That crazed Liberal, William F. Buckley, weighs in on the Terri Schiavo matter.

Michael Palin is sitting on top of the world. [Los Angeles Times, registration needed]

Frank Rich on those who exploit religion to pander to what is really a rather small chunk of the American electorate.

For those of you who are not sick of the Terri Schiavo matter, here's a link to an interesting FAQ which seeks to dismiss some of the myths and misunderstandings of the case.

And here's Andrew Sullivan writing about the matter, but more importantly about the contradictions he sees in the present-day Conservative movement.

Neil Gaiman wrote me last night asking me to explain what's going on with the current rift between the Writers Guild of America, West (hereafter referred to as WGAw) and its Right Coast counterpart (WGAe). That's right, Neil. Give me the impossible assignment. I'm almost afraid to tackle it because the dispute sounds so petty and childish, but it may explain why these affiliated organizations do not achieve more for their members, and why some of us have opted to excuse ourselves from Guild politics. I did my time, thank you, and this is yet another example of why I don't go back.

As briefly as I can tell it: The two Guilds have existed for decades as parallel, largely-united entities. They are closer than sister organizations but not quite Siamese Twins. They negotiate together, they do many things as one…but they have separate leaderships. They also fight a lot. No matter who's running the WGAw, they always seem to be fighting the same battles with WGAe and forming uneasy compacts when the two must link arms in some crusade.

The dividing line, by the way is the Mississippi River. If you're on this side and you write TV or movies, you're under the jurisdiction of the WGAw. If you're on the other side, you're WGAe and proud of it. But of course, some writers are bi-coastal. Some productions go back and forth. And there are many services, especially in the area of screenwriting, which the smaller WGAe is unable to provide…so the WGAw provides them for all. The constitutions of both organizations require a screenwriter living in the east to join the WGAw and specifies that half of those folks' dues will go to WGAw. If I understand my history correctly, this was the practice until some time in the seventies when it stopped.

Why did it stop? No one seems able to explain, but things have been pretty volatile in the WGAw since that approximate time. We've spent a lot of time and energy battling with the Producers…and when we're not battling the Producers, we attack each other. Every so often, someone out here has tired of fighting Management or Ourselves, and they raise the issue of the WGAe allegedly not living up to the agreement. Nothing has ever been resolved or seriously pursued until just recently when the current WGAw board made a major issue of it and things got very nasty. Let's see if I can fairly summarize both sides…

The WGAw contends that the WGAe is waaaay in arrears on paying bucks to the WGAw for services and that a lot of its screenwriter members were long ago supposed to join WGAw and that all this needs to be mopped up. The WGAw maintains that this is all spelled out unambiguously in the similar (but not identical) constitutions of the two organizations.

The WGAe responds that, first of all, the wording ain't that clear — there are questions — and that those parts of the constitution haven't been enforced in 30-some-odd years so why start now? The WGAe is currently involved in an important negotiation regarding newswriters and in an election dispute. They say that even if the WGAw is right (which they aren't conceding), the WGAw has picked the worst possible time to raise these issues and is doing so to harm the WGAe.

The WGAw has replies to all that, but the important thing is that there is an arbitration process, described in both Guild's constitutions, that can bring in a neutral party to play Solomon and carve up the baby. The WGAw invoked the clause that triggers this process and it specifies that the arbitration must commence in 60 days, which in this case means April 10. First order of business is for the two sides to agree on an arbitrator. After some delay and an accusation of stalling tactics, they agreed on a Justice Joseph Grodin…though the WGAe told the WGAw not to contact him until there was further communication. Then there was no further communication.

Worried that the 60 days was being frittered away, WGAw President Daniel Petrie composed a letter over both his signature and that of WGAe President Herb Sargent. Addressed to Justice Grodin, it merely asked if he was available to serve as mediator. Petrie sent it to Sargent and said, in effect, "if you have no objection, I'm going to send this." There was no reply so Petrie sent it. Sargent became furious that it was sent at all, but also that it was sent with his signature since, for one thing, he hadn't written or okayed it. The WGAe therefore withdrew its approval of Grodin as mediator. A new one has been selected and since I haven't heard anything in a week or so, I assume things are on track for the arbitration to begin…but that something will soon arise to get everything off-track again. Betting on WGA discord is like laying money that the Milwaukee Brewers won't be in the World Series.

