Joseph J. Finn writes, in reference to that Pat Buchanan column I linked to…

Well, it is an interesting viewpoint from someone who helped cover for the Nixon White House; an administration that, like the current one, tried to cover up all sorts of malfeasances, lies, unnecessary combat deaths and the subversions of a free press. Sadly, we don't appear to have a Ben Bradlee right now to connect the dots and convince the reasonable elements of the Republican Party that their leader is worthy of impeachment for his crimes.

I agree that investigative reporting in this country ain't what it used to be. I'm just not sure there is a "reasonable element" in either party that will ever place principle above politics…nor did we have that back in the Watergate days. What we had then, I think, was a Republican party that realized that Nixon was going down — in popularity if not in an impeachment trial — and they threw him overboard to save their own necks. Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott and I forget who the third one was — three prominent G.O.P. leaders — essentially went to the White House and told Nixon that he would not have solid Republican backing if it came to an impeachment vote and trial. Goldwater even said he was prepared to vote to convict on at least one count. That was when Nixon knew the time had come to have Pat start packing.

That did not happen with Clinton. The day he was impeached, all indicators had his popularity at some sort of record high. Republicans had thought the various revelations would get it down to the point where Democrats would dump the guy but it never came to that. I have little doubt that if his approval rating had been low — around where Nixon's was — some delegation of Ted Kennedy and the Democratic House and Senate leaders would have gone to see Bill. But they all decided they were better off with him than without him.

I don't expect that to happen with Bush. He has a certain hardcore following. I don't know how large it is but around 21% of Americans tell pollsters they "strongly approve" of his presidency so figure it's close to that number. Bush could get caught robbing a liquor store to buy crack and he wouldn't lose those people. They'd shrug it off as a plot by the Liberal Media, Hillary Clinton and militant gays. Nixon had a rock-solid constituency of about the same size Bush now enjoys but I'm guessing the difference goes something like this: The Republican leadership of 1974 figured they could afford to tick off the extreme right; that they weren't the heart and soul of the party and would eventually fall back in behind its next standard bearer. Which they pretty much did. Moreover, Nixon's "failings" were personal and reflected only on him and his aides. Ousting him did not in any way tarnish the grand Republican agenda.

Today's G.O.P. leadership is afraid to alienate that (approximately) 20%. That's why they won't nominate a pro-choice candidate like McCain or Giuliani in 2008 unless they think the alternative is President Hillary or someone else that fringe would think meant the end of life as we know it. Talk of impeachment might be fun for those who think Bush has been a lousy president. It might even be a good way to convince some of those not in the 20% to vote Democratic in the mid-term elections. But that's about all it's good for.

As I mentioned here, the trend in the fast food industry is decidedly away from healthier, low calorie fare. This article in The Washington Post today notes the same thing. [Thanks to Dennis Donohoe for the pointer.]

According to this article in The New York Times, Mort Walker is about to reopen his comic art museum in the Empire State Building in New York.

This may come as a news flash to some but we gave you a giant-sized hint in this item 85 weeks ago.

I don't agree with every word of this article by Pat Buchanan about Cindy Sheehan and war protests. Heck, I don't agree with every word of a lot of political articles to which I link. But this one is an interesting viewpoint from someone who was around when Richard Nixon was seeing popularity erode for the war over which he found himself presiding.

Bob Costas, who is for my money the best interviewer on television, is sitting in for Larry King this week. Last night, he spent the hour with Conan O'Brien. Tonight, he and his guests discuss the BTK Killer — and every time I see that phrase, I think it's some new sandwich at Burger King. Mr. Costas has also resumed his Costas Now program on HBO which mostly discusses sports in a manner that will even interest people who are not much interested in sports.

A number of folks have written me to tell of recent DVD releases that are advertised as "complete" collections of certain seasons of a TV show but are not. In a few cases, songs are missing, presumably because someone wanted too much money for the rights to a tune they controlled. This is apparently the case with the new release of Season One of The Muppet Show. A few numbers are omitted from the set, including Charles Aznavour singing "The Old Fashioned Way," Jim Nabors performing "Gone With the Wind," Paul Williams doing "All of Me" and Vincent Price warbling "You've Got a Friend" with a Muppet Monster. On some sitcoms and dramatic shows, familiar (and expensive) tunes have been replaced with something generic and cheaper.

