- White House ethics lawyer James Schultz has resigned. All right, everyone. Say it with me: "The White House had an ethics lawyer???"
Category Archives: To Be Filed
Wow!
As you know, reporters for the Washington Post broke the story about the first woman who came forward to tell of the sexual misdeeds of Judge Roy Moore. You all know Judge Roy Moore, that find upholder of Family Values and The Bible who has nothing but condemnation for those who do not rise to his definition of morality. His supporters have been trying hard to discredit the Post's reporting and haven't succeeded.
Take a look at this report on how an undercover "sting" agent, apparently working for James O'Keefe's Project Veritas, approached the Post with a bogus tale of an affair with Moore when she was underage. The Post did not fall for it.
I do not think the press in this country — any newspaper, any network — is even close to infallibility. I also believe that every time they get it wrong, the only possible explanation is not bias. Incompetence is also a big factor. So you should have a healthy skepticism about anything you hear or read…and a healthier one for those "too good to be true" stories that tell you just what you want to have be so.
But have even more skepticism for those who tell you that the press is biased and slanted and dishonest, so you shouldn't believe anything they tell you. That seems to be their only line of defense from when real bad, evidence-based stories come out about them. And they're expecting those stories.
Today's Video Link
The other day, I recommended watching reruns of The Danny Kaye Show on the Jewish Life TV channel. Actually, I don't recommend trying to watch anything on that channel, which is like a restaurant that doesn't advertise, doesn't have a sign out front, doesn't have a menu and if you do stumble in there, they just serve you anything they like whenever they feel like it.
Also, someone there seems to occasionally decide that right in the middle of a musical number is a dandy time to cut away for three minutes of commercials.
They've revamped their website and it now actually purports to tell you what they're showing and when…but my sporadic checking finds that what they say they're airing and what's actually on the channel rarely match. Worse for some of us is that the listings they send out to others don't match either. My cable company (Spectrum) has no idea what airs when and my TiVo listings (which come from a separate source) are different and also wrong.
Until early today, my TiVo listed no shows of any kind this week on JLTV. It said that each day, the network was running a 24-hour program called "To Be Announced." Today, they changed and began listing individual shows with The Danny Kaye Show airing each day at Noon, my time. As I write this, it is just after Noon and today's episode of The Danny Kaye Show is over because it actually aired at 11 AM. I think, if I've figured it out right, they're actually airing Monday-Thursday at 11 AM Pacific Time but TiVo still thinks they're on at Noon and Spectrum is thinking 2 PM.
By the way, here's the writing credits on today's episode, which originally aired October 2, 1963: Herbert Baker, Mel Tolkin, Sheldon Keller, Saul Ilson, Ernest Chambers and Larry Gelbart. A pretty impressive roster. If they run what the website says they're going to run — unlikely but not impossible — tomorrow's should have Gwen Verdon as a guest star, Wednesday should have Art Carney, Thursday should have Louis Jordan and the Amazing Carl Ballantine, and Thursday should have Julie Newmar and (again) Howie Morris.
In any case, my friend Bob Elisberg just sent me a link to a sketch that ran at some point on the series. It's a long one with Danny plus Buddy Ebsen (in his Beverly Hillbillies role), Howie Morris and Harvey Korman. Howie is playing pretty much the same character he played on The Andy Griffith Show, Ernest T. Bass. Contrary to what most think, Ernest T. only appeared on five (5) episodes of that show but he sure became a memorable character.
In the last decade or so of his life, a goodly part of Howie's income came from appearing as Ernest T. at autograph shows and screenings connected to The Andy Griffith Show. By then, his residuals had long petered out and they weren't much to begin with, but he was able to buy groceries and pay alimony thanks to those five appearances. There have been many actors who were similarly supported. I worked with Roger C. Carmel on what may have been his last acting job. He told us all how amazed he was that after appearing in dozens and dozens of TV roles and films, his best source of funds was appearing at Star Trek conventions, where he was welcomed because of the two episodes of that show on which he appeared.
Anyway, here's the clip. The person who uploaded it to YouTube wrote in his notes, "Howard Morris gave me a copy of this years ago. He enjoyed doing this sketch but didn't like working with Danny Kaye at all." Like I told you.
Your Monday Trump Dump
It's like every morning now, I wake up and say to myself, "Well, let's see what horrible thing he's done today…"
- In his maniacal campaign to undo everything Obama did, Trump will be making Obamacare less affordable for everyone but mainly for those who voted for him in the last election. Kevin Drum explains this and notes that "Most of these folks don't seem to realize it, though. They'll either blame Democrats or else shrug and figure that at least Trump hates the same people they do."
