast — for a total of three hours and thirty minutes. One suspects they've taped all the music and a lot of footage that mentions cutting to Dick in New York. One also suspects that even if Mr. Clark makes a rapid recovery, it would not be a good idea for him to fly to New York, battle New Year's Eve crowds and spend several hours atop a building in what may be pretty cold weather. So someone is at the very least thinking about an alternate Times Square correspondent and figuring out how they can re-edit what is already taped to accommodate a change. Dick might still pull himself together in time, but they're probably scrambling to pull together a Plan B. Just in case.

Frank Rich uses the movie Kinsey as a jumping-off point to discuss attempts in this country to roll back sexual freedom. Quick summary: Everything old is new again.

And for a more considerate attitude about our men and women in uniform overseas, I direct you to a column by Lloyd Omdahl.

Fred Kaplan discusses the latest instance of Donald Rumsfeld saying something horribly insensitive and inaccurate. Republicans are often very quick to pounce on anything a Democrat says that could possibly be interpreted as anti-military or disrespectful to our brave fighting men and women. But apparently The Donald can get away with just about anything.

Here's a clever piece of Shockwave animation at the expense of Ashlee Simpson. I'm starting to feel sorry for Ms. Simpson with all the lip-syncing jokes, but I think even she'd enjoy this one.

Our friend Ray Bradbury was among the recipients of the National Medal of Arts a few weeks ago, a fact which has just come to my attention. Here's an article about the Oval Office ceremony with George W. Bush and a bad picture of all the winners. [Washington Post, registration perhaps required. You never know with some of these links.]