Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Today's Political Rant

I dunno how many of you are following the "Able Danger" revelations but it's like a really bad episode of Divorce Court. On Divorce Court, the idea was, at least back when I occasionally watched it, to swing the spectators' emotions back and forth. Some witness would reveal that the husband did something worthy of the Anti-Christ on a bad hair day while the wife was the soul of honesty and goodness. Then the next witness (or perhaps cross-examination of the same witness) would reveal additional details about the incident that cast both players in the opposite light. Like a witness would say, "He [meaning the husband] was in the bathroom shooting himself with drugs while she [the wife] was out collecting donations for charity." Then the follow-up testimony would reveal that the husband was a diabetic injecting himself with insulin and the wife had been convicted several times of running a phony charity scam and using the money she collected to fund child pornography.

That was the formula: Load the argument for one side, then for the other. On some shows, they'd go back and forth a few times before the judge would grant the divorce and divide the property on a more-or-less 50/50 basis.

For the last few days, there have been new revelations every few hours about this government intelligence program called "Able Danger." Some of these stories seem to be collapsing out of sheer improbability. Others may have some real substance...and as the accounts bounce back and forth like Divorce Court testimony, it's almost been fun watching the various political blogs and pundits play their hands. No one yet knows to what extent this scandal can be used to blame 9/11 on the Clinton administration or the Bush administration, but it has the makings of being good for one or the other. So, near as I can tell, the strategy sounds like this: "There's nothing there...unless, of course, this can be used against our political opponents — in which case, it's a bombshell, an undisputed fact and the smokiest of smoking guns."

Both extreme Liberal and extreme Conservative sites are urging caution...and it's not like either group is terribly afraid of publishing false, unverified rumors. Some of these sites will post any damn thing as long as it's determental to the other side. No, they're being cautious about committing to a firm position before they see where this thing is going to point. No one wants to say, "Whoever did this has the blood of the 9/11 victims on their hands" until they're sure it won't be their party.

I have a feeling that's going to be said. I'm just curious to see by whom.

• Posted at 8:08 PM · LINK

Another Con Report

Our friends over at Animation World Magazine have posted a nice report on this year's Comic-Con International. You'll especially enjoy it if you like to see me giving sarcastic answers to perfectly reasonable questions.

• Posted at 6:27 PM · LINK

Police Standoff

I'm back from Canter's, posting via conventional means with no potato salad in sight. Right now on my TV, I see live coverage of a white Honda that led police on a high-speed chase beginning about an hour ago. The car is stopped on the eastbound 10 freeway with about a dozen police cars stopped a few yards away, waiting for the passenger(s) to come out. There are probably at least a half-dozen helicopters hovering overhead and they've been there for about half an hour...

Oh, wait. The police are finally moving in and the suspect is coming out with his hands up. He's being arrested while police with guns drawn advance cautiously on the car, just in case there's someone else inside...

...which there isn't. Okay, it looks like this one is over. But the traffic out there has to be a nightmare with one of our busiest freeways shut down for 30+ minutes as rush hour commences.

All through the standoff, you could see that the person operating the helicopter camera was poised to zoom out to a longshot if there was a chance of us seeing a person shot to death on live TV. I still don't know why the local stations don't all agree to cover these things on a seven second delay.

Okay, back to work. Nothing to see here. Show's over.

• Posted at 4:40 PM · LINK

Hello From Canter's

This is an amazing post. Why? Because it's being done from a table at Canter's Delicatessen on Fairfax Avenue here in Los Angeles. I'm lunching with Josh Jones, one of the high muck-a-mucks (that's a technical term) of Dreamhost, the company that hosts this website on its massive servers. Josh just had a turkey melt and I wolfed down the half-sandwich and a cup o' soup special, then he let me play on his Sony Vaio T140P with a wireless Verizon EVDO card that connects to Ye Olde Internet. I couldn't resist trying to post from it and if you can read this, it works. At this moment, I have full, wireless access to the Internet and full, wireless access to deli food. Ain't Science wonderful?

• Posted at 1:39 PM · LINK

Spot the Errors

How many mistakes can you find in this paragraph from an article written by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich at The Jerusalem Post? It's a review of a new Fantastic Four videogame.

There is more of a story behind this action adventure game than inside it. Fantastic Four was created in 1961 by Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber in New York 83 years ago) after he helped to create the unforgettable Superman, Spider-Man, The Hulk, X-Men and Daredevil characters. But after comic books' readership declined and poor management sent Marvel Entertainment into bankruptcy in the late '90s, two Israeli businessmen named Avi Arad and Isaac Perlmutter took over the ownership and, demonstrating Superman-like acumen and courage, saved it from collapse. They managed to restore the past glory of this forefather of the comic book industry - largely developed by American Jews after the Depression and reaching its heights in the '60s. Its new Twentieth Century Fox superhero movie (from which this game was a knockoff) is, despite disapproving reviews by critics, making money nevertheless.

There's more to the article than that one paragraph but it alone should keep error-finders busy for days.

• Posted at 12:00 PM · LINK

Cautionary Note

Never underestimate the power of this weblog. Here's proof of it.

• Posted at 11:12 AM · LINK

Dawna Online

Who really broke the story that Mark Felt was Deep Throat? Well, a number of us made educated guesses but only a few journalists managed to nail it down before Felt's family took him public. One was my pal Dawna Kaufmann, who's just set up a weblog. Her first entry tells all about how she broke the story.

• Posted at 9:46 AM · LINK

World Class Title Holder

Saul Bass was a great designer of advertising and especially of movie titles. He elevated the latter area to a true art form, as you can see over at this webpage devoted to his work. You will especially enjoy the little interactive feature where you can click your way through many of his most famous title sequences. [Thanks to Steve Horton for telling me about it.]

• Posted at 9:42 AM · LINK

Briefly Noted

A surprising number of folks have written in to say I misspelled "Merlin" in my piece about Camelot. That's the way the wizard's name is more commonly spelled but according to the script by Alan Jay Lerner and the program book for the show, the character in Camelot is named Merlyn, with a "Y." So that's why I spelled it the way I did.

• Posted at 12:41 AM · LINK