Michael Kinsley on John McCain, the man who has a reputation for "straight talk," no matter how he bobs and weaves.

Kinsley's article reminds me of something, which is the extent to which some supporters are willing to accept that their chosen candidate is hiding his true views in order to perhaps get elected. Years ago on the old Lou Gordon TV show — and am I the only one who remembers Lou Gordon? — I once saw a man make an interesting presentation. His thesis was that a number of then-current candidates, mostly from the South, were using code words in their speeches.

They couldn't come right out and say they were for rolling back Civil Rights for minorities because then they'd lose. So they'd developed certain phrases that when uttered, would convey their true agendas to voters of like sentiment. A sentence like, "We must protect the sanctity of state governments" sounded reasonable but it really meant, "We must stop Federal Troops from coming in and insisting we let blacks in white classrooms." The gent on Lou Gordon's show ran several clips that, he said, were examples of this. He called them "winks." They were a way of saying one thing and then winking at a certain segment of the electorate to let them know you didn't really mean it; that your heart was with them and they should just accept that you had to say such things to get into office and give them what they want. Whether those particular examples were valid or not, I do think politicians do that a lot. They also bait-and-switch the other way, hinting they'll do the opposite when they really won't. Wish I knew which kind McCain was. Maybe both.

Why are we still looking for Jimmy Hoffa?

I just revised the text of the previous item. When I wrote it at 2:30 this morning, I could've sworn that the film version of Cabaret won the Best Picture Oscar that year and said so. As teeming multitudes are now reminding me, that is not so.

A number of you have suggested that I just stamp Top Secret on my screw-up and claim some sort of National Security Privilege to cover it up. Not a bad idea. If I can tap enough reporters' phones, I might even get away with it.

That's a photo from the original Broadway production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, produced by Cy Feuer and Ernie Martin. The two men were also responsible for Where's Charley?, Can Can, The Boy Friend, Silk Stockings, Little Me, Guys and Dolls and a batch of other Broadway shows and even a few movies, including the much-acclaimed 1972 Cabaret.

Mr. Feuer died today at the age of 95. He needs no greater testimonial to his success than to just list those shows. A lot of men have been heralded as major Broadway producers with just two like that. For the rest of time, actors will be performing and audiences will be enjoying works made possible by the producing savvy of Feuer and Martin.

You all know Barbara Feldon as the comely spy "99" on Get Smart. Before that, some of us knew her as the sultry-voiced seductress who writhed about on a tiger rug and sold Top Brass hair dressing in one of those commercials that was better than most shows it was in. (Well, it was if you were my age when it aired. I was around twelve at the time.)

Odd how your memory can overrate something. I just saw this clip, the one I'm sharing with you today, for the first time in around forty years. I remember it as being much sexier and filled with horny innuendo than it is, and I don't think it's because she did other Top Brass ads that were. I think this is what passed for randy in 1964. See if you don't agree…

A couple of things…

• Several folks have written to inform me that Honey Smacks have already been renamed just Smacks. I didn't see that on the shelf or on the Kellogg's website but I'll take your word for it. On that site, by the way, you can see a page devoted to Pops (formerly Sugar Pops, Sugar Corn Pops and Corn Pops). They're trying quite hard to make a connection between hip-hop music and sugar-frosted puffed corn…and of course, I can see how those two things go together like cheap car insurance and talking reptiles, but I wonder how many people can.
• It has also been suggested by some correspondents that the word "sugar" disappeared from a lot of boxes because of the shift from that sweetener to high fructose corn syrup. I suppose that could be part of it but sugar is still the second ingredient listed in Frosted Flakes, right after milled corn, so I'll bet they could still use it in the name if they wanted to. They don't. The only place you'll find the "s" word prominently displayed on the box or in advertising is when they tout the new versions of Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops that have "1/3 less sugar." Absence of sugar is a selling point these days.
• Since we're talking about cereal, I'll mention that the only one I eat these days is Barbara's Shredded Oats. It used to only be available in Southern California at Whole Foods Markets, Trader Joe's and health food emporiums but lately, they have it at Ralph's and Gelson's and maybe other grocers. As you can see here, it contains zero sugar, using molasses for its slight sweetness. It tastes pretty darn good, I think.
• On another topic: People send me a lot of links they think I might want to put up on this site. An awful lot of them lately have been for sites where you get to punch George W. Bush in the face or hit him with pies or watch him morph into a gibbon. I love political humor and not just when it reinforces my views…but there's a certain humorless level of nastiness that just leaves me cold or worse. I think Bush is a pretty bad president but I don't derive any jollies from seeing him Photoshopped into a clown suit or a sex scene with Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton. My belief in Free Speech accepts that such things have a right to exist but nothing says I have to link to them.
• Lastly, my pal Gordon Kent makes another good point about this argument of, "If you're not doing anything you shouldn't be doing, you should have no problem with having your calls monitored." If Dick Cheney wasn't doing anything he shouldn't have been doing with that Energy Task Force of his, he should have had no problem dilvulging the names of its members, right? This is the most secretive administration ever and I don't buy that it's all about National Security. As Jack Anderson once said (approximately), "In Washington, you don't bury your failures. You stamp Top Secret on them."

