• The Bi-Partisan Bust by Joe Conason, Salon
• Vengeance: It's Part Of Justice by Joshua Micah Marshall, New York Post
• An Agenda For Victory by Michael Kinsley, Slate
• Pat Robertson: His Liberia Deal by Colbert I. King, Washington Post
• They're Rich, They're Spoiled, They're Supporting Terrorists by Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times
• Orwell's Example by Gene Lyons, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Also, there was a recent article in Salon entitled "Bin Laden As Lex Luthor" in which writer Gale Holland attempted to view the world's new real super-villain as cut from the same mold as Superman's arch-nemesis. I don't really endorse the analogy (and told her that when she interviewed me for the piece) but, hey. I'll link to any piece that quotes me.

By the way: As I mentioned recently here, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has begun charging for on-line access, which means I can't read my favorite political columnist, Gene Lyons, at least for free. Fortunately, a thriving e-mail network has erupted so someone sends it to me each week…and the website, www.bartcop.com has started posting it regularly. Lyons' column appears Wednesday mornings so it'll probably turn up on Bartcop later that day.

I have no political observations this week. I'm battling a deadline and, even if I weren't, I think I'd be avoiding the news. From what I can tell, we're well into the category of Lotsa Scary Stuff, and the reporters have so much time to fill, they're making it sound like more of a crisis than it is, inflating by hours the six minutes of actual news they have to offer. And the White House may be launching the ground war just in time, insofar as keeping domestic support up and running. If they can't announce some sort of major "win" soon — i.e., we've arrested some major terrorist, bio or otherwise, or killed someone close to Bin Laden — the patience of certain right-wingers will be exhausted. We are long since past the stage where they'd be screaming about incompetence and possible impeachments, were they getting the same level of results from President Gore.

My buddy Earl Kress noticed something interesting on Late Night With Conan O'Brien.  Not long ago, they unveiled a new set which shows a majestic New York skyline.  When the show returned to the air following the 9/11 tragedies, the skyline was draped in funereal cloth as if to suggest a city in mourning…a nice touch, but one that apparently had an additional purpose.  The folds in the cloth caused some segments of the skyline to be totally obscured and, if Earl's deduction is correct, the drape was placed carefully so that the folds covered the World Trade Center.  Its Twin Towers were right in the center of the skyline, situated such that it would have been in the background of every two-shot of Mr. O'Brien and whoever was in the guest chair.  Perhaps this was just a temp measure until they could have the backdrop repainted, or perhaps so they didn't want to immediately show the panorama minus the World Trade Center.  Whatever, the drape has now been lightened so it no longer obscures that area…and you can now see that the skyscrapers have been removed from the tableau.

In the meantime, the late night shows are struggling with what to rerun when they need to do this.  The Tonight Show will be dark next week and they're re-airing shows from earlier this month.  In fact, on 10/22, they're recycling the broadcast of 10/11, which already reran last week in the NBC Overnight slots.  That was a pretty good episode but three times in twelve days?

I really enjoyed The Warren Companion, a new book from TwoMorrows Publishing, edited by Jon B. Cooke and David A. Roach, chronicling the company that brought us Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, Famous Monsters of Filmland and many other intermittently-wonderful magazines from the sixties and seventies.  (Full Disclosure: I write a column for another TwoMorrows publication, The Jack Kirby Collector.)  Expanded from an issue of Comic Book Artist, this 288-page volume is filled with interviews with Jim Warren himself and many of those who contributed stories and/or artwork to his magazines over the years.  One does suspect that most parties are speaking nicer of one another than they might have, were their employer/employee relationships a more recent memory.

Still, the book does succeed in capturing a lot of what was, at the time, obviously unique to Warren Publishing.  Its monarch was a charismatic, mercurial entrepreneur whose long list of skills did not include going unnoticed.  Through determination and ingenuity — neither of which are intrinsic to most publishers — he built not only an empire but a new format for comics.  Others emulated with much less success, and I suspect the explanation is to be found in this historical overview: Others simply did not work as hard, and throw themselves into pioneering and nurturing a fragile marketplace as did Jim Warren.  Read all about it in this nifty new book.

