The Disney folks have launched D23, a site that will be of interest to the serious Disney fan, so full is it of historical articles and goodies. You need to $ub$cribe to enjoy all that it has to offer but there are some freebees for those who don't. One is that each day, they feature one early installment of the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip, the Donald Duck newspaper strip and the Scamp newspaper strip, starting from Day One of each. They're on this page…and I think you have to go there each day to see them because there doesn't seem to be an archive feature, at least for non-subscribers.

What do Bozo the Clown and The Beatles have in common? I mean, besides the obvious raw sex appeal. Answer: Alan W. Livingston. Mr. Livingston, who was the former president of Capitol Records, passed away today at the age of 91. He started at the company in 1946 writing kids' records, back when Capitol did the best anyone has ever done…with full orchestras (sometimes led by Billy May) and superstar voice casts. On one of the first ones he wrote, he created the character of Bozo the Clown, who became the star of best-selling albums and a kind of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on the entire Capitol line.

As Mr. Livingston worked his way up to the presidency of the company, he did a lot of different things. He signed Frank Sinatra at a low point in his career and steered a major comeback. He signed a new comedian named Stan Freberg. He was involved in the launch of a new TV show called Bonanza. And, oh yeah…he signed The Beatles. Can't do much better than that.

That's only some of what this man did (more but not all is listed in this obit) but it's more than enough to warrant a salute and our thanks for stacks and stacks of memorable wax.

I'm not going to embed Jon Stewart's interview last night with Jim Cramer. From the lethargic way it's loading right now, it's obvious the Daily Show website is being inundated with hits. They've posted the unedited interview in three parts and if I embed all three parts here, this page will load at about the speed of Heinz Ketchup mixed with black strap molasses. So you'll have to go to that site and find it yourself to watch.

Note that they've posted the interview in two versions, each carved into thirds. One is the edited version as aired last night. The other is unedited and uncensored. The latter is probably what you want.

(P.S. Talking Points Memo has embedded the whole thing. It'll save you some time to watch it there.)

Every two years, folks in Great Britain celebrate Red Nose Day. What, I hear you cry, is Red Nose Day? Good question. It's a day when folks do something silly to raise money which goes to Comic Relief, a most worthwhile charity that helps the impoverished.

My pal Ken Plume and his pal Widgett Walls have decided this is such a great idea that they're stealing borrowing it and bringing it to America…and guess what. It's today! And lemme tell you about the silly thing they're doing. They're doing a 24 hour live webcast starting at Noon (East Coast Time), which is 9 AM out here where I am. There will be phone-in guests (including me at some point) and music and puppets and silly stories…all to encourage you to donate to Comic Relief.

Wanna know more about it? Wanna watch these silly guys in action? You'll want to go to their website and follow them on this Twitter page.

Tune in. It's gonna be silly.

You know, I don't really care what happens with Sarah Palin's daughter and her boy friend and whether they get married or not. It's none of our business.

But I can't help but think: If someone on the Democratic ticket last year had an unwed mother for a daughter, the whole G.O.P. campaign would have been about that; about how if your kid gets pregnant like that, you're an unfit parent and you should be ashamed of yourself for thinking you can run the country when you can't even run your own family.

I just rewatched tonight's Daily Show on which Jon Stewart…well, I started to type that he "spanked" Jim Cramer but that's not quite accurate. What he did was to give the financial news industry a civil and well-deserved scolding…and Cramer wound up agreeing with most of it.

It reminded me what I like so much about Stewart's interviews. I can't think of another person who just talks with his guests on such a one-on-one basis. I don't always agree with the guy but he seems sincere and thoughtful…and also uninterested in grandstanding. He talks to people — not at them, not down to them — and doesn't let his guests get away with pre-planned rote answers. Who else has ever had the kind of discussion that he had tonight with Jim Cramer?

A couple of e-mailers who watched the show told me they thought Cramer's career was over; that he'd committed professional suicide by grovelling before Stewart instead of getting into a slapfight with him. I think that's wrong. Cramer's not dumb enough to think that the old "act" is still viable and therefore worth defending. He and his peers have shilled too long for the CEOs and the lower-grade Bernie Madoffs. The jig on that is up and he oughta be glad that Jon Stewart has given him the chance to do a public mea culpa, pledge to reform and try to grab onto the new dynamic. I got the feeling the whole field of financial news reporting changed a little tonight…and for the better.

