I never thought Flip Wilson was that wonderful a comedian. He struck me as a guy with about three good bits and four good catch phrases, plus his Geraldine identity, which was fun in limited doses until he started getting into drag to play her. In interviews, he used to talk about his various characters like the Reverend Leroy and Freddie the Swinger, and I wondered if anyone ever told him that, Geraldine aside, they were all the same person: Same voice, same look, same attitude, etc. But I will say this for the guy: He knew how to work an audience and make them love him, which is sometimes better than actually being funny.

So why am I mentioning this now, years after this death? It's because TV Land is about to start rerunning the 1970-1974 Flip Wilson Show, starting with an all-day, all-night marathon the weekend of July 3-4. I remember not liking Flip but liking his show, which usually had good writing and a fabulous array of guest stars. What TV Land is airing are cut-down versions which trim the hour shows to 30 minutes, presumably dumping the lesser moments. Here's the schedule and as you'll see, there aren't many people who were big in show business in the early seventies who didn't put in an appearance. Which is why I'm setting the TiVo to grab a bunch of episodes.

I didn't think much of this evening's 60 Minutes interview with Bill Clinton. Some of that was because Dan Rather so overhyped a rather unremarkable chat, both in his teases and an appearance the other night on Larry King Live. It mostly consisted of Rather seeing how many ways he could tell us we had to tune in and hear what Clinton says about this or that, while King kept reminding everyone over and over that Clinton will be on his show on Thursday.

But Clinton, as he so often has, left me disappointed. When he's "on," he's an incredible speaker and a very, very smart man. Tonight, perhaps because Rather confined the on-air exchanges to "headline" issues and asked the obvious questions, we got short, surface replies. It was almost like Clinton rehearsed speaking in quick sound-bites. I hope his book, which I intend to read, isn't like that.

It's fascinating how, via the Internet, you "meet" people all over the world and in different walks of life. It's been that way ever since I got my first modem and began logging onto 300 baud bulletin board systems. It happened more often as the speed of my connectivity increased, and took a quantum leap when I set up my own website. I now have a few dozen "friends" whose weblogs I check every day or every few days.

I just added Sam Johnson to my list. Sam lives down in Savannah, Georgia where he works as a disc jockey in a nightclub. His reflections on that, his life, his ongoing dialysis treatments and his general outlook on the world are well worth perusing. If you go there, you'll note that Sam and I just straightened out a little misunderstanding, which is fine since it led to me reading and enjoying his blog. You will, too.

Comic book news sites (like this one) are reporting that Crossgen Comics has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

I occasionally get messages asking me if the comic book industry is healthy, if it's rebounding from its major downturn, etc. There are many ways to measure that kind of thing, and certainly the fortunes of one company could be an exception. But I suspect this announcement tells us a lot that is not optimistic. As with an awful lot of previous crash-and-burns — anyone remember Tekno Comics? — the business model seems to have been to use the publishing of comic books not for standalone profit but to promote characters who might be made into lucrative TV shows or movies or toys. In theory, that is not a bad idea but if you're not at least breaking-even on the comics, it puts you on a very critical time limit: You have to get someone to make the movie or the toys before the losses from loss-leader publishing takes you down.

That's what has killed a lot of comic book companies and no small number of Internet Content Providers. Entrepreneurs look at the grosses of the Spider-Man movie, forget it took decades to get that thing made, and think they can engineer a deal before the money runs out. Some can but many can't, and Crossgen has apprently landed in the "can't" category, at least so far. One report says they've gone more than 30 million in the hole, which is a staggering amount to lose, given how relatively modest their publishing efforts were. (Last December, I reported that though I am pretty well-connected in comics, I had never seen one of their books. That has since changed. As of now, I have never seen one of their books unless a free copy was handed to me by the guy who wrote it.)

I have no idea if Crossgen will survive, though pessimism is probably not unwarranted. That's based on my observation over the years that when you hear that a company is not paying its artists and writers or is paying horribly late, said company is not long for the world. Marvel has recently announced that they've managed to retire the debt that drove them into bankruptcy protection so it's not impossible…but I don't think Marvel ever did miss a payment to its freelancers, which is one of the points of bankruptcy protection.

It is also important to note that Marvel did not crawl back out of the hole just by (or even largely by) publishing comic books. Movie, TV and toy deals were the big factor in their rebound. As I said, there are many ways to measure whether or not the comic book business is healthy but a good one might be to assess how many publishers are actually making a profit publishing comic books. Clearly, there are not enough of those these days.