So what's really going on here? My expert analysis, which is worth about a dime on the open market, is that it all goes to the defensive posture of the WGAe, seeking to maintain its independence. It's a much smaller entity and given the way Show Business has migrated steadily west over the years, it will only get smaller. There are a lot of folks who have suggested that the WGAw go all-out to absorb the WGAe, and the WGAe probably sees all this as laying groundwork for such a takeover. I don't know if that would be better or worse for writers as a whole but I can certainly understand how some WGAe members fear getting lost in a bigger labor organization. The WGAw expends its best efforts on screenwriting and whatever kind of prime-time TV is currently hot. The last 30-or-so years, WGAw members who write game shows or variety shows, to name two categories that don't have big constituencies, have felt that their Guild does not pay enough attention to those areas. It's easy to imagine that the localized concerns of WGAe members could get the shortest kind of shrift if, officially or unofficially, they become a subset of the WGAw. On the other hand, there are those out here who think a merger or takeover would end the squabbling and help writers on both coasts, and that the primary obstacle is that the WGAe's paid staff enjoys high salaries and wants to keep enjoying them.

How this will all play out, I dunno, but I doubt it'll be healthy in the long run. In the short run, it may just be a temporary Cease Fire, which is sometimes all you can hope for in Guild disputes. The expectation seems to be that the arbitrator will work out a compromise that will say neither side is wholly in the wrong. That's kind of what arbitrators do, especially in a case like this.

The WGA, when it works the way it's supposed to, is a grand and vital organization that has made it possible for creative folks to swim with sharks and not get too badly mauled. Even when it doesn't work, it's preferable to no representation at all…and I say that as someone who has written loads of teevee shows with WGA coverage and without. The "without" jobs have been animation projects. Cartoons were once wholly outside the WGA's purview but they're slowly-but-thankfully moving under Guild protection. There's a reason that darn near every single person who has written animation the last thirty years wants that to happen.

Still, the WGAw is too often a dysfunctional organization that splinters along a wide array of party lines — haves versus have-nots, militants versus statesmen, young versus old, hyphenates (writer-directors or writer-producers) versus full-time writers, etc. It's an enormously democratic institution but at times, letting everyone have their say can be quite immobilizing. Most committees are "open," meaning that any members can be on them, and I once chaired what I think was the largest Guild committee ever. It proved rather tidily that when you get enough opinionated people in a room and they all get to speak and vote, nothing can ever get done. As more than one WGA member has commented, "Management doesn't have to try and divide us. We do a fine job of that, ourselves." The current WGAw/WGAe dust-up is yet another chapter and the end of the book is nowhere in sight.

I dunno the release date yet but Warner Home Video is preparing DVD sets of the first seasons of The Huckleberry Hound Show from 1959 and The Yogi Bear Show from 1961. That is to say, one set of Huck, one set of Yogi. These are some of my all-time favorite cartoons, especially due to the superior vocal performances of Daws Butler, but also because the timing and gags are often quite wonderful. So I was delighted that they asked me to appear for an interview that will be part of a documentary for the Yogi set. Also appearing in supplementary material on one or both will be Earl Kress, Nancy Cartwright, Charlie Adler, Corey Burton and Tom Kenny, plus some other folks. That's what I did today: Drove through pouring rain to be videotaped for this project.

(Confidential to Fred Hembeck: Tom "Spongebob Squarepants" Kenny told me to tell the world that your review of the songs he co-authored for the Spongebob movie and/or CD — the review is somewhere on this archived page — was uncanny in that you nailed all the "in" references. Nice job, Hembeck.)

I have another public appeal to animation buffs here. As you might just recall, The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Yogi Bear Show once featured little segments (they call them "interstitials") of Huck and Yogi and everyone before, between and after the cartoons. They were discarded later when the cartoons were repackaged a dozen different ways for syndication…but when they were part of these half-hour shows, these short segments were part of the experience.

