Monthly Archives: January 2011

Number fourteen in a series…

So this morning, I find myself thinking about two celebrities who were acquitted of murders that many (perhaps most) people think they committed…

Superstar lawyer F. Lee Bailey, who hasn't been much of a superstar since the Not Guilty verdict in the first O.J. Simpson trial, has released three chapters of…well, they're not chapters of a book that insists Simpson was innocent. They're more like three chapters of a presentation for such a book. And I must admit that one of the 93 things that convinced me back then that Simpson was guilty was that no one on this legal "Dream Team" came forth with such a book or argument. There were a lot of books and appearances that sought to justify their own roles in the drama but none that built a solid case for Simpson's innocence or offered any semblance of a credible "who did do it" theory.

I don't see that Mr. Bailey has now furnished either. When Vince Bugliosi wrote his book on why Simpson was guilty, one of his main themes was kind of like, "He's guilty because I, Vince Bugliosi, decided he was guilty and I know more than anybody else." Bailey's case seems to hang a lot on, "He's innocent because I, F. Lee Bailey, decided he was innocent and I know more than anybody else." Somebody get those two people in a room together someplace. I'm serious. Bailey claims that he's shown his thesis/presentation/whatever to numerous lawyers and none of have quibbled with a word of it. I'm not sure many will bother at this late date but I'm wondering if someone will. In the meantime, I'm torn between wanting to hear more about it…and not wishing to reopen that case in my mind. There was a time when I spent way too much of my time reading and hearing about it.

If you see that Bugliosi or anyone has responded to Bailey, let me know. In the meantime, Bailey's writings can be read or downloaded from this website. I must admit that it's odd to see someone insisting that he has the absolute truth, painstakingly and exhaustively researched and verified, and then to present it in PDF files full of typographical errors.

Turning to other famous alleged murderers: I often attend a thing called the Hollywood Show out in Burbank. Every few months, they do one of these and they're basically autograph shows where celebrities and near-celebrities sit around and sell photos of themselves. I usually find a few folks on the guest list who I'd like to meet or see again, and there are always interesting people in the aisles. Sometimes, the people in the aisles are more interesting than the people behind the tables.

The next one is the weekend of February 12-13 and the guest roster includes people I know and people I like and people I'd like to meet and one person who may have murdered his wife. It's Robert Blake.

I don't know how I feel about this. I do know I don't feel anywhere near as strongly about Blake's guilt as I do about Simpson's. This may be because there wasn't as much press or as many books to follow…and having squandered so much of my life reading about the Simpson matter, I resisted paying rapt attention to the Blake trial. In case you've forgotten, Mr. Blake was acquitted in a criminal proceeding but as with Simpson, he was later found liable for the murder in a civil suit.

Did he do it? I dunno. I'd like to think he didn't but it's sure difficult to see it that way. I don't even know how I feel about him turning up at this show to sell autographs. Part of me thinks he did it so he should be shunned and ostracized. Part of me thinks, well, maybe he didn't do it…and the guy sure could use the money. I also notice that a few previously-announced guests of the show have recently cancelled and I'm wondering if that's because Blake's appearance there was announced. If I were a celeb, I don't think I'd want the table next to his even if I thought he was probably innocent.

A profile of the fine comic book artist Ramona Fradon.

I was just researching something on the Internet and I made a left turn at Albuquerque and found myself on the Wikipedia page for the O.J. Simpson Murder Case. It'll probably be changed soon but I found the following there…

The O. J. Simpson murder case (officially called the People v. Simpson) was a criminal trial held in Los Angeles County, California Superior Court from January 29 to October 3, 1995, in which former American football star and actor O. J. Simpson was tried on two counts of murder following the June 1994 deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. The case has been described as the most publicized criminal trial in American history. Simpson was acquitted after a lengthy trial that lasted over nine months — the longest jury trial in California history. Simpson hired a high-profile defense team initially led by Robert Shapiro and subsequently led by F. Lee Bailey, Johnnie Cochran and Bernardo the Ice Dragon.

I didn't know Bernardo the Ice Dragon had passed the bar.

Somewhere in this world, there's a piece of software which, when you install it on your PC, won't insist on giving you the Ask toolbar, making Google Chrome your default browser and/or installing a whole mess of ugly fonts on your system.

Those of you contemplating the role of the media and political firestorms in the Tucson shooting might want to read Matt Taibbi today. He does a certain amount of soul-searching…and some of it is about why those who inflame the rhetoric don't dare indulge in any of that. I want to quote one section that I think is important and absolutely true…

You can make vast fortunes riling up mobs. And because it's a fiercely competitive market, there's an obvious and immediate benefit to using superheated rhetoric — it's more entertaining, gains more attention, and definitely gets more viewers and listeners and, er, readers.

