Tuesday, October 17, 2006

From the E-Mailbag...

Kenneth F. Thomas sends a question that I thought was worth answering here...

As far as your search engine tells me, I don't think you've ever expressed an opinion on the relationship between the death of Leon Klinghoffer and the rationale for the Iraq war. As you no doubt know, U.S. forces under Bush in 2003 captured Abu Abbas, the head of the P.L.F. terrorist group responsible for Klinghoffer's murder on the Achille Lauro. Abbas escaped arrest for the crime in Italy using an Iraqi passport and was sheltered by Saddam Hussein for many years after that. Christopher Hitchens among others has used this point to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein did indeed make alliances with terrorist groups, one of the major reasons for the war. I'll stop short of asking what you think Kirby might have thought about the Iraq war, but if you have a moment to share your thinking on the subject seen from this perspective, I would appreciate it.

For those of you puzzled by the connection between Leon Klinghoffer (the elderly, wheelchair-confined gentleman killed aboard the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985) and the great comic book creator, Jack Kirby...Jack and Leon were childhood pals who'd remained in contact. They and their spouses had dined together not long before the Klinghoffers' tragic vacation. As you might expect, his friend's death enraged and depressed Jack, especially because it happened during a time of great personal stress in his life: During his celebrated battle with Marvel Comics over the return of his original artwork. Jack's wife Roz later told me that the murder of "Albie" — that was Klinghoffer's childhood name — had a deep impact on Jack, and in an upcoming article somewhere, I'll try to discuss what that impact seems to have involved. It's too long a discourse to go into here and it's not what you asked about, anyway.

I won't speculate on how Jack would have viewed the Iraq War except to say that he was an early opponent of the Vietnam conflict and that around 1971, he told me — with a certain amount of pride, I sensed — that he'd never voted Republican in his life. Does that mean he'd be as against the current war as some of us are? Who knows? People do change over the years. I have one friend who went from Rabid Democrat to Mad Dog Republican in about a decade and a half — and Jack was often unpredicable.

As for me: It's frustrating for some of us that the "selling" of this war has also included the notion that you have to buy the entire package. There can be good aspects in a situation that is largely disastrous and one can also agree with the goals but decide that too high a price is being paid to achieve them. The friend I described in the previous paragraph argues with me as if I have to either back Bush 100% on everything or I'm effectively wishing that Saddam Hussein was back in power and that whatever terrorists have been killed or caught were free to plot another 9/11.

Deposing Saddam seemed like a commendable goal but the loss of lives (American and those of the people we're ostensibly liberating) and resources sure seems like a bad trade-off. When it's claimed that what we're doing over there is increasing the world's supply of terrorists, not depleting it, it really sounds like a terrible idea. Like an ever-increasing majority of citizens, I've come to the belief that we're going to look back on the Iraq War as an enterprise that killed a horrifying number of human beings just to replace one dreadful situation in Iraq with another. Not everything that has happened in the War on Terror has been a disaster, and catching Abu Abbas was certainly, in and of itself, a good thing. But history will not suggest it was worth the lives of thousands of American soldiers and countless Iraqis, plus all the ancillary destruction and grief that comes with those deaths, just to make more of the world wish we were all dead and to catch the guy Jack Kirby used to play handball with.

• Posted at 11:49 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

What killed George "Superman" Reeves? Maybe it was eating too many boxes of Kellogg's Sugar Smacks.

Here's a one minute "in-show" commercial...a very common relic of TV shows of the past. The cast of the program would often appear in the final commercial spot...or in one occasion that you've seen, the star's relatives would do it. That commercial I linked to last week of Harpo and Chico Marx was an in-show spot done for brother Groucho's You Bet Your Life.

The thing to watch here: John Hamilton, who played Perry White, always had a lot of trouble remembering his lines. It was excusable in a way since these Superman shows were shot so rapidly and out of sequence. They'd set up for the afternoon in Perry White's office and do scenes for a half-dozen different episodes, one right after another. (This is why Clark, Perry, Lois and Jimmy almost always wore the same clothes from week to week...the same reason Dean Martin always wore a tux on his later variety show. When you shoot segments for different weeks at the same time, it's easier to not have the performers need to change wardrobe.)

Anyway, in many episodes, the director would have Hamilton seated at his desk and they'd put the script right in front of him. You can often see him glancing down to check on his next line. If you look carefully, you can see him doing it in this commercial.

• Posted at 3:47 PM · LINK

Christopher Glenn, R.I.P.

Last February, I posted here that veteran newsman Christopher Glenn was retiring. Among his other credits, he was the voice and producer for many years of the "In the News" segments that CBS ran for many years amidst their Saturday morning kid shows. He did a great job there with a tough assignment.

I'm sorry to report that Mr. Glenn didn't get to enjoy much of his retirement. CBS News is reporting his sudden death.

I thought someone had uploaded some "In the News" segments to YouTube and I could embed one here...but my searching has been fruitless. You'll just have to imagine a concisely told news item, presented without sensationalism or any hyping of certain facts, told in a calm and assured voice. That was Christopher Glenn.

• Posted at 2:53 PM · LINK

Video Poker Appeal

The following message is a partial rerun of one I posted several years ago here. It got a lot of reponse but, alas, none that enabled me to fill the need. I'm asking again to see if it'll do any good now...

My mother loves to play Video Poker. Loves to play it in Vegas and loves even more to play it at home where she can play without fear of losing her son's inheritance. Years ago, I got her a little toy Video Poker machine. It was about a foot tall and ran on batteries and you didn't have to put coins in. You just pressed a button and it "dealt" the cards just like the machines in Vegas.

She played it for hundreds and hundreds of hours. She played it so much that she once got a Royal Flush on it. A Royal Flush is the rarest of all poker hands and the odds of getting one are one in 40,200, so you don't see them often. This thrilled her but presented a problem: She couldn't bring herself to push the button that would wipe the Royal Flush off the screen and deal the next hand, so she couldn't use her beloved Video Poker machine. I finally solved things by taking a Polaroid camera over, snapping some shots of the Royal Flush, then pushing the button for her.

This brings us to another of my infamous Public Appeals...

That machine was worn out and junked long ago. She would like a new one but I can't seem to find the perfect one. You can get computer software that will replicate a Vegas Video Poker machine but she doesn't have nor could she use a computer. She could not possibly operate an XBox or any other sort of videogame module thingie that hooks into a computer or TV set. What I need is a little, standalone Video Poker game but in all the ones I've come across, the cards are too small for her to see. Anyone here know where I can get one that has a large display?

(Sarah...if you read this, please don't tell her about it. I want to surprise her.)