Warner Home Video would like to include as many of these bridges as possible on their forthcoming DVD sets of those programs. Problem: They can't find all the interstitials. Even as I blog, grown men are combing through warehouses for this footage which hasn't been broadcast in umpteen years. They've found a number of them…and in a few cases, they've located the audio but not the video of one, or the video but not the audio. Anyway, this is a real longshot but does anyone reading this have any old 16mm prints or VHS tapes of whole episodes of The Yogi Bear Show with the interstititials? They've located all or most from ol' Huck's show but some of the Yogi spots are missing in whole or part. Even if you just have a bad quality videotape, the audio may be usable to dub over footage that is lacking a soundtrack. If you have anything of this sort, please drop me a line and I'll forward it on to the appropriate folks…but hurry. There isn't much time before the DVDs have to be finalized. Thanks — and if you're on an animation discussion board, please copy this paragraph and the one before and post it, or just direct people to this item.

Came home from something I'll describe in the next posting to find no less than fourteen messages reminding me (or asking me if I knew) that Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville) had a nice role in Mr. Hitchcock's esteemed Rear Window — playing a songwriter, no less. Yes, indeed.

A couple of folks wrote to ask if I was kidding when I said that "David Seville" created Alvin and the Chipmunks. One wrote, "He was a cartoon character, wasn't it?" Well, yes, he was…but he was the alter ego of Ross Bagdasarian, the songwriter-singer responsible for the Chipmunks records. Even before Alvin squeaked into existence, Bagdasarian had hits (like "Witch Doctor") under the Seville name. He used the two monikers rather interchangeably — I have an autographed Chipmunks album he signed as D.S. — and that's how I was using them. So, no, I wasn't making a joke…and yes, he was also Ross Bagdasarian…and, hey, isn't it about time for a CD of his non-Chipmunk recordings?

David Brooks, who does a column for the New York Times, is the Conservative that Liberals most often cite when they want to prove they're fair-minded enough to not write off everything any Conservative says, just because he's across the aisle. I'm not sure who the Liberal is that Conservatives would cite as fair-minded. Some, of course, would argue it's an oxymoron.

Brooks, of course, occasionally inflames The Left with things he writes but they seem to be cheering this column, which is about the nasty (and lucrative) ways The Right has co-mingled lobbying and governing. Worth a read.

Warner Home Video has finally issued a DVD of the 1960 movie version of Bells Are Ringing, starring Judy Holliday and Dean Martin, complete with a glorious hunk of bonus material. There's a short "making of…" documentary, there are cut numbers and alternate takes…and if you have any fondness for this film adaptation of a hit Broadway show, you'll want to order it, which you can do from Amazon by clicking here. I always found the film quite entertaining, if only because it captured the wonderful performance of Ms. Holliday. I never got to see her on stage but there was something so delightful about her screen appearances that I'm sure I missed out on something.

I have two special interests in this movie. One is purely nostalgic: In 1960, I was eight years old and my mother took me on a two-week trip to New York, Hartford and Boston — the first two towns were because I had relatives to meet. In Manhattan, we stayed at the Taft Hotel, went to the Statue of Liberty, attended a live broadcast of the game show, Concentration…and took in two movies. One, which bored me silly, was The Nun's Story. I think my mother didn't like it either, and we walked out on it. The other, which I enjoyed, was Bells Are Ringing, which we saw at the Radio City Music Hall. I liked the film and I liked the fact that there were scenes of walking around New York City, and then when the movie ended, we went out and walked around New York City. When you're eight, as I was, that kind of thing can impress you.

I'm also, as you can see from this site, fascinated by the contribution of great voiceover actors, and Bells Are Ringing has fine, uncredited performances by June Foray, Paul Frees and Shepard Menken. You all know June and Paul from their many appearances, most notably in the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, but the late Mr. Menken was equally ubiquitous. (He did almost all the extra voices on The Alvin Show, including the great inventor, Clyde Crashcup.) In Bells Are Ringing, Shep was the announcer in the opening fake commercial, and he's heard in a few other spots. Paul and June provided most of the voices that are heard in phone calls, of which there are many in the film. In the "Drop That Name" musical number, there's one point where two on-camera actors are dubbed by Paul and one actress is dubbed by June. This may not matter to you but when you're fifty-three, as I am, that kind of thing can impress you.

