Monday, October 6, 2003

Recall Thoughts

I find myself strangely disinterested in the outcome of tomorrow's election. I think the recall is a gimmick form of democracy based on a flukishly bad law. The public should be able to recall elected officials but it shouldn't be this easy. (Have you noticed that absolutely no one outside of California is proposing that their state's recall standards be changed to match ours?) I'll vote against it but I don't have any reason to be positive about Gray Davis. Ergo, his ouster won't bother me that much. I suppose what I like least is the feeling that his unpopularity is based not on what he's done but on the fact that he comes off poorly when he speaks in public. I suppose that's a disqualification from public office but I wish it wasn't as big a factor as it usually is.

One aspect that I don't see being considered in the news coverage is what one might call the Jesse Ventura Factor. When voters of his state elevated "The Body" to the governorship, it was interpreted as a strong vote against the traditional Democratic and Republican machines. That was because he was an Independent but it was also because he was viewed as an outsider, and Minnesota voters were apparently seized by the desire to stick an outsider in there. (It was a short-lived notion. By the end of his one term, Ventura was pretty unpopular and would have had a hard time winning another.)

Now, Schwarzenegger's a Republican but only by a technicality: Pro-choice, pro-some gay rights and gun control, etc. Since there's no primary in this election, labels of Democrat and Republican are less important than usual and I suspect that a significant number of Arnold voters don't care about party affiliations. They just see him as an outsider, and perhaps they believe a certain image of him as a heroic figure.

Perhaps I'm reading one of my own prejudices into the situation but I think there's a pretty big block of voters out there who really don't like Democrats or Republicans, even if they're registered as one or the other. The recall has empowered that sentiment and they're voting for the most independent guy they think has a chance to win, as many of them once flocked to Perot. To them, voting down the recall means that the Democrat-Republican establishment wins again. Ultimately, I don't think they'll like Arnold any more but at the moment he's an Impulse Buy, not because of what they think he'll do — they don't know and don't care — but because it's a rare chance for voters to beat up on a politician. They don't want to let that get away from them.

• Posted at 11:38 PM · LINK

More on Roy

A friend currently performing in a Vegas show says that the number one question being asked there is no longer, "Do you want insurance?" but "Have you heard any news about Roy?" Many answers abound, ranging from "It's better than they're reporting" to "It's much, much worse." What seems pretty certain is that the "Siegfried and Roy" show is closed indefinitely and no one's betting that it will ever reopen. Beyond the obvious tragedy here, it's sad to think about how many lives this accident has impacted. Most of the 150-180 people who worked on the show are suddenly unemployed at a time when no other show is hiring.

So far, I haven't seen any of the news stories mention that Dreamworks is deep in production on a CGI-animated series for NBC called Father of the Pride, all about a family of white lions who appear in the Siegfried and Roy show in Las Vegas. I have no idea if it'll be abandoned or altered but obviously, the lives of those working on that program will be impacted, as well. In fact, the ripples may reach anyone anywhere who's involved with dangerous performing animals. There are even silly but significant concerns: Someone on Late Night With Conan O'Brien is probably checking Monday night's rerun episode to make sure there's no Siegfried and Roy gay joke in there.

Years ago, I heard someone talking about what it meant to do a good job running a business...any business. He said, "One measure of being a good executive is to make sure that if you get hit by a car tonight, someone could walk in tomorrow morning and begin doing your job and keeping the company functioning." It probably doesn't work that way all the time in most industries but it almost never works that way in show business.

• Posted at 12:06 AM · LINK