Monthly Archives: December 2013

The "Trailers From Hell" video series started out, as I understand it, as a place to showcase trailers from awful or odd films. At some point, I guess they ran out of those because it now has modern-day filmmakers paying tribute to older movies. Here's Alan Spencer talking about a film I liked more than most people seemed to…Mel Brooks' Silent Movie. Mr. Spencer provides some interesting facts about other actors who were sought for the film but were unavailable or unwilling…

A couple of folks have written me to note the times that Bill Maher has defended the Free Speech of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter. Okay, right. But one might suggest that Mr. Maher has a certain — shall we say? — self-interest in defending the rights of those who say outrageous things that many find offensive. Much of what Maher says about Limbaugh, including the references to drug use, applies to Maher himself.

On the other hand, I don't recall Limbaugh ever defending Maher or anyone with an opposing viewpoint. I think Coulter has but not Limbaugh.

Here's a question. We've seen a lot of people these days who are defending someone else's right to Free Speech. People are defending Martin Bashir's coarse, rude statements about Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is defending the Duck Dynasty guy's. I see a lot of Democrats defending what other Democrats have said and a lot of Republicans defending what other Republicans have said.

Has anyone seen any prominent individual defending an allegedly-outrageous or over-the-limits remark that wasn't by "their side?" You know, a Democrat defending a Republican or a Republican defending a Democrat? I'm looking for something like me defending someone else's right to say cole slaw is edible. The other night, Jon Stewart kinda defended the Duck Dynasty fellow but what Stewart was really doing was pointing up the hypocrisy of Fox News figures who defend what one person says while leading the charge against what others say.

So…anyone see someone defending Free Speech they hate? Because anyone can defend Free Speech they like. It's only a matter of principle when you defend the stuff you wish wasn't said. The American Civil Liberties Union does that all the time but when lately have you seen an individual do that?

And by the way: Can we get clear that the First Amendment doesn't prevent your employer from firing you? And that your right to Free Speech does not shield you from having people disagree with you, decide you're an idiot or choose not to listen to you?

I embedded this video once before but this is a much better copy. It's a segment from the game show, To Tell the Truth from February of 1963 and I'm afraid the title of the video gives away the surprise ending…but watch it anyway.

The second impostor is a man named Oscar Jordan, a painting contractor who had a brief secondary career for a few years there. As you can see, he was a look-alike for Nikita Khrushchev, who served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964. For a while there, he was turning up all over television and in magazines — including the back cover of an issue of MAD — playing his Russian twin. But it's the third impostor — who also appeared in MAD — who steals the show…

From Scott Marinoff…

I'd appreciate it if you'd post your thoughts (or anything you've seen online) about how consumers should address the recent payment card troubles at Target. I usually shop there a few times a month – including within the Black Friday through mid-December timeframe when the hack happened.

Since hearing about this, I've checked my online banking website daily for any unusual activity. None yet, but some of the news reports say it could be weeks or months before the stolen card information might actually be used. I'd rather not call my bank and get a new card if there's no need to. The phone lines to Target are apparently jammed and it's not clear if they know or if they would even tell a consumer if their card information was affected. So, all that's left is a waiting game, with daily worry if or when the other shoe will drop and cause financial headaches.

You're always pretty savvy when it comes to dealing with large organizations when things go wrong, so I await your wisdom on this situation.

Well, if what I'd had ripped-off was a debit card, I'd cancel it immediately. Beyond that, I'm not sure you're at any greater risk than you are all the time with credit cards. Two nights ago, you ate at a restaurant and for a few minutes, your Visa card was away from you and several restaurant employees could easily have copied down all the info on it. They can wait a few months, then post just as many unauthorized charges to your card as the folks who obtained that info by hacking Target.

Matter of fact, I'd be more worried about info stolen on a small scale. The busboy at the restaurant who passed your info on to his brother-in-law only stole 20 or 30 numbers that way all week and might well try to use all of them at local businesses. The Target hackers stole 40 million numbers and the majority will probably never get used that way…or will be used from all over the world. Even the stupidest credit card company in the world will smell large rodents if you live in San Diego and usually purchase gas and groceries locally…and suddenly, your card is being used to charge purchases of rifle ammo in Reykjavík, Iceland.

What I'm getting at is that I think you should always monitor your credit cards as if your numbers are in unauthorized hands…because probably, somewhere, they are. And with regard to the Target situation, read this.

I don't know why in the age of Smartphones, credit cards don't work more like this…

1. You charge a purchase in a store to your credit card.
2. When the store phones or "internets" in to check on the card, the credit card company dispatches a text message to your Smartphone.
3. You receive the message and it asks you to confirm your purchase of $828.43 at Whips 'R Us.
4. You type in a little 4-digit code to confirm it and the purchase goes through.

Now obviously, not everyone has a Smartphone or would want the occasional hassle…but if my company offered me a card that worked like that, I'd get one. I would think it would be especially good for online purchases. There must be a reason they haven't tried this.