I have no idea what changes, if any, the bombing will cause in Afghanistan but I am guardedly confident it will play out for the better. What I do fear is that we're in for some rabid domestic squalls over what kind of criticism, if any, constitutes treason. A certain, rather large section of the U.S. is dying to hear that we kicked the asses of those who brought down the World Trade Center and will consider it unpatriotic to suggest that any nugget of U.S. victory is less than total and honorable.

I have a rather cynical, but perhaps not inaccurate view of what drives our public debate and it often comes down to: Watch the Money. For a long time and perhaps still, there was cash to be made and careers to be built on Clinton-bashing. So we got a lot of Clinton-bashing. Those who hated Clinton got lots of attention and those who just mildly disliked him learned to hate him because it did wonders for their bank accounts and fame. Any viewpoint that gets authors on CNN and their books on the Amazon.com "hot 100" is a viewpoint we hear more of and it needn't even be a majority. It just has to be fervent and have buying power.

Right now, those who are eager for John Wayne's America, where the U.S. is always supreme in strength and purpose, are fervent and have buying power. Merchandising of the tragedy (and particularly, of its heroes) has already commenced and what's coming will make the current flag-gouging and tribute events look tasteful by comparison. The same consumers also have, or think they have the moral high ground to bash anyone who might question their vision. Look at how much grief they caused Bill Maher for remarks that should have passed for Fair Comment…and initially did, until a few yahoo radio personalities began misinterpreting them.

I actually think it's a hopeful sign that our government has so demonized Osama Bin Laden and has recently announced a "Most Wanted" list of 22 suspected terrorists. This is not the most logical reason but I'm recalling J. Edgar Hoover's old dictum to his FBI minions that no one should be placed on the "Most Wanted" list unless there was a reasonable expectation that they would be apprehended. And just as J. Edgar didn't want to be caught failing to capture anyone on his list, I don't think those who are controlling the U.S. anti-terrorist efforts want to define the enemy and then fail to defeat it. They must believe they have enough information and access to bring down Bin Laden and to bag most of the 22.

If and when they do, we're going to see a lot of parades and dancing in American streets. We'll probably be told that this proves we need to ban abortions, rescind all laws about gun ownership, investigate the Clintons some more and do away with the Capital Gains tax. And folks who for years have abhorred the concept of "political correctness," as applied to things like smoking and gender discrimination, will be out selling all the right-wing wet dreams as the will of Real Americans. One hopes that some loud voices will remind them that we are all Real Americans…especially those who respect the flag instead of wrapping it around their pet prejudices.

I was watching a late-50's To Tell the Truth on the Game Show Network the other night and an interesting exchange went by, almost without notice.  Panelist Johnny Carson was about to interrogate the three contestants, each of whom was claiming to be an experienced lumberjack.  The host of the show, as usual back then, was Bud Collyer, better known to comic book fans as the voice of Superman on radio and early animation.  Here's how the dialogue went…

CARSON: I know almost nothing about lumberjacking.  Number Two, is it true that Smokey the Bear's a Communist?

(Big laugh over the audience, during which the host makes this comment:)

COLLYER: Don't let him plead the Fifth, Johnny.

Why this is interesting to me: During the blacklist period of the fifties, when performers were going unhired strictly due to unproven allegations about their politics and some were being hauled before Congressional committees, Bud Collyer was a staunch supporter of the practice.  That is to say, he approved whole-heartedly, urged it on, and headed up factions in the actors' union that sought to block any condemnation of Red Channels or other instruments of blacklisting.  He thought those who wouldn't inform on their friends and who took the Fifth Amendment instead were traitors — or, at least, that's how it sometimes gets reported.  Others, either because they were his friends or because they just don't want to believe the man who played Superman would have done such a thing, have claimed that, yes, Collyer was pro-blacklist, but he wasn't hysterical.  He had, they say, a deep, humane fear of Communists making inroads into the entertainment industry and believed that the cause was right, even if some of the tactics employed to ferret them out were wrong.

I never knew what, if anything, to think of Mr. Collyer.  But now, here he is on a show done when blacklisting was on the decline but still being defended, making that remark.  Gotta make you wonder.

