This piece by Ross Douthat strikes me as being a pretty good summation of where Mitt Romney is at the moment and where he's going to have to be soon if he's going to get to the White House. I'm going to guess that his soon-to-be-disclosed running mate has been selected with some of this in mind.

But I also think this campaign is ultimately not going to be about Romney's fitness to hold office. The folks wanting to unseat Obama have to make it about Obama…and I can't shake the feeling that at this very moment, they're meeting and talking and crafting the big story for September-October, which will be some scandal or revelation about Barack. Ideally, they'll want it to achieve three things. One is that it'll have to be the kind of thing which cannot be decisively disproven by Election Day or maybe ever. Secondly, it'll have to be one of those personality-oriented scandals that will make people who think he's a level-headed family man think that's been a façade and that there's some dark, aberrant side to the guy. And thirdly, it will have to be something that sets up the fear that if Obama gets four more years, you will die and the United States of America and your religion will cease to exist.

I have the feeling they're digging, trying to come up with it. It might be 100% fiction or it might be grounded in some small bit of reality twisted or enlarged to suit. But if Romney's going to have a shot at winning, his side has to fire up that base that equates a slight tax hike on millionaires with Socialism and lives in constant fear of a 9/11 on every block. They've got to be convinced that their lives are on the line in this one.

The man at left in the above photo is (I think) Paul Willson, a very clever actor and a nice guy who is irrelevant to this posting. The guy at right is who we're talking about. That's comedy writer Arnie Kogen responding when someone asked him how many truly funny jokes he's written in his long career.

You may know Arnie from his work for MAD magazine where he's been a major contributor since Alfred E. Neuman lost his front baby tooth. Arnie has also written for dozens and dozens of TV programs including The Carol Burnett Show, Empty Nest, Newhart, The Dean Martin Show and many, many others. He has three Emmy Awards. He also has a sterling reputation which he will risk later today by appearing on Stu's Show, the oft-plugged-here podcast for which each Wednesday, Stu Shostak interviews someone from the world of television. I don't recommend every episode of Stu's Show to you but I recommend this one. Arnie is a very witty man and he has achieved the impossible in show business: Everyone likes him. Everyone. Of course, they don't know some of the things I know.

There are two ways to listen to Stu's Show. There's the free way. "Tune in" while they do it live today at 4 PM Pacific, 7 PM in the East, other times in other climes. The show runs a minimum of two hours and sometimes goes longer. This is the best way to hear it because not only is it free but it somehow seems more participatory even if Stu doesn't get around to taking phone calls. Listen in at the Stu's Show website.

You can also listen to it the pay way. Go to that selfsame website after the live webcast. There, you can download it or any of hundreds of wonderful episodes for a measly 99 cents each. But to get the real deal, order four for the price of three. You will enjoy Arnie and you will enjoy just about anything else you select there.

I hosted two Cartoon Voice panels at the Comic-Con — one Saturday, one Sunday. Our video today is the Saturday one which featured Matthew Mercer, April Winchell, Jim Ward, Jack Angel, Debi Derryberry, Steve Blum, Chuck McCann and for the last 15 minutes or so, a surprise guest. If you just want to see the segment where I brought on the surprise guest and 3000 people stood and cheered, move the slider to around 56 minutes in. But I recommend you watch the whole thing…all 71 minutes of it because it was a pretty good panel. I can say that because other people did all the performing…

The phone just rang and the Caller I.D. said "Home Energy Mas." I answered and the call went like this…

SOME WOMAN: Hello, Mark?

ME: That's me.

SOME WOMAN: This is [some woman's name] with [some construction-type company with "home energy" in its name] getting back to you. Do you remember our call about eight months ago?

ME: No.

SOME WOMAN: Oh well, I just wanted to see if you're still interested in doing that new exterior coating on your house.

ME: You're lying. We never talked before. Don't ever call me again.

SOME WOMAN: Oh, okay. Goodbye.

Everyone's theorizing why Mitt Romney won't release all his tax returns. The prevailing theory seems to be that there will be years in which he paid zero taxes and that this would be embarrassing for a guy who has zillions of dollars and is running on a platform that the rich should pay less.

Maybe that's what he's hiding. Maybe it's something else like claiming George Will as a dependent. Maybe he's afraid that reporters will scrutinize the papers, do a bit of research and discover that he made a half-billion somewhere he didn't report.

But maybe it's a lot simpler than any of that. Maybe he just wants to not hand the Obama camp a pile of papers figuring they'll find something in there they can spin as illegal or unethical or hypocritical. Political campaigns these days — Romney's along with everyone else's — are really good at ginning up scandal out of the slightest oddment. He may just feel "the less they have to work with, the better."

I came back from San Diego to discover that Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and a bunch of other Viacom-owned channels had been suddenly pruned from my DirecTV satellite feed. Viacom and DirecTV are both offering up videos and press releases that essentially all say "The other side took away your channels because they're greedy bastards and they want to make more money off this arrangement." Both sides are basically correct, though it appears that the Viacom side is fibbing a little, making it sound like DirecTV made the decision to take those channels off the air when the negotiations reached the nuclear level. Obviously, they hope angry DirecTV subscribers will put pressure on the satellite provider and cause them to accept a worse deal. Maybe so. One wonders how Viacom advertisers feel about their commercials running in a lot fewer homes.

