Monthly Archives: January 2016

Willa Paskin discusses why The Daily Show with Trevor Noah is not must-see TV the way The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was for some of us. I don't really disagree with any of her observations, especially the one about how Noah is being judged not against how Stewart was after he was there four months but how he was after he was there sixteen years.

I think some of what's happened on that show post-Stewart has been quite good but Noah lacks a certain connectivity with the viewers that Noah hasn't mastered…and that in fact, most people who have a TV show where they speak mainly to the camera haven't mastered. The new guy also has a weaker bench of correspondents and the show has a tendency to take on topics not the instant they happen but a few days later. When something outrageous happened in the news, Stewart was the guy you went to to see what he had to say. Noah is the guy you go to to see what he has to say that others haven't.

Some of that is, I think, because the current slate of candidates is so outrageous that everyone with their own TV show, blog or Twitter account can now do their own little Daily Show. Another is what Ms. Parkin says about Noah's version being too civil. And some of it is that Noah comes at American politics and customs more like an outsider — and is constantly reminding us of that. He doesn't have the street cred to criticize this country that a guy who grew up in New Jersey had.

I still like him. I'm still Tivoing every episode. I'm not in as much of a rush to watch them as I was when J.S. was in command…but it's still a good show and I won't be the least bit surprised if it gets a whole lot better.

When you hear people say, "Bernie Sanders can't possibly be elected president" or "There's no way Donald Trump will be the G.O.P. nominee," it might be a good idea to remember all the people who said it was impossible for Barack Obama to ever get that job.

The original network What's My Line? TV series debuted on Thursday, February 2, 1950, then moved to Wednesday, then back to Thursday and then on October 1 of that year, it moved to Sunday nights and stayed there until September 3, 1967. A total of 876 episodes were aired but not all of them still exist.

Most of those that survived were aired regularly for years on Game Show Network and in its new incarnation at GSN, they occasionally air a week or two of them around the end of each year. They also turn up on Buzzr, a new "all vintage game shows" cable channel that I can't get from my cable company.

Recently, a "lost" episode turned up on eBay — and not just any "lost" episode but the first Sunday night one from October 1, 1950. Some devout What's My Line? fans including W. Gary Wetstein, Stan Taffel and our friend Stu Shostak mobilized. It was arranged to purchase the 16mm print, get it transferred to video and to upload the video to YouTube. This is it.

John Daly is, of course, the host. Dorothy Kilgallen and Arlene Francis are on the panel as they were ever after — Ms. Francis for the rest of the CBS run, Ms. Kilgallen until her untimely death in 1965. The two male panelists are Louis Untermeyer and Hal Block. Mr. Untermeyer was an author and poet who was a panelist on What's My Line? until 1951 when he was fingered as a Communist during the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His presence on television was protested by various groups and though Untermeyer was probably not a Communist, the game show's sponsor eventually gave in and ordered his removal. He was replaced by Bennett Cerf.

Hal Block was a top comedy writer who'd worked for Milton Berle, Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope and others of that prominence. As an on-air personality, he was given to sometimes ad-libbing crude and tasteless jokes, especially if the contestant was an attractive woman. This created a problem since the show was broadcast live and there was no way to edit or bleep, nor would he stop doing it. As What's My Line? became a classier show — everyone in formal wear, more famous Mystery Guests — he fit in less and less. He was finally removed in early '53 and Steve Allen, who was then sitting in for the vacationing Bennett Cerf, remained on the panel when Cerf returned. Steve Allen was eventually replaced by Fred Allen and after Fred passed away in '56, that seat on the panel was filled by a visiting male celebrity.

Here is the lost episode — and I must warn you that the end is missing. The film ends abruptly just after the last contestant is introduced. The next-to-last contestant is the Mystery Guest, who was Kathleen Winsor, the author of the best-selling novel, Forever Amber. As you will see, the staging of the show is crude, the set is cheap, the boom mike shadow is seen as much as any of the guests — but it is a fascinating look at early television…

Our pal James H. Burns regrets that it's very, very difficult to see George Pal's Puppetoons these days…and the reason he regrets that (as do a lot of us) is that they were very, very imaginative and entertaining. There's a lot of good stuff that isn't readily exhibited because of racial jokes and imagery that could (would?) be taken the wrong way today. I wish we could get past all that but it feels like we're moving in the wrong direction for that to happen.