For that matter, To Tell the Truth was an interesting — and, given its name, ironic — venue for folks on both sides of the blacklisting issue to come together.  The show's producer, Mark Goodson, was one of the few strong opponents of blacklisting in the management side of the industry.  He not only fought it, he often booked as panelists, personalities like Orson Bean and John Henry Faulk who were being refused work elsewhere.  Those two men had, in fact, been part of a slate of candidates within the performers' union that ran on an anti-blacklist platform and succeeded (in a landslide) in ousting Collyer's faction from office.  Still, on the game show, Collyer was by all accounts a gentleman and a professional.  He'd welcome them, introduce them, play the game…and then scurry off to a union meeting to argue that such people should be barred from ever working again.

Game Show Network is also rerunning vintage episodes of another of Goodson's shows, I've Got A Secret, which had its own battles with blacklisting (and another ironic title).  In this case, the firing was demanded of panelist Henry Morgan for, as usual, rather vague, unproven allegations that were in no way against the law.  Someone said he'd gone to the wrong meetings or hung out with the wrong crowd.  Whatever, the sponsors wanted Morgan removed, and Goodson refused.  He got the show's host, Garry Moore — something of an American icon — to join in a strong statement denouncing the blacklist.  In this case, the blacklisters retreated and Morgan retained his seat on the Secret panel.  Would that more producers and performers had had the guts of Mssrs. Goodson and Moore.

• The War Begins by William Kristol, Weekly Standard
• Killing Bin Laden Won't Do by William F. Buckley, Jr.
• Should We Blame Clinton? by Jacob Weisberg, Slate
• Stars Banned From The Zone from E! Online
• Terror Unanswered by William Saletan, Slate
• Bush To Bin Laden by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
• Sesame Street Bert Joins Bin Laden on Posters by Bernhard Warner, Reuters
• Want To Know Why We Are No Safer In The Skies Today Than We Were 30 Days Ago? Two Words: Tom DeLay by Joe Brancatelli, The Brancatelli Files
• Life's Odds and Sept. 11 by David Plotz, Slate

The management of this site reminds you that one need not agree with all or any of an article to recommend that you read it.

On Sunday afternoon (10/7), my friend Carolyn and I dropped by the Hollywood Collectors Show, an event held around thrice a year at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in Studio City.  The hotel, by the way, is named for the wonderful character actress, Beverly Garland, who is best known for her long-running role on the TV show, My Three Sons.  She was among the many celebrities who were there, selling autographed photos and memorabilia.

These two-day events, run by Ray and Sharon Court, give stars — past and present — a chance to meet their fans and to make a few bucks writing their names on eight-by-tens.  Sometimes, it's more than a few bucks.  Rumor has it that the all-time grosses are racked up whenever Don Knotts is at a table, signing Barney Fife photos at ten bucks a pop.  He was advertised for all weekend but, due to poor health, only showed for one day.  Still, one of the guests with a nearby table, estimated that Mr. Knotts signed perhaps a thousand signatures on Saturday.  You do the math.

(The unofficial runner-up for the longest line is said to be Charlton Heston, who wasn't among the guests this time.  Apparently, the way to generate crowds at this thing is to have at least one bullet in your pocket.)

Besides Knotts, others who were signing one day or both this time included Hugh O'Brian, Ed Asner, Gennifer Flowers, Buddy Hackett, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, David Carradine, Howard Morris and many others.  Joey Heatherton, Stella Stevens and Carol Lynley were all there.  If in the sixties, you were male and unaroused by any of the three, you were automatically declared gay.  There were also a couple of former members of "Our Gang," a number of one-time Mouseketeers, a few Playboy Playmates …and the main reason I went: Soupy Sales.  The Soupman was selling 'n' signing his newly-released autobiography, Soupy Sez, written with Charles Salzberg.

Mr. Sales seemed tired and in poor health so I didn't attempt much of a conversation; just bought a book and got it signed.  I was outside, paging through it when I discovered that I'd written a chunk of it.  Soupy's co-author, Mr. Salzberg, e-mailed me some time ago and secured permission to quote the article I penned about Soupy (this one) and I'd plumb forgotten.  But despite me, it's a pretty good book…one that will delight anyone who names Soupy and his menagerie as among their childhood playmates.

