Monthly Archives: August 2005

Time to catch up on the late night reruns of What's My Line? on GSN…

The other night, they ran a 1958 episode in which one of the contestants was a man named named Henri LaMothe, whose occupation was given as "High Diver (Dives 40 feet into 2 feet of water)." He later got himself the Guinness Book of World Records for making what they called "The highest shallow dive," plunging 28 feet into twelve inches of water, a feat he set around 1979 and which was only recently bested.

What they didn't mention on the show and what I found especially interesting about the man was that, first of all, high-diving was a sideline occupation. His main line of work was as a doctor. In fact, he learned the high-diving trick — a special way of contorting your body when you hit the water — when he attended a medical school with a very shallow pool. Secondly, he was doing this dive well into senior citizenry. He was in his forties on the episode of What's My Line? He was in his seventies when he set the world's record…and we had him on a TV show I wrote in the early eighties where, sure enough, he dove from the top of our studio (around 30 feet) into about as much water as I drink in a day. How odd to see him on this old game show. I remember sitting with him in his dressing room thinking, "This man is old enough to be my grandfather and he's about to do something I wouldn't have attempted when I was sixteen."

The What's My Line? Mystery Guests aren't all that interesting in the coming week: Kathryn Grayson tonight, followed by Esther Williams, Van Cliburn, Althea Gibson, Steve & Eydie, and Dick Powell. In a month or so, we should get to a few weeks of very interesting shows to watch.

Hey, you want a handy Internet service? Let's say you have to send a very large file to one or more people. You could e-mail it to each of them but not everyone's e-mail service will accept large files. Moreover, if you're sending it to ten people, that would mean your computer would have to upload it ten times. So whaddaya do? And yes, I know I'm starting to sound like a damn infomercial about this…

You use YouSendIt.com. This is such a great free service that you figure there's got to be a catch…but as far as I can tell, there isn't. You upload the file (up to 1 GB) to their server and enter the e-mail addresses(es) of its intended recipient(s). The site sends messages out to everyone you specify and gives them a link to come and download the file at their leisure. It remains available for seven days and then it's deleted from the YouSendIt server.

Folks say it's safe and secure but if you're concerned that someone will pry into your file, you can use some sort of encryption on it. The easiest would probably be to put it into a password-protected ZIP file, and then e-mail the password to the recipient. You probably have a ZIP program on your computer even if you don't know about it.

I posted this because I thought some of you could make good use of it, but also because I wanted to have one item up here this weekend that doesn't concern Cindy Sheehan.

As of this moment, The New York Times has not officially posted this weekend's Frank Rich column. However, it's hidden on their site and I've figured out how to link to it. It's about Cindy Sheehan and the attempts to make her protest about her instead of about the War in Iraq.

The Blondie newspaper strip will be 75 years old on September 8. To celebrate, members of her clan are paying visits to other strips to invite their characters to a big party. The festivities start today and depending on my mood, I may or may not provide links to all the strips involved, which lead up to an appearance in the feature by George W. and Laura Bush on September 4. If Cindy Sheehan is still camped out in Crawford on that date, we will probably hear remarks that Bush is too busy to meet with the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq but he has plenty of time to visit Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead.

In any case, because I promised Len Wein I'd dig up this information, here's the current schedule of crossover strips…

• Saturday, August 20: Garfield, Rose is Rose
• Sunday, August 21: B.C.
• Monday, August 22: Mutts
• Tuesday, August 23: Beetle Bailey, Mother Goose and Grimm
• Wednesday, August 24: The Family Circus
• Saturday, August 27: Hi and Lois
• Sunday, August 28: For Better or For Worse, Sally Forth
• Wednesday, August 31: The Family Circus
• Friday, September 2: The Lockhorns
• Saturday, September 3: Dennis the Menace
• August 29-September 3: Curtis
• August 29-September 4: Hagar the Horrible
• Dates Unknown: Zits, Wizard of Id, Gasoline Alley, Dick Tracy, Bizarro

Jim Jurgensen (who doesn't capitalize his name but I will) writes…

1. Cindy Sheehan seems to yuck it up quite a bit for a person who had her son killed.

2. Seeing her holding a Pro-Palestine sign bobbing it up-and-down like she's at a political convention with a big smile on her face makes me think twice about her motives…or someone else's agenda she's been sucked into or milk it long enough for a nice book deal.