And not only is there no incentive for restraint, there's actually a huge disincentive for restraint, because for many of us in the punditry world, our livelihoods depend upon cultivating audiences who come to expect a certain emotional payoff for tuning in. If you've trained them to expect to have their prejudices validated and their sense of Superiority Over the Other stroked every time they turn on your program, they're not going to like it when the show comes on and the editorial storyline is completely opposite. For the same reason audiences checked out when Mork married Mindy, or when a straightforward detective show like House became a sappy relationship drama, political audiences who get off on anger will start turning the channel when their needs aren't met.

So when you the pundit start admitting to being wrong, and forgiving your enemies, and questioning yourself, and making your message that even people with views different from your own are thinking, feeling human beings who deserve your respect — well, none of those things tend to help you keep your market share. What does win market share is bashing the living fuck out of people your audiences love to hate (and most of the time, it's you who've trained them to hate those people). That's just a fact, and anyone in this business who's honest with himself knows that. That's why Rush Limbaugh can't come on the air today and start telling his Dittoheads that his whole career isn't serious at all but rather a schtick, a thing he does to make money, and that while he maybe does believe some of the things he says, most of the venom is a wholly fictional additive, that the liberals he spends all day implying to you are not really human and don't love their country are citizens just like you, who in reality want all the same things for themselves and their children that you do. He can't do that, because it would be professional suicide for him to say so.

Last week or the week before, there was a minor controversy because Tucker Carlson said something silly about how Michael Vick should be executed. People got up in arms and Carlson eventually had to walk back his statement and say he didn't mean it literally. But my reaction to it was like, "Tucker Carlson? Why does anyone care what Tucker Carlson says?" He's not an elected official. He's not a particularly well-respected pundit. He has no constituency and he's run out of networks that would give him a regular series then cancel it. He's news only because he said something stupid and violent. The way our media works, that's the only way he matters. If he says something that spreads unity and common sense, no one is hearing it.

Yesterday, I wrote that I generally agreed with Jack Shafer and the piece he wrote about violent rhetoric in our political discourse. To show you how conflicted I am about a lot of this, I also generally agree with Noam Scheiber who wrote a rebuttal to Mr. Shafer's piece. (At least, I think the piece is by Scheiber. It's in Jonathan Chait's blog section.)

I don't think too many people, if anyone, are suggesting that there be any sort of legal-type ban on political speech…although I do note that one Congressman today says he's introducing legislation to ban the use of rifle cross-hairs in campaign ads. That's just for show and will never go anywhere. There are also unofficial bans that decent people loosely enforce with their responses. In many circles these days, you don't compare your opponents to Hitler because, if you have a lick of sense, you've learned that you automatically lose the argument with much of your audience. It's kind of assumed that if you're so desperate that you have to liken someone to ol' Adolf, your points are invalid and you're kind of a putz. So you don't do it. It would not chill the First Amendment in any way if audiences started reacting the same way to gun imagery or cross-hairs in ads or even suggestions to "take out" a political foe.

My software hiccuped last night and instead of posting my final draft of the previous post, it put up two earlier drafts which were incomplete and contained some mistakes. Things are now fixed. Note that the Laurel and Hardy marathon starts at 8 PM Eastern, not 8:30 as the erroneous drafts claimed. You can't trust those erroneous drafts.

Turner Classic Movies is offering up close to 24 solid hours of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy on Tuesday. Any Laurel and Hardy is better than no Laurel and Hardy but some Laurel and Hardy is better than some other Laurel and Hardy. Here's a handy-dandy guide to what they're showing, complete with my recommendations. These are all Eastern times so consult whatever you need to consult to make sure the times match up with when you can see/record these films on your TV…

