The leadership of the Writers Guild has just agreed to a new 3-year contract with the AMPTP after months of working without a contract. A rough summary can be read in this press release. I haven't seen all the terms but after years of reading WGA press releases that try to put a victorious spin […]
I think it's kind of slimy that the Sinclair Broadcasting Group is ordering its stations to air an anti-Kerry documentary just before the election. And though I never like to judge something I haven't seen, it appears that the film in question is of dubious accuracy. Every time I hear something from those "Swift Boat […]
John Kerry said that we ought to reduce the terror threat so it's just a "nuisance." The Bush campaign is currently flogging the idea that the use of this word tells us something — I'm not clear on what — about Kerry and his wrong attitude towards terrorists. This strikes me, and probably even a […]
The infamous Nixon tapes are being edited for public release. I don't think this bothers me but I'm not sure. […]
Garry Trudeau, its maker, is a guest on The Charlie Rose Show this evening. If it's already run in your area, you might check for a rerun tomorrow on your local PBS station. […]
All this week, Doonesbury is pointing its readers towards webpages on which prominent Conservatives endorse John Kerry. Today's link (to this article by John Eisenhower, son of Guess Who) created so much interest that it crashed the site of the Manchester Union Leader newspaper…though it seems to be accessible at the moment. Here's an article […]
Just caught two episodes of Win Ben Stein's Money, a series that was done a few years ago for Comedy Central but which is now rerunning on Game Show Network. I forgot how much I enjoyed the show, especially the first three years when Jimmy Kimmel was the co-host. Mr. Stein was put on this […]
As you may have heard, The Lone Star Iconoclast, which is George Bush's "hometown newspaper" in Crawford, Texas has endorsed John Kerry. Here is a link to that endorsement…and here's a link to a follow-up article on the anger that the endorsement has generated. (Thanks to Al Feldstein, comic book legend and longtime editor of […]
One of my favorite political bloggers, Kevin Drum, lists every known lie or distortion from the Bush-Kerry dust-up and scores them on falsity, importance, etc. Forget the scoring and just read down the columns. […]
When you think about it, it's like a really bad, contrived soap opera storyline twist: A guy who was so physically fit he could play Superman suffering an injury that left him almost paralyzed for life. If a writer came up with that, you'd say, "That kind of thing never happens in real life." But […]
Friday night, CNN asked folks to vote in their online poll as to who they believe won the contest and said they'd report the results later. They then proceeded to ignore those results and never report them because, as you can see, Kerry won by an incredible margin. Obviously, someone decided that it represented well-organized […]
Fred Kaplan reveals how an awful lot of the fictional movie, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, wasn't fictional. I found this article via the website of my friend, radio master Paul Harris. If you don't live in or around St. Louis, you can't listen to him but […]
Within days of the 9/11 attack, the Broadway community rallied and taped a TV commercial starring everyone who was then appearing in a show, urging people to come back to the theaters. It had Nathan Lane up front and everyone was singing, "New York, New York." At one point, one of the cable channels (Bravo […]
I need to clear my head of political and logical thought before I go back to writing Groo today so… I'm not surprised that polls say Kerry did well with "undecided" voters last night. I'm surprised there are any undecided voters but not that they would have preferred Kerry. Bush went a long way to […]
Turner Classic Movies doesn't run nearly enough classic movies to suit me but every month's schedule includes a few treasures. Obscure but wonderful footage can often be found on their Festival of Shorts, which hauls out rarely-seen short subjects. This month, they have a 1930 film called The Hard Guy starring Spencer Tracy in a […]