Monthly Archives: September 2008

Someone named Lynn (I may stop quoting correspondents who don't have full, real-sounding names) writes…

Okay, Mark, you've pointed out several of Bill Krystal's wildly inaccurate predictions in the past. Well, this time he got one right; he predicted Sarah Palin as the v.p. pick for McCain. You can argue that even a broken clock is right twice a day, but give credit where credit is due!

I'm not sure if it was a prediction so much as a suggestion that maybe McCain picked up on…but okay, Bill Kristol (that's how he spells it) did mention Sarah Palin as a potential veep two months ago. At the time, she wasn't on too many folks' radar. But I would also point out that shortly before McCain settled on anyone, Kristol penned this column in which he made a strong case for Joe Lieberman as the best possible pick and dismissed Palin because she "has been governor for less than two years." So he kinda backed off his own prediction before it could come true.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from The New York Times that oughta raise your eyebrows well off your face…

It could become one of the most expensive financial bailouts in American history, though it will not involve any immediate taxpayer loans or investments.

The Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., who engineered the plan, would not say how much capital the government might eventually have to provide, or what the ultimate cost to taxpayers might be. Two months ago, the Congressional Budget Office gave a rough estimate of $25 billion. One senior government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, signaled on Sunday that even that figure was optimistic.

Mr. Paulson said Sunday that it was important to rescue the mortgage giants because a failure of either company would cause turmoil in financial markets in the United States and around the world.

This is one of the things that's wrong with our economy and it's been wrong for some time, even before the Bush administration ramped it up to disaster levels: If you or I make stupid business decisions, we suffer the consequences. But if big companies make stupid business decisions, the government steps in and bails them out with our money. And the CEOs and execs who made those decisions get to keep their six-figure salaries.

Many years ago, I attended a lecture by a man named Akio Morita, who may well have been the smartest person to ever be in the same room as me. (He was the co-founder of Sony.) He said — this is not an exact quote but it's close — "The thing that will eventually doom much of American business is that your executives pay no price for failure. You can become CEO of a corporation, do everything wrong, drive your company into the ground and then retire and buy several mansions with the money they will pay you for doing this."

Government bailouts are an even more pernicious form of this. We can't let those institutions fail…and the people who run them know it. Maybe we need to give those deregulation ideas another think, especially in cases where we have to cough up billions when companies are mismanaged.

Here we have another answering machine message that I used to have on my telephone. Earlier, I posted one with Daws Butler as Huckleberry Hound and one with Lorenzo Music as Garfield the Cat. Here's the incomparable June Foray as Rocket J. Squirrel…

It's been quite some time since I mentioned the What's My Line? reruns that air late night on GSN. They're still on and they're still fun. The episode that airs early tomorrow morning might interest someone because the Mystery Guest is Debbie Reynolds, who was then married to Eddie Fisher. Her hubby also puts in an appearance on this episode, which aired April 15, 1956.

Or you might want to check out the episode that airs early Tuesday morning. The first guest is Chester Gould, creator of the comic strip, Dick Tracy.

Then the one for Wednesday morning is a real treat. Paul Winchell is on the panel and the Mystery Guest is Edgar Bergen. It's kind of a historic meeting of the two superstar ventriloquists and their dummies.

Okay, despite my declaration that I'd devoted enough time/space to this, I'm still getting messages arguing The Monty Hall Problem from odd angles, some disagreeing with what I said was the correct answer, some offering convoluted explanations of why it's right. I'm going to give this one more try. It's really a lot simpler than some people think.

You have a choice of three doors. Behind one is a car. Behind two are goats. You get to pick one and you'll win the prize that is behind it. You have no idea where the car is but your goal is to win it and not a goat.

After you make your selection but before that door is opened, the host (Monty) opens one of the doors you didn't pick to reveal a goat. Monty knows what's behind each of the doors and he always opens one to show you a goat. (This, by the way, is not exactly the way Let's Make a Deal ever worked.)

So now two doors have not been opened — yours and the one you didn't pick. Monty gives you the option of staying with your original door or swapping for the unopened door. Should you swap?

Yes, you should swap. Contrary to what you might think at first glance, it does make a difference. If you swap, you double your chances of going home with the car.

To prove this, let us consider the odds if you don't swap…

• One-third of the time, you pick the door with the car
• Monty opens a door that reveals a goat
• You don't swap
• You win the car

• Two-thirds of the time, you pick a door with one of the goats
• Monty opens a door to reveal the other goat
• You don't swap
• You win a goat

So one-third of the time, you go home with the car. Two-thirds of the time, you go home with a goat. Do we all agree on this? Fine. Now, here's the situation if you do swap…

• One-third of the time, you pick the door with the car
• Monty opens a door that reveals a goat
• You swap the door you picked for the other one that is not yet opened
• You win the other goat

• Two-thirds of the time, you pick a door with one of the goats
• Monty opens a door to reveal the other goat
• You swap the door you picked for the other one that is not yet opened
• You win the car

Got it? Two-thirds of the time, the swapper will go home with the car. That's because there's a one-in-three chance you'll start with the right answer and a two-in-three chance you'll start with the wrong answer…and swapping will turn the right answer into the wrong answer and the wrong answer into the right answer.

This is my final post on the subject. I hope.