Ultimately, this is just a battle of companies that rake in billions but want to rake in a little more. The most likely outcome is that it'll all be settled soon, that my rates will go up and each side will be satisfied it's making more $$$. In the meantime, the big winner is Jon Stewart who got a very funny segment out of the dispute…

Women In Animation is a non-profit organization established in 1994 to promote the advancement of women working in the art and industry of animation. On Sunday August 5, I will be teaching a class in doing voiceover work for cartoons…but never mind that. The big announcement is that it will be part of a special reception honoring June Foray, who does that kind of thing better than anyone. Click here for more details.

As usual, we played Quick Draw! to a packed house on Saturday morning at the con. I'll write a report from my perspective later this week but in the meantime, here's one attendee's report.

A reader named Devlin sent me a link to look at Awesome People Hanging Out Together. Search for the few in there with Groucho.

And Joel O'Brien sent me this link to view photos of William M. Gaines, publisher of E.C. Comics and MAD magazine.

We were supposed to start at 11:30 AM today but by at 11:23 with every seat in 6A filled but Rob Paulsen's, I decided to start the Cartoon Voices Panel early. It would give the audience more panel with less wait, plus it would make Rob feel ashamed that he was tardy and we started without him. For the record, he was there at 11:27 so he was not late.

Six talented people who make livings with their voices demonstrated their art/craft/whatever it is to a most appreciative audience. Standing at the podium watching faces, I could see the amazement as Dee Baker leaped from one inhuman voice to the next and the next and the next. Were those all coming out of that alleged human being? Apparently so.

I kvelled (a fine Yiddish word; go look it up) as Misty Lee — the newest pro on the dais — dazzled all with her enthusiasm, then proved she had the chops to match.

I enjoyed it as Fred Tatasciore turned himself vocally into The Incredible Hulk and the audience roared its delight. They'd have been even more impressed if they knew what a sweet teddy bear of a man this Tatasciore guy is. I mean, they could tell he was acting against type but didn't imagine how against.

I laughed as Gregg Berger demonstrated how to "die" in a videogame, something voice actors often have to do to excess. It's not uncommon for the game to contain a hundred different ways in which your character might die and the producers need you to record every scenario. So we had Gregg vocally plunge off a 2000 foot cliff for us. On the way down, he was hit by three arrows, the third of which was flaming so it set him on fire. He landed in a pit of razor-sharp spikes and then was eaten by rabid raccoons. Somehow, he managed to sound like that was exactly what was happening to him.

I really liked it when Audrey Wasilewski mentioned she was the lady in that Prego Spaghetti Sauce commercial that's on CBS more often than that little eye logo in the corner of the screen. The audience in unison gasped "Oh right, that's her!"

And when Rob Paulsen did Pinky and whichever Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle he is, the cheers were loud and long.

They all read a script — the same script the Saturday panel had read — with totally different interpretations, totally different voices and just as many laughs but in different places and for different reasons. It was all brilliantly funny and afterwards, people complimented me — the guy who hadn't said a word throughout — on how wonderful it was.

Can't beat that. I'll write about more panels in the days to come.

Still laptopping so this'll be brief. Or maybe not…

It's such an odd, not-unsatisfying sensation to feel Comic-Con drawing to a close each year. The pace of life suddenly slows like someone dialed it down and you wanna go, "No! Not yet! How about if we go for another hour?" But at the same time, you know it's got to end and by 5 PM this afternoon, everyone was ready for it and most had ended it for themselves already by going home.

At five sharp, a thunderous voice announced over the P.A. system that the hall was closed and a large cheer and ovation erupted. Were we cheering that it was over? Of course not, you silly. We were cheering that we'd done it again; that all of us, by making whatever silly contributions we made including sheer attendance, had created this extraordinary event one more time.

Last night, I spoke at a dinner celebrating the earlier days of the con and especially the life of one of its founders, the late Richard Alf. I said there that I loved those days when the total convention attendance was about what we had in the room yesterday for Quick Draw! But I also love these days. I can complain about people who stop dead in the middle of aisles to do photo-ops and videos, or about the folks with microphones who annoy the hell out of all who venture near them. I can also overlook them or write them off as a necessary downside to the tremendous creative energy in that hall.

The number one complaint that gets voiced to me, though no one ever phrases it this way, is that there's too much good stuff and you can't do it all. You can't get into everything you want to see. You can't navigate the entire hall. You can't find everything or everyone you want to find.

I am well aware that as a guest-of-honor and the moderator of umpteen panels per year, my convention experience is not like everyone else's…but that's almost the point. No one's convention experience is quite like anyone else's and if yours wasn't tailor-made for you, you may just need to do a better job of tailoring next time.

There was a time years ago when I did not realize this and I could feel my enthusiasm for the con atrophying. I learned to reconfigure my attitude about the event and to stop doing things just because I felt I was supposed to do them. In my case, the errors included viewing the con as a tool to aid my career rather than to vacation from it,
sitting behind a table for long stretches to sign things I'd worked on and wandering the hall every single minute I wasn't parked somewhere for a "signing." One of the reasons I do all them panels is because I want to be there but to have something to actually do.

But that's just me. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's just me.

An attendee came up to me as I was hiking from Panel #14 to Panel #15. It was his first convention. Not just his first Comic-Con International. His first convention, period. He was having a great time, he said, and he asked me if cons were all like this. I said no. Most have their merits but only this one is like this one.

What's more: At that very moment, tens of thousands of people on the premises were experiencing completely different conventions — ones that would bore him or me — and each was having a totally distinctive Very Good Time. I think what I enjoy best about the con is just being around so many people who are so damned happy to be there. I hope you were one of them this year…and if not, that you'll be one soon.