Okay, here's what I don't get. Dick Cheney goes on a radio show and...well, here. Here's how The New York Times is reporting the matter...
The White House found itself fending off questions on Friday about what Vice President Dick Cheney meant when he agreed with a talk-radio host that there was nothing wrong with dunking a terrorism suspect in water if it saved lives.
Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Cheney was not endorsing water-boarding, a coercive interrogation technique that simulates drowning and that many have said qualifies as torture. Mr. Snow said Mr. Cheney was not, in fact, referring to any technique, whether it was torture or not, because administration officials do not discuss interrogation methods.
Maybe I'm dense here but the White House position seems to be as follows: Let's say there's a terrorism suspect. Let's say he has some information which we must have in order to save lives. So what do we do? We don't torture him. We dunk him in water in some manner that does not constitute torture and this gets him to spill his guts.
Pretty wimpy terrorists if you ask me. We put them in a dunk tank, seated on that little plank, and start lobbing softballs at the target. And they yell, "No, no! Don't get me wet! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" Maybe all terrorists think they're witches or something.
If what we're doing to these people so terrifies them that they betray their cause, isn't it — almost by definition — "torture?"
William Saletan discusses Rush Limbaugh's response to the Michael J. Fox ad. In a day or so, I'll post some of the comments I've received but in the meantime, Saletan has an interesting view of it all.
Sadly but not unexpectedly, we now have confirmation of the passing of veteran comic book and animation creator Don R. Christensen at the age of 90. Chad Frye, the president of CAPS, spoke to his daughter a few minutes ago and called to let me know.
When I have time, I'm going to try to write something that might convey the length and breadth of the man's career. Don was an animation storyman at Warner Brothers (Bob Clampett called him one of their best) before he began doing comic books. He produced a staggering number of scripts for Western Publishing's Los Angeles office, working on all the major Disney, Warner Brothers, Walter Lantz and Hanna-Barbera comics. He's easily one of the ten most prolific writers the medium has ever seen. I have a partial list somewhere in my files. I'll try to find it and post some of it later.
Someone who knows not of time zones woke me up at 6 AM to ask if I could confirm the death of Don R. Christensen, the prolific comic book writer (and occasionally, artist) for Western Publishing Company and other firms. And this wasn't even a magazine or newspaper calling. It was just a devout fan of Disney Comics who couldn't wait another minute to know. He'd sent me an e-mail at 4 AM my time and when I didn't respond in two whole hours, he decided to phone. A number of other folks were content just to write and to not expect us to be checking the mailbox here, 24/7.
All I know, I'm afraid, is that one Italian-language Disney site is reporting that Don passed away on October 18. I found this out by checking Tom Spurgeon's fine news site, The Comics Reporter. The Italian site just says that Don died and there's no explanation of how and where they learned this. Since Don was born in 1916, one tends to assume a report like this is true but I think I'd like a more direct source, preferably in English, before I leap wholly to that conclusion.
And the next time someone wakes me up at that hour to ask me anything, I'll post an obituary about them. And then I'll go make it accurate.
Live or dead (and I'm still hoping for live), Don was one of the great talents in the world of animation and "funny animal" comics, and one of my favorite people when he lived in Southern California and I fraternized and occasionally worked with him. He authored countless scripts for the Dell Comics and Gold Key Comics produced by Western Publishing Company, including Magnus, Robot Fighter and one of my all-time favorite specials, Donald in Mathmagic Land. Don was also Western's "go-to" guy when a comic book required that puzzle pages be designed, plus he authored dozens of non-comic kids' books for the outfit.
Because people are always making the understandable mistake, let me remind the comics/animation community that there have been two separate and unrelated men named Don Christensen in the cartoon business, along with a Don Christiansen — who also was not the same person. The Don Christensen of whom I write here is Don R. Christensen, who sometimes signed his work as "Don Arr" or "Don Arr Christensen." He is not the Don Christensen whose name you'll see in the credits of old Filmation cartoons, although Don R. did do a few brief jobs for that studio.
Of course, if anyone has any solid info on his current health or lack thereof, please write. Or phone at a decent hour.
Here we have an "in-show" commercial from The Flintstones that has Fred (Alan Reed) and Wilma (Jean Vander Pyl) hawking Welch's Grape Juice, which was one of their sponsors. Jean also did the voice of Pebbles.
As a kid, I was an enormous fan of The Flintstones but this did not cause me to down large quantities of Welch's Grape Juice. All products of the Welch's company were verboten in our household. Why? Because a very wealthy man named Robert Welch had helped found The John Birch Society, which was a reactionary political group. I guess it's still around but you don't hear much about them these days. Back in the sixties, however, they seemed to be all over California and the TV news, with their crazier members demanding that the U.S. drop a couple of atom bombs on Moscow.
Robert Welch made his fortune from candy products he'd invented, including the Sugar Daddy, Sugar Babies and Junior Mints. He and his company were apparently unconnected to the Welch's Juice Company but most people didn't know that. It was a pretty common misconception among my family's circle of friends and I'm certain I saw it stated as fact in several newspapers. Anyway, we didn't want any of our cash going to the Birchers so Welch's products were not on our shopping list. I didn't particularly want to eat any of them but for a time there, Welch's Grape Jelly came in great looking Flintstones glasses and it was sad not to be able to drink my milk from one. Years later when I found out that we'd boycotted the Welch's grape product people under false assumptions, I wanted to run right out and see if the markets had any grape jelly with Fred and Barney on the jars but I was about fifteen years late. Sigh.
October 28, 2006
