Monthly Archives: August 2005

New York Times reporter Judy Miller is still behind bars for refusing to divulge sources in the Plame/CIA/maybe Rove matter. Some people, of course, have always felt she should be jailed because the enforcement of various espionage-related laws is of greater importance than whatever principle of the Free Press she is protecting. Others, who believe no reporter should ever be incarcerated for protecting a source, have come to her defense. But as I read various members of the media who hold that latter position, I sure get the feeling that sentiment is moving away from that point-of-view; that they're starting to think they should be arguing that Ms. Miller is not fighting for any worthwhile tenet of journalism.

I guess I feel about her the way I feel about Robert Novak. I am amazed that she still had a career — at the New York friggin' Times, of all places — after writing so many Iraq-related stories that turned out to be sheer, untrue administration propaganda. I dunno why so many pro-Bush people hate the Times after all the front page stories they obligingly published, most of them written by one Judith Miller, telling us that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction ready to use on the U.S., and was on the verge of getting more. The stories were dead wrong and the Times has since done much (though not enough) to correct the record…

…but no one fired Judy Miller.

No one got fired in the Bush-Cheney administration for being wrong about that, either — including Bush and Cheney. There seems to be an odd sentiment in America today that if you screw up royally — even if it gets people killed — that's okay, just so long as you didn't engage in deliberate deception. If someone lies, that's bad. But if they're just inept, that's okay…and how dare anyone accuse them of lying?

I think we need to carry this principle into other areas of life. For instance, let's say your doctor tells you that your right leg has to be amputated and that's done. Then you find out later that you just had bad Athlete's Foot, and a good dose of Lamisil would have fixed everything. I think in this case, you should say, "That's all right. The doctor didn't lie to me. He actually did think my right leg had to come off so he was acting in good faith. I think I'll let him examine the other leg."

Or let's say an air traffic controller makes an honest mistake…or how about an auto manufacturer whose cars explode? I think we can all come up with examples. Being wrong doesn't usually make you a bad person but it also doesn't mean you should still be in that job.

All the polls are telling us that Americans are drifting to the view that George W. Bush is not a very good president. Acccording to this one, which isn't even the worst, only 42% think he's doing a good job as president and only 38% think he's handling Iraq the right way. His numbers for "honesty and integrity" are a bit higher but they're also headed to historic lows. I think those are the numbers to watch. Because a certain portion of this country doesn't care if you botch things up so long as they feel your heart's in the right place.

Happy birthday to the man who is (I think) America's greatest satirist and a major architect of comedy for an entire generation. I sure hope he doesn't try to blow out the proper number of candles because it could be dangerous, and we need to keep him safe and sound.

Fortunately, Stan Freberg has a new and wonderful wife protecting him. Her name is Hunter and I think she also arranged to donate Stan's old hair-do to Phil Spector. Hope they both have a joyous Freberg Day.

The other day, I made an outta-left-field reference here to Joe Pyne. This brought the following e-mail from Brad Kohler…

I realize that you did not really give him a favorable mention, but it amazes me that, even though he has been dead for over 30 years, just the mention of that man's name raises my blood pressure. To me, he was a venomous snake who, among his many sins, laid the foundation for today's hate radio.

I think that was the idea, Brad. Joe Pyne inspired a couple of generations of TV and especially radio personalities who learned that getting people pissed off was good for the ratings. I never met Mr. Pyne but the guy who used to cut my hair used to cut his, and you tend to trust your barber. He said that Pyne was, indeed, an angry, one-legged man who was always yelling about everything, but that the guy clearly laid it on thick and deliberately for his broadcasts. Like a lot of folks in radio, he found an act that worked for him and he worked that act for all it was worth.

Pyne was big on TV and radio in Los Angeles in the sixties, and I could never understand why some people went on his show or called in. He was generally Conservative but his overwhelming concern seemed to be contempt for his guests, no matter what they said. To the extent he had a political philosophy, it seemed to be mostly anti-freeloader. He was pro-police, pro-military, pro-gun ownership, etc., but he was also pro-union, at least when the union was actually representing the interests of working men and women. I don't think anything enraged him more than the concept of welfare…and not just for the poor or minorities. Unlike a lot of people who loathe welfare, he was also against various government subsidy programs that he thought functioned as welfare for the wealthy, and quite willing to rip even Republican leaders who were responsible for that kind of thing.