As Harry Enten notes, the National Weather Service did a good job calling yesterday's blizzard in New York. Something most folks don't understand about weather forecasts is that they're usually right in a general way. That is to say if they say your city will get 1" of rain, that usually means that some areas of your city will get 1" of rain. It doesn't necessarily mean your home will get it. A forecast for all of Southern California covers many areas of different elevation, proximity to the ocean or mountains, etc.

Years ago, I was involved in an odd way with the business of forecasting the weather on TV. One of the things I learned was that there's a big difference in a forecast that says your city will be rainfree because a passing storm will miss it by fifty miles…and one that says your city will be rainfree because there's no storm within a thousand miles. Try to get your predictions from some source that has the sensitivity (or the time or space) to make that distinction. A storm that is going to come close to you can always get blown a little off course.

Last evening, I had the honor of attending an honor for Mell Lazarus, the cartoonist responsible for the newspaper strips, Momma and Miss Peach. It is rare for a guy who draws silly pictures to have one long-running strip but two? And he's done so much else as a writer of novels and plays and as a performer and lecturer and as an important figure in the National Cartoonists Society. Small wonder that the N.C.S. made him the second recipient of its Medal of Honor for lifetime achievement — Mort Drucker was the first — and that's what the ceremony was all about.

The place was packed with cartoonists and folks from the world of cartooning. I went with Sergio Aragonés and among the others present were Matt Groening, Cathy Guisewite, Jerry Van Amerongen, Jeff Keane, Daryl Cagle, Tom Richmond, Tom Gammill, Bill Morrison, Chad Frye, David Folkman and Grant Geissman. I somehow wound up sitting next to the Guest of Honor and it was a special delight to just sit and talk with this funny man named Mell. He was humbled by the whole event…though pleased when I pointed out to him that he was receiving the only award for cartooning that Sergio hasn't won.

I may have some photos for you later in the week. It was a grand event and a most deserved bit of recognition.

Nice to see someone's enjoying the blizzard. This is Tian Tian in the Washington Zoo…

I'm sitting here watching TV news coverage of snow upon snow falling on New York and surrounding areas. Here and there, it looks beautiful and fun but for the most part, all I can think of is that I hope people are not suffering due to lack of heat or electricity or food or emergency services. The one time I was in a blizzard in New York, I watched the upper stories of a very tall building on 7th Avenue burn…and there was no way the fire department could get to it, nor were the hydrants of any use.

All Broadway shows have canceled their performances for tonight. Apparently though, Saturday Night Live is doing a new show. The folks who trek in there to be its live audience sure deserve to see a good one.

That one blizzard I was in was almost the magnitude of this one, at least in Manhattan, but its strength was not anticipated so the shows didn't close. Some friends of mine and I went to see Nine at the 46th Street Theater, which is now the Richard Rodgers. I believe this was 1983. It was a light-to-moderate snowfall when we went in and when we came out, New York looked like a Christmas tree that had been seriously over-flocked and there was a fierce, chilling wind. No cars were going anywhere — the parked ones were buried — and the subway wasn't running. My friends and I trudged in the snow — two steps forward, one step back — back to our hotel, stopping halfway at the Carnegie Deli for soup. The waiters at the Carnegie were reassuringly unbothered by the overabundance of white outside.

Last I heard, the Carnegie remains closed…a pity. I'll bet there are people in that town who could use that soup tonight. To bathe in if not to eat. Stay warm, folks.

The folks at FiveThirtyEight.com do the best possible job in predicting unimportant things like who'll be our next president. But now they're getting into the critical matters…like who'll win the Academy Awards. I'll predict they'll eventually realize they're trying to predict the unpredictable.

This is not to say they won't get some forecasts right. Any of us could just going by the "buzz" and the nature of some nominations. I would say for instance that Sylvester Stallone is quite likely going to win Best Supporting Actor for Creed but I'm not basing that on a point system based on other awards the way the FiveThirtyEight folks are doing. I just think the "story" there — Stallone, who he is, what that win would mean dramatically, etc. — makes voters want to see him snag the statuette.

But that's not a scientific formula, it's just a hunch. As even the FiveThirtyEight experts note…

We can't poll the 7,000-odd people who vote on the Academy Awards. We don't even have a good idea of who exactly they are. This means that unlike the methods we use to predict, say, the Iowa caucuses, the problem we're trying to solve is pretty much stripped of input data.