I guess what it comes down to for me is that though I'm sorry Ms. Sheehan lost her son, ultimately I don't think her motives or personal integrity matter that much. In my e-mailbox and when I go to certain websites, I am assaulted by arguments that there's something wrong with the woman…that she's nuts or a Communist or someone's puppet or lying or whatever. Many of the assailants seem to want me to leap from that to the notion that there's something wrong with all criticisms of the current U.S. effort in Iraq.

This is not to suggest Cindy Sheehan is everything (or even anything) her detractors say she is. But even if she is, so what? At worst, she's one human being who's getting way too much media attention. Someone else wrote me that what she's doing is a "stunt." Okay, fine. It's a stunt. All protest demonstrations are. The idea is to call attention to your cause, and in that she seems to be succeeding, which is why I think she's generally been a positive force. She's caused a few more people to begin thinking and talking about Iraq.

Which is good because we need to talk more what's going on Iraq. I spend more time following the news than most people and I'm getting foggier and foggier on why we're there, what will constitute a genuine success that will justify the costs (both human and financial) and just how our leaders think we're going to get to that. If I sound forgiving of Ms. Sheehan's evident confusions, it may be because I'm confused about Iraq, myself. I don't think George W. Bush should go down to Camp Casey (or whatever they're calling it) and explain to her what Americans are dying for. I think he ought to go on TV and tell us all…and on a level that goes deeper than robotic talking points like, "We have to show the world that we mean business." Several polls now show 55% of Americans think going to war in Iraq was a mistake and that number's going to go up, not down. If there are good reasons we're there, Bush needs to do a better job of reminding people what they are.

Because that stuff's important. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being a matter of critical concern, the rationale for war is at least 8.5, maybe nine. Questions about Cindy Sheehan's personal life and whether she's looking for a book deal are barely a one, if that. If she bothers you, just ignore her the way you ignored the Scott Peterson case or the search for the Runaway Bride or, if you're smarter than I am, the Michael Jackson trial. I fear much of America is about to make the same mistake that many made during the Vietnam War. It was to get more emotional and interested in the protests than in what they were protesting. In the long run, Cindy Sheehan doesn't matter. What we do in Iraq does.

Matt Taibbi gives us a look at how things really work in Congress.

It's a heavy work day but I wanted to mention a few things here before I plunge back into a script…

Sam Tomaino writes to take issue with my characterization of John McCain as "pro-choice." He's right, though if you Google the senator's track record on this topic, you might see why I was confused. McCain votes pretty much like your basic "pro-life" candidate, though he occasionally says things like — this is a quote — "Certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support the repeal of Roe vs. Wade." Opponents have accused him of being "pro-life" but of sometimes disguising this to try and tap into "pro-choice" voters. (By the way: I usually put "pro-life" and "pro-choice" in quotes because I think they're rotten terms for the attitudes they're used to denote.)

Sam and a few other correspondents also argue that Richard Nixon was not much-loved by the extreme right in his day…

I remember a man named John Ashbrook. Ashbrook was a conservative GOP congressman from Ohio (I think) who ran a campaign for the Presidency in 1972 in GOP primaries against Nixon. He got no delegates but he had support from important conservatives of the time like William Rusher, publisher of National Review. They even had little buttons with a no-left-turn symbol on them. Nixon had done a number of things to p.o. conservatives: detente with the Soviet Union, normalization of relations with China, expansion of the "welfare state" spending, etc. I don't remember whether wage and price controls were in effect in early 1972 but conservatives did not like them either. The Ashcroft campaign was the start of a conservative movement in the GOP that resulted in the Reagan campaigns in 1976 & 1980. So I don't think Nixon had much support from the "extreme right."