For a time when my father was dropping me off at school on his way to work, we used to listen to Pyne on the car radio. Even though I was pretty Conservative in those days, I thought Pyne was a jerk on many fronts, seeing Commies where they weren't any and presuming that if you were under the age of 21, you were almost certainly a worthless, dope-smoking hippie. It amused me that he was always railing against people (especially young people) who allegedly shunned honest work…this, while he was making a small fortune via what struck me as very easy, dishonest work. Pyne then did his A.M. radio show from a little studio in his bedroom at home. Often, he was lying in bed in his jammies, yammering insults and telling people to go out and get a real job. My father did not see the irony or amusement. Pyne simply enraged him…but he listened, and I guess that was the point.

The best thing about Pyne's TV shows was a local businessman named Ozzie Whiffletree. That, obviously, was not his real name. It was an identity he adopted because he was afraid of reprisals against his family and/or business. He began showing up in Pyne's "dock," where audience members could get up and debate him. Mr. Whiffletree, whom I recall looking like Gavin MacLeod on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, was a Liberal and a good arguer, and he put Pyne in his place a few times, playing Joseph Welch to the host's Joe McCarthy-like rants. Pyne and/or his producers apparently realized it was good television because they made Ozzie a regular on the show, promising to maintain his anonymity. I suspect Pyne came to regret that decision because he was sometimes reduced to stammering insults, and it began to seem like he was trying to make the show run long so there'd be no time for the bald guy. When Pyne's show finally went off the air, I don't think very many people missed him. But a lot of us missed Ozzie Whiffletree.

Still the funniest, cleverest thing on my TV: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. If you didn't catch last night, they had a wonderful segment about Mr. Novak's outburst on CNN, and followed it with a piece about the news coverage of that Toronto airport accident. You can view a video with one bit after another here. (If that link doesn't work — and it might not — go the Comedy Central website and look for a video entitled "It's a Miracle.")

For some reason, they bleeped Novak's expletive in the online video even though it ran unmarred on the show.

Bloggers are making way too big a deal about the incident today on CNN when Robert Novak uttered an obscenity and walked out. (If you didn't see it, the video's all over the 'net. Here's a good place to view it.) Since the rhetoric preceding his little outburst was pretty much the norm for years on Crossfire, everyone wants to know why he stormed off the set. A better question would be why this man was ever allowed on the set in the first place.

He's a dreadful reporter and always has been. Back when he was teamed with Rowland Evans, people called them "Errors and No Facts," and the surviving member of that partnership has kept their record intact. No one expects reporters to get everything right or for all a pundit's predictions to be on target but there's such a thing as being so consistently wrong that you just shouldn't have the job. A week or two ago, Novak was proclaiming he had inside info that the retirement of Chief Justice Rehnquist would come in a day or two. It didn't, and I'm afraid that's pretty typical.

For years, he's been touted as a major Conservative commentator but you rarely see any true Conservatives quote the man, and many seem to be embarrassed that he has so many forums to so badly represent their views. Actually, his conservatism seems to start and stop with one issue: That wealthy people should make more money and pay less tax. One suspects that given the choice of outlawing abortion, achieving victory in Iraq and having ten bucks shaved off his I.R.S. bill, he'd instantly go for the third option. It is in no way surprising that Novak loves the Bush administration and has been willing to shill for it and repeat any damn thing they told him to report, including the identity of someone who may have been a covert C.I.A. operative. The Bush administration has lowered his taxes.

There are all sorts of theories for his little outburst today: He knew questions were coming about his involvement in the CIA/Plame story and was looking for a way to get out before them. He knew CNN was ready to can him and wanted it to seem to be for a reason other than controversy and the fact that every show he's done for them lately has been cancelled. He's under stress because he knows the case is about to blow wide open and he's in the middle with some embarrassing (and perhaps, criminal) revelations looming. Some or all of these may be true…but I don't think it's outrageous that he walked off CNN. I think the outrage is that he was there in the first place.