- And as Hannah Levintova reports, he's set off a war at the Consumer Protection Agency. I don't think there's anything Trump dislikes more in this world than Consumer Protection. In fact, the whole goal of the Republican Party now seems to be to ensure that nothing ever stops a large company from maximizing its profits. Not health concerns, not environmental concerns, not truth in advertising…
- Ed Kilgore reports that as vital as Trump says it is to elect Judge Roy Moore and keep that Senate seat for the G.O.P., he won't go to Alabama to campaign for the man. He'll probably stay in Mar-a-Lago and compose tweets to use in case Moore loses…tweets explaining why that's not a loss for Donald Trump.
- Here's a Visual Guide to the Key Events in the Trump-Russia Scandal. For an administration where everyone said they had no contact with Russia, there sure are a lot of them.
- Ryan Lizza runs down some of the things Trump and the Republican Congress are going to try to enact next month so they don't end the year with no major legislative accomplishments. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
- And by God, it looks like Trump is really trying to sell the idea that that Access Hollywood tape of him — the one for which he apologized — wasn't really him after all. Maybe he's going to insist it was Alec Baldwin.
Are there still people left who think this guy is a straight-talker? I can understand those who think — and I have some friends who feel this way — that the guy's a supreme bullshitter but that he's going to accomplish things they want to see accomplished. I really don't get those who believe he stands for truth or integrity or anything resembling a Christian Value.
Good Mousekeeping
Here's a good profile of Dave Smith, who founded and built the Disney Archives for the studio. Other companies I've worked for will occasionally decide "We should have something like that" and they hire someone and spend a few bucks on it before someone else decides to save money and start slashing its budget…and pretty soon, it's gone. But the Disney Archives are quite extensive and valuable. I wish more companies had done that.
Today's Video Links
The Price is Right is seen every weekday morning on CBS and probably always will be. Long after all of us are dead and buried, The Price is Right will be seen every weekday morning on CBS and someone will be playing Plinko. I watch once in a while…or maybe it would be more accurate to say I have it on once in a while.
Hey, a lot of people who come to this site get upset with me because I write here that I don't like Donald Trump or Mike Pence or certain other political figures. Well, that upset is nothing compared to what I'm about to cause when I tell you that I actually like Drew Carey more than I ever liked Bob Barker as host of The Price is Right. And it's not like I like Drew Carey all that much as host — he's much better as a stand-up — but he seems to understand that it's his job to let the games (and therefore the contestants) be the stars of the show, not him. Let the Hate Mail begin.
I find the show more fascinating than entertaining. Back in 2008, I was also fascinated to attend a performance of The Price is Right Live!, which was then in permanent residence at Bally's Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas. They retooled the show to be offered as a live attraction, complete with exact replicas of some of the most popular games from TV, and Todd Newton hosted, ably filling the shoes that Mr. Carey had just begun filling for Mr. Barker. I wrote about that field trip here.
The show is no longer in Vegas. It's on the road, criss-crossing America. Today, it's in Canyonville, Oregon. Tomorrow, it moves to Airway Heights, Washington for a few days and then on to Wenatchee. If you want to know when it's coming your way, here's the page with the schedule.
I'm embedding two videos that will tell you about it. The first is from a magazine-type show and it has a very enthusiastic host-lady interviewing Todd Newton, back when the show was in Vegas. The second is intended for casino operators. It's a sales piece telling you how much money you'll make if you book The Price is Right Live! into your establishment. The show doesn't only play casinos. It can be found at State Fairs and in a lot of Performing Arts Centers too. If you only have time to watch one of these videos, watch the second one. It's a part of show business that we sometimes forget about…
Phoenix from the Playbills
The musical Gypsy debuted on Broadway in 1959 and it has been revived there four times since — in 1974, 1989, 2003, and 2008. In case you're wondering, the five ladies who opened those productions as Mama Rose were, in order, Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone. Another revival which would star Imelda Staunton, has seemed imminent for a while but Ms. Staunton is currently in a revival of Follies at London's National Theatre.
Four revivals so far but it somehow feels like more. There are certain shows that always seem to be about to reopen. If you asked me to guess what show has had the most resurrections on the Great White Way, I'd say either Fiddler on the Roof or Guys and Dolls…and I'd be wrong both times. They've each had five revivals and there are two shows that have had six and one that's been revived seven times!
Do not click on this link until you've made your guesses. Then click on the link and find out.
(And if you guess Chicago, you're even wronger than I was. That show's only had one revival on Broadway. Okay, so it's been running there for more than twenty years with no end in sight…but it's still only the first revival. There may not be a second one because this one may never close.)