I agree that if you look at Nixon's record, there's plenty in there that angered hardcore conservatives…but my recollection is that Nixon had the support of much of the extreme right in spite of all that. They sure turned out to vote for him (or maybe just against George McGovern) in '72. Ashbrook — who was, you're right, from Ohio — didn't get very far. Nixon was very good at pushing emotional buttons, and with all his "tough guy" talk about America as a super-power and punishing war protesters and especially of "law and order," he got them where he wanted them. A lot of Conservatives might have preferred someone else but in the end, they supported Nixon. It was only after he left the stage that those Reagan Republicans had an opening.

A lot of this gets down to the fact that people often form an image of a politician based on his speeches and stated positions, and then cling to it despite that individual's actual actions. Nixon was not as Conservative as a lot of his backers wanted to believe, just as Bill Clinton — in deeds if not rhetoric — wasn't as Liberal as many of those who voted for him both times believed. And of course, George W. Bush was the guy who was going to reduce the size of the federal government and not get us into any silly attempts at "nation-building."

Chuck Sigars writes to remind me that the third G.O.P. emissary — who along with Goldwater and Scott went to tell Nixon it was all over — was House minority leader John Rhodes.

Several folks have written to ask what I think of Cindy Sheehan and why I haven't written anything about her protest efforts. I haven't been entirely sure what to think of Cindy Sheehan, beyond the obvious bullet points that I feel sorry for any mother who loses a child, and that I admire her guts for sticking her neck out as far as she has. It bothers me when anyone purports to speak for the dead, but it bothers me a lot less when a mother puts words in her son's mouth than it does when people who never met the kid announce that he would certainly have been ashamed of his mother.

I lost the last gram of whatever respect I once had for Bill O'Reilly that time he had on the young man whose father had died in the 9/11 tragedies. The son was protesting certain Bush policies on terrorism and O'Reilly — who never knew the deceased at all — was saying, "I don't think your father would be approving of this [position]." Just for the record, my mother doesn't know every single thing about how I feel but her understanding is sure worth a helluva lot more than the opinion of someone who never met me.

Cindy Sheehan is not a seasoned politician or pundit. That is both her strength and her weakness. Some of the things she has said — or at least, been quoted as saying, which is not always the same thing — strike me as awkward and off-target. In a way, the lack of polish and precision makes her message more effective because it comes from (or seems to come from) the heart. At the same time though, it makes her vulnerable to attack, and I guess the attacks by their very nature have driven me more towards her side. It's amazing to me that grown men and women weren't bothered by Bush saying we'd found the Weapons of Mass Destruction, or Cheney saying the insurgency is in its last throes, or Rice trying to explain away as insignificant, a briefing headlined, "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S." or dozens of other disingenuous or blatantly false statements. All of those can be rationalized or ignored by people who are now going over every syllable Cindy Sheehan utters, trying to find phrases that prove she's a nutcase or a tool of the far left or just an awful person. Maybe she's just a grieving mother who believes what she says but hasn't yet learned how to speak in precise, carefully-worded sound bites.

Like an ever-widening majority of Americans, I think Iraq is a mess. I'm honestly not sure if it's a mess we should stay and fix or one we should just walk away from. Making either option work has to involve some recognition that serious mistakes have been made. If Cindy Sheehan, in her amateur, clumsy way can get us closer to that recognition, then more power to her.

Joseph J. Finn writes, in reference to that Pat Buchanan column I linked to…

Well, it is an interesting viewpoint from someone who helped cover for the Nixon White House; an administration that, like the current one, tried to cover up all sorts of malfeasances, lies, unnecessary combat deaths and the subversions of a free press. Sadly, we don't appear to have a Ben Bradlee right now to connect the dots and convince the reasonable elements of the Republican Party that their leader is worthy of impeachment for his crimes.

I agree that investigative reporting in this country ain't what it used to be. I'm just not sure there is a "reasonable element" in either party that will ever place principle above politics…nor did we have that back in the Watergate days. What we had then, I think, was a Republican party that realized that Nixon was going down — in popularity if not in an impeachment trial — and they threw him overboard to save their own necks. Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott and I forget who the third one was — three prominent G.O.P. leaders — essentially went to the White House and told Nixon that he would not have solid Republican backing if it came to an impeachment vote and trial. Goldwater even said he was prepared to vote to convict on at least one count. That was when Nixon knew the time had come to have Pat start packing.