Let's play Catch-Up on items posted here lately…

• No, I do not know of any firm plans for memorial services for Pat McCormick, Danny Simon or Gary Belkin, though I am told there will be public events at least for Pat and Gary. If you knew these gents and want to be kept informed, drop me a note. Or if you hear about plans before I do, inform me.
• I am told by several of you that Theodore Geisel once pronounced his middle name as "soice" but that, in at least one bio of him, it says he gave up and went for the more common pronounciation of Dr. Seuss. Okay. But my point is that if even he was pronouncing it that way by 1958, there was nothing wrong with us pronouncing it that way in the sixties and later. Also, of course, just because your middle name is pronounced one way doesn't mean you have to pronounce your similarly-spelled pen name the same way. Especially when you're making a lot of money off folks who pronounce it "soose."
• Apparently, I did proofread that interview that ran in Back Issue before publication and corrected all the errors. The problem was that the wrong draft was sent to the publisher. Oh, well.
• I am receiving a lot of volunteers for my Kirby Book Research Project, some of whom apparently think they're signing up to proofread the book. No…what I need is folks who can dig up old issue numbers and data for me. Proofreading will come much later.
• Lots of messages about your own experiences with telemarketers and phone survey takers. Yes, I did sign up for the National Do Not Call Registry. Yes, I still get a lot of unwanted telemarketing calls.

I'm way behind again in answering e-mail. Please forgive. And if you can't forgive, at least try to forget.

Some old wise man — I think it was Joe Pyne — once said that the real scandal in government wasn't about what laws were being broken but what you can get away with without breaking any laws. As this article in the Washington Post notes, there's an awful lot that lobbyists can do to bestow presents and perks on our legislators without violating a single statute.

I suspect everyone reading this would agree that it's possible for something to be immoral or unethical but technically legal. Some would say that performing abortions is immoral even though it's legal. Others would say that a C.E.O. draining his employees' pension fund is unethical even though it's legal. And yet, in the partisan bickering that's getting worse and worse, this principle is largely being trampled into oblivion. A lot of Karl Rove's defenders are contending that no law was broken…so, end of argument. Champions of the Clintons have trod the same ground in the past: No one was indicted; ergo, the actions were honorable. Well…maybe, maybe not.

I don't even believe that not being indicted or convicted means that no law was broken. A very small percentage of all murders are ever prosecuted in this country. That doesn't mean no one should have gone to prison for them. The case just couldn't be proved. A lot of white collar and political crimes aren't prosecuted due to which party controls the office of the prosecutor at any given moment. We might well be in the midst of impeachment-related hearings right now if all the same things had transpired in Washington the last few years except that the Democrats had control of Congress.

Read the Post article. A lot of those things aren't illegal but should be. That's where our outrage should begin…not when the law is violated but, at times, when it isn't. And by the way, I was just kidding about Joe Pyne being wise.

About three weeks ago, I got a call from a friendly-voiced lady who said she was conducting a marketing survey for a national research company, the name of which I didn't catch. On a whim, I agreed to answer her questions and the first few were pretty innocuous…things like, "Do you like chocolate?" and "Have you ever rented a DVD?" But then, maybe twenty queries in, she started asking me about my household income and I said, "Put down 'declines to state.'" I don't think my income is the business of anyone except me, my Business Manager and the Internal Revenue…and if I could cut the last of these out of the loop, I would.

The lady got a bit upset that I wouldn't answer. She told me the survey was anonymous…but of course, she had my phone number. I said no, I would not answer questions about money, and if that's all she had left, the call was over. She replied, unconvincingly, "Listen, we're not supposed to say this but if you don't answer all the questions, I don't get paid for this. I only get paid for each survey that's fully completed."

I said, "Then just put down any numbers you like. Make something up."

She said, "I would, but they check."

I asked her, "How do they check? They don't have my name or my income. All they know is that I like chocolate. How do they — whoever 'they' are — check to see that you haven't made up the numbers?"

She mumbled and stammered and then she said, "Well, they monitor these calls. This is being taped."

"Aren't you supposed to inform me at the start of a call that the conversation is being taped? This isn't Linda Tripp, is it?"

"Uh, well, it isn't exactly being taped. It's more like…I can't explain but they check on us."

I announced, "Well, when they check on you, they'll see you made a noble effort. Bye!" And that was it for that conversation. I put it out of my mind and went back to whatever she'd interrupted. Performing a liver transplant, as I recall.

A week or so later, I got another call, this one from a man with some Marketing Research company. I didn't get its name but I think it was different from the earlier one. He asked if I'd answer some questions. This was during the time I was busy getting my mother in and out of the hospital and I really resented the call, so I guess I was a bit abrupt with the guy. I told him to leave me alone and hung up.

The next day, I got a call from someone who claimed to be his supervisor at the same firm, apologizing for the previous call. I said, "Fine, apology accepted." He asked if I had time to answer the survey. I said no. He asked if he could call back at a later time to ask me the questions. I got suspicious and asked, "Is there anything in there about total household income?" He said, "Uh, I'm not sure which questionnaire I have here for you…"

I said, "Please don't call here again…you or anyone from your company." And I ended that call.