A lot of you chipped in to help Bob Kahan raise enough cash to not get evicted from the apartment where he and his cats have resided for many years. Bob reports today that he went to court and the funds raised did the trick. The eviction notice will be vacated as soon as the checks clear. Yay! Now, we just hope the fellow can find a job.

This kind of thing makes me happy. You know what doesn't make me happy? The people you see on and in the news who have that Scrooge-like self-hatred that bubbles out as contempt for the needy. You know: Anyone who doesn't have a job is a lazy bum who leeches off the public. The homeless should just starve to death and disappear. Sick people can just go to emergency rooms and don't bother me with them. Oh — and you know, slavery wasn't so bad…

The rhetoric is sometimes frighteningly identical to ol' Ebenezer and his wish that the poor die off and decrease the surplus population. You'd think that the folks who think like that would at least have the sense to conceal their a-holishness, especially around this time of year but no. I guess the Tea Party has made them feel liberated enough to boast of their selfishness. Some of them have even developed convoluted explanations of how their worldview is utterly consistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ. He didn't care about the poor and sick at all except…well, all the time.

I often think about this one quote from Kurt Vonnegut. Someone asked him to explain the meaning of life and replied…

Well, I have a son who writes very well. He just wrote one book; it's called The Eden Express. It's my son Mark, who is a pediatrician and who went crazy and recovered to graduate from Harvard Medical School. But anyway, he says, and I've quoted him in a couple of my books, "We're here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."

Merry Christmas.

How often do you drink coffee or tea from a styrofoam cup? How often do you take food out from a restaurant in a styrofoam container?

Answer: Probably never. The stuff you think is styrofoam is not styrofoam.

So…what's going to happen with the National Security Agency and its snooping, especially in light of that judicial decision that its surveillance operation is "probably" not Constitutional? Fred Kaplan has some thoughts.

Hey, what would the James Bond Theme sound like played by a full symphony orchestra? I have a feeling it would sound something like this…

Joe Conason writes about the War on Christmas. If Ebenezer Scrooge was alive and had yet to meet those three ghosts, he'd be busy cutting food stamps and unemployment benefits.

Shelly Goldstein e-mailed me with a horrible story that hasn't hit the U.S. news outlets much yet. This evening in London's West End, the balcony of the Apollo Theater collapsed during a performance. At least 65 people were injured. Just awful.

Matt Taibbi on the latest attempt by Sarah Palin to…uh, gee, I'm not entirely sure why she says such inane things. I guess she's making a good living spinning reality to fit the beliefs of her base. I think you've got to give the woman credit for realizing she had no future in running for elected office but could prosper mightily via stuff like this. And she learned well from Rush to never, ever put yourself in a position where you have to defend your positions against someone who'll in any way challenge them.

The New York Times has an obituary up for Al Goldstein, who at one time was the most outspoken defender/purveyor of pornography in this country….and quite a celebrity in New York. A friend of mine once remarked that there was no aspect of sex or person so attractive that Al Goldstein couldn't make it, he or she repulsive. Every time I came across him on some talk show, I was reminded of the joke where someone asked Woody Allen if sex was dirty and he answered, "Only if you're doing it right."

I admit to a certain admiration for Mr. Goldstein's outspoken rants. You know the song lyric about how freedom's just another word for nothing more to lose? Al Goldstein used to demonstrate that a person can say remarkable (sometimes, even true) things when they don't have a shred of dignity or self-image left to protect. One night on Tom Snyder's old show that followed Carson, Goldstein unleashed a hysterical diatribe against government interference with private sex lives that, bleeps aside, was like the Gettysburg Address of getting Uncle Sam out of the bedrooms of consenting adults.

But that's not why I bring him up here. I love New York Times corrections. Very few newspapers make them at all and the ones that do usually do only the real significant ones. Here's one they ran on the Goldstein obit that could only appear in The New York Times…

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a movie Mr. Goldstein starred in. It is "Al Goldstein & Ron Jeremy Are Screwed," not "Al Goldstein & Ron Jeremy Get Screwed."

This is the time of the year when lots of people link to my Mel Tormé Christmas story. Its location on this site has moved so here's the new address for it.

I haven't checked lately to see if it's still so but it used to be the most-read page on this site owing to the tremendous number of links it gets each year. But it was also the most stolen thing. People often just copy it onto their sites and sometimes (not always) they credit me. Sometimes, they also do odd excerpting, including omitting the punchline.

I even had people take it and run it on their sites as if it had happened to them. I was especially amused by the rabid right-winger who copied it onto his site as if it was his account of his own experience. When I wrote to call him on it, I got a couple of crazed e-mails, full of words spelled in odd ways, that said basically it was a good story and he wanted to share it with his readers but he didn't want them coming to my site and reading my America-hating Commie views and since I was a Commie, I should have no objection to "sharing the wealth" and letting people take what was rightfully mine. Love that Christmas spirit.

The best part of the story for me, by the way, is that one of Mel Tormé's children wrote me a few years ago and said that Dad had told them about the incident and felt very touched and pleased by it. So I'm glad I helped make it happen.

• 42% of Republicans think Santa Claus is "Verifiably White." OK, I'll bite: Where does one go to verify Santa's race? Macy's?