That did not happen with Clinton. The day he was impeached, all indicators had his popularity at some sort of record high. Republicans had thought the various revelations would get it down to the point where Democrats would dump the guy but it never came to that. I have little doubt that if his approval rating had been low — around where Nixon's was — some delegation of Ted Kennedy and the Democratic House and Senate leaders would have gone to see Bill. But they all decided they were better off with him than without him.

I don't expect that to happen with Bush. He has a certain hardcore following. I don't know how large it is but around 21% of Americans tell pollsters they "strongly approve" of his presidency so figure it's close to that number. Bush could get caught robbing a liquor store to buy crack and he wouldn't lose those people. They'd shrug it off as a plot by the Liberal Media, Hillary Clinton and militant gays. Nixon had a rock-solid constituency of about the same size Bush now enjoys but I'm guessing the difference goes something like this: The Republican leadership of 1974 figured they could afford to tick off the extreme right; that they weren't the heart and soul of the party and would eventually fall back in behind its next standard bearer. Which they pretty much did. Moreover, Nixon's "failings" were personal and reflected only on him and his aides. Ousting him did not in any way tarnish the grand Republican agenda.

Today's G.O.P. leadership is afraid to alienate that (approximately) 20%. That's why they won't nominate a pro-choice candidate like McCain or Giuliani in 2008 unless they think the alternative is President Hillary or someone else that fringe would think meant the end of life as we know it. Talk of impeachment might be fun for those who think Bush has been a lousy president. It might even be a good way to convince some of those not in the 20% to vote Democratic in the mid-term elections. But that's about all it's good for.

As I mentioned here, the trend in the fast food industry is decidedly away from healthier, low calorie fare. This article in The Washington Post today notes the same thing. [Thanks to Dennis Donohoe for the pointer.]

According to this article in The New York Times, Mort Walker is about to reopen his comic art museum in the Empire State Building in New York.

This may come as a news flash to some but we gave you a giant-sized hint in this item 85 weeks ago.

I don't agree with every word of this article by Pat Buchanan about Cindy Sheehan and war protests. Heck, I don't agree with every word of a lot of political articles to which I link. But this one is an interesting viewpoint from someone who was around when Richard Nixon was seeing popularity erode for the war over which he found himself presiding.

Bob Costas, who is for my money the best interviewer on television, is sitting in for Larry King this week. Last night, he spent the hour with Conan O'Brien. Tonight, he and his guests discuss the BTK Killer — and every time I see that phrase, I think it's some new sandwich at Burger King. Mr. Costas has also resumed his Costas Now program on HBO which mostly discusses sports in a manner that will even interest people who are not much interested in sports.

A number of folks have written me to tell of recent DVD releases that are advertised as "complete" collections of certain seasons of a TV show but are not. In a few cases, songs are missing, presumably because someone wanted too much money for the rights to a tune they controlled. This is apparently the case with the new release of Season One of The Muppet Show. A few numbers are omitted from the set, including Charles Aznavour singing "The Old Fashioned Way," Jim Nabors performing "Gone With the Wind," Paul Williams doing "All of Me" and Vincent Price warbling "You've Got a Friend" with a Muppet Monster. On some sitcoms and dramatic shows, familiar (and expensive) tunes have been replaced with something generic and cheaper.

It is also sometimes the case that what gets collected on the DVD set are syndication prints have long since been trimmed by a minute or three or five or six to accommodate more commercials. I am told this is the case with the new releases of The Cosby Show and at least the first season of Alf.

This is annoying for many reasons, not the least of which is that something that's advertised as "complete" oughta be complete. I suppose one could mount an argument that "complete" means every episode and not that the episodes themselves are complete…or maybe they'd claim that the syndication versions are now the official versions of the episodes in question. But really, honestly, that's not what customers think they're buying and we all know that. What concerns me also is that at a few of the companies that release material on DVDs, there is sometimes a conscious thought that they will put out a product and then, after everyone who loves that show or movie has purchased it, they will put out an enhanced version with better video, more footage, special features, commentary tracks, etc. that will force the lovers of the material to buy another edition. (Let us remember that the main purpose of new home video formats is to see how many times they can get me to buy Goldfinger.) How will you feel if you pop for a hundred bucks to purchase the several volumes that comprise the "complete" collection of your favorite TV show and then, a year or so later, out comes a "more complete" collection of the same series? Yeah, that's how I'll feel.

