Yearly Archives: 2003

Paul Krugman makes what may well be a significant connection: The premise that Bush lied about the economy to justify tax cuts just as he lied about the uranium (and maybe a couple other things) to justify the war in Iraq. Here's a couple of key sentences from Krugman…

There's no mystery about why the administration's budget projections have borne so little resemblance to reality: realistic budget numbers would have undermined the case for tax cuts. So budget analysts were pressured to high-ball estimates of future revenues and low-ball estimates of future expenditures. Any resemblance to the way the threat from Iraq was exaggerated is no coincidence at all. And just as some people argue that the war was justified even though it was sold on false pretenses, some say that the biggest budget deficit in history is justified even though the administration got us here with cooked numbers. Some point out that Ronald Reagan ran even bigger deficits as a share of G.D.P. But they hope people won't remember that in the face of those deficits, Mr. Reagan raised taxes, reversing part of his initial tax cut.

Now, I don't know that all that's quite true or quite fair. I mean, don't most government projections of deficits turn out to be way low? That doesn't make them all fibs. But if Democrats want to paint a negative image of G.W. Bush, there it is: He lies and unlike the previous White House occupant, lies about things that genuinely harm or even end lives. I mean, even a lot of folks who liked Clinton didn't think you could believe everything he said. But the majority of Bush supporters have this thing about his "character" and personal integrity, and if he takes a hit there, it could really do some damage. Right now, he can't really argue that deficits aren't out of control or that everything's going precisely the way he wants in Iraq. If Democrats make those into issues not just of competence but of deception, Bush could be in a lot of trouble.

I'm not necessarily looking forward to that. One of the political tricks I've often thought was underhanded was the selling of a so-called "Pattern of Deception." It usually translates to, "We're not going to be content to convince you that the opposition lied about A and B. We want to convince you that establishes a pattern so you should assume they're also lying about C, D, E and everything else." I don't think that's fair. Wasn't fair when Republicans did it to Clinton…won't be fair when Democrats do it to Bush…

But it does seem to work.

Well, the good news is that as you can see, I got the first-string laptop working again before I left. The bad news is that first time I connected to the Internet, it got infected with what seems to be the "g" variation of the W32.opaserv.worm. This is a nasty little beast that has Norton Anti-Virus popping up every few seconds to inform me that it has quarantined this or that unwanted file. I think I've managed to remove it but then I thought that the first four times.

But forget about that. Let's talk about the Comic-Con International here in San Diego. Let's talk about a convention so big, you could fit ten other conventions inside it and still have room for a Boat Show. Let's talk about an exhibit hall so large that folks look around and figure they'll never see it all, so why even start? Today (yesterday by the time this'll get posted), I wandered part of the area actually devoted to comic books, chatted with friends and hosted three well-received panels. The first was the Seduction of the Innocent panel with Al Feldstein, Kurt Busiek, Grant Geissman and Dwight Decker. Seduction of the Innocent, for those who don't know, was a book written 50 years ago by a man some have called the Josef Mengele of comics. His name was Dr. Fredric Wertham and his premise was that comic books — especially those of the horror and crime variety, the kind Al Feldstein was then editing and writing — were a major corrupter of America's youth. A Senate subcommittee seized on this concept and actually held hearings to determine if the government should censor or otherwise regulate the comic book industry. Wertham was a star witness and the main rebuttal came from William M. Gaines, who was then the publisher of the comics Mr. Feldstein was producing. At the panel today, we showed some video clips from the hearing and also from an interview with Judge Murphy, who was the first head of the censorship board that most of the publishers instituted as a solution to the problem. (Some have said the cure was worse than the disease.)

We followed this with a little treasure — a segment from a 1967 episode of The Mike Douglas Show, on which Dr. Wertham appeared to plug his latest book, A Sign For Cain. The other two guests were Vincent Price and Adam West, and after praising Price as a great actor, the doctor launched into an attack on a recent Vincent Price movie, fixating on the ghastly image of a bathtub full of blood. It was an odd debate with Price making Wertham look pretty foolish — a superfluous task, as the doc was doing a fine job of that on his own. (I wish I'd had time to show more of the interview, or of another appearance Wertham made with Mike Douglas. On that episode, he had his thesis pretty well demolished by Mike's co-host of the week, Barbara Feldon.) I'll write more about this at a later date, hopefully on a disease-free computer.

Following that panel, I did two "spotlights" — one interviewing Sal Buscema, who drew darn near every Marvel comic at one time or another. The other was with Stan Goldberg, who is now the most prominent of the Archie artists but who, at the birth of "The Marvel Age of Comics," was the firm's entire coloring department. Two very fine, fascinating gentlemen.

Not much more to report except that the convention staff is anticipating a staggering turnout the next few days. It was possible to get around in the exhibit hall today. I'm not sure that will be true of Saturday or even tomorrow. There is so much enthusiasm in that room…so many people travelling from all over the world to be there, so much commerce related directly or indirectly to comics, it makes you wonder why most of them sell so poorly.

Well, I had this brilliant idea about trying to post every day from the Comic-Con in San Diego but as I configured my laptop to take along, something went kablooey and I suddenly had no operating system or files on it. Lovely. Fortunately, I have my old laptop to take along so I can work on assignments but I'm not sure I'll be able to post to this page from it. We'll see. If you don't see anything here from me until Sunday night, you'll know I couldn't do it.

