I read Woody Allen's response to the allegations against him and then Dylan Farrow's response to the response. I'm afraid I haven't done a very good job of not reading what others have to say about this so I'm still amazed at how many people not in that family can type with a straight face, "We'll never really know what really happened" and then write many, many paragraphs from the position that they know exactly what happened.
Some nice tributes out there to Mr. Leno upon his retirement from The Tonight Show…but I also read a few from TV writers who never liked him and felt that to seem sporting, they should damn him with the faintest of praise. As one who is old enough to recall when the critics said pretty much all the same things about Johnny Carson, I can well imagine Jay someday achieving some of the same kind of nostalgic reverence.
It's a bit different with Jay. Johnny didn't have so many competitors attacking him…or jealous peers. Jay did a lot of things on his show I didn't like but whenever my path crossed his, it renewed my view that he was just an honest, hard-working guy who was trying to do a successful show. I admire the work ethic just for putting together something like 5,000 topical monologues…and I admire the way he's coped with a lot of cheapshot attacks, outright lies and network politics. Can't wait to see what he does next even if all it is is a lot of stand-up dates.
I wrote the other day here about CVS dropping cigarettes from their stores and quoted CEO Larry Merlo as saying, "We've come to the conclusion that cigarettes have no place in a setting where health care is being delivered." Then I said I'd be curious to hear the explanation of why those three aisles of liquor do have such a place. Well, a couple of folks wrote me to say I was wrong and that CVS pharmacies don't sell liquor. Memo to those couple of folks: Some of them do.
A few other folks wrote to insist that alcohol isn't as harmful as cigarettes and an occasional glass of wine can even have beneficial effects on health. Okay, fine. But CVS isn't just selling the occasional glass of wine. They're selling the large bottles of Jack Daniels and Smirnoff Vodka…and really, all I was doing was focusing on Mr. Merlo's statement. Does Jim Beam have a place in a setting where health care is being delivered? And yes, I suppose you could ask the same thing about the jumbo-sized packages of Double-Stuff Oreos.
Our pal Floyd Norman is a guest on Tavis Smiley's interview show on Tuesday night. Floyd got his start as an assistant to Bill Woggon on the Katy Keene comic books, then went on to become the first black animator at Disney. Heckuva nice guy, too. You might want to set your DVR in the unlikely event you can figure out what channel Tavis Smiley is on and when. I imagine Floyd will be rebutting the notion that Walt D. was racist and/or anti-woman. I hope Meryl Streep is watching.