Edwin E. Smith writes…

While I wouldn't base my vote on who is funnier, I think you can draw some conclusions about a person from their sense of humor. The comparison to picking a cute doctor versus a competent one is not entirely applicable. For one thing a sense of humor (in my opinion) is a sign of intelligence. I'm sure there are geniuses and savants with little or no sense of humor, but within the normal scope of human intelligence, my funniest friends are invariably the ones with the sharper sense of humor as well. And the second thing I think makes a sense of humor relevant is if McCain thinks "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" is howlingly funny, to me that is a pretty good indication he is out to lunch.

Kennedy was fairly amusing, Nixon not so much, and I do think that what we laugh at says a lot about us as people.

Well, I've spent much of my life around some very funny people, including a number of comedians who are usually described with the adjective, "legendary." I disagree that a sense of humor is a sign of intelligence…or at least that it's usually a sign of intelligence. Even then, there are all kinds of intelligence. It's possible to be utterly brilliant at playing the clarinet but unable to balance your checkbook. It's possible to be very, very smart at math and very, very stupid about people.

I would also suggest that what passes for a sense of humor in a politician is often the skill of a good joke-writer on the payroll. An office-seeker doesn't have to be funny too often to get the reputation we're talking about here. It can be attained with a few good lines in speeches (scripted by others) and a few softball talk show interviews where the host obligingly sets up planned punch lines or the politician's writers predict accurately what will be asked.

Actually, I think McCain has been pretty funny on some shows, and a lot of it has seemed spontaneous to me. I don't think that makes him more or less qualified for high office. Jokes like the one you cite, however, demonstrate a serious lack of basic judgment. One of the most important things to understand about comedy is that it's often a function of time and place and of who says it. The "bomb Iran" lyric was kinda funny when The Capitol Steps did it years ago. It's just not that funny coming from a guy who might someday be in a position to actually bomb Iran or to influence the decision to do that. It was also scary that he seems to have just blurted it out on a whim without thinking. In the days to come, we're going to hear more about McCain's temper and impulsiveness.

Really, I can think of plenty of people I've encountered who were very funny and maybe even pretty smart about some things. They might even share enough of your life style and opinions that you'd think, "Hey, he's one of us." But if you put them behind the desk in the Oval Office, it would literally mean the end of civilization. They'd have us in a nuclear war faster than you could tell a knock-knock joke.

Here's a press release that CBS has sent out…

Sen. Barack Obama to visit David Letterman on Wednesday

How funny can Barack Obama be?

You can find out when the Democratic presidential candidate visits "Late Show With David Letterman" on Wednesday.

It will be Obama's fifth visit to the show. Another guest will be LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers and the U.S. Olympics men's basketball team, which won a gold medal in Beijing.

Here's my answer to the question posed: I don't care how funny Barack Obama is. I don't care how funny any person on my ballot is and I think voters are chowderheads if they allow that to matter in their selections.

If the guy's funny, great. That might be because he's disarmingly honest and unpretentious, which sometimes helps a leader be funny. But if so, it's the honest part that's a plus, not the funny part.

I want a president who'll know how to deal with the situations in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and other places where U.S. lives and interests are in deep, deep trouble. I want a president who'll work for a fairer distribution of the tax burden, who'll curb needless spending and bring down the deficit, who'll do something about the inefficiency and prohibitive expense of health care in this country, who'll approach environmental issues without the fear of costing some corporation a smidgen of profit, and who'll defend the Constitution and the Rule of Law and basic human rights for all.

If he or she can do some or all of that, I don't care if they're less funny than The McLean Stevenson Show. (That was the first TV show I worked on and it was not very funny.)

Conversely, if we want a president who'll be funny, let's elect Gilbert Gottfried or Lewis Black or one of those guys. Stephen Colbert tried to get into the race but they wouldn't let him.

Please…let's elect a president because he or she is smart and competent, not because they're funny or "he seems like one of us" or they look like they'd be fun to have a beer with. Giving someone points for being funny is like picking the surgeon who's going to perform your heart bypass because he's cute. It's really, really stupid.

Senator James Inhofe from Oklahoma said some things the other day that were interpreted as questioning Barack Obama's patriotism. He basically said Obama would lose because Americans would decide he didn't love his country enough. This morning, Inhofe's office issued a statement that included the following…

[I am not] questioning Sen. Obama's patriotism, but you have to question why at times he seems so obviously opposed to public displays of patriotism and national pride, like wearing an American flag lapel pin.

I don't think wearing a flag pin or not says anything about a person's patriotism or lack thereof. But I can't help pointing out that in their respective acceptance speeches, Obama wore a flag pin and McCain did not.

I am not questioning Sen. Inhofe's sanity, but you have to question why at times he seems so obviously opposed to public displays of sanity.

Did I mention today is Sergio's birthday? Today is Sergio's birthday. That's Sergio at left in the above photo, posing with master comic book editor-artist Dick Giordano.

I took this picture right outside the Dealers Room at the 2002 Mid-Ohio Con in Columbus, Ohio. About three minutes after it was snapped, the sounds of a fire alarm began to ring out. Security guards swept through the area and herded us all outside…which might not have been too bad except that everyone was in t-shirts and other lightweight wear and it was snowing outside. Sergio and Dick stood out there in the Winter Wonderland in their shirt sleeves, signing autographs for their fans until the alarm ended.

Anyway, happy birthday to Sergio Aragonés, my friend and collaborator for more years than either of us would like to admit. May he have just as many more and may they be even better.