The folks assembling these DVDs are not the villains. Most companies have had the wisdom to hire devout fans of the material who truly knock themselves out to bring forth the best-possible products. I've seen some of them remove large handfuls of hair from their own scalps in frustration over the legal issues and rights problems, as well as the many cases where material has been lost and only incomplete prints are available. If one took the position that nothing will be released unless it's absolutely complete, a lot of things we want would never see the light of Netflix. I am willing to accept a set that's almost complete if that's the only option but I would like to know about the omissions in advance, and not because I happened to stumble across an online message from some irate buyer.

Video companies should have the gonads to, at the very least, put up this information on their websites in advance so the purchasers don't have to find it out from one another after they've spent the bucks. Before I order, I'd like to know not just what's on the DVD but what's not on it that a reasonable person might assume is there. Are the episodes of a TV series the full, original network versions? Are they cut-down syndication prints? Or sped-up ones? (That happens, too.) What had to be cut or changed because a song could not be cleared for a reasonable fee or even at any price? Has something been omitted because it didn't offend anyone when it first aired but it might today? How about because of legal action? I can think of a couple of things that ran on network television and led to lawsuits, and the settlement was that a certain episode or segment would never be seen again.

That this is generally not done is not wholly because someone's afraid it will harm sales. Heck, in some instances, I think it might help sales. I think it's often laziness. They don't think to make this information available anywhere so we all have to wait at least until the review copies come out and check them, and sometimes the reviewers don't know. This is not a very good system and it's made me a lot more cautious about buying DVD sets and especially about advance-ordering. If the companies would just be candid about this kind of thing, maybe we'd all benefit. At the very least, it would be more honest and that is not without its value.

I dunno how many of you are following the "Able Danger" revelations but it's like a really bad episode of Divorce Court. On Divorce Court, the idea was, at least back when I occasionally watched it, to swing the spectators' emotions back and forth. Some witness would reveal that the husband did something worthy of the Anti-Christ on a bad hair day while the wife was the soul of honesty and goodness. Then the next witness (or perhaps cross-examination of the same witness) would reveal additional details about the incident that cast both players in the opposite light. Like a witness would say, "He [meaning the husband] was in the bathroom shooting himself with drugs while she [the wife] was out collecting donations for charity." Then the follow-up testimony would reveal that the husband was a diabetic injecting himself with insulin and the wife had been convicted several times of running a phony charity scam and using the money she collected to fund child pornography.

That was the formula: Load the argument for one side, then for the other. On some shows, they'd go back and forth a few times before the judge would grant the divorce and divide the property on a more-or-less 50/50 basis.

For the last few days, there have been new revelations every few hours about this government intelligence program called "Able Danger." Some of these stories seem to be collapsing out of sheer improbability. Others may have some real substance…and as the accounts bounce back and forth like Divorce Court testimony, it's almost been fun watching the various political blogs and pundits play their hands. No one yet knows to what extent this scandal can be used to blame 9/11 on the Clinton administration or the Bush administration, but it has the makings of being good for one or the other. So, near as I can tell, the strategy sounds like this: "There's nothing there…unless, of course, this can be used against our political opponents — in which case, it's a bombshell, an undisputed fact and the smokiest of smoking guns."

Both extreme Liberal and extreme Conservative sites are urging caution…and it's not like either group is terribly afraid of publishing false, unverified rumors. Some of these sites will post any damn thing as long as it's determental to the other side. No, they're being cautious about committing to a firm position before they see where this thing is going to point. No one wants to say, "Whoever did this has the blood of the 9/11 victims on their hands" until they're sure it won't be their party.

I have a feeling that's going to be said. I'm just curious to see by whom.

Our friends over at Animation World Magazine have posted a nice report on this year's Comic-Con International. You'll especially enjoy it if you like to see me giving sarcastic answers to perfectly reasonable questions.