Thursday, September 2, 2004

Thursday Night

Well, Bush has spoken. I TiVoed it and may get around to watching his speech tomorrow. (So far, a quick surf of political websites is yielding "reviews" that could have been written before the speech was.)

I am delighted to say that my worst fears about the protests do not seem to have materialized. I'm still not sure the human resources might not have done more good if they'd all gone door to door and collected donations for Kerry...but if it made people feel like they were doing something, great.

What happens next? Well, tomorrow, the numbers come out on job creation for August. If they're high, Bush gets a nice bounce. If they're low, he's got a big problem. They'll probably be somewhere in the realm where Republicans can claim they're great and Democrats can say they're awful, and the arguments will continue. By the time this election is over, we may all earn Purple Hearts.

• Posted at 9:05 PM · LINK

Recommended Surfing

The Comedy Central website is difficult to navigate and since its recent makeover, their online video clips have become less reliable. (They used to play on two of my three computers. Now they run on only one.) But if you're among the few who can handle the terrain, go find a funny clip from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. It's probably on this page and it's called "George W. Bush: Words Speak Louder than Actions." It's a phony commercial for Bush, much like the one they did for Kerry during the Democratic Convention. But it wouldn't surprise me if the Kerry people watched it and said, "Hey, why don't we try something like that?"

• Posted at 8:30 PM · LINK

Something We All Need

A new kind of toilet. For $2,200.

• Posted at 6:49 PM · LINK

Review Reviewed

Creem was an irreverent rock magazine founded in 1969 and flourishing in the seventies...and I think it even made it into the eighties. It has been revived in online form at this site.

Currently featured is this article about Marvel's Conan the Barbarian comic book. In it, writer Jeffrey Morgan says that Jack Kirby left the company in 1970 because they didn't assign the art job on that comic to him. This is nonsense. I was working for Jack a month before he left Marvel and he couldn't have cared less about Conan. Jack never liked handling other folks' characters and I doubt he'd ever read a Conan novel. Also, the Conan comic book was always going to be written by Roy Thomas, and as Roy has noted in several different articles, Jack didn't want to work with any writers but Stan Lee. (That was not a criticism of Roy. Jack had simply decided he didn't want to work "Marvel method" any longer, drawing a comic from a plot instead of a full script. Roy did not write full scripts. Neither did Stan but he was the boss so Jack didn't have a lot of choice there.) Roy has also pointed out that it was out of the question then for someone like Kirby or even John Buscema to draw Conan. Kirby and Buscema were receiving Marvel's top page rate and since the publisher had no confidence in Conan, and also had to pay a licensing fee for the rights, the book had to be drawn by someone receiving a low rate.

Morgan also describes a visit to the Marvel editorial offices in August of 1970 and says that the walls were covered with F.O.O.M. (Friends of Ol' Marvel) posters by Kirby that had been slashed to demonstrate how someone felt about his defection to DC. Actually, F.O.O.M. wasn't invented until 1973. If there were Kirby posters up, they were Marvelmania posters. And if they were slashed, I can't imagine why since when I visited those offices in July of 1970, everyone there wished Jack well, gave me warm notes to take back to him, etc. They were probably not as warm to the topic of Kirby over in the business offices but they sure loved him in the editorial division.

Apart from all that, you might want to take a look at the piece, which is a review of the new Dark Horse reprint of the early Marvel Conan comics. I haven't seen that volume yet but I hope someone notes that Roy Thomas deserves praise for suggesting a book that challenged all the established notions then of what would sell. He stuck with it despite predictions from everywhere that it would bomb big, and he built it into one of big successes — financial and creative — of its day. I don't think he's received enough credit for that little feat.

• Posted at 3:19 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

Several folks have sent me various links to online videos of last night's verbal scuffle on Hardball between Chris Matthews and Zell Miller. (It's tough to link to some of these online videos. Your best bet is to go to the Hardblogger page and see if there's a link there.) Before I viewed it late last night, I'd read a dozen accounts on websites that made it seem like a World Wrestling Smackdown. It isn't that big a deal. Some said that Miller embarrassed himself while others said he effectively bitch-slapped Matthews. I think both views are wrong, though the first is closer to the truth. Either way, you can decide for yourself. It did seem to me that a lot of the problem was that Miller couldn't hear Matthews very well and misunderstood a couple of the questions. And of course, there was also Matthews' annoying habit of asking a question, rephrasing it and asking it again, repeating it one more time, then asking a follow-up question...all without leaving air for the interviewee to respond to any of it. It all made for a nice seven minutes of two grown men in suits and ties making a lot of noise while saying nothing.