Your Early Sunday A.M. Trump Dump
And we're expanding it to include Roy Moore, the people who still support him, and Joe Barton…
- Remember the scandalous Access Hollywood tape wherein Trump bragged about sexual assaults? At the time, he apologized for it. Now, he's trying to spread the suggestion that it's not real; that it's dubbed or it's someone else or something. Even the Trumpiest Trump supporter won't believe that though a few might find it handy to say they do. It's a lot easier than defending it, I guess. But it makes you wonder if Trump is anticipating legal proceedings against him for sexual misdeeds and somehow — God knows how — thinks it will help him to now not admit the recording is legit.
- Matt Yglesias explains why the math in the Senate Tax Bill just plain doesn't add up. And in this article, he points out that this bill is based on a lot of the same theories and predictions that were disastrous when attempted under the last Republican president.
- William Saletan reviews the evidence against Judge Roy Moore and finds it pretty solid. He also reviews the rebuttals from the Moore camp and finds them pretty feeble. I think we're about to see a lot of people who profess to be deeply moral respecters of old-fashioned family values in an evangelical sense go to the polls and vote for a child molester…and pretend it's okay because, you know, he denies it.
- Speaking of evangelicals, Thomas S. Kidd discusses who they are these days and why some who say they are aren't.
- Rod Dreher writes about Joe Barton, the latest in a series of "deeply moral" politicians who spent years scolding people for their immorality before being humiliated by some revelation about the deployment of his own genitalia. It's gotten so every time a Republican leader lectures us about our sex lives, we should just start wagering on what there is about his that he's hiding.
- Getting back to Trump: Daniel Larison says, "Arming Ukraine would be an extraordinarily foolish thing for Trump to do, and so it is probably what he will decide to do." Click on Larison's name to read more.
- Jonathan Chait wonders if Donald is intentionally sabotaging police departments everywhere. And Chait's right: Whenever Trump talks about "crime" or "law and order," he's using codewords to single out racial minorities.
- And finally for now: Matt Taibbi writes about Trump's battle with Sportsfather LaVar Ball. One of Ball's sons was among three basketball players arrested in China recently, then released via a diplomatic maneuver for which Trump is demanding a louder thank-you than he got from them. Trump vs. Ball is one of those cases where you'd rather not root for either guy but one is clearly worse than the other, if only because for the worse guy, it's just another chance to depict black athletes as spoiled and unworthy of this great nation of ours.
My favorite tweet of the last few days, by the way, came from Conan O'Brien who wrote, "Trump is already tweeting that Black Friday is the most ungrateful of all the Fridays." Good one.
Go Read It!
My cousin David has lunch with a filmmaker I admire and a film critic I don't.
Recommended Reading
Jessica Rosenworcel is a member of the Federal Communications Commission. The F.C.C. may soon do away with Net Neutrality, the principle which means that the folks who control your Internet can't block certain portions of the 'net to you, charge you premium prices to access them, slow them down, attempt to divert you away from them, etc. Under Net Neutrality, you can go where you please to go. The argument for it — that it will encourage investment or something or other — seems very contrived and bogus to me. It's like the folks who wanted to do this couldn't think of a good reason so they're just saying, "Trust us. You'll like what it does." But even that upon closer inspection turns out to mean, "Trust us. You'll like what it does for big companies by giving them more power over your Internet." It should be opposed with all might.
Today's Video Link
I mentioned here the other day that the musical Mack & Mabel is rarely much of a hit. One exception was the recent British production. Here's a commercial for its touring company which, alas, did not tour across the Atlantic in this direction..
Trump Trumps Time…Maybe
Donald Trump has long struck me as a guy who plays checkers, not chess — a man who doesn't have the ability to think 3+ moves ahead. He might not even see the value in doing that since time and again, he gets away with saying things that aren't true and pays little if any penalty for not being able to back them up.
But he may have out-strategized Time magazine on this "Person of the Year" thing. At first, he looks petty…
And then when Time tweets back, "The president is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year," he looks petulant and self-obsessed, as he so often does. But notice they didn't deny that they'd contacted him…or that he's likely to be their guy.
By tweeting what the man done tweeted, Trump probably figures he's set up this situation: If Time does decide to scorn him for the "honor," he's got the perfect rejoinder — "Well, of course I'm the greatest newsmaker who's ever lived but I told Time I didn't want their silly title but I told them to shove it so they had to go pick someone else."
And if they do decide they want to slap his smug face on their cover, he'll have a bargaining position to maybe influence the story somehow…maybe force them to switch back to "Man of the Year." Last year, when they named him "Person of the Year," he griped about the "political correctness" even though it made him the top of a much larger group. The point is he can maybe make them do something that will enable him to go to his base and brag, "I made that lying magazine kiss my ass." If he sits for a special photo and interview, he can put conditions on it. If he doesn't, he can say, "They had to give me the honor even though I told them to go to hell."
I don't think Trump knows beans about the law or the constitution or health care or how to deal with foreign powers…but he's really good at manipulating the press. That's why he is where he is today.