These Hollywood Collectors Shows (and similar events around the country) leave me with mixed feelings, I have to say.  On the one hand, I think it's terrific that actors who wish to avail themselves of the opportunity have a venue where they can make a few bucks off their autographs.  A lot of those in the hall receive scant (often, no) residuals from their old TV and movie appearances and have had their willingness to sign autographs exploited by dealers.  I like the fact that if, for example, you always admired Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, you can go up to him at one of these shows, tell him that, shake his mitt and buy a signed pic or autobiography with every nickel going to him.  Against this is the fact that it's a little sad, at least with some guests, that this is all that remains of their stardom.

What causes me to side (mainly) with the happier thought is a melancholy memory from one of the Courts' shows, a few years back.  It involved the late comedian Pat Paulsen who, at the time of course, was not a late comedian.  Alas, he then knew he was about to become one.  He'd been diagnosed with something terminal — the big "C," I believe — and was out on a crusade to accrue cash to leave his family.  Pat was a very sweet, very funny man who had managed to not rack up much of a fortune during his years on television — though I suspect his last minute putsch for dollars was less a matter of needing cash than of needing something constructive to do.  Whatever, for his last few months, he was appearing everywhere he could, performing and signing, making whatever money he could make.

Colleagues were abetting him.  Ruth Buzzi was sitting with him that day, dolled up in the Gladys Ormphby outfit she wore on Laugh-In, signing and posing for photos, with and without him, all proceeds going to Pat.  A few other stars lent their celebrity to the effort while autograph dealers, aware that the supply of Paulsen autographs was soon to be finite, were stocking up, buying multiples from him.  It was sad…but it would have been even sadder if Pat hadn't had that outlet.

Navigating the ballroom at these events presents certain challenges of etiquette: You don't want to make eye contact with folks whose wares you have no interest in purchasing.  But you also don't want to act like you don't know who they are or don't care that they're there.  I don't collect autographs, at least not on eight-by-tens, though I've purchased a few at these shows, just so I had the chance to chat with the star or slip a few bucks to someone who seemed to really need the money.

Many don't.  One guest this time told me she would have preferred to pass out pics gratis but, for two reasons, couldn't.  One was that, when she'd tried that in the past, the autograph dealers grabbed 'em all up and they went directly up on eBay.  The other problem was that the other guests who did need (or just really want) the money got quite angry at her; like she was trying to make them look bad.  So she charged ten bucks a photo, threw in a lot of freebees, and gave everything she collected to the Twin Towers Fund.  Works for her, works for me, works for everyone.  In fact, the more I think about the whole institution, the more I like it.  I wish the room was less shabbier and crowded, and I wish the whole proceedings were a bit more dignified.  But I'm glad someone invented this kind of event and will attend whenever possible.

Two other points: The above-linked article I wrote about Soupy was as much about his sidekick, the late Clyde Adler, a wonderful gent about whom little is known.  This may change.  My article found its way to his widow who sent me a lovely letter — on paper; people still do that — correcting a few minor errors and inviting me to hit her up for additional info on Clyde.  I intend to do this soon.  (Thanks, Ed Golick, for passing it on to her.)

Also, they're not in stores yet but if you want to pre-order a copy of Soupy's autobiography, you can do so at Amazon.Com.  And if you do so by clicking on this link, I make enough money to buy about half a pack of gum.

My buddy Dana Gabbard informs me that he saw in a bulletin for the Motion Picture Academy that their recent screening of All That Jazz used a print prepared for a forthcoming DVD release.  No date is yet known.

If you get The Biography Channel on your cable system (or have a satellite dish) check out their programming for later this month.  They're running lots of episodes of Biography about show biz personalities.  I just marked about nine for my TiVo to record.  Listings for the channel can be found here.

I would especially recommend the two-hour Biography Close-Up that reruns on A&E (as opposed to The Biography Channel) October 8 and 9 in the wee small hours of the morning, and later this month in a more humane time slot.  It's all about the making of Sesame Street and if you have the slightest interest in children's TV programming — or Jim Henson and the Muppets — it's a must-see, must-keep.