At least, we hope Stephen Sondheim is both on this, his 75th birthday. He should be. I mean, he's only our greatest living Broadway composer, and a lot of people think he's the best ever. He probably won't read this but maybe, if we all think good thoughts in his direction, he'll sense them, enjoy the day…and then go back to writing his next show. We can't get enough out of this man.

Just wanted to note the passing of two great musicians who probably never played the same room…

Bobby Short was the King of Cabaret Performers, logging four decades at the Cafe Carlyle in New York. I once had the pleasure of enjoying his smooth blend of jazz, old standards and show tunes, and it was a fine (if pricey) evening. There was something very beautiful about the sight and sound of Mr. Short in his tux at the piano. It was just so…right. Here's a link to a piece about him in the New York Times.

Lalo Guerrero was a fine singer-writer of Mexican-American tunes, many of them glorious parodies like "There's No Tortillas," which he composed to the tune of "There's No Tomorrow." His biggest hit was probably "Pancho Lopez," a parody of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett." (The New York Times obit errs and gives its name as "Pancho Sanchez.") And Guerrero was not only the Allan Sherman of Mexico. He had a line of kids' records starring "Las Ardillitas," a band of squirrels who sang with sped voices. If that sounds to you like The Chipmunks…well, Mr. Seville, the creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, thought so, too. He sued…but Guerrero managed to convince a judge that he'd been making the records before Seville started his series. I never got to see him perform but just last year, I attended a play based on his life and music. He was a very talented man and an important voice for his countryfolks.

Still busy, but I wanted to direct your attention to this article by Eric Boehlert. It's in Salon so non-subscribers will have to watch an ad or something if they want to read it. But it claims something about the Terri Schiavo case that I hadn't realized. (That's assuming it's true. If it isn't, I would imagine it would be pretty easy to rebut by citing the correct numbers.) Here are two key paragraphs…

Recent polling data, in outlets from Fox News to the Washington Post, shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans back the position of Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, that he, and not his wife's parents, should have the final say about removing the feeding tube of his wife, who has been severely brain-damaged and incapacitated for the past 15 years. The polling data seriously undercuts the notion that Americans are deeply divided on the Schiavo case. Yet ever since March 18, when Republicans began their unprecedented push to intervene legislatively in a state court case that had already been heard by 19 judges, the press has all but disregarded the polls.

The Schiavo episode highlights not only how far to the right the GOP-controlled Congress has lunged — a 2003 Fox News poll found just 2 percent of Americans think the government should decide this type of right-to-die issue — but also how paralyzed the mainstream press has become in pointing out the obvious: that the GOP leadership often operates well outside the mainstream of America. The press's timidity is important because publicizing the poll results might extend the debate from one that focuses exclusively on a complicated moral and ethical dilemma to one that also examines just how far a radical and powerful group of religious conservatives are willing to go to push their political beliefs on the public.

I'm guessing that if you polled people on the question of whether Congress should decide who wins on American Idol, more than 2% would think that was appropriate. So is there any reason the Schiavo matter is in Congress at all?

My gut is split two ways on this matter, though neither thinks most of the folks riding the Terri Schiavo bandwagon are out to do anything but demonstrate their power and/or fealty to the Religious Right. On the one side, I think there is a state-level process in place that decides this kind of thing and that Ms. Schiavo's defenders have shown no reason to depart from that process, other than that they don't like what it has repeatedly determined. The other side says that we should err on the side of compassion and giving "life" (such as it may be in her case) the benefit of the doubt. But even there, I don't think that should stop with Terri Schiavo. If we're going to do everything possible to keep her breathing, let's make the same effort for everyone else whose death could perhaps be prevented with more human effort. One Republican I saw on C-Span the other night made what I'm sure he didn't intend as a great argument for National Health Care and increases in Medicaid, Medicare and access to cheaper prescription drugs. Or is anyone out there so disingenuous as to deny that people who are much more "alive" and salvageable than Terri Schiavo die due to lack of affordable health care and medicine?

I kinda like a lot of what I'm hearing from the G.O.P. about denying "the culture of death" and about doing everything we can to prolong life. I just think it oughta apply to everyone who might actually be helped instead of just one poor lady who, sad to say, is probably never going to get any better…and maybe didn't even want this kind of "help."

