I said here the other day that the Marina Hotel in Las Vegas was torn down to make way for the MGM Grand. A few correspondents have politely accused me of being a bit loose with history (or just plain being wrong) so here's a clarification: The MGM Grand was erected on the site of the old Marina Hotel. Where the MGM is now situated is where the Marina used to be. But the builders of the new inhabitant of that real estate only tore down portions of the Marina and they left some of it standing and incorporated those parts into the MGM Grand.
There. Happy now?
A more serious error may be this: I said this year's Labor Day Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy would be on Labor Day. I'm told it's actually on September 4, which is the day before Labor Day — in most cities from 6 PM until Midnight. Does that mean it's live to the East Coast and tape-delayed everywhere else? If so, that would mean that the big total at the end would not reflect results from most of the country seeing up to half of the telethon, wouldn't it? We need to look into this.
I'm also told this year's hosts have been selected: Jann Carl, Alison Sweeney, Nancy O'Dell and Simon Lithgoe. These are probably all fine, devoted personalities but if the producers want to turn around their loss of audience share and key stations, they need to conscript a superstar or two. Perhaps they're planning to do that in 2012 when the host(s) wouldn't seem so blatantly a replacement for Jerry.
Lastly: A couple of folks wrote me that they thought I was misrepresenting the case against Gay Marriage to make it seem more feeble than it is. No, I was writing about the case people make to me in e-mail, which is pretty damn feeble. So was the courtroom defense of California's Proposition 8, about which I believe I wrote (I can't find it at the moment) that I could have made a better case than that…and I'm a guy who thinks it's moronic and bigoted to not allow consenting adults of any stripe to wed.
Some folks have the unfortunate tendency to believe that any stupid thing said on behalf of their cause is valid and brilliant and inarguable. It's a sad part of our public discourse, this rush to deny everything the "other" side says and embrace everyone on your side as a fellow soldier. If deep in my soul I thought Same-Sex Wedlock was wrong, I'd hope I'd be embarrassed, if not by that then certainly by some of the people out there saying that. Few of the elected officials who oppose Gay Marriage even strike me as caring that much about it. They all seem more interested in how the issue can be manipulated to rouse a certain segment of the population to vote for and donate to candidates who'll reduce taxes on the wealthy. And they seem to be in a panic that the issue is of decreasing effectiveness to accomplish that.
Okay, that's all for now. Gotta go to work.