Dave Mackey operates a terrific website filled with info about great cartoons, over at www.davemackey.com.  One thing he currently has up is a guide to the year-by-year color schemes that were used on those concentric circles that opened and closed all the great Warner Brothers cartoons.  I never realized it but they were color-coded and Dave explains how.  He also just e-mailed me with his solution to the mystery (put forth here) about how, in the MGM cartoon, House of Tomorrow, the narrator briefly changes from Frank Graham to Don Messick and back again…

Don Messick's narration was during the pressure-cooker gag.  The narration makes mention of a specific year: 2050.  Joe Adamson's book , Tex Avery: King of Cartoons, notes that the cartoon described the House of Tomorrow – "Tomorrow" in the original cartoon being noted as 1975. This was the only scene in the whole picture with a hard date reference.

I have a feeling that MGM's sound engineer, Lovell Norman, had the dialogue replaced when the cartoon was packaged as part of CBS's The Tom And Jerry Show in the mid-1960's, thinking that the cartoon's date reference would soon be outdated.  Norman may have had access to enough original sound elements to be able to do a nice, neat patch job, albeit without Frank Graham.  Another less likely possibility was that the line was changed when the cartoon went into local TV syndication in 1977.

That all sounds possible to me but, at least in the print on the Cartoon Network, the editing was not a nice, neat patch job.  It was a pretty sloppy edit, out of style with the other ins-and-outs, which were done via fades.  (The animation in the Messick-narrated segment also seemed a little out-of-style, as if it had been animated by others, but that may just be my imagination.)

But you're probably right that it was done when the show went on CBS (1965, I believe).  And wasn't that the same time that they re-animated and revoiced the episodes that featured the black, stereotyped maid to give her June Foray's Irish accent?

The Los Angeles Times is reporting (here's the link) that the Canadian government is likely to drop tax-shelter financing laws that have made it financially attractive for American studios to shoot TV shows and movies up there.  This would be a boon to Hollywood and could have a major impact on the animation business.  An awful lot of cartoon work that would otherwise have been done in this country — voice work, especially — has gone North.  With so many studios in L.A. closing down or laying off, this would be a great time to not have it be advantageous to cross the border.

Here they come: More articles I recently found interesting.  I do not agree with with every word of them but yadda, yadda, yadda…

• Press Self-Censorship by Gene Lyons, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
• The First Casualty by Joe Conason, Salon
• Yes, But What? by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
• Why Did The Media Delay Its Florida Recount Study? by Eric Boehlert, Salon
• Courage Under Fire by Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal
• Defining Terrorism by Michael Kinsley, Slate
• Why the Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics by John Montoya, Adequacy.org

The first link above is to the weekly column of one of my favorite current political commentators, Gene Lyons.  Mr. Lyons is an award-winning journalist who resides in Arkansas and, throughout the Clinton administration, he was generally out in front with predictions and commentaries, including some of the first reports of Ken Starr's goons trampling on the Civil Rights of anyone in the state they thought might be squeezed into giving damaging testimony about the President and First Lady.  That no one ever caved to the pressures and said what Starr's office wanted them to say is amazing.  I'm not sure that, if they'd done some of that stuff to me, I wouldn't have cratered and confessed to carrying Bill Clinton's Communist love child or whatever they wanted to hear.

But, getting back to Gene Lyons:  His columns have not received the attention they deserve because they run exclusively in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, a relatively small paper.  Still, a lot of us have been flocking to their website on Wednesdays to read him…though we no longer do this.  On October 1, the Democrat-Gazette began charging five bucks a month for on-line access…an experiment that will almost certainly flop.  When you can read The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and hundreds of other papers for free, why would you pay for a smaller paper with so little unique content?

