Wednesday, November 5, 2003

Oh, Really? No, O'Malley!

For around a quarter of a century, Walter O'Malley was the head honcho of The Los Angeles Dodgers. As owners go, he was more popular than Steinbrenner. But then, so is mange. O'Malley's family has set up a website about his life full of facts and figures and fotos. Of particular interest is a section of correspondence 'twixt O'Malley and various celebrities including Harpo Marx, Walt Disney, Frank Sinatra and Johnny Carson. And don't miss this letter from Milton Berle complaining about how he was treated at Dodger Stadium. Thanks to my old pal (since high school) Bruce Reznick for the pointer.

• Posted at 9:24 PM · LINK

Weighing In...

Wayne DeWald writes, "Mark, I hope you'll weigh in on The Reagans controversy" but I'm not sure I have anything to say that a lot of others haven't said. I've never been a fan of docu-dramas, especially those where the issues involved were still very much "in play," insofar as history is concerned. I didn't like the recent film that attempted to portray George W. Bush as John Wayne on 9/11. I doubt I would have liked this new one about the Reagans. But then, the actual content of the film is almost irrelevant, and I got the feeling that a lot of folks who weighed in on the content of the movie and claimed to have read the script or even viewed excerpts were bluffing, trying to avoid the charge that they were attacking or defending that which they had not seen.

Most of our past presidents exist in two forms, man and myth. Their partisans cling to the myths, not just out of denial but because the myth can be useful. Democrats sell the myth of John F. Kennedy, suggesting you should vote Democratic to resurrect the glory days of Camelot. Republicans put down their opponents by comparing Democrats to the mythic Reagan, not the real guy. To me, the real guy was either hopelessly out of touch with what his administration was doing with regard to foreign affairs and things like Iran-Contra, or was lying and shredding the Constitution. I have a friend who somehow believes Reagan was the former, but also a great president. I don't understand that except that we all have a powerful need to believe we have Superman in the Oval Office and some of us are willing to ignore a lot of reality to believe that. A lot of Republicans — especially lately, defending Bush tax cuts — insist Reagan never raised taxes. Or if forced to admit he did, they suggest that evil Democrats held Nancy at gunpoint to get him to do so...and by the way, Reagan gets all the credit for subsequent economic good news. I don't think any president, Reagan or Clinton included, deserves as much personal credit or blame for the economy during his watch as they often get. But when you're campaigning, it's useful to claim or assign responsibility.

I have no idea how slanted or wrong the CBS mini-series might have been. The examples of bias cited by its critics seemed rather mild — or, at least, nowhere near as bad as they might have been. I think Reagan's record has a lot of embarrassing and unethical blots that his fans are rabid to deny...but I also think that on a human level, a very strong case can be made that this was the wrong time to exploit/depict the former Chief Exec and his First Lady at all. A wholly-positive portrait that didn't mention the negatives would just be propaganda. But CBS should have known that including any negatives would incur the wrath of those trying to sell the myth, abetted by those who believe you don't speak ill (even the tiniest bit) of an Alzheimer's sufferer and the woman taking care of him.

The main problem of course is that by giving in and dumping the movie elsewhere, CBS has empowered a certain mob mentality and probably scared off a lot of more worthy efforts. Somewhere, there's a writer with an idea for a valuable and important docu-drama who won't bother to pitch it — or won't find producers receptive — because it might spark controversy. That's a loss for us all, but the parties celebrating their "win" over CBS probably won't see it that way.

• Posted at 1:17 PM · LINK

Death or Taxes

Here's something I don't fully understand. Well, I guess I understand it in a pragmatic sense but not in a philosophical sense. A man named Gary Leon Ridgway just admitted that he killed 48 women. Let me write that out the long way for you: Forty-eight women. The courts have just made a plea bargain deal with him that will spare him the death penalty and commit him to life in prison with no chance of parole.

Now, if you're against the death penalty in all cases, that's probably the way it ought to work. But if you're not, and most people are not, this should be an outrage of the highest order. If a judge looked at a confessed murderer of 48 human beings and said, "I sentence you to life in prison," death penalty advocates would be demanding the judge's resignation and circulating recall petitions. If 48 murders don't get you the death penalty, what should? Maybe we ought to wait until the guy does something real nasty.

This article on the case suggests that the prosecutors made the deal because their county is short on funds and could not afford a costly trial. I think it would be interesting to poll the residents of that county and ask them (a) if they believe in the death penalty and (b) if so, if they believe in it enough to kick in a few bucks more in taxes to enforce it in a case like this.

Ridgway is white. I wonder if there'd be an outcry over the sentence if he were black. I wonder if he'd even have been able to make this deal if he were black. Do we think maybe that one day soon, that very same court is going to order the execution of a black man who killed only one human being, and who possibly had a little better reason than that he wanted to get out of paying his hookers for sex? Or is it that since Ridgway's victims were mostly prostitutes, that's not like killing 48 real human beings?

I'm not arguing here for any point other than that the death penalty in this country is enforced in an arbitrary, inconsistent manner. Its advocates advocate it in an arbitrary, inconsistent manner. I am enormously conflicted on the rightness of the government taking lives and I guess I can see the case for it if the implementation rises above questions of race and budget constraints...and of course, it would be nice if our court system did a better job of convicting only those who actually committed the crimes. In the absence of that, I find myself tilting towards the notion that there should be no death penalty, not necessarily because that's the right position but because it's the practical one.

• Posted at 11:33 AM · LINK

Money, Money, Money

A few days ago on this site, I posted the following line, just on a whim...

Is the economy really on a rebound? I'll believe that when more people start using Paypal to donate money to this site.

Posted it. Didn't think much of it. Thought it might net a few more bucks which I could use to pay the costs of maintaining this site and buy cat food for the Back Yard Menagerie. If there's any left after I do that, I sometimes snag a few oddments from the land of eBay. The spots on this and my other site that ask for donations (or for you to use our links when you buy from Amazon) provide a steady trickle of loot that I view as applause. I sure didn't expect my best 3-day period ever in donations.

Actually, I got about the same number of "tips" I usually get but the amounts jumped way up, including one for $200 (thank you), one for $300 (thank you, thank you) and one for $500 (thank you, thank you, thank you). And thank you to the folks who sent ten or twenty dollars, too. I know when people say "it isn't the money, it's the principle," they usually mean, "it's the money." But in this case, it's the principle. If nothing else, these donors have erased for now the occasional guilt twinge I have when I stop doing paying work and spend an hour or three fixing up my sites, writing stuff and tweaking HTML codes. I shall continue to do these things.

• Posted at 10:59 AM · LINK

In The Stars

Brian Madigan called my attention to this one. Celebrity astrologer Joyce Jillson prints in her column little predictions for famous folks. Not long ago, she printed one for John Ritter: "Having a Virgo sun sign helps keep his career ticking." And of course, it came out the day after his heart stopped beating.