Some websites are reporting that the Stewart-Cramer interview had to be trimmed for time and that the full version, which is eight minutes longer, will be available on the web tomorrow. I'll embed it here when it is.

Bernie Madoff's confession.

Just watched The Daily Show — the face-off between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer. Watch it. Then watch it again. Stewart tells Cramer why his network is inept and does it so well that Cramer has no choice but to agree.

A couple of people seem not to have grasped what I was trying to say about this Jim Cramer controversy…and by the way, that skirmish is fast turning from a legitimate debate into a cable TV crossover stunt. I don't think it was premeditated in that sense but that's what it's become.

My point was not that pundits make mistakes or get predictions wrong. Everyone does, self included, and we all understand that. It's that you can achieve a stunning level of wrongness on TV and people don't seem to notice. I saw another version of this in the early eighties when I was working on That's Incredible! We were bombarded with approaches from folks who claimed to be able to predict the future via psychic vision or other paranormal means. Most were making a very good living selling, in one way or another, their prognostications…and of course, an appearance on ABC TV would have boosted that income through the skylight.

I happen to not believe in psychic powers or chatting with the dead or anything of the sort…and if I ever did, exposure to these people would have convinced me not only that it was hokum but that most of them knew that. Some, off-camera, seemed to no more think they could read minds than Penn and Teller think they really catch bullets in their respective teeth…and of course, there was zero guilt about the many (and some had many) out there who believed in the alleged psychic's ability, paid well for counsel and adjusted their lives based on what they heard. Some self-proclaimed clairvoyants, of course, did believe in their own abilities, having not only deluded others but themselves, as well.

You could understand how some got away with it. Through a combination of lucky guesses, careful phrasing and logical deduction, they could cite some "visions" that had come to pass…and that was really all it took: Some. The batting averages seemed to not matter. Five accurate predictions out of ten can be somewhat impressive. It's not proof of psychic ability, especially when two of the five are pretty vaguely worded and two more are occurrences anyone could have foreseen…but it didn't seem that odd that the "5 out of 10" psychics had substantial followings. What amazed me was that the "5 out of 200 (or more)" psychics had clients and devotees, as well.

All that seemed necessary was that you had folks who yearned to believe, that they were being told what they wanted to hear and that every so often, you were right about something. If they could get that, they'd ignore all the misses, no matter how numerous. That's kind of how it works too often with experts and pundits on TV. Being right once in a while is enough.

As you probably know, Frost/Nixon was a stage play and a movie, both starring Michael Sheen as David Frost and Frank Langella as the other guy. I enjoyed the movie (as delineated here) but had a lot of reservations about the way it portrayed certain true events.

The National Touring Company, which features Alan Cox as Frost and Stacy Keach as Nixon, has parked itself down at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles for a few weeks and this evening, Carolyn and I attended the first performance. Sad to say, I didn't much like it. The production is slick and well-assembled but I found it superficial and shallow, reducing its story down to the kind of conflict that gets resolved by one outta-left-field "gotcha" moment. David slays Goliath and snatches victory from defeat wholly because at the last minute, one of his researchers hands him a magic bullet in the form of a previously-unknown tape transcript.

That was one problem I had with it. Another, greater one was that I rarely saw Richard Nixon on that stage. Stacy Keach is a fine actor but you either buy him as Nixon or you don't and I couldn't buy him. Among other problems, he seemed too commanding in a movie star way. Richard M. Nixon was socially awkward (the play even says that a few times) and despite his many triumphs, always had an air about him of trying to prove that he belonged among the elite crowd. Keach's Nixon says that in so many words but Keach's manner is confident, charming and theatrical. There's that famous exchange when Nixon made a desperate stab at male bonding small talk, asking Frost, "Did you do any fornicating this weekend?" Coming from Stacy Keach, it sounds like a deliberate joke.

Maybe I'm too familiar with the material and the real events to warm fully to any shorthand or fictionalization…but it seems to me there's a deeper story there, having to do with Nixon's vulnerabilities. Keach does a great job of wringing audience laughter at the sheer disingenuousness of many real Nixon quotes but I just felt he was too good an actor to play someone who was that bad an actor.