Even more embarrassing for Miller, I thought, was his exchange on CNN where he didn't seem able to defend certain points in the speech he'd given not half an hour earlier. He'd attacked Kerry for voting against certain weapons but couldn't respond to the fact that Dick Cheney had opposed a lot of the same expenditures. (Actually, I think the whole Talking Point that Kerry voted that way is a case of his opponents misrepresenting the actual vote...as Fred Kaplan explains here.)

Then, after Miller faulted Kerry's priorities on national defense, we were treated to this sad exchange...

GREENFIELD: Then why did you say in 2001 that he strengthened the military? You said that three years ago.

MILLER: Because that was the biographical sketch that they gave me.

In other words: "I'm not responsible for what I said then. I just said what someone told me to say." It sounds like things haven't changed.

• Posted at 12:44 PM · LINK

Straight Talk Show

Interesting to see John McCain on with Letterman the other night. Michael Moore preceded him in a remote segment, complaining that McCain had slammed his movie without seeing it, which is a perfectly valid point. Fahrenheit 9/11 has been criticized by a lot of people who, like McCain, have only seen excerpts. One suspects some, like McCain, have avoided seeing the entire movie (or perhaps avoided admitting they've seen the entire movie) because this way, they can criticize certain scenes without being asked about ones they might be hard-pressed to defend. Anyway, McCain praised Moore's filmmaking skills and congratulated him on his success, and seemed a bit embarrassed by the whole thing. He said he had not been aware Moore was in the hall...but really, what difference should that have made? It was one of those moments when I felt that John "Straight Talk" McCain was playing it like any normal, weasely politician. Either you think Moore's excesses are severe enough for him to deserve a public scolding as a "disingenuous filmmaker" (that was the term he used in the speech) or you don't...and of course, it helps if you've actually seen the film you think was disingenuous.

Shifting gears though, when they moved on to other topics, McCain made an impassioned pitch for four more years of Bush and then did something you don't hear often these days. He said nice things about the opponent. He called John Kerry a good man and I think he even said the guy would make a good president.

Wait, I just remembered I still have it on my TiVo. His words were, "John Kerry is a friend of mine. He would be a good president of the United States. He's a decent American. He served honorably. He has served this nation honorably and I resent very much these attacks on his service. I believe George Bush served honorably and I believe John Kerry served honorably." And then he went on to say that he felt Bush had proven to be a good leader.

But then Letterman asked him something, referring to the primary campaign of 2000 where Bush and his guys were said to have smeared McCain with whole and half-truths. Here's that exchange, again transcribed right off Ye Olde TiVo...

LETTERMAN: If it were me and if I were expected later in my political future to support the president, irrespective of the causes and the demands of that office...and something like that had happened to me...at some point along the way, I would have picked up the phone or cornered him someplace and said, "Hey, Pepe. What was that crap you were running on me in North Carolina?"

McCAIN: I did that at the time.

LETTERMAN: You confronted him...

McCAIN: I did that at the time in South Carolina. In fact, the Kerry ads were...it's interesting. I get in both candidates' ads. Shows that I'm a uniter and not a divider.

So I really don't know what to make of McCain. That all sounded quite honest and refreshing to me, but I could certainly build a case that McCain is trying to position himself as the one guy who can run in 2008 as the candidate for people who are sick of partisan sniping. Which by then should be just about everyone. I could also theorize in many different directions as to why he is not either more outraged at the 2000 mud-hurling or, conversely, not saying "I don't blame Bush for it." For the time being, I intend to stow the cynicism and believe that McCain is not saying any of these things — including the part about how he thinks Bush has proven his leadership capabilities — just for effect. But there are those other statements, plus I've been disappointed before by politicians who seemed sincere. So I don't intend to believe it too firmly.

• Posted at 3:05 AM · LINK

September 3, 2004 • Current • September 1, 2004