It is also sometimes the case that what gets collected on the DVD set are syndication prints have long since been trimmed by a minute or three or five or six to accommodate more commercials. I am told this is the case with the new releases of The Cosby Show and at least the first season of Alf.

This is annoying for many reasons, not the least of which is that something that's advertised as "complete" oughta be complete. I suppose one could mount an argument that "complete" means every episode and not that the episodes themselves are complete…or maybe they'd claim that the syndication versions are now the official versions of the episodes in question. But really, honestly, that's not what customers think they're buying and we all know that. What concerns me also is that at a few of the companies that release material on DVDs, there is sometimes a conscious thought that they will put out a product and then, after everyone who loves that show or movie has purchased it, they will put out an enhanced version with better video, more footage, special features, commentary tracks, etc. that will force the lovers of the material to buy another edition. (Let us remember that the main purpose of new home video formats is to see how many times they can get me to buy Goldfinger.) How will you feel if you pop for a hundred bucks to purchase the several volumes that comprise the "complete" collection of your favorite TV show and then, a year or so later, out comes a "more complete" collection of the same series? Yeah, that's how I'll feel.

The folks assembling these DVDs are not the villains. Most companies have had the wisdom to hire devout fans of the material who truly knock themselves out to bring forth the best-possible products. I've seen some of them remove large handfuls of hair from their own scalps in frustration over the legal issues and rights problems, as well as the many cases where material has been lost and only incomplete prints are available. If one took the position that nothing will be released unless it's absolutely complete, a lot of things we want would never see the light of Netflix. I am willing to accept a set that's almost complete if that's the only option but I would like to know about the omissions in advance, and not because I happened to stumble across an online message from some irate buyer.

Video companies should have the gonads to, at the very least, put up this information on their websites in advance so the purchasers don't have to find it out from one another after they've spent the bucks. Before I order, I'd like to know not just what's on the DVD but what's not on it that a reasonable person might assume is there. Are the episodes of a TV series the full, original network versions? Are they cut-down syndication prints? Or sped-up ones? (That happens, too.) What had to be cut or changed because a song could not be cleared for a reasonable fee or even at any price? Has something been omitted because it didn't offend anyone when it first aired but it might today? How about because of legal action? I can think of a couple of things that ran on network television and led to lawsuits, and the settlement was that a certain episode or segment would never be seen again.

That this is generally not done is not wholly because someone's afraid it will harm sales. Heck, in some instances, I think it might help sales. I think it's often laziness. They don't think to make this information available anywhere so we all have to wait at least until the review copies come out and check them, and sometimes the reviewers don't know. This is not a very good system and it's made me a lot more cautious about buying DVD sets and especially about advance-ordering. If the companies would just be candid about this kind of thing, maybe we'd all benefit. At the very least, it would be more honest and that is not without its value.

I dunno how many of you are following the "Able Danger" revelations but it's like a really bad episode of Divorce Court. On Divorce Court, the idea was, at least back when I occasionally watched it, to swing the spectators' emotions back and forth. Some witness would reveal that the husband did something worthy of the Anti-Christ on a bad hair day while the wife was the soul of honesty and goodness. Then the next witness (or perhaps cross-examination of the same witness) would reveal additional details about the incident that cast both players in the opposite light. Like a witness would say, "He [meaning the husband] was in the bathroom shooting himself with drugs while she [the wife] was out collecting donations for charity." Then the follow-up testimony would reveal that the husband was a diabetic injecting himself with insulin and the wife had been convicted several times of running a phony charity scam and using the money she collected to fund child pornography.

That was the formula: Load the argument for one side, then for the other. On some shows, they'd go back and forth a few times before the judge would grant the divorce and divide the property on a more-or-less 50/50 basis.

For the last few days, there have been new revelations every few hours about this government intelligence program called "Able Danger." Some of these stories seem to be collapsing out of sheer improbability. Others may have some real substance…and as the accounts bounce back and forth like Divorce Court testimony, it's almost been fun watching the various political blogs and pundits play their hands. No one yet knows to what extent this scandal can be used to blame 9/11 on the Clinton administration or the Bush administration, but it has the makings of being good for one or the other. So, near as I can tell, the strategy sounds like this: "There's nothing there…unless, of course, this can be used against our political opponents — in which case, it's a bombshell, an undisputed fact and the smokiest of smoking guns."