So if we worked for Time and we wanted to out-strategize him, what would we do? Well, the first thing we'd do is something he probably never does, which is to understand the rules. Read this…
Person of the Year (called Man of the Year or Woman of the Year until 1999) is an annual issue of the United States news magazine Time that features and profiles a person, a group, an idea, or an object that "for better or for worse…has done the most to influence the events of the year."
There's probably no value in pointing out that it's not always an honor and that in 1938, it was Hitler and in 1939, Joseph Stalin. That doesn't help us because in this day and age, being famous is way more important than just about anything else, especially to a guy like Trump. And if Time follows their stated criteria, he's again the obvious choice. No single person in recent history has ever been talked-about more than Donald Trump. I have friends who love him and others who hate him, both kinds unable to go three minutes without mentioning his name.
I don't think there's another individual we could name who would qualify…and before you suggest Robert Mueller, I think next year's likely to be his year. But take another look at those rules. It can be a group. We could name the vast and growing forces of Americans who disapprove of Trump's presidency. It would be a way of saying, "Yes, Trump is the core of more news stories than anyone else but mainly because so many people think he's incompetent and/or corrupt."
That might be a bit of a win for Time but Trump would just crow that that was demonstrating the hostility and bias of the Lying Media and "the failing Time magazine" so here's my other thought…
Name as "Person of the Year" — and I don't know exactly how you'd phrase this — the many women who have come forth to complain about sexual harassment and assault. They've sure generated plenty of news, especially the last few months. And if there's anything Trump doesn't want right now, it's a focus on all the women who've reported his behavior.
Software Question
Maybe somebody reading this can help me. I have a PC and an iPhone and an iPad. I download a number of podcasts and listen to them on all three devices.
I use a program called Roboform that stores all my passwords and keeps them in sync on all three. I use a program called Evernote that stores all my short little notes and keeps them in sync on all three. I'm wondering if there's a program that will store all the podcasts I download and keep them in sync on all three…and the "sync" would include tracking which ones I listen to and where I pause them. The idea would be that I could listen to half a Marc Maron or Gilbert Gottfried podcast (or whatever) on the computer in my office, then get on an airplane with my iPad and say, "Oh, I haven't finished that one! I think I'll listen to the rest of it" and then click and resume playing!"
Has anyone invented this and if not, why not?
Oh, Kaye!
There are a lot of cable TV channels that rerun a lot of pretty old TV shows. Some of those programs hold up, some don't. For example, Jewish Life TV runs old episodes of The Soupy Sales Show — some from the sixties, some from the seventies. In the sixties, I loved that show and if I were still twelve, I probably still would but…well, they don't quite hold my attention the way they did back then. (I got to hang out on the set of his seventies show during tapings and those bring back good memories but, again, the actual content doesn't quite delight me the way it once did.)
JLTV reruns Candid Camera, which I never liked, not even when I was twelve. They run The Jack Benny Program, which is a lot like The Soupy Sales Show for me. I'm fond of the star and admiring of his talents but I don't have the patience to wait for the moments when they're as good as I'd like to think they always were.
They rerun That Show with Joan Rivers, a late-sixties talk program which was sometimes interesting because of its guests. I found Joan Rivers impossible to watch in her later years when she became so nasty and so committed to plugging her financial enterprises, but it's nice to see her when she was the Joan Rivers I liked. And they run The Danny Kaye Show.
There are a lot of stories around about Danny Kaye not being a very nice person. My dear friend, the late Howard Morris, was a semi-regular on that series for a while and he hated Danny Kaye almost as much as he hated Jack Carter. It is not humanly possible for one human being to hate another human being more than Howie Morris hated Jack Carter. Then again, my friend Ron Friedman who was a writer on The Danny Kaye Show loved its star.
When I watch these reruns, I elect to side with Ron. Mr. Kaye is so funny and magical and delightful to watch and the writing, which was done by the best in the business at the time, is quite good…and durable. It generally holds up. Danny's performances generally hold up. The guests are great. And when Howie wasn't the second banana, Harvey Korman was and he was sensational.
If you get JLTV, I suggest you check this series out but I'll warn you: JLTV is very bad at telling you what they're running when. I have a Season Pass on my TiVo for these and half the time, what it records is some other program altogether. Also, I never know which episodes they're running. If it's on twice a day, that may be the same episode twice or two different ones…I think. They have me very confused. All I know is that I enjoy watching that man, in large part because he comes across as the exact opposite of what Howie Morris said he was. If Howie was right, I don't want to know it.
Black to the Future
Today is Black Friday, a good day to not go shopping because that's what everyone else is doing. While waiting three hours in line to check out, you might ponder the question of why this day is named like it's associated with some form of violent terrorism. Kevin Drum has an explanation.