• 8:00 PM — Thicker Than Water (1935) – Stan and Ollie spend Ollie's inheritance on a Grandfather Clock, a move which does not delight Mrs. Hardy. This was their last starring short comedy before moving exclusively into features and is most notable for its odd ending where Laurel turns into Hardy and Hardy turns into Laurel. This one's about a B+.
• 8:30 PM — The Fixer Uppers (1935) – Stan and Ollie try to help a woman who feels her husband has been neglecting her. The plan is to fake an affair between Hardy and the lady to make hubby jealous. This is not a good idea…and also not one of their best shorts.
• 9:00 PM — Tit For Tat (1935) – Stan and Ollie operate an appliance store and quarrel with their neighbor, Charlie Hall. Something of a sequel to Them Thar Hills…the only time The Boys referenced one film in another. Last time TCM did one of these marathons, this weblog convinced them to run these films in the proper sequence. This time, I didn't notice until it was too late to say anything about it. Watch Them Thar Hills before you watch this one.
• 9:30 PM — The Live Ghost (1934) – Stan and Ollie get stuck on a ship that's supposed to be haunted. The Boys didn't do a lot of this kind of storyline but when they did, it was always very funny.
• 10:00 PM — Them Thar Hills (1934) – Stan and Ollie escape to mountain country to soothe Ollie's frazzled nerves and wind up drunk and in a spat with a jealous husband played by Charlie Hall. You should watch Tit for Tat after you watch this one.
• 10:30 PM — Going Bye-Bye (1934) – Stan and Ollie testify in court against a thug, then try to get out of town before he can beat the tar out of them. Kind of a witless protection program. Pretty good film.
• 11:00 PM — Oliver the Eighth (1934) – Ollie prepares to marry a woman whose previous seven husbands have all been named Oliver and who all died under mysterious circumstances. Probably just a string of coincidences. This one was kind of a C+.
• 11:30 PM — Dirty Work (1933) – Stan and Ollie play chimney sweeps who get mixed up with a mad scientist and I don't think this is among their best ones.
• Midnight — Busy Bodies (1933) – Stan and Ollie work in a construction shop of some kind…and that's the entire plot. They just work there and screw things up. Very funny.
• 12:30 AM — Midnight Patrol (1933) – Stan and Ollie are policemen. Why are they policemen? Who put these two clowns on the police force? That premise alone should have made for a funnier film than this one.
• 1:00 AM — Me and My Pal (1933) – Stan and Ollie each, in their own ways, manage to screw up Ollie's wedding day. With a superb performance by the great foil, Jimmy Finlayson, who was always worth watching. A quiet film but a good one.
• 1:30 AM — Twice Two (1933) – Stan and Ollie play each other's wives in a dual-role romp that, to me, doesn't work at all. The only laughs come from how stupid they look in drag.
• 2:00 AM — Towed in a Hole (1932) – Stan and Ollie decide to become fishermen so they buy and start refurbishing a boat. They're about as good at that as they ever are about anything and the result is one of their best short comedies.
• 2:30 AM — Their First Mistake (1932) – Stan and Ollie arrange for Ollie to adopt an orphan. This was by no means the first mistake these guys made but it was a pretty big one. This one had some heart in it but not a lot of laughs.
• 3:00 AM — Scram! (1932) – Stan and Ollie are ordered by a judge to leave town for vagrancy and somehow wind up breaking into his home. You get the feeling their screen characters weren't the brightest bulbs in the batch? Pretty good.
• 3:30 AM — County Hospital (1932) – Stan and Ollie deal with Ollie's hospitalization and Stan's attempt to drive him home through the streets of Los Angeles and past a bad rear-screen projection. One of my least favorite of their films.
• 4:00 AM — The Chimp (1932) – Stan and Ollie attempt to remake Laughing Gravy (made earlier but airing later today) but with a chimpanzee instead of a dog and a marital infidelity angle tossed in. Another of my least favorite of their films.
• 4:30 AM — The Music Box (1932) – Stan and Ollie attempt to deliver a piano to a house atop a very long flight of steps. This was their big Academy Award winner and Stan's pick as the best short they ever made. Every step is a joy.
• 5:00 AM — Helpmates (1932) – Stan and Ollie attempt to clean up the Hardy home before Mrs. Hardy returns from a trip. This film is highly educational in that it shows you why you should never ask Stan Laurel to help you clean your home before your wife returns from a trip. I like this one up until the unpleasant ending.
• 5:30 AM — Beau Hunks (1931) – Stan and Ollie join the Foreign Legion, as they tended to do from time to time. This was either a very long short or a very short feature but whatever it was, it's exactly the right length for the material. A fine film.
• 6:15 AM — One Good Turn (1931) – Stan and Ollie try to assist an elderly widow they think (wrongly) is about to be evicted from her home. This is the only film they made where Stan, in essence, turns on Hardy and gets mad at him — an odd twist in their relationship but quite satisfying.
• 6:45 AM — Our Wife (1931) – Stan and Ollie attempt to engineer the elopement of Mr. Hardy with a lady of similar girth, which means cramming everyone into a tiny car. A cameo by Ben Turpin makes this one a delight.
