Monthly Archives: February 2017

Okay, I'm back doing this again: Get all my Trump posting for the day over in one big dump. In fact, I just decided that starting tomorrow, I'm going to call this The Trump Dump. It has a nice ring to it…

1. Fred Kaplan points out one reason that things are such a mess in the Trump Administration: He's not appointing all the deputy, under, and assistant secretaries who actually do most of the work.
2. Andrew Sullivan is back and sorta-blogging. This one is about how the media should deal with the lies told by Trump and those around him. That sounds a lot easier to demand than it does to enforce, especially when Trump himself won't sit for interviews with anyone interested in doing that. Bill O'Reilly was interested in coming across as tough without actually being tough. And frankly, most people are falling into one of two categories: Those who know Trump lies and those who don't care as long as they get what they think they want out of his presidency.
3. Okay, so let's get this straight: Trump kept saying he wouldn't honor the "One China" policy unless President Xi Jinping conceded to him on some points involving trade and international commerce. They had a phone conversation. President Xi said no. Trump quietly announced he would honor the "One China" policy. I had an agent like that one time.
4. I'm not a big fan of doing psychological evaluations of public figures from afar and all these discussions of what's mentally wrong with Trump automatically trigger my skepticism. But I will admit most public figures don't give us anywhere near as much to work with as Trump does. John Cassidy engages in a little of that but makes the point that acting the way he does sometimes works well for Trump. I think that's important to remember. All the thing we may think he shouldn't do did get him the presidency.

Okay, that's four. And now I don't have to think about Trump for the rest of the day…or so I'll tell myself.

Our clip today combines two things that intrigue me, the first being the song "The Rhythm of Life" from the Broadway show, Sweet Charity.  As I noted here, the original song was a parody of the bogus religious cults of the sixties, not to be confused with the religious cults of every other decade in the history of mankind.  I'm fascinated by how some people have transformed it into a serious choir number about the rhythm of life while others offer it in odd contexts.

The other thing here that I find fascinating is — or rather was — a TV show that aired on ABC for a brief time in 1969 and it was called What's It All About, World? At the time, CBS had some success with The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and NBC had Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. So you had two variety shows that played to younger audiences and they were also political and anti-establishment at times.

Today, the politics of either show seem about as controversial as the new KFC pizza that substitutes a piece of fried chicken for the pizza crust. But in '69, a couple of gents who owned ABC affiliates were outraged at that Commie Trash on CBS and NBC and they demanded that their network whip up a similar show designed to offend no one, especially right-wing folks like them. That was What's It All About, World?, hosted by Dean Jones and featuring some of the oddest musical numbers ever done on television. They all seemed to be about taking something hip and taking all the hip out of it.

Here's a version of "The Rhythm of Life" they did, introduced by Minnie Pearl and performed by Dean Jones and Ricardo Montalban with the Kevin Carlisle Dancers. Just try and figure out what was on the minds of the people who devised this. I dare you.

We could make this a daily feature since there are so many things I Don't Get. But the one I'm going to write about now is this…

Every day now, there seems to be some story from deep inside the Trump Administration — anonymously sourced — that makes Donald Trump appear to be one or more of the following…

• Shockingly unaware of what he's signing and what policies he's changing. I mean, it's bad if he's doing bad things because he's studied the situation and honestly believes they're good. But even those who think he's a brilliant, great leader have to be appalled if he's signing executive orders without knowing what's in them.
• Insanely obsessed with convincing people — including other world leaders — that he had the biggest victory in the history of elections, trouncing Hillary in the popular vote, getting the biggest turnout ever for his inauguration, etc.
• Childishly vowing that he will get his way 100% of the time and that anyone who opposes him on anything — even if they're with him on most matters — will be destroyed and/or made to apologize.
• Irresponsibly ordering major actions — including military ones — on a near-whim, without bothering to sufficiently plan or to consult with those around him who may be more informed and equipped to plan better or raise questions about the decision.
• And then there's all that stuff about how the Trump brand must not be allowed to suffer. He seems unaware that as his popularity goes down, people become less likely to buy anything associated with him.

Are all these leaked stories true? Naturally, since they fit in with my perception of the man, I'm likely to assume they are. But I don't want to be like some people I've encountered the last few years who'll believe absolutely anything negative, no matter how unsourced or stupid, about Obama, Bill or Hillary, etc.