Actually, I was almost willing to part with the fiver just to read Lyons but, before it came to that, strangers began to e-mail me his first column of October, and Bartcop (a left-wing, sometimes-wacko site) posted it, as linked above.  In fact, I have now been e-mailed his column five times, all by folks I don't know but who saw me mention on this site that I enjoyed his work.  A whole Gene Lyons Bootleg network has spontaneously erupted and it seems to me that, as a result of his paper making it harder to see his writings, it's now a lot easier.  Given the topic of his first column that was affected this way, it's especially ironic.

The folks at Mezco Toys have brought out a line of terrific Popeye action figures — two different ones of Popeye the Sailor Man, one each of his friends and foes — Bluto, Olive Oyl and Wimpy.  All are well designed as per the best of the Fleischer cartoons.  These are all in the (approx.) 6" size and seem to be most available at Toys R' Us and Tower Video.  There's also a larger, 12" Popeye figure that is only obtainable from Amazon.com, where it goes for twenty bucks plus a special $5.00 shipping surcharge.  If you click here, you will not only be transported to the page where you can order but POVonline (that's us)  will get a tiny cut of the money you spend while you're there.

And, speaking of the Spinach-Eater: My pal Jerry Beck has announced, over on his splendid Cartoon Research website, that Cartoon Network will soon commence a Sunday evening series that will run vintage Popeye shorts, uncut and with their original titles.  That's the good news.  The bad is that it's on at one o'clock in the morning but, hey, that's why God invented the TiVo.  Set yours for the wee hours of Sunday, October 29 (Monday morning, actually) and every week thereafter.  If you don't have a TiVo, they sell them at Amazon.com and the 30-hour model is currently down to a new low price, plus we get our little cut if you go there by clicking here.  End of commercials.

And let's note: Slowly but surely, Cartoon Network is sneaking more and more uncut cartoons onto their schedule.  The Bob Clampett Show, The Tex Avery Show, The Chuck Jones Show, Late Night Black and White and Toon Heads all run unexpurgated films and, since they seem to be garnering no complaints and no sponsor defections, this trend will likely continue.  The latter two shows, by the way, have been running some superb, rarely-seen goodies.

I'm posting this and then I have to go work on the third issue of the forthcoming Groo mini-series, which is subtitled Death and Taxes.  The first part comes out in December, and we hope people will understand that the first two chapters were written and drawn, and the plotline of the whole story was formulated before September 11.  Part Three, which picks up where the second part left off, opens with the citizens of one village demanding that their government go to war and kill the enemy…even though they have no real idea as to who that enemy may be.  Are we timely or what?

I've really been enjoying the reruns of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In that have been running on the Trio satellite channel — though, as is too often the case on cable, they're rerunning episodes they've already rerun, long before they've cycled through all they could run.  The shows hold up pretty well, perhaps because, in trimming to allow more commercials, someone has excised some of the topical references that are now lost to obscurity.  (On the other hand, one of the charms of these reruns is the occasional quote of a then-current commercial or catch-phrase, or jokes about the now-forgotten Everett Dirksen or William Proxmire.  Recently, we hit a week of shows wherein every third joke was about Twiggy's lack of a bustline.)

One of the things that makes the shows work (and this was sadly absent on a Laugh-In knock-off I once worked on — taping in the same studio, no less) was that the cast had a tremendous sense of family and fun.  As a kid, I sometimes went over to NBC to watch them tape Laugh-In and to see this spirit in person…but it clearly bled onto the screens, as well.  With the occasional exception, the performers enjoyed doing the show, especially when performing as themselves or while doing one of Billy Barnes's clever special material numbers.  There have been shows since that fired a lot of jokes at the audience but without much impact.  There have also been shows that looked like the cast was having fun — often, too much to care about entertaining us at home.  But this one was a hit, I suspect, because it found the middle ground.  And also because Goldie Hawn and Judy Carne were so cute.

If you don't get Trio, which is more than likely, there's a big VHS/DVD home video release about to come our way.  (And, by the way, one can also order DVDs of old Johnny Carson highlights over at www.johnnycarson.com.  Johnny probably needs the money because he hasn't worked lately.)

Several folks e-mailed to ask if, in light of the screening of a restored, stereo print of All That Jazz recently (discussed here), they could expect a DVD release soon.  I'm sure one will be along soon enough but, no, I haven't heard it announced.