Warren Stubli just sent me a good add-on to my previous message...
Just read your post about draft and why there hasn't been one, yet. Good point and pretty much right except it isn't just the draft in general they are afraid of being known for. In our modern age of equality, a draft today would include both males and females. And there is not one of them in Washington who wants to known for the first draft of some constituent's daughter.
Yeah...and another thing is that any new system of conscription would include some sort of rules as to who didn't have to serve...for health reasons or because of financial hardship or conscientious objector status or other perhaps-valid reasons. And immediately, you'd have the folks who are against reinstating the draft saying that the rules had been slanted to exempt wealthy white guys or the kids of Senators or disciples of some religions and not others. I don't know that it's humanly possible to draw up those rules in a way that will be completely fair.
They certainly weren't fair when I was draft-eligible but there was a momentum then...and frankly, people weren't that sensitive to issues of discrimination. I think it would be much more difficult today to put together those rules and have them accepted. We can't even elect a president without folks charging (with some justification) that the system has been rigged.
Fred Kaplan runs the numbers on whether — or how soon — a military draft might be necessary in this country. My own gut feeling is that regardless of the necessity, and assuming there isn't another 9/11 or larger disaster, there's no elected official alive who wants it said that he's the one who brought back the draft. So until they find a way to reinistate it without anyone taking responsibility for it, it won't happen.
It's amazing how the dynamic has changed on this. I was eminently draftable as I approached an age where I might get shipped off to Vietnam. At the time, there was a very real, very loud sentiment from some members of the right wing of this country that it was my duty as an American, that it builds character, that there was something wrong (cowardly, selfish or gay) with any male who had the slightest reticence about military service. If you were my age, you got that a lot...from, of course, people who were not going to get drafted. One friend of mine called them the "You Should Be Willing To Die For Me" crowd.
One wonders how much of that we'd be hearing today if the Iraq War could be blamed wholly or even primarily on Democrats. We seem to be at around a 68% disapproval of the war in this country. What would it be like if a large percentage of those dying over there were draftees who didn't want to be in the military in the first place? I'm guessing over 80% disapproval and even that may be low.
Floyd Norman — one of the dwindling folks in the animation business who actually worked with Walt — discusses the place of "mavericks" at the Disney Studio. It always amazes me how all big entertainment companies think nothing of throwing away tens of millions of dollars to agents and packagers on aborted projects...but it's a waste of money to let creative people experiment and try to come up with something new.
We mentioned here one week ago that we'd heard that comedian Stanley Myron Handelman had passed away. It's taken until today for anything to show up about it in the press but the L.A. Times has an obituary.
As many of you know, comic strips get smaller and smaller with each passing year. This webpage has a good overview of how the Sunday Funnies have shrunk. And I'm going to quote here from an e-mail I received recently from Russell Myers, who has been drawing the superb comic strip Broom-Hilda since 1970...
In Tulsa in the 1940's and 50's the Sunday comic section was sixteen pages. Each page measured 14.5 inches by 21.5, or 311.75 square inches. Prince Valiant was a full page, Tracy, Annie, Blondie, and others were a half page. The smallest were one third page.
Today's Tulsa Sunday section is four pages. Each page measures 12 by 21, 252 square inches.
In those old sections a half page comic was approximately 13 by 10, 130 square inches. Today in the Tulsa paper, Broom-Hilda is 5.5 x 5.5. That's 30.25 square inches, less that one fourth the size of, say, Blondie of a half century ago. If you try to draw anything much more complicated than talking heads and torsos you can barely see it.
Not everything changes for the better, huh?
No, some things sure don't. And I won't waste anyone's time by trying to pretend that a campaign of any sort would reverse this trend. Strips are just going to get smaller and smaller and there doesn't seem to be anything that anyone can do about it.
See that duck? That's Webster Webfoot, who was a star of local kids' TV in Los Angeles during the sixties. He was usually seen in the company of the man in the photo, "Uncle" Jimmy Weldon. I remember watching Tex Avery cartoons and Felix the Cat adventures on Channel 13 when I was a mere lad. As I later found out, Uncle Jimmy was one of the true pioneers of hosting shows for younger audiences.
I won't attempt to go through his history here. Why? Because he can tell the story much better than I can...and he'll be telling it later today on Stu's Show, hosted by the Johnny Carson of Internet Radio, Stuart Shostak. Each week, Stu welcomes someone important from the world of television onto his program for interviewing purposes. That is, if he can find someone important. When he can't, he has me on. But he finds great guests often enough that you're probably sick of seeing me tell you to tune in.
I'll be listening today from 4 PM to 6 PM Pacific Time on Shokus Internet Radio. The show is live so if you live on the East Coast, for instance, you need to tune in at 7 PM your time. Also please understand that this is not a podcast. You can't download this show and listen to it at your leisure. It's Internet Radio, which means it's like a radio station...you listen when it's on. If you can't be at your computer when it's on, you can catch one of the many reruns during the week but it's more fun if you listen live. (You can even call in and ask Jimmy a question.) The whole broadcast schedule is over on this page. Adjust the little time doo-hickey at the bottom to reflect your time zone.
Stu and Uncle Jimmy will be joined in the plush Shokus Internet Radio studio by my colleague, animation writer-historian Earl Kress. Earl will mostly be quizzing Weldon on his days voicing the cute duck, Yakky Doodle, on the Yogi Bear show, and on Jimmy's other work as an animation voice actor. And maybe they'll even chat about Jimmy's other career, which is as a motivational speaker. You can find out a lot about Uncle Jimmy over at his website.
Anyway, tune in. Call in. If you grew up in Los Angeles or one of the other cities where Uncle Jimmy and Webster did shows, you'll have the special thrill of hearing a fixture of local teevee. If you aren't familiar with Webster Webfoot...well, how often do you get to hear a man who talks like a duck? I mean, besides when you watch almost anyone on C-Span.
To access Shokus Internet Radio, go to this page and select an audio browser. And you don't have to wait 'til Stu's Show is on. If you go there right now, you may hear something else you'll like.
Today, we have the opening to the 1962 "Supermarionation" TV series, Fireball XL5. Even better, we have the closing credits with the show's super-cool theme song. I really liked this show at the time, and also Supercar, which came from the same producers, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Later, their shows got more sophisticated and turned more towards human action. I'm not sure if it was that or my age but I lost interest in them. I enjoyed watching this little clip though, and I thought some of you might, also.
Over on his website, Mike Barrier has posted brief but informative interviews with three men who supplied voices for Disney cartoons — Clarence Nash, Billy Bletcher and Jimmy MacDonald. When I get a chance here, I'm going to post stories about (a) a show I went to when I was nine at which Mr. Nash performed and (b) the sad story of how I tried to hire Billy Bletcher for a cartoon voice job but he died before we could record him. But never mind that now. Go read the interviews with those gentlemen.
August 14, 2007