Steven Marsh makes a good point that I originally included in the previous post then deleted…

To those who argue, "If you're not doing anything you shouldn't be doing, you should have no problem with having your calls monitored," I note that "wrong" is in the eye of the beholder. One of the most telling examples from recent history were from McCarthyism, where people who had associated with others legally (either because it was before the 1940 passage of the Smith Act or because the people they had associated with weren't part of the Communist party until years later) were still forced to testify and account for those actions years later; lives were destroyed.

As a more nuts-and-bolts example, I suspect many of these people saying, "If you're not doing anything wrong…" still wouldn't want to be, say, audited on their taxes every year for the rest of their lives. Yet, why should they object? After all, if they're filing their taxes correctly, then they shouldn't have a problem having to disrupt their lives for a week or so every year, getting files together, making sure everything is documented so that another person can pore over it, etc. And, of course, they should be willing to pay whatever fees or penalties for filing incorrectly on the off chance that they have made a mistake within their half-inch of papers; after all, they obviously did something wrong in that case, right?

Yeah, I should have left in that I don't necessarily agree with the first part of that statement; that if you haven't done anything wrong, you shouldn't be worried about having your calls monitored. Plenty of people in this country have their lives nuked by unfounded investigations that never prove wrongdoing or prove it only on the slimmest of technicalities. This is the reason we have that "probable cause" phrase in the Bill of Rights and so many laws. Authorities should not be able to go on fishing expeditions, prowling through your life in search of something they can twist into an indictment.

My father, as I've probably mentioned here, worked most of his life for the Internal Revenue Service, a job he hated to pieces. He was not involved with audits but he dealt often with people in his office who were. Much of the time, he thought they were fair and benevolent but there were periods — especially during the Nixon administration but only with regard to selected targets — that an auditor was told, in effect: "Nail this guy."

If you were that guy, there was no such thing as filing your taxes correctly. They would keep calling you in and demanding paperwork you couldn't possibly have and threatening to audit your friends and business associates the same way because of your association with them. They'd just scare the hell out of you until you gave in and accepted a plea bargain, paying a fine and maybe even admitting criminal guilt just to end the nightmare. The atmosphere in the department did not allow the auditor to go back to his superior and say, "I couldn't nail that guy. He's clean." So he'd keep you on the hook until you yelled "Uncle!" Of course, at the same time (this is still during the pre-Watergate Nixon era) they were letting their friends make millions a year, lie like hell on their taxes and get away with paying eleven dollars. That's the kind of thing that too often goes on in government departments that can operate without oversight and which assert a sole right to decide what's legal.

I can understand that some people are so fearful of another 9/11 that they're willing to let government officials do any damn thing they say they need to keep us safer. I think they're wrong — I think we'll be safer if those officials are a lot more accountable for any possible abuse of the system — but I understand the fear. What I don't understand is why when you say you want the spying programs to be subject to judicial review, they act like you're saying, "We must stop all intelligence gathering because my privacy is more important than stopping the next terrorist attack."

Years ago, there was a State Senator in California — I forget his name — who was accused of a gross impropriety and conflict of interest because he'd voted for some bill that enriched a certain corporation while he was a major stockholder in that corporation. He promptly called a press conference and issued a denial in the clearest and most outraged terms. He did not own stock in that company, he said…and it turned out that was technically true. Some time later, reporters discovered that the stock was registered to his five-year-old daughter. I suspect that some or all of the statements the Bush Administration is making about the NSA situation are "true" in that sense.

