Monthly Archives: November 2010

Some call Dennis Palumbo the "psychotherapist to the stars." I call him my pal, my former writing partner and a guy who dispenses sage advice to folks in show business, especially writers. Here he has some good counsel for those attempting to write anything much longer than this post.

Roger Ebert discusses loneliness.

As you probably heard, Keith Olbermann has been suspended from his MSNBC show because he violated a company rule against making political donations without prior approval. The Internet is abuzz with some celebration but a lot of outrage, much of it from folks who don't like Olbermann's politics. Obviously, I think he was dumb to violate a corporate policy but he should get his wrist slapped and be put back on the air. That may be what happens but somehow, this smells to me like something else is up — like the new controllers of NBC Entertainment are looking to renegotiate his contract or get rid of him…or something. There's something going on here other than Olbermann violating that one rule.

I do agree with a point Rachel Maddow made on her show last evening. It kinda proves there's a false equivalency at work when folks claim MSNBC is just the flip side of Fox News. Fox News has no problem with its hosts not only making donations to political candidates but going out and appearing at fundraisers. Then again, it was pretty obvious before this that the two were not alike. MSNBC gives three hours of its daytime schedule over to a right-of-center former Republican congressman. There is no corresponding left-of-center presence on Fox News. And Fox News employs many "commentators" who are either recently active in charting Republican strategy (Karl Rove) or likely to be Republican candidates before long (Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, etc.). There are no Democrats like that on MSNBC. This will never matter to those who like the worldview that Fox News sells. They'll forever believe it's Fair and Balanced.

I have a lot to get done the next day or three so posting here will be sparse and responses to e-mail will be sparser. But here's a tip: There's this thing I found on the web called Google (catchy name, huh?) and you can use it to find other websites — websites besides this one! — that are filled with things you can read until I return. It won't be long…and knowing the way my luck runs, it'll probably be to post an obit.

Jonathan Chait makes a good point about the election, which is that Republicans won the House but Democrats passed Health Care Reform…and that ain't a bad trade-off at all.

One loser in yesterday's election is (or ought to be) the Rasmussen Poll. They've long been accused of having a strong Republican bias and this time, they sure did. In about 75% of the races they forecast, Republicans are finishing 5% or more behind where Rasmussen said they'd wind up. That's a pretty blatant skew. In Hawaii, they said Democrat Daniel Inouye would win by 11 points and while that race isn't final yet, it looks like he's going to win by about 28…or about seven times the margin of error. Anyway, that's one reason a lot of pundits thought the G.O.P. would win the Senate and would take even more House seats and governorships than they wound up getting.

You notice how on election night, someone on the losing side always tries the "This is the best thing that could have happened for us" spin? When the same people win, they somehow never say, "This is the worst thing that could have happened for us."

I don't have much to say about the outcome beyond the obvious. It is kind of amazing to me that some candidates manage to win, or at least come close to winning, who have things in their recent past like major financial scandals and being caught with hookers. Sharron Angle lost and she ought to really be embarrassed. Not being able to beat Harry Reid in Nevada is like not being able to pin Betty White in a Jell-o wrestling match. I'm not sure what the lesson of Ms. Angle's loss will be for most but I know what I hope it is. It's that if you can't hold public office if you can't talk to a reporter and answer a couple of simple questions. My new rule of thumb is that anyone who won't talk to the press is someone who's well aware that if they do, they'll probably say something very, very stupid.

There's also something nice about the lesson that even if you spend tens of millions of dollars of your own money, you can't buy your way into office. Unfortunately, you apparently can if the money comes from the Chamber of Commerce.

I'll bet you Christine O'Donnell has a rosier future for having lost her Senate race than if she'd won. She'll certainly have more opportunities to appear on television…and she'll be able to get paid for most of them.

And what was all that talk about how Barney Frank was in real trouble and might lose his seat in Congress? He won by like twelve points.

Well, I guess the Tea Party crowd is happy tonight, not because of how many candidates they helped elect but merely that they helped any. I hear a lot of pundits saying that if not for their knocking out more electable Republicans, the G.O.P. would have won control of the Senate. I don't know if that's true. It sounds a little like a variation on that "Best thing that could have happened for us" routine…but maybe so. I would imagine the Tea Partiers will be celebrating until John Boehner and Eric Cantor start talking about raising the debt ceiling.

