Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Claus for Alarm

Guess who's playing Mrs. Santa Claus in the Macy's parade on Thursday! If you're registered to read articles at the New York Times website, you can read this article by the future Mrs. Claus and some comments on what it all means.

• Posted at 10:10 PM · LINK

Buy Carl Gottlieb's Pants!

Carl Gottlieb is a writer, producer, director and actor with a list of credits to die from. I just called and left a message on his voice mail informing him that someone on eBay is selling his pants!

• Posted at 8:40 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Here we find William Saletan and Jacob Weisberg discussing the Republicans' new TV commercial that suggests the Democrats are against fighting terrorists. The discussion makes a good point that Bush's policy of shooting first and looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction later is getting tougher to defend.

The other day on Crossfire, Paul Begala challenged Republican Senator Kit Bond of Missouri on this ad. He quoted the line that says "Some are now attacking the President for attacking the terrorists," then asked Bond twice to name someone who's actually doing that. No names were forthcoming.

Maybe there should be a TV show during elections called "Defend Your Commercial." In it, the producer or candidate would come on and their commercials would be shown. They would be asked to substantiate each claim, and there would be a jury of statisticians to fact-check whatever they said. At the end of the show, a panel would vote on the truthfulness of the ad and would itemize the assertions they felt were false or misleading. The show would also fact-check the commercials of those who refused to come on and defend them. I wonder if a network could refuse to air any spot that declined to submit to this process.

• Posted at 2:56 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Richard Cohen has some pretty strong words for the Bush administration and what they got us into with Iraq. I wish I could link to one of Cohen's columns from the lead-up to the war because it sure seems he's changed his tune.

• Posted at 1:58 PM · LINK

It Is...Balloon!

As I mentioned, I'm probably not going to tune in to the infomercial formerly known as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But I might to see the announced return of some of their older balloons, including one (four? three?) of the Marx Brothers. And I did enjoy browsing around a website the Macy's folks set up to give out info and some of the history on their annual Turkey Day ritual. Actually, one of these days, I'd like to go to N.Y. and see the parade in person. It marches down Broadway past the windows of several companies I do work for, and at least one of them will usually open the office on Thanksgiving for the employees who want to come in and watch the festivities below and sometimes above. One year, a friend of mine called me from his desk to say, "I took a secretary into my office, closed the door and we started making out...until we saw a sixty-foot Bullwinkle peeking in on us. That kind of killed the mood." I imagine it would.

• Posted at 11:41 AM · LINK

Whoa, Nellie!

I doubt there's anyone anywhere who thinks that Newsmax is a legitimate news source. It's not that they're a rabidly right-wing website and news service but that they're rather fiercely committed to printing whatever will get right-wingers fired up enough to send money. For a long time, they were flogging the idea that it was an absolute certainty that Hillary Clinton has a firm plan to run for president in 2004 and were soliciting donations to stop her. Lately, they've been edging towards the idea that she now realizes she's so unpopular that she can't win. So if she doesn't run, that will be the reason. (Uh, it couldn't be that she never planned to run?)

Anyway, they recently posted this "news" story that flows from an interview on Larry King Live the other night...

For all the coverage generated by the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination this past weekend, the media managed to miss the only genuine news to emerge from the commemoration. Nellie Connally, wife of former Texas Gov. John Connally and the only person still alive who rode in the presidential death limousine, publicly disputed for the first time the Warren Commission's "magic bullet" theory, a scenario absolutely essential to its finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was Kennedy's lone assassin.

They're wrong about this being the first time she's said this. She's said it hundreds of times. The Newsmax piece says it's the first time she said it publicly but also quotes her as saying she said it to the Warren Commission. Her statements there and elsewhere are quoted in around 95% of all the books that seek to refute the official findings, and that's a lot of books. Here's a link to the text of a 1998 interview in Texas Monthly where she not only says it but says that she's never wavered from her view. I think she's incorrect about the second shot but it certainly is not news that she believes that.

It is also kinda dishonest for them to pull that one item out of the interview (here's the whole transcript) and not cite that she also said that she was positive there were exactly three shots and that all three came from behind. Of the thousands of conspiracy theories that have been tossed out since 11/22/63, I'm not sure there are any that believe there were three from behind, that the second hit Connally and that the third hit Kennedy only. That description does not match the physical evidence. In any case, Nellie Connally may firmly believe the "single bullet theory" isn't right but she also firmly believes Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. She's wrong about some part of it, and Newsmax is wrong to quote only the part that supports their agenda. They do a lot of this.

• Posted at 1:23 AM · LINK

Winchell-Mahoney Time!

One of my earliest heroes was the world's greatest ventriloquist, Paul Winchell. If Paul was on TV with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff, I was in front of the TV. Always. I read and re-read his autobiography, which was also a kind of "how-to" book on his craft, and practiced many hours with my toy Jerry Mahoney. I loved my little Jerry and kept it long after most of my other toys of that era had gone into the dumpster or off to Goodwill. About seven years ago, the water heater in my basement burst and the only thing destroyed was my old Jerry Mahoney doll. I cried a bit, then ran to the computer, logged onto a new thing called eBay and won my first auction: $300 for a new old Jerry Mahoney doll. I have since purchased exact, working replicas of Jerry and Knuck, which sit around my house and do a great job of scaring my maid every single time she walks into the room.

Shortly before the water heater incident, I'd written this column about Paul and the current "best ventriloquist" I've seen, a talented gent named Ronn Lucas. I'll have to write another, better one since that column doesn't begin to do justice to Paul. In the meantime, you can find out a lot about him at his website. They're still erecting the new version but there's already some good biographical information posted there.

• Posted at 12:09 AM · LINK