Yesterday afternoon, someone from (allegedly) another Marketing Firm called with a survey. A woman began, "Your number has been chosen at random…"

I told her, "No, it hasn't. Please put down, 'This person will not answer our questions and we should never call him again.' Goodbye!"

I can be slow but I catch on, eventually. All these calls, I'm guessing, are from the same outfit, and they couldn't care less if I like chocolate or rent DVDs. They're out to build some sort of financial index/profile of the person at this phone number and their computer system still has me in the "need income data" category. They've worked out a routine: If one person can't get the info out of you one way, they wait a week and have someone else call and use a different approach. It wouldn't even surprise me if that "I don't get paid if you don't answer all the questions" routine is part of one script.

That's about all there is to this at the moment. I'll report back if I get another call. And next time, I think I'm going to see what I can find out about the company that's phoning me.

David Frum, a writer for National Review, had much the same reaction I did to the news coverage of that airplane crash at the airport in Toronto. The main difference is that I found CNN, MSNBC and Fox all lacking…and he just watched (and criticizes) CNN.

I apologize that I didn't give you a "head's up" about an episode of To Tell the Truth that was rerun the other night. The panel had to guess which of three men was Theodore "Dr. Seuss" Geisel.

One of the many things I found interesting about it was that for years, learned men and women — including one of my professors back at U.C.L.A. — had insisted that "Seuss" was pronounced, "soice," as if it rhymed with "voice." A prominent author once berated me at length for saying it as if it rhymed with "goose." I argued back that there were examples like the TV special, Dr. Seuss on the Loose, that suggested otherwise. "No, no," said the man who was lecturing me. "Seuss is his middle name and it's pronounced 'soice,' no matter what the Troglodytes in the TV business think."

I said, "Uh…why would he give permission for someone producing his work to maul his name like that?"

The reply: "Well, he may have given up by now…so many morons getting it wrong. But he always pronounced it "soice" and out of respect for the man and his work, that's how we should pronounce it."

That might make sense — Mr. Geisel's middle name was, indeed, Seuss — but there he was on a 1958 game show and he himself pronounced it to rhyme with "loose" and "goose" and "juice." So if the world got it wrong, there's the reason.

The August edition of Back Issue, which I have just received, contains an interview that was conducted via phone with Sergio Aragonés and me. It's not a great interview and it's marred by a number of terrible transcription errors…like when I talk about a character named "Palandrone" in Groo, that's actually a reference to a team of characters we have named Pal and Drumm. There's also a place where I am quoted as saying our lawyer was incompetent and I can't imagine how that got in there because I have always thought that particular lawyer was brilliant…and twenty-some-odd years later, he still represents me.

There are a number of other errors but the real annoying one comes when I'm quoted as talking about a Marvel exec named "Carol Staley" who was responsible for getting Groo over to that company. The lady in question was the late Carol Kalish, and I apologize to her memory that I didn't demand to proofread the interview before publication. I shall have to remember to do this in the future.

It's been a bad few months for comedy writers and for folks affiliated with the Sid Caesar TV shows. My friend Gary Belkin was both.

That's Gary at a 1996 event called "Caesar's Writers" held at the Writers Guild Theater.  He was seated one person away from Danny Simon, who passed away last week. When Gary got the invite, he scanned the names — Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart and others, including himself — and remarked, "My God. I'm the only one on here I've never heard of." Actually, a bunch of us had to practically threaten Gary to get him to the event. His wife had passed away not long before and he'd become something of a hermit. But he went.

Writing for Sid Caesar was only one of Gary's many credits. He wrote for Danny Kaye. He wrote for Carol Burnett. Some of his other credits are listed in this obit and yes, it's true. Gary even wrote for Muhammad Ali. He was engaged, at what he described as a handsome salary, to pen the rhyming quips for which Ali was once so famous. He also worked as a "troubleshooter" for comedy-related projects. One of the leading agents of stand-up comedians used to hire Gary to midwife new comics through their early appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He'd help them select and edit their material and he'd critique their rehearsal sets. I remember running into him once outside the Improv and he dragged me in to hear a set by a new comic named Ellen DeGeneres. He was helping her to get ready to make her debut with Mr. Carson.