What I don't get it who's leaking these stories? And why isn't Trump waterboarding members of his staff to find out? Here's one that came out the other day…

In his first call as president with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump denounced a treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployment of nuclear warheads as a bad deal for the United States, according to two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official with knowledge of the call.

When Putin raised the possibility of extending the 2010 treaty, known as New START, Trump paused to ask his aides in an aside what the treaty was, these sources said.

Trump then told Putin the treaty was one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration, saying that New START favored Russia. Trump also talked about his own popularity, the sources said.

Who leaks this kind of thing to the press? And why isn't shutting down such leaks the most important thing in the life of Donald J. Trump at the moment? Even if the story is an out-and-out lie, you'd think he'd be firing back at it a lot more than he has. As it stands, it's another thing that I don't get.  Collect 'em all!

Here's a movie musical number that's always worth another viewing. I was never bothered by Dick Van Dyke's alleged British accent in Mary Poppins. I mean, it's not like it was the only unrealistic thing in that film. And it probably didn't bother any of the many Brits who worked on the movie, either, at least at the time.

One of them — though you never see him on screen — was the veteran character actor, J. Pat O'Malley. He was engaged to coach Van Dyke…and what you basically have in that film is Dick Van Dyke imitating J. Pat O'Malley, a genuine British performer of great renown. O'Malley was also one of three different actors who at various times played Dick Van Dyke's father on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Mr. O'Malley did a fair amount of cartoon voice work for Disney, starting with Ichabod and Mr. Toad in 1949. That's him voicing the little cockney man in this sequence.

The very first cartoon I ever wrote was an ABC Weekend Special called The Incredible Detectives and one of the main characters was an English bulldog. For some reason, though I was new to the profession, the producer let me sit in on a casting discussion with the voice director, who I suspect resented my having any input at all. I suggested for the role Mr. O'Malley, who was then very much still with us and would probably have loved getting the job. The director wrote down my suggestion, then went to his office and booked whoever the hell he wanted to…an actor who was a friend of his.

That actor was fine but later in front of me, the producer asked the director why he hadn't hired my nominee and he said, "I don't like to work with on-camera voices who haven't had any experience doing voices." I, of course, then said, "J. Pat O'Malley's done dozens of cartoons. He was in Mary Poppins."

The voice director immediately added, "And those guys who work for Disney…they're always too expensive and they don't take direction well."

Okay, let's roll the clip…

Rolling Stone has a good interview with John Oliver, who returns to the air this Sunday.

And while you're over there, read Matt Taibbi about how a lot of Trump supporters know how much he lies and it doesn't bother them a bit because he seems to be winning for their side.

I think I've reached the stage in the script I'm writing when everything is funny, not because it really is but because it's 5-friggin'-thirty in the morning. Gonna go to bed and try not to lie there for the next three hours "writing" the rest of this script in my mind.

Wanna help? Please spare me e-mails for the next few days unless they're really essential. I'm actually writing two scripts at the moment — a few pages on this one, then a few pages on that one, then back to the first one. I'll tell you about them whenever there's time.

Good night, Internet!

Today on Stu's Show, your host Stu Shostak chats with actor-producer Tom Williams, a fine gent who produced, among other shows, Dragnet and Adam-12. Tom's also had a pretty impressive acting career, as well with appearances on, among other other shows, Quincy, The Rockford Files, The Jeffersons, Too Close for Comfort, Life With Lucy and many more. Stu and Tom will be chatting for two hours and then they'll go live to streaming internet video and you'll be able to see not only them but some samples of Tom's work on your home computer or your Roku-enabled TV.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there and then. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond. Then shortly after a show concludes, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a bargain 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. And hey, the ones were I'm the guest are the same price as the ones with Dick Van Dyke and Carl Reiner and Jonathan Winters! Pretty awesome.

CNN has a new series called The History of Comedy and it's loaded with clips and great insights…or so I'm told by friends who have previewed it. I haven't but I've set my TiVo to capture the first episode, Thursday evening at 7 PM with several repeat airings (and new episodes) to follow. You might want to grab at least this first one, just in case it's as good as I'm told it is.

Jake Gyllenhaal will be starring soon in a Broadway revival of Sunday in the Park With George. Apparently when this was announced, a number of people were openly skeptical that he was up to the vocal demands of the role. So they've released a video of him from rehearsals singing "Finishing the Hat" and I wonder if anyone is skeptical now…

For those of you interested in the late night ratings battle, here's a good overview of where things stand. Fallon has been in the lead all along, though occasionally Colbert has been close or even a bit ahead…in overall homes, though not in the key demographic. Kimmel has a solid following too.