As always, there are 7,342 things that absolutely have to be done before the convention. As the time ticks away, most will one by one fall into the categories of, "Well, maybe that one can wait 'til next week" or "Well, maybe I don't need to do that." This will get the list down to about 43, of which 41 will get done…except that halfway down the San Diego Freeway, I'll suddenly remember three more and — well, you get the idea. I'm still hoping they'll decide to delay the entire convention by a week but it's not looking good.

Every moment of my convention is booked with panels, meetings, meals, parties and something else I'm forgetting. Oh, right: Sleeping. Have to do at least a little of that. But I know I will miss checking in on the news three or four times a day as the Internet allows me to do when I'm home. Many years ago, when I was a major wallower in the Wonders of Watergate, I was away at a science fiction convention the weekend of the Saturday Night Massacre. It wasn't a bad convention, as I recall. There was then a short-lived trend that at the costume competition, at least a couple of women would show up without costumes — i.e., naked. I was 21 years old at the time and that was a big deal. Hell, it still isn't a small deal. But when I got home and found that I'd missed a fine chunk of Nixonian History, I wished I'd passed on that convention. In those pre-VCR, pre-C-Span, pre-cable days, if you missed something on TV, you missed it. I missed it. I recall thinking, "There will always, God willing, be more naked women…but how often do you get to see the entire Nixon Adminstration come unglued?"

So ever since, I make it a point to actually turn on the news while I'm at a convention or, more recently, log into a few news sites. I doubt I'll again see the likes of the Saturday Night Massacre. But the way things are going, it does look like G.W. Bush is going to have to throw out a few bodies any day now.

Back to packing…

Leonard Maltin on obliterating old movies because of racial stereotypes and white guys playing non-white guys. I agree with Leonard.

Here's a review of Bob Kane's grave.

Years ago, working with a terrific artist named Will Meugniot, I did a comic book called The DNAgents. We always seem to be on the verge of reviving it but never quite do so. Maybe we should now that they've turned up in a trivia quiz in The New York Times.

I didn't mean to imply that the Quik Bunny was only invented when Quik turned into Nesquik. He's been around for a while. He even teamed up with Superman in a 1987 promotional comic, the cover of which is at left. This leads to intriguing speculations. There are few famous names, real or fictional, who who have not met Superman or at least met some other character who has met Superman. It's kind of like the Kevin Bacon game. Since Muhammad Ali, Albert Einstein, Adolf Hitler and John F. Kennedy all met Superman in one comic or another, they all must live in the same universe as the Quik Bunny. For that matter, I was once a character in an issue of Flash, and since Flash has met Superman, I live in the same universe as the Quik Bunny and if you've met me, so do you. It's one big happy reality.

And I probably shouldn't pick on the Quik Bunny, if only because his voice was — and still is, for all I know — supplied by a terrific actor named Barry Gordon, who was a rock of integrity when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild. Come to think of it, this means that everyone who was ever a member of SAG has a connection to the Quik Bunny and through him to Superman. Small world, ain't it?

Tom Shales says a lot of the things I feel about what talk shows have become.

Michael Kinsley and William Saletan each weigh in on the matter of the Great Uranium Fib — an important matter but not nearly as important as the renaming of Quik.

Did you know the Nestlés's people no longer make Quik? Jesus H. Christ. I stop buying a product and ten years later, they change it. They stick a cartoon rabbit on the can and rename it, "Nesquik." Who the hell wants to put something in their milk called "Nesquik?" With a rabbit on the can, no less. Quik was introduced in 1948, four years before I was. As soon as I was old enough to lift a utensil, my mother taught me how to shovel two heaping teaspoonfuls of the stuff into my milk and stir it until either it dissolved or my damn arm fell off, whichever occurred first. Usually, it was the arm because the mystic potion seemed to be made of plastic shavings and even when it did dissolve, it only made the milk taste a teensy bit like chocolate.

That is, unless you did what my friend Mike Hockee did, which was to dump in as much of the can as would fit in the glass, then chug-a-lug the rest of the Quik powder directly. Oh sure, I could have done chocolated my milk the easy way, the sissy way, with Bosco chocolate flavored syrup. But real men drank Quik — or at least, real men who weren't lactose intolerant. I'm not but somewhere around half-past puberty, I began to realize that the less dairy I had in my diet, the better I felt. So I gave up on milk (and therefore, Quik) and look what they've done as a result! In '98, they changed it to Nesquik, which isn't the same. It horrifies me that kids are now drinking the stuff and, worse, that somewhere there's probably some kid pouring it on a bowl of Trix cereal. That's a frightening combination of sugar, artificial coloring and cartoon rabbits on the package.

Bill Moyers interviews Jon Stewart.

This article discusses the ongoing disparity between what scientists believe and what the White House believes.

Don't ask. Just go read it.

If you'd like to see him in action, this webpage has a video interview with him and about a ten-minute excerpt from his act. Funny boy.

Mac King is a very funny magician…or maybe he's a comedian who does magic well. Either way, he does a small but fun show most afternoons at Harrah's in Las Vegas, breaking the long-standing Nevada tradition that says afternoon shows suck. His sure doesn't (and neither does the wonderful ventriloquist Ronn Lucas, who works afternoons over at the Rio). Mac is also a helluva nice guy as I found out when he and I guested on Paul Harris's radio show last year in Vegas — and he's clever, too. He was actually doing real magic tricks over the radio. Obviously, I'm a fan — so it's an honor to be able to direct you to his website.