One credit you won't find in that article is MAD Magazine, but that was okay. Gary didn't often mention that he was one of the earlier writers for MAD after Al Feldstein assumed editorship of the publication from Harvey Kurtzman. His job there didn't last long, as he quarreled with publisher Bill Gaines over MAD's insistence on owning all rights and refusing to pay royalties or reprint fees.

You may notice in the obit that Gary was nominated for an Emmy in 1985 for his work on Sesame Street. One of the other people nominated in that category (Best Writing in a Program for Children) was me. At the ceremony, I went up to him and asked him how much he'd want to throw the Emmys. He quoted a bargain price — I think it was fifty bucks — then asked, "Now, how does one go about throwing the Emmys?" I told him he should commit an act of vulgar, distasteful sexual deviancy that would cause the Academy to shun him. Gary said, "Yeah, but that's what I was nominated for!" (We both lost, by the way…to Mr. Rogers. But it was okay, especially for Gary. He had a shelf full of awards.)

As a comedy writer, he was a clever man with an acerbic, cynical sense of humor…kind of like the way Buddy Sorrell would be if everyone in the world was Mel Cooley. He was quietly outraged about a great many things in the world, most recently the Iraq War and the Bush administration. But before that, I heard him spend entire lunches railing about the Writers Guild and its neglect of his main area, the writing of variety shows and specials. And he really disliked (with good reason) a producer we both once worked for. Out of a spirit of justice, not greed, he kept after the guy to pay us every nickel he owed us. Every so often, he'd call to say that the shows we'd written had, he learned, aired in Venezuela and we were owed eight dollars for that and, by God, he'd go after that money and I'd eventually receive a check for my share of the eight dollars.

That's far from the only reason I already miss Gary. I just spent a few minutes looking back through my e-mailbox for old communications from him. The next to last came on May 24, right after our mutual friend Howie Morris died. Gary wrote to me about it, and I think this is the only message he wrote that didn't have a punch line. The entire thing read as follows, typos and all…

I just learned that Howie died. In recent months I've been in touch with Delores (so I know who sick he was) but you're the one I thought of to whom express my condolences. Lovely man, always a pleasure to see him.

One could say the same of Gary: Lovely man, always a pleasure to see him.

Just watched Bill Maher's latest HBO Special, which is entitled "I'm Swiss," and which reruns often over the next few weeks. (It's on tomorrow night, to name one instance.) Mr. Maher has developed an annoying little giggle that punctuates many a line, as if to suggest he just thought of it and can't help cracking himself up. It's a bad habit that amateurs often apply to material of questionable mirth…a way of suggesting bogus spontaneity and implying, "Hey, even if you don't find this funny, I do." The special also has a couple of jarring edits in it. All taped stand-up specials are edited but it's usually not this obvious.

Those problems aside, I thought it was terrific. I remember Maher from his early days at the Improv. He took stage with smart material but if the audience didn't get with him by the fourth or fifth joke, he often turned on them. I think he's gotten better but he's also been discovered by a slightly brighter breed of audience.

The material is highly political and if Bush-bashing gives you gas, you might be happier watching something else. But I found myself laughing even at some stuff with which I didn't agree, and any political comic who can manage that has my respect.

Great news: All 309 folks aboard that jet that crashed at the airport in Toronto escaped with their lives. I sure didn't think that would be the case when I watched about a half-hour of news coverage this afternoon, dancing between CNN, MSNBC and Fox. The folks covering the accident obviously thought the opposite had occurred, and some were using a lot of phrases to indicate as much. I recall a reporter on one of the channels (I forget which one) saying, "In a crash of this magnitude, you have to figure on major casualties." That must have been comforting to those who had friends or family members aboard.

We get a lot of this in today's highly-competitive news market, especially when they put newsfolks on the air to fill an hour with maybe three minutes of actual facts. At some point, they weary of repeating the same known info over and over and they start speculating and implying things. I remember hearing a Journalism professor once say that the sad fact of the news business is that you get more credit for being first than for being accurate. One suspects the producers and on-air talent at the major news channels are ever-conscious of the fact that you can and will change channels if you think they've said all they have to say.

In fairness, some of what I heard showed restraint and caution. But, boy, I'd have hated to be watching the news desperately to find out if a loved one had perished. For quite some time there, they didn't have any information…and even when they didn't, that didn't stop some of them.

I am told that the Lena Horne episode of What's My Line? aired this morning (I'm behind on watching what's on my TiVo) so that would mean the one with Lieber and Stoller is on tonight.