The most telling/foreboding comment I heard all evening came when some reporter on MSNBC was interviewing one of the new Republican leaders in Congress. I didn't catch the representative's name but I think it was Mike Conaway from Texas. Whoever it was, he was asked if Republicans were prepared to compromise with President Obama on some issues. He said guardedly that they were, depending on the issue. Then he was asked to name the first compromise he would consider making. He said, "No tax hikes." That's been one of the main problems in Washington the last few years. We have leaders who think "compromise" means they get everything they want.

Ah, well. As my Uncle Nathan would say, it could have been worse.

Robert Kolker examines false confessions in crime cases…something that happens a lot more often than you might expect. I'm oddly fascinated by this kind of thing…and by the fact that a lot of people like the idea of the law throwing people in prison or executing them, and aren't particularly bothered by how often it isn't the right person.

Hey, you know what we haven't checked on lately?

Yes, already. I forgot to announce they were going on sale today but that's okay because they didn't. There were techie-type problems and the on-sale date for ordering passes for next year's Comic-Con in San Diego will be rescheduled. I'll try to remember to announce the new one in advance but don't count on me.

The following is probably unnecessary for me to mention by now but most of the stuff on this blog is unnecessary, so: The convention will sell out and it'll sell out long before you expect. Those of you who think you have until next February or March to decide if you'll be attending are kidding yourselves.

One of my favorite blogs is The Daily Mirror, a feature of The Los Angeles Times that merely reprints (that's not the right verb) old pieces from that newspaper. In this posting, they give us much of the story of the infamous loan that Howard Hughes made to Donald Nixon, brother of then-veep Richard M. Nixon. When it was revealed by columnist Drew Pearson, it was a scandal of sorts, though Richard M. and his aides did a pretty good job of spinning the news such that the controversy was not about the impropriety of the loan but about Pearson printing an untrue smear. You'll even see a Times editorial of the day which sides not with its own columnist but with the Nixon spin. History would later show that Pearson's reporting and any suggestions of a bribe were absolutely accurate but at the time, much discredit was heaped effectively upon what the columnist disclosed.

The Hughes loan proved to be a major underlying factor in much of Nixon's future. Some said that even though it was true, he refused to see it as anything but a Liberal/Democratic/Commie last-minute mudball and that it heightened his hatred and paranoia of the press. Some of this can be attributed to a political operative named Dick Tuck, who gained a kind of undeserved fame as a campaign prankster. There are dozens and dozens of tales about him playing tricks on opponents, primarily Nixon. One or two of those tales are actually true…but for a long time, any time anything went wrong on a Nixon campaign trail, it would be blamed on a Dick Tuck prank. And since he would sometimes impishly not deny them, his reputation grew.

One that he actually did engineer came when Nixon was running for governor of California in 1962. The candidate made a stop at a rally in Chinatown and appeared before a large sign with Chinese characters on it. One ally who could read that language whispered to Nixon that the sign asked, "What about the Hughes loan?" and Nixon got furious and was photographed ripping up the sign. The incident revived talk of the loan, which was a salient issue in that campaign as Hughes was then lobbying the state government for all manner of special treatment. Tuck later told the story — I'm not sure if it's true — that in '68, he showed up at a Nixon campaign rally in New York where they were handing out buttons in various languages to woo the multi-ethnic vote. Upon spotting him, Tuck claimed, Nixon aides looked down at the buttons they could not read, recalled the flap with the sign in Chinatown, and made the decision to stop giving out the buttons until they could get translators to verify what they said.

Nixon forever believed that the controversy about the loan was unfair and that it was one of the reasons he lost. Later, one of the prominent theories for the Watergate break-in was that Nixon was worried that other connections he had with Hughes would come to light. The burglary and bugging were, you may recall, at the office of Lawrence O'Brien, then the Chairman of the Democratic party. Before that, O'Brien had been a lobbyist for Hughes and had many connections with the organization…so there was the logical assumption that O'Brien had access to Hughes-related dirt on Nixon. One report says that John Meier, a former Hughes aide who was then working for Hubert Humphrey, had called Donald Nixon and — knowing he'd call his brother with it — fibbed to him that O'Brien had a mountain of such dirt. In any case, the theory goes, the Watergate break-in was to try and find out what O'Brien had and how he intended to use it.

So take a look at the articles and note how effectively the Nixon forces largely knocked down a basically-true news report, at least for a while, as a politically-motivated lie. And if you don't find that interesting, notice the tiny ad for singer Duke Mitchell (co-star of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla) playing at some local night club. History right before your eyes.