Saturday, May 13, 2006

It's Hard Out There For A Procurer

My TiVo recorded (without being asked) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum from some cable channel the other day. This is the little description in the TiVo listing...

Comedy, Musical. Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Jack Gilford. A con-man slave and his sidekick fake a courtesan's funeral to fool a pimp in ancient Rome.

"Pimp?" Forget for the moment that in the film, they actually fake the funeral to fool a Roman Captain. The character to which they are presumably referring, Marcus Lycus, is described as a buyer and seller of the flesh of beautiful women. I suppose the word "pimp" can be applied to him but come on. I suppose that when they run The Ten Commandments, the listing will refer to Moses leading his people out of the 'hood.

• Posted at 2:21 PM · LINK

Today's Political Pondering

Everyone seems to be talking about the new revelations about the NSA phone-monitoring project...and I must say that my initial reaction was that it was an egregious violation of civil liberties.

But I admit that, like you, I don't know everything about the program and that to some extent, I'm working backwards from my growing distrust of this administration. I am not alone in this attitude and we are not necessarily wrong. Almost everyone in America is getting suspicious to some extent of the White House claims as to what's legal. Especially since it often seems to go no deeper than, "Whatever Bush wants done."

So here's what I would like to know. As we've all heard, most telecom companies went along with the program but Qwest did not. This may not have been, as some are suggesting, because they were certain it was illegal. It seems more like Qwest wanted more proof than the Bush administration's say-so that it was Kosher. Here's a snippet from The New York Times...

The telecommunications company Qwest turned down requests by the National Security Agency for private telephone records because it concluded that doing so would violate federal privacy laws, a lawyer for the telephone company's former chief executive said today. In a statement released this morning, the lawyer said that the former chief executive, Joseph N. Nacchio, made the decision after asking whether "a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that request." Mr. Nacchio learned that no warrant had been granted and that there was a "disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process," said the lawyer, Herbert J. Stern. As a result, the statement said, Mr. Nacchio concluded that "the requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act."

Sounds to me like Qwest would have cooperated if some court, like the FISA court, had merely signed off on the program. The firm's stance may have been a courageous defense of its customers' freedom but it could also have been a cover-yer-ass fear of finding itself in a massive class action lawsuit. You know...the kind people are now vowing to file against Verizon, BellSouth, etc. I'm big on civil liberties but if I was running a big telecommunications company and the President of the United States (or his reps) came to me and asked for what they've asked for, I'm not sure my response wouldn't have been, "Fine. Just give me a written guarantee that this is legal. I don't want to say yes and then a year from now, some court rules it's unconstitutional and people sue and I have to go before my stockholders and explain why I didn't get more assurance."

Which brings me to the part I'm wondering about. The Bush administration makes the claim that this program is absolutely, unquestionably legal and absolutely, unquestionably necessary. But as with many of their approaches to surveillance, they would rather cripple the program than go in and have a judge sign off on it. They decided to do without monitoring QWest's 15-18 million subscribers. So what happens if they're tracking the phone calls of Al Qaeda Member #1, who has Verizon, and he keeps phoning Al Qaeda Member #2, who has Qwest? Doesn't the trail of information end there? Wouldn't it have been better to get the warrant so Qwest would get with the program and tell them who Al Qaeda Member #2 had called?

The position of the Bush administration with regard to spying on people seems to be that there's no doubt it's necessary and no doubt it's legal. In fact, it's so necessary that they don't want to take a chance some judge will think it's illegal and stop it. But of course, there's no doubt it's legal.

No wonder this guy's at 29%.

• Posted at 12:21 PM · LINK

Happy Birthday, Marv Wolfman!

Here at newsfromme, we always like to note the birthday of the real veterans of the comic book industry...the guys who were in it at the start and who are (happily) still around to remind us of our great and glorious heritage. Respecting one's elders is important, which is why we've noted the birthdays and honor of men like George Tuska (age 90), Paul Norris (age 91) and Creig Flessel (age 94).