Both extreme Liberal and extreme Conservative sites are urging caution…and it's not like either group is terribly afraid of publishing false, unverified rumors. Some of these sites will post any damn thing as long as it's determental to the other side. No, they're being cautious about committing to a firm position before they see where this thing is going to point. No one wants to say, "Whoever did this has the blood of the 9/11 victims on their hands" until they're sure it won't be their party.

I have a feeling that's going to be said. I'm just curious to see by whom.

Our friends over at Animation World Magazine have posted a nice report on this year's Comic-Con International. You'll especially enjoy it if you like to see me giving sarcastic answers to perfectly reasonable questions.

I'm back from Canter's, posting via conventional means with no potato salad in sight. Right now on my TV, I see live coverage of a white Honda that led police on a high-speed chase beginning about an hour ago. The car is stopped on the eastbound 10 freeway with about a dozen police cars stopped a few yards away, waiting for the passenger(s) to come out. There are probably at least a half-dozen helicopters hovering overhead and they've been there for about half an hour…

Oh, wait. The police are finally moving in and the suspect is coming out with his hands up. He's being arrested while police with guns drawn advance cautiously on the car, just in case there's someone else inside…

…which there isn't. Okay, it looks like this one is over. But the traffic out there has to be a nightmare with one of our busiest freeways shut down for 30+ minutes as rush hour commences.

All through the standoff, you could see that the person operating the helicopter camera was poised to zoom out to a longshot if there was a chance of us seeing a person shot to death on live TV. I still don't know why the local stations don't all agree to cover these things on a seven second delay.

Okay, back to work. Nothing to see here. Show's over.

This is an amazing post. Why? Because it's being done from a table at Canter's Delicatessen on Fairfax Avenue here in Los Angeles. I'm lunching with Josh Jones, one of the high muck-a-mucks (that's a technical term) of Dreamhost, the company that hosts this website on its massive servers. Josh just had a turkey melt and I wolfed down the half-sandwich and a cup o' soup special, then he let me play on his Sony Vaio T140P with a wireless Verizon EVDO card that connects to Ye Olde Internet. I couldn't resist trying to post from it and if you can read this, it works. At this moment, I have full, wireless access to the Internet and full, wireless access to deli food. Ain't Science wonderful?

How many mistakes can you find in this paragraph from an article written by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich at The Jerusalem Post? It's a review of a new Fantastic Four videogame.

There is more of a story behind this action adventure game than inside it. Fantastic Four was created in 1961 by Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber in New York 83 years ago) after he helped to create the unforgettable Superman, Spider-Man, The Hulk, X-Men and Daredevil characters. But after comic books' readership declined and poor management sent Marvel Entertainment into bankruptcy in the late '90s, two Israeli businessmen named Avi Arad and Isaac Perlmutter took over the ownership and, demonstrating Superman-like acumen and courage, saved it from collapse. They managed to restore the past glory of this forefather of the comic book industry – largely developed by American Jews after the Depression and reaching its heights in the '60s. Its new Twentieth Century Fox superhero movie (from which this game was a knockoff) is, despite disapproving reviews by critics, making money nevertheless.

There's more to the article than that one paragraph but it alone should keep error-finders busy for days.

Never underestimate the power of this weblog. Here's proof of it.

Who really broke the story that Mark Felt was Deep Throat? Well, a number of us made educated guesses but only a few journalists managed to nail it down before Felt's family took him public. One was my pal Dawna Kaufmann, who's just set up a weblog. Her first entry tells all about how she broke the story.

Saul Bass was a great designer of advertising and especially of movie titles. He elevated the latter area to a true art form, as you can see over at this webpage devoted to his work. You will especially enjoy the little interactive feature where you can click your way through many of his most famous title sequences. [Thanks to Steve Horton for telling me about it.]

A surprising number of folks have written in to say I misspelled "Merlin" in my piece about Camelot. That's the way the wizard's name is more commonly spelled but according to the script by Alan Jay Lerner and the program book for the show, the character in Camelot is named Merlyn, with a "Y." So that's why I spelled it the way I did.