A number of commentators seem to also think that and they're likening the hair-splitting to when Bill Clinton said, "That depends on the meaning of the word, 'is.'" I don't know that that's a fair comparison. Clinton may have been trying to weasel on the truth there but at least he was doing it under oath in a deposition where his interrogators could ask him the question again and again, rephrasing it to narrow in on specifics. If you've ever been deposed, you know that's what they do. Unlike a statement to the press, you don't get to give your evasive answer just once with your calculated phrasing because they get to pose follow-ups and you have to respond to them.

That's what I think is missing here. When George W. Bush says, "…we do not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval," I think I'd like a sharp reporter to be able to ask a couple of follow-ups like, "Who is 'we' in that sentence? Does anyone in the government listen to domestic phone calls without court approval?" And given some of the ways in which our Attorney General has attempted to define the powers of the presidency as virtually unlimited, I'd like someone to ask, "Do you believe a president has the right to authorize eavesdropping on domestic phone calls without court approval?"

My objection to the NSA program may have less to do with what they're doing than it does with the fact that they assert their power to do it without oversight. I don't trust anyone in government to wield power without oversight and I certainly don't trust the band of guys who are now going around claiming, "Well, we never actually said there was a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda…we never actually said we were sure there were Weapons of Mass Destruction…"

People keep e-mailing me to say, "If you're not doing anything you shouldn't be doing, you should have no problem with having your calls monitored." I think a fair response to that is: "If the Bush administration isn't doing anything they shouldn't be doing, they should have no problem with letting an independent entity such as the FISA court monitor what they're doing."

The diamond-encrusted cell phone. Prices start at $25,600 and go up to a million. If only I'd known about this before I got Marv Wolfman his birthday present.

Saw something shocking today in the market. Once upon a time, Kellogg's had a cereal called Sugar Pops…puffed corn with a sweet coating. They weren't my favorite but when I got a Variety Pak, the Sugar Pops (unlike the Shredded Wheat) did not go uneaten.

Then one day, the word "sugar" began to fall out of favor with parents and maybe even with some kids, too. Sugar Pops became Sugar Corn Pops and then a few years later, they were just plain Corn Pops. I'm not sure if this was part of a long-range plan or not. Maybe someone at Kellogg's thought that if they made the change from Sugar Pops to Corn Pops in steps, loyal buyers would understand it was the same product. (I assume it was the same product. If they'd modified the cereal itself, I think they'd have completely changed the name.)

Inevitably, they became Corn Pops…and I'm pretty sure inside was the same puffed corn with the sweet coating I ate when I was five. But I have also seen packages — and I'm sorry I couldn't find a photo to prove this to you but take my word for it — that just said Pops. Nothing about sugar, nothing about corn. It was just a box of Pops.

I stood there stunned, blocking the aisle as other shoppers attempted to get by before their DiGiorno's Frozen Pizzas thawed. They had to squeeze past me, staring at the shelf, realizing where this is all heading. I've seen Sugar Frosted Flakes become just Frosted Flakes and Sugar Smacks become Honey Smacks. Next time I go in, they'll probably be just Flakes and Smacks.

It's not a great trend. If people are going to eat sugar, let them be well aware it's sugar. Don't help them pretend it's something else. Why they're doing this, I don't know. If I were running the Kellogg's company, I don't think I'd want to disabuse people of the notion that my product relates in any way to food.

When Johnny Carson announced his retirement, we were saddened but there were consolation prizes. His last few months of shows were wonderful as performer after performer came by and made a little extra effort for his or her farewell appearance with Johnny. For Steve Martin's last turn, which was on May 6, 1992, Johnny prevailed upon him to do The Great Flydini. This was a routine Martin had developed years earlier and performed here and there, mostly for personal appearances and charity affairs. As I understand it, he hadn't done it in years, in part because of the long prep time involved and in part because he'd pretty much quit performing in front of live audiences. (He did the routine again at least once. A year later, there was a big charity concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown L.A. where Neil Young and The Great Flydini opened for Simon and Garfunkel. Bet that was an evening.)

If you'd like to see another Steve Martin appearance with the once and future King of Late Night, there's one from 1976 up on the Johnny Carson website. If you prowl that site, you'll find a lot of fine video clips. You'll also find a history of The Tonight Show containing a couple of errors.

And now, without further ado — The Great Flydini…

Back in this item, we talked about a new category that was being added to the Tony Awards — Best Performance by an Actor or Actress in a Recreated Role. The idea here is to honor someone who steps into a role that they did not do on opening night but who does outstanding work. It would or could go to someone who played Max Bialystock in The Producers after Nathan Lane or The Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera after Michael Crawford.

