Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Recommended Reading

Fred Kaplan on what we can still accomplish in Iraq.

People ask why I link to so many Fred Kaplan articles and I would think the answer would be self-evident. He's the only guy I've seen out there writing straightforward, address-what's-really-happening pieces about Iraq. One of the things that made me decide the war was a botch was that the arguments about why we're fighting all either fell apart (We're there because Saddam has Weapons of Mass Destruction, we're there because a wonderful democracy will fall easily into place without him, etc.) or they were just too vague. Lately, in the last category, I keep getting e-mails from pro-war folks whose case never seems to go much deeper than "We have to win there because we're America and America always has to win." I think I'd like a little more than that, along with a specific definition of what will denote a "win."

• Posted at 3:43 PM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

Boy, we get answers fast around here. Barry Mitchell writes...

The sketch artist wearing the smock in Dick Van Dyke's Bosco commercial is local New York-area TV weatherman, Tex Antoine. He's famous for two things: illustrating his forecasts while drawing his character Uncle Weatherbee, and in the 1970s, being forced off the air in disgrace. Antoine was commenting on a news story that preceded his segment, and had the poor taste to ad-lib, "Confucious say: if rape is inevitable, sit back and enjoy." Or words to that effect. His long TV career was over in a flash.

Which is not surprising, especially since the preceding story was about the violent rape of a five year old girl. It was in 1976, by the way. Can we think of anything stupider that's been said on a newscast since then? I mean, besides about 20% of everything said by our elected officials?

• Posted at 2:12 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Preeeeesenting...three and a half minutes of commercials for Bosco, the chocolate syrup that seemed to sponsor about half of the shows I watched when I was a youth. Of interest in the spots is Bosco's identity crisis: Sometimes, they tried to sell it as something that was good-tasting and decadent, and sometimes it was a "milk amplifier" that added vitamins to the cow juice. After all, we all know how milk isn't healthy for children unless you add a lot of sugar to it.

Also of interest is that one of the commercials features Dick Van Dyke as spokesguy. I'm guessing this was from around (or slightly after) 1956 when CBS was using Mr. Van Dyke to host kid-oriented programming like Cartoon Theater and the occasional family movie special. This was before he starred on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie and well before The Dick Van Dyke Show. I wonder who the cartoonist is in this spot.

Bosco was introduced in 1928 and it's still available in stores. They have the original chocolate flavor (natural cocoa with malt extract) but there's also a strawberry version, a "berry blue" variety, a caramel Bosco, a sugar-free chocolate Bosco and Sugar-Free Bosco Pancake Syrup. My impression is that Bosco once had a pretty large share of the market but then the Hershey's and Nestlé's corporations made a move on the syrup shelves and managed to whittle Bosco down to a smaller company. One of these days, I'll have to edit and upload a series of Bosco commercials that Daws Butler did which were, like everything Daws did, marvelously entertaining.

• Posted at 1:22 AM · LINK

Enrico

Here's an obit for Enrico Banducci. It says in there that his birth name was Harry Banducci but all the comedians I was with last evening — including one mentioned in this obituary, said his real surname was something that sounded Jewish. Perhaps they were in error or maybe it was a joke I didn't get.

• Posted at 1:20 AM · LINK