Thursday, February 24, 2005

Today's Political Rant

According to this article, a town hall meeting was planned for George W. Bush's trip to Germany but it has been cancelled. The reason? Bush's crew was insisting that the questions be approved in advance so that no one would ask anything our Chief Exec did not want to answer...but the German reps insisted that an unscripted event had to really be unscripted.

If this were any other American president, I'd be skeptical of a report like this. But I recently watched a little of one of Bush's open forums in this country on C-Span, and the toughest question was along the lines of, "How do you manage to achieve such greatness?"

One of the most sacred principles of democracy is that elected officials are answerable to The People, and have to be prepared to answer the hard questions. Good to know this concept is alive and well...in Germany.

• Posted at 10:12 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Frank Rich discusses how the Oscars are being sold this year on the promise of a little indecency.

• Posted at 9:49 PM · LINK

Bill Yoshida, R.I.P.

I wish I had more details on his life and death. All I know is that Bill Yoshida, the longtime comic book letterer, passed away last week. He began lettering comics in the late sixties and became the main letterer for Archie Comics around 1980. Occasionally credited as "Bill Yosh" or "Saburo Yoshida," his handiwork had a lot to do with the look and feel of that company's books ever since, appearing on almost every cover and something like 90% of the interior stories, plus the Archie newspaper strip. He was said to be dedicated and dependable, which you'd have to be in order to letter that many comic books over the years.

• Posted at 1:04 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

An interesting article over at Jim Hill Media. Jim Hill himself explains that the Disney-MGM Studio theme park down in Florida may be in for a very expensive name change later this year.

• Posted at 12:48 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Nikki Finke on what Chris Rock may or may not do on Oscar Night.

• Posted at 10:09 AM · LINK