• 7:15 AM — Laughing Gravy (1931) – Stan and Ollie attempt to hide a dog from their landlord. They don't do a very good job of this…but then they never did a very good job of anything. Better than the remake which aired earlier today.
• 8:00 AM — Chickens Come Home (1931) – Ollie is a successful businessman being blackmailed by a floozy from his past. This was a remake of a (then) recent silent short which had Jimmy Finlayson playing the businessman. I liked it better with Fin.
• 8:30 AM — Be Big! (1931) – Stan and Ollie demonstrate why married men should never try to stand up to their wives. They're trying to go to a convention but spend most of this film trying to get Hardy's boots on and off. Only Laurel and Hardy could make that hilarious for most of two reels.
• 9:00 AM — Another Fine Mess (1930) – An early talkie that is oddly dialogue-driven. Stan and Ollie are vagrants who wind up inhabiting a mansion with Hardy impersonating its owner and Laurel dressing up as his servants. Somewhere between a B+ and an A-. Based on a sketch written by Stan's father.
• 9:30 AM — The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case (1930) – Stan and Ollie are in an old house and there are scary things happening around them and it's all very broad but screamingly funny.
• 10:00 AM — Hog Wild (1930) – Stan and Ollie attempt to install a radio antenna on Mr. Hardy's roof. Guess how many times Mr. Hardy will fall off that roof. Every plunge is a gem.
• 10:30 AM — Below Zero (1930) – Stan and Ollie are street musicians with no money. They find a wallet crammed with cash and decide to treat themselves to a feast, even inviting a policeman to join them. Turns out, it's the policeman's wallet. A good film, not a great film.
• 11:00 AM — Brats (1930) – Stan and Ollie play themselves and also, thanks to trick photography, their sons. A cute, funny short. Mr. Hardy, sans mustache, makes an especially adorable toddler.
• 11:30 AM — Blotto (1930) – Stan and Ollie go out for a night on the town to get drunk…and manage to do so even though, unbeknownst to them, Mrs. Hardy has replaced their booze with tea. One of their funniest shorts. Gleason and Carney did the same bit on The Honeymooners only not as well.
• Noon — Night Owls (1930) – Stan and Ollie help out a policeman played by Edgar Kennedy, agreeing to break into his superior's home so he can arrest them and score points with the boss. Well, what could possibly go wrong with an arrangement like that? Good but not great.
• 12:30 PM — The Hoosegow (1929) – Stan and Ollie are not in any hoosegow. They're in a prison work gang and there's this weird gag with putting rice in a car's radiator and throwing it at everyone. It's the only Laurel and Hardy film that feels like a Three Stooges comedy…and not one of their better ones.
• 1:00 PM — They Go Boom! (1929) – Ollie has a cold. Stan tries to nurse him back to health. Yeah, that'll work. Not much plot but it's a joy to watch the interplay.
• 1:30 PM — Perfect Day (1929) – Stan and Ollie, their wives and an uncle (played magnificently by Edgar Kennedy) try to go on a picnic. They don't make it. One of their best.
• 2:00 PM — Men O' War (1929) – Stan and Ollie are sailors who, despite an utter lack of funds, try to pick up some dames and show them a good time. Then they try to go boating on a lake. A good film but the first half is better than the second.
• 2:30 PM — Berth Marks (1929) – Stan and Ollie try to get to sleep in a too-small upper berth in a railroad car. Much awkwardness ensues. This was probably funny to folks who, unlike me, ever had to try to sleep in one of those things.
• 3:00 PM — Unaccustomed As We Are (1929) – Stan and Ollie deal with a jealous husband neighbor and one of those farce situations where hubby thinks his wife is cheating on him. This was The Boys' first talkie…ergo, the title. Not bad for a first effort in what was basically a new medium.
• 3:30 PM — Come Clean (1931) – Stan and Ollie rescue a floozy who was trying to kill herself. She decides that since they saved her, they're now responsible for her, which means they have to hide her from the wives. A bit contrived, plot-wise, but the gags are solid.
• 4:00 PM — Any Old Port (1932) – Stan and Ollie are sailors on shore leave and they somehow get mixed up in a boxing match and the whole film's kind of clumsy. This isn't one of the better ones on this list.
• 4:30 PM — Pardon Us (1931) – Stan and Ollie go to prison, get out of prison, wind up back in prison, etc. Their first starring feature started out to be a short but it got padded into a longer film and the patchwork shows. Still, there's much to laugh at, especially if you like dentist humor.
• 5:30 PM — Pack Up Your Troubles (1932) – Stan and Ollie get involved with another orphan — the daughter of an old army buddy. This is one of their better features though what happens is, again, more charming than funny.
• 6:45 PM — The Bohemian Girl (1936) – A feature-length "operetta" with many grand moments, even if it all doesn't add up to one of their best films. Actress Thelma Todd died during production and so her role had to be cut down from a major co-starring one to a minor part. The best scene has Stan trying to bottle wine and drinking most of it. Well worth watching.