The Tony nominations were announced the other day and you may be wondering who was nominated in this new category. Answer: No one. They decided not to give out the award this year.

Because there are so few Broadway shows — compared, say, to the number of TV shows eligible each year for Emmys or motion pictures that could garner an Oscar — the Tony rules allow for this. Some years in some categories, they decide there just aren't enough contenders so they skip it. This past season, there seemed to be only two possible entries for Special Theatrical Event, an award which usually goes to a one-man or one-woman show. The possibles were Bridge and Tunnel, which stars Sarah Jones and is a critical and maybe a financial success…and The Blonde in the Thunderbird, an autobiographical presentation by Suzanne Somers that opened to withering reviews and closed a week later. Rather than give Ms. Somers a Tony nomination, they're dropping the category and awarding a special Tony to Sarah Jones.

They're not even doing that with the "Recreated Role" award. There were a couple of actors who might have qualified…Jonathan Pryce in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and (if the judges bent the rules on the dates a bit) Harvey Fierstein in Fiddler on the Roof. But it turns out there's a loophole in the rule book. Tony regulations require that all 24 members of the award's Administration Committee see a performance and that 16 of them vote it worthy of a nomination. While all or most of the committee members see shows when they first open, many do not get around to seeing the replacements…so it's hard to muster 16 votes. Someone needs to work on this idea.

Just pulled the above box off the new Yahoo front page. They're probably right about Peter Luger's, which serves the best steak I've ever had. But let's be accurate here, people. Prime rib is not steak. The prime rib at Lawry's is quite wonderful but it's wonderful prime rib. It's not steak. Steak is one thing. Prime rib is another. If the guy who made up this chart ordered steak in a restaurant and they brought him prime rib, he'd say, "Hey, this isn't what I asked for."

Has he been to some of the more acclaimed restaurants in L.A. that actually serve steak? Mastro's? Arnie Morton's? The Palm? Taylor's? Porterhouse Bistro? Did he actually sample these and decide that Lawry's The Prime Rib (that's the full name of the establishment) was a better steakhouse in spite of the fact that the word "steak" appears nowhere on its menu? This matters. If I issued a list of the best places to eat in each city in Ohio and put down Burger King for Cleveland, it might be relevant for you to know that I've only eaten one meal ever in Cleveland and that was at a Burger King. Which also, by the way, is not a steakhouse despite the fact that they serve broiled beef.

I expect weasely steakhouse ratings in those in-flight magazines. The ones listed pay to be on those lists. I also notice that are about eleven hundred "Top 10" and "Top 20" steakhouse lists on the Internet. You'd have to serve a pretty lousy steak to not get on someone's "best" list. But you'd still have to serve steak. It would be nice if it was good steak but based on some of the places I've seen on those lists, that's not mandatory.

This has been your Trivial Outrage for today.

As we've mentioned here, NBC did something a bit odd (to me) with last night's Deal or No Deal. Coverage of the speech by George W. Bush took up a bit less than 25 minutes of the show's time on the East Coast so the producers and/or network edited two separate versions of the show. The full, two-hour version which aired in other time zones included the last part of one game (a waitress from New York), a complete and very long game (a woman whose husband is stationed in Iraq and who participated via a live satellite feed) and the first part of a third game (a Blackjack dealer from Hawaii). There were also a few "behind the scenes" segments showing cash being awarded to past winners.

For the East Coast version, they edited out the "behind the scenes" stuff and cut out the gent from Hawaii. Presumably, the next episode will begin with the end of his game and the folks in the East will go, "Hey, where'd he come from?" For them, last night's show ended with the lady whose hubby is in Iraq. (Someone did some quick-and-dirty edits there. As the show concluded out here, Howie Mandel thanked everyone who'd arranged the live feed from Iraq…and the Blackjack dealer was in some of those shots. For the East Coast version, they substituted some tape of the military wife and her family, and laid Howie's lines over those visuals. The end credits on the East also had to be laid over different footage since the Blackjack dealer was in them, too.)

An interesting way of handling a problem. I guess I like it more than delaying all the shows' start times…and it sure beats just joining a show in progress and missing the opening. Still, I think it's kind of an admission that on Deal or No Deal, the first half of every game is pretty missable.

The Los Angeles Police Department is blogging.