John Oliver returns to the air this Sunday to start his new season. In this interview, he talks about all sorts of things, including his contempt for the White House Correspondents Dinner.

With regard to the issue of "fake news," it seems to me we need some new terminology here. People are trying to draw a parallel between Kellyanne Conway talking about imaginary massacres and a comedian like Stephen Colbert joking that Donald Trump gave an engagement ring to Vladimir Putin. They're calling both "fake news" as if they're the same but one is intended to deceive and one to amuse. And most of the ones intended to amuse are built on the presumption that the audience knows it's an outrageous exaggeration or distortion. Maybe we should just call one "false news" and the other, "joke news." It's a shame we may need to make that distinction.

Boy, I wish I had a good anecdote about meeting the man who billed himself as "The World's Foremost Authority" and didn't even seem to be an authority on anything, including what he was the World's Foremost Authority of. But I sure thought he was funny and anyone who can make it to the age of 102 deserves a certain amount of respect.

There was a time in the sixties when talk shows would fight over who was going to book the Professor next because he was always hilarious. But he was almost always disruptive, hijacking the show and taking it into an utter chaos that the producers did not expect, leaving the host (whoever it was) unable to control or even participate in his own show.

I remember one time on The Mike Douglas Show when the Professor — and this was obviously unplanned — suddenly decided to seize control of one of the cameras and show the world the right way to do that job. As Douglas tried in vain to conduct a serious interview with the next guest, there was the previous guest giving us views of audience members' knees, grungy parts of the studio, the nostril hair of the host, cue cards telling the host what to ask as he was asking it, etc. I think they finally stopped Corey as he was trying to shove the camera he'd commandeered out the studio door and down the hall towards a men's room.

They didn't have him on for a long time after that. One by one, a lot of those shows decided to not have him on. Sometimes, you can be too funny for your own good.

We took yesterday off from this, not that there weren't plenty of items that could be posted here…

1. As Eric Levitz points out, Trump seems to be doing a great job of alienating foreign leaders — and for no good reason.
2. The more I see of Mike Pence, the more I think impeaching Trump is a bad idea. As William Saletan notes, Pence has become really committed to spinning the phony facts and worldview of this administration.
3. As Kevin Drum notes, the Trump administration is trying real hard to sell the idea that there are terrorist attacks all around us, many unreported by the press for its own, ulterior motives. They seem to think they can scare Americans into letting Trump do any damned thing he wants as our only chance at survival.
4. And if there is another terrorist attack, Trump is already blaming it wholly on those who won't let him pass unconstitutional laws.

And lastly, a bit of good news: The notion that the most important thing in the world was to immediately destroy Obamacare has subsided. It's become pretty obvious, even to Republicans, that they have nothing to replace it with that's better and won't make a large segment of America worse-off and furious. Jonathan Chait has more.

And it may qualify as good news to some: Not long ago, covering Donald Trump speeches was really good for the ratings of TV news shows. Now, it's not so good but you know whose ratings are way up? Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Last week, Colbert beat Jimmy Fallon in total viewers and Trump-bashing seems to be the reason. That means we'll be seeing a lot more of it…on those shows and others. Alec Baldwin hosts SNL this coming Saturday.

Johnny Carson shows you how to welcome a new sponsor…

One good thing Donald Trump may do for America is that he may destroy one institution that could use a little destroying — the White House Correspondents Dinner. I used to find these amusing and maybe, back then, they were. But as we get more politicized in this country, it seems phonier and phonier for the President of the United States to come in, appear before a tuxedo-clad pack of journalists and shmoozers, and roast them and himself lovingly. And then some poor comedian has to get up, follow the star attraction, and entertain a roomful of folks who dread what he might say about them and would much rather be mingling anyway.

There seems to be some question as to whether this dinner will even be held this year and if so, if the President of the United States, will show up and fill his customary role. With Trump out there now saying essentially that any negative news about him or his administration is a deliberate lie, I don't see that ceremony happening, at least in its usual form.

Stephen Colbert is campaigning a little to host it. I have the feeling that if someone there has a list of potential hosts in preferred order, my name is ahead of his. And ahead of me is everyone else on this planet.

But I don't think it would be a bad thing if this dinner went away. It's built on the faulty premise that these two institutions — the presidency and the press — may quarrel at times but down deep, they had a true respect for one another. I'm not sure if that was always a faulty premise but it sure is, these days.