Here's this one from Dennis Donohoe. I'll reply and then I have to get back to paying work…

I too am conflicted about this case. However, I see a distinction (as did your e-mail correspondent) between cutting off "life support" and removing a feeding tube. Consider the sad case of Karen Ann Quinlan. She had life support cut off, but proceeded to live another ten years. Clearly she still had a feeding tube. I think it is grotesquely cruel to let someone slowly and painfully starve to death by cutting off their food. If the courts (and her husband) want her to die, why not give her a quick acting injection and bypass the suffering? The answer seems to be that this would offend the public's sense of propriety.

This is a sad situation. I agree with you, by the way, that this Congressional intervention is crazy.

Even if there is a difference between cutting off "life support" and removing a feeding tube, I don't see how it matters to the debate currently going on in this country. Either way, people make a decision and it leads to the patient dying.

When I first read about the Schiavo case, several elements of the story had me conflicted, and one was this notion of someone painfully starving to death. In such a situation, I would sure rather go via lethal injection. However, I then read in a couple of articles like this one [Miami Herald, subscription may be required] that what is now being done to Ms. Schiavo is peaceful and painless. The right-wing news sources all say otherwise…and I think this all dovetails with the article by Dana Milbank to which I linked last night. We have competing sets of facts here, perhaps on at least one side, tailored to fit the readership.

Don't anyone write and tell me which one is correct. I know who I want to ask about this, and I'll accept what he tells me. But we don't read the news so we can get "facts" that cancel one another out, and then have to go out and do our own research. News exists to tell us things with some authority, even the things we might not want to hear. Or at least, it used to. We don't have to believe everything we're told, and we shouldn't. But we also ought to have some sources that won't fib or sugar-coat to appease their key demographic group.

Incidentally, I think the argument for letting the patient starve as opposed to administering that lethal injection is that in the latter, it seems more like humans are taking a life, whereas in the former, it's like we're stepping back and letting God work His or Her will. But I also think that's one of those distinctions without a real difference.

This just in from John Thomas…

Terry Schiavo is not on life support. She is not suffering from a "fatal congenital disease." If her feeding tube was not removed, she would continue to live, much like if Christopher Reeve's breathing tube was not removed, he continued to live.

There's way too much conflation of the different kinds of medical status to compare Schiavo's case to a myriad of other things, but it's apples and oranges, and just serves to confuse people who might not know what's going on. The insinuations in your recent blog post are part of that confusion.

Why not declare to people that Terri Schiavo is not on "life support" any more than Christopher Reeve was, and that she is not suffering from a fatal disease like the child referenced at the blog you linked to.

You're right that the two cases are not exactly alike but I think you're wrong, at least in a conversational sense, that the term "life support" does not apply in the Schiavo situation. I just did one of them nifty Google searches and found well over 3,000 news stories and headlines that disagree with you. A lot of folks, including doctors on both sides, seem to think she was on "life support."

In any case, the rhetoric and arguments that people are using to demand that her feeding tube be reinserted could certainly apply to darn near any instance where human action or inaction leads to the termination of a life. And without taking sides on the Schiavo matter — because I'm conflicted on many aspects of it — I have to wonder what larger principle her defenders think they're fighting for. Tom DeLay is convening emergency sessons to make sure this one woman has "every opportunity to keep living" but there are plenty of people who don't get that opportunity and I don't see him spending five seconds on them. And just last week, DeLay was trying to cut $40 billion from the Medicaid program, and that would certainly hasten a lot of deaths…and in people who are alive in more than the technical sense that Terri Schiavo is still alive.

If you read the article about the child in Texas, you'll see that it's also about a 68-year-old man who, like Schiavo, is in a "persistent vegetative state." Texas law apparently allows the hospital to turn off his ventilator, which will end his life just as surely as yanking Terri Schiavo's feeding tube will end hers. That man's family is fighting to keep him alive and there isn't even anyone in the case saying, like Terri's husband says of her, "this is what (s)he wanted." Why isn't Congress convening emergency sessions to give that man "every opportunity to keep living?" If we want that to be our national goal, great. Let's apply it to everyone.