In that tradition, we note the birthday of Golden Age Great Marv Wolfman who reaches the big six-oh today. When I was a small boy, barely able to read, I discovered his work on...oh, was it Tomb of Dracula? Or Nova? Or Blade? It was Daredevil, I think. It's hard to remember back that far. He was also Marvel's Editor-in-Chief for a time, back when they used to hand out that job like some kind of deluxe No-Prize. Later, he went on to DC and did The New Teen Titans and Crisis on Infinite Earths and Superman and he also killed Supergirl, for which some of us will never forgive him. In spite of this, we wish him a happy birthday and will be present this evening for a quiet, low-key celebration.

On a more personal note: I began corresponding with Marv around 1968 and first met him in person in the DC offices in 1970. He was standing outside an office that was then shared by two editors — Julius Schwartz and Dick Giordano — and was being yelled at by a writer named Robert Kanigher. Mr. Kanigher wrote some fine comics in his day but he was given to rambling, incoherent tirades and I rescued Marv from one. He has been forever in my debt since and we became...well, I'm not sure if "friends" is the proper word since he is so many years my senior. Mostly, he envied my youth and skills, whereas I respected his age and endurance. I still do, so I am pleased to wish him a happy birthday and to hope there will be more in the future. Even if he did kill Supergirl.

• Posted at 11:27 AM · LINK

Very Early Saturday Morning Raccoon Blogging

Returning from my local 24-hour Sav-On drug store — where if you go at 2 AM, you can pick up a prescription without waiting in line — I found this fellow on my back porch, partaking of food left out for the stray cats. He interrupted his dining briefly to watch me walk into the house then returned to the Friskies. When I got my camera, he shrugged as if to say, "This is the price I pay for free food." Or maybe it was, "Hey, if I'm going to have to model for you, you could at least provide dessert."

This is the first raccoon I've actually seen in quite a while but I know they've been around. Lately, I get up in the morning and find that plastic dish halfway across the yard. I think after he licks it clean, he uses it for a frisbee.

• Posted at 2:40 AM · LINK

Deal or No De

Here's a possible entry in the list of network time slots being juggled to annoy us. NBC has been advertising a two-hour special edition of Deal or No Deal for next Monday night at 8 PM. It includes "surprise" appearances (surprises to anyone who hasn't seen the promos) of Regis Philbin and Jay Leno. It's followed at 10 PM by a special, heavily-promoted episode of The Apprentice.

But now, George W. Bush has announced he will address the nation Monday evening at 8 PM Eastern time, which is 5 PM Pacific. Standard operating procedure would be for the network to just bump everything later on the schedule. Bush's remarks (plus whatever additional coverage is done) are expected to consume 25 minutes. Ordinarily, that would mean that Deal would start at 8:25, Apprentice at 10:25, the late local news at 11:25, Leno at Midnight instead of 11:35, etc. Somewhere in the wee, small hours of the AM, they'd make up the missing time.

That's how it would work on the east coast. On the west, they'd just cover the speech as part of the 5 PM News and then all the prime-time shows would run as scheduled.

NBC is now announcing on its website and elsewhere that Bush will speak at 8 PM, Deal will start at 8:25 and Apprentice will still start at 10 sharp. The person at NBC who told me this (someone not in the programming department, I should emphasize) says they're editing Deal or No Deal down to 95 minutes...but only for the East Coast.

I'm not sure I believe this. It's not unprecedented for breaking news to cause one time zone to miss a hunk of a show but it usually isn't planned this way. I can't recall any network actually cutting a different version of a program to air on one side of the country. Let's see if that's actually what they're doing...and if so, if TiVo finds out about it in time to update.

• Posted at 12:23 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here's another one of what people always refer to as the Max Fleischer Superman cartoons. Actually, the Fleischer Brothers (Max and Dave) were ousted from their own studio before this one — "The Mummy Strikes" — was made in 1943. The history of early theatrical animation was filled with tales of animation producers losing their own studios or their star characters to their distributors and no tale was sadder than that of the Fleischers. Their operation was renamed Famous Studios and it went on producing cartoons without them. You'll notice the names of Max and Dave Fleischer appear nowhere on this cartoon.

One name you will see is that of Jay Morton, who's listed as writer. He has sometimes been credited with having devised the famous Superman tagline, "Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive," etc. This was probably one of the last cartoons he worked on as about this time, the studio moved from Florida to New York and he elected to not move with it. I wrote about him here a few years ago in conjunction with his obituary.

• Posted at 12:04 AM · LINK

May 14, 2006 • Current • May 12, 2006