So there's no input data but they're going to try to formulate predictions anyway. At some point, they're going to figure out that won't work. Or so I predict.

As we've mentioned, there will soon be a new production of Hello, Dolly! on Broadway and it will star Bette Midler. Ah, but who else did they consider for the role? Here's my pal Christine Pedi playing some of the other ladies who auditioned. Or could have…

Our friend Floyd Norman has become one of the few people around that historians and filmmakers rush to interview when they need someone who actually met Walt Disney. He and Richard Sherman seem to turn up in every documentary and at every event. Here are some of Floyd's recent thoughts on how he knew Walt…and how he didn't.

I don't mean to keep linking to Jonathan Chait columns but he's writing a number that cry out for attention…

Yesterday in the item right below this one, I linked to a National Review article in which a bevy of conservative figures denounced Trump as unfit to wear the mantle of G.O.P. nominee. This article, by the way, seems to have gotten the magazine disinvited to cover the next Republican debate, which I guess suggests the power Trump already wields in that party.

In this new column, Chait makes the point that all those right-wingers rallying against Trump are doing so "…not because he is an ignorant demagogue, but because he's not their ignorant demagogue." Okay, so I gave away the last line of the piece. But read it anyway if you have the time.

Prominent Conservative figures tell why they don't want to see Donald Trump be president. When I realize I have the same goal as some of these people, I start to think I must be wrong.

Didja see Colbert's routine about Sarah Palin last night? Well, if you didn't, you should and if you did, you probably want to see it again.

A thought has occurred to me a few times lately while watching the man's show: Jon Stewart is being credited and presumably paid as a producer. Wonder if he's involved in the writing, as well. This is pretty much the bit he would have done last night on The Daily Show if he were still helming it…

They're saying 2015 was the hottest year ever recorded — and given some of the weather that parts of this country endured, that's easy to believe. But some folks still won't believe it. They've gotten so deep into their denial of Climate Change that they simply can't climb their way out and admit that, uh, maybe they were wrong. Jonathan Chait is eager to see how George Will is going to pooh-pooh this latest blow to his talking points.

Back in my college days, I had a run-in with a gentleman (I'm being nice calling him that) who was writing books and lecturing that the Holocaust was a hoax; that hardly a Jew died at the directive of the deeply-wronged A. Hitler. He even offered a big cash prize for anyone who could prove the Holocaust had really happened…but that prize was unclaimable because of the rules this Franz Liebkind clone had decreed. They said that he could reject "obviously phony evidence" and of course, since he knew the Holocaust has not occurred, any evidence that suggested it had was phony.

A debating society with which I was involved briefly tried engaging the guy, more for sport than out of any hope that he could be convinced. The obvious problem was that you weren't asking this guy to change his mind. You were asking him to give up the somewhat lucrative profession on which he had based the last 20+ years of his life and you were asking him to admit he'd been a fool. It wasn't like the way you or I could decide that we no longer thought Bill Cosby was a great guy. We had none of our lives invested in the premise that he was. We didn't lose a nickel changing our minds.

I have friends who get frustrated at the outrageous statements of Trump, Palin, Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, etc. But those outrageous statements are those folks' careers and they've gotten them where they are. Ann Coulter is only famous for saying inflammatory things. If tomorrow she admitted she was wrong, her livelihood and fame would evaporate. Very few human beings ever give all that up. In most cases, their brains won't allow them to believe their worlds are based on false premises. People don't want to feel they're living a lie.

Slowly but surely, some Climate Change deniers are coming around. That's because there is always new data, always new unprecedented weather. I have one acquaintance who after years of saying it was all a hoax perpetrated by Al Gore, decided to switch positions. He more or less admitted to me that he figured his conversion was unavoidable; that eventually, there'd be physical destruction so severe he'd have to admit he was wrong and that it might be less painful to do that now, rather than wait 'til Florida is relocated next door to Atlantis. George Will may even make that decision sooner or later but some folks never will.

Those who insist Barack Obama was born in Kenya have been able to deny all the evidence to the contrary and it's unlikely anything new and undeniable will ever turn up…so that position is safe. But Climate Change just brings new information every month and every year. It's going to be interesting to see how long some of those deniers can hold out.