I sometimes write pieces for this weblog not so much for your enlightenment as for mine. Writing is how I organize my thoughts and become aware of which portions of an issue I need to think or read more about. This is one such piece. It's about the shooting yesterday in Arizona.

I think we all agree that it's horrible that anyone takes a bullet, especially passers-by and a nine-year-old child…but that may be about all we all agree on. I found myself nodding in general agreement as I read this article by Jack Shafer about how silly it is to try and launder political speech because somewhere, some looney might become motivated to use a gun. If we learned nothing else from the Mark David Chapmans and John W. Hinckleys of the world, it's that we don't know what, if anything, goes on in that kind of mind. We who are more-or-less rational try to view what they do as rational acts…but they aren't. Even if you decided logically that this would be a better planet if a certain public figure died, none of these assassins ever go about making that happen in a rational way. They just walk into a public place, open fire and then either cluelessly or deliberately get taken into custody. At times, these incidents seem as much about suicide as murder. Or maybe it's that they'd rather be famous prisoners than to get away with their crimes and remain non-entities.

I don't pretend to know anything about what motivated this Jared Loughner fellow…who I guess we need to refer to, despite dozens of eyewitnesses, as the alleged assassin. My suspicion is that none of the people who are claiming to understand him or his politics know much, either. In the rush to pigeonhole the shooter as belonging to "the other side," a lot of folks have done quick and dirty analysis of his YouTube videos and a few rumors and constructed a profile of this guy that proves he's just whatever they might want him to be — a leftist, a right-winger, a Nazi, a Commie, etc. Pick your demon and he's it. One of these hastily-invented Jareds may even be close to the real thing.

(By the way: I notice that in the press, the alleged assassin's name has now gone from Jared Loughner to Jared Lee Loughner. You can't be a famous and violent psychotic in this country if you don't have three names or at least a middle initial. Let's all thank the media for correcting that.)

Anyway, I read Shafer's piece that basically says, "Don't blame Sarah Palin" and I pretty much buy it. It's understandable why people would point to Palin's now-infamous map that put Gabrielle Giffords into the crosshairs, even though there's no evidence that Loughner ever saw that map. For all we know, Loughner thinks Palin is a looney not a leader and he shot Giffords because he thinks people with the initials G.G. are the devil and she was closer than Gilbert Gottfried. He may even have a less explainable reason than that.

But I think the defenders of Palin and Sharron "Second Amendment solutions" Angle and the others are wrong about something. They think the Left is just pouncing on a tragic situation and trying to manipulate it to score points against their heroes. There may be some of that but I think a lot of people are staring in horror at a scenario. It's the scenario for a clear-cut cause-and-effect act of assassination or terrorism than occurred yesterday in Tucson.

The level of raw hatred in our political discourse has gone way past the concept that reasonable men can disagree. You have all these nutcases out there who are dead certain Obama is a Socialist Nazi born in Kenya who wants to bankrupt America, then give it back to the Indians. It's always been easy to imagine one of them building a fertilizer bomb or getting his hands on a Glock or otherwise snapping. What happened in Arizona has made that seem way too possible.

Keith Olbermann did a special Countdown yesterday and one of his Special Comments. As he tends to do, he came off very strident and arrogant and overly theatrical…and he took about nine minutes to say little more than "Violence has no place in the political landscape," a point few would argue. But in there, he did do something that separates him from what some would call his right-wing counterparts. He said he'd sometimes crossed the line and he apologized and said he wouldn't do it again. As far as I can tell, his opposite numbers on the Right are saying, "We didn't do anything wrong and we won't change our ways." Even as they scrub their websites, they insist their rhetoric is not dangerous and I'm not saying they're wrong…so far. But one of these days, there's going to be another shooting spree or another Oklahoma City Bombing, this time with an inarguable link to some politician or pundit fanning the flames and urging the flock to "take action"…

…and I wonder if maybe, just maybe, someone isn't going to regret something they said.

I guess my language wasn't as clear as I try to make it. People are inundating me with offers of VHS copies and frame grabs of Head of the Family. Thank you all but that's not what is needed. A friend of mine is doing a book and he needs an actual publicity-type still from the show…a real photo shot on the set. This may not exist but if it does and if you have one, please get in touch with me. And the rest of you…your offers are appreciated.

Hi. You see that photo up above? That's a low-resolution scan of a still from Head of the Family, the unsold TV pilot starring Carl Reiner that morphed into The Dick Van Dyke Show. A friend of mine needs an original still of any good scene (not necessarily the title) or a high-resolution scan of one. Can you help him? If so, drop me a note. Thanks.