Ventriloquist Jay Johnson is doing a one-man (plus dummies) show in New York that I hope he'll do out here, or still be doing next time I get to Manhattan. Here's some info about it. I met Johnson briefly at a party for the legendary Señor Wences on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Jay and his monkey puppet had done a very funny performance…and seated in the front row were his two heroes, the Señor, plus Paul Winchell. It clearly meant a lot to Jay to do well in front of that audience with those men seated there, and he had. Even the monkey puppet looked a bit emotional over the experience.

Anyway, it's nice to see him doing well off-Broadway, too. And nice to see that the show's co-director, Murphy Cross, is getting kudos, too. And just in case she blunders onto this website: Murphy, the neighborhood hasn't been the same since you moved away from here.

Back when Clarence Thomas was being nominated to the Supreme Court, a lawyer friend of mine said, "It's a shame they got involved in all that crap about Anita Hill and Coke cans and renting porn. They should have just refused to confirm the guy because he's completely unqualified and not very bright." That may have been a harsh judgment but I haven't seen anyone — even those who are happy when the majority votes their way and Thomas is in that majority — seriously argue that this man is a wise scholar of the law.

I just read over the decision in the case involving the mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance. (Here's a PDF file of it.) I noticed a tiny, perhaps telling reference in Justice Thomas's opinion on the matter. It's in this sentence…

The Establishment Clause provides that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. [Amdt. 1] As a textual matter, this Clause probably prohibits Congress from establishing a national religion.

"Probably"? How much clearer could it be stated? There is absolutely no wiggle room in that language, at least with regard to Congress being able to establish a national religion.

Thomas goes on to state that it would be okay for the states to establish state religions since it says "Congress shall make no law…" Gee, that's just what this country needs to pull together. Let's start telling folks that in any given state, one particular religion is better than theirs. I mean, it's not like people in other countries ever fight bloody wars over such things.

Larry King had a "tenth anniversary" broadcast tonight about the O.J. Simpson case, chatting with members of the victims' families and some of the officers who investigated the case. At one point, Tom Lange, who was one of the latter, said this…

One thing of interest that hasn't come out that also should have during the trial is another bit of evidence that wasn't introduced, and that was the fact that Nicole had reported her house keys stolen some ten days before this ever happened… she said, "I think O.J. has the keys." Well after the chase, guess what we find in his pocket? The keys.

I followed the case more closely than I now like to admit, and I read all the books, though not Lange's. I never heard that.

Lange didn't explain why this was never introduced in the trial but I can guess. The prosecution made a decision to omit all discussion of the famous slow-speed Bronco chase. There were a number of incriminating elements to it but the prosecutors apparently feared Simpson's lawyers could spin some aspects of it to drum up sympathy for the guy, and they figured they had more than enough evidence without it. That might have made sense at some level but…jeez. He had her stolen keys in his possession? That's a heck of an incriminating fact to throw away.

Yeah, I know: You don't care about this any more. I don't either, most of the time. Now and then, I have lapses…

Someone screwed up. Sundance Channel was supposed to run the 1970 movie, The Projectionist, this morning. And right there on the TiVo listing, it says that it's that movie, starring Chuck McCann, Rodney Dangerfield and Ina Balin. But if you were sharper than some of us, you'd have noticed it gave the running time as 20 minutes, which is not the length of that great movie. Turns out, what they actually ran was a short film from 2002 that happened to have the same title. We are not happy.

Fortunately, you can purchase what I think is the right version from the folks at Amazon by clicking this link. At least, they give the running time for the DVD as 85 minutes, which is correct. If you're unfamiliar with this clever film, you might want to take the gamble that the one they're selling is the one with Chuck and Rodney. It's the story of a nerdy projectionist and it utilizes clips from old films and…well, you kind of have to see it to understand what the filmmakers had in mind. And I'll be talking about it and many other things when I interview Chuck on Friday afternoon at the Comic-Con International.

The other day, I gave you a link to a page with a small online video of one of the new Mountain Dew "Spy Vs. Spy" commercials. Here's a link to a page with large online videos of two of them, plus photos from the spots and a link to this article which will tell you more about them.

Frank Rich draws what strikes me as a strained comparison between the Reagan funeral and the O.J. Simpson news coverage. But I think somewhere in there, there's a valid point.

Jim Brocius sends the following…

When you say you would defend freedom of speech to the death, you don't literally mean you'd actually physically fight for it, do you? Do you mean instead you will defend speech with speech, or political contributions of some kind? I don't think American government will ever get so bad (in my lifetime or yours, although one would have to be ignorant of history to completely disallow the possibility) that freedom of speech will need to be physically defended. You strike me as someone who chooses your words carefully and I'm wondering if you were just using those words as a figure of speech or if in fact you would actually risk your life defending freedom of speech if you thought such action was necessary.

I said I would fight to the death. Nowhere did I say it might be my death. I am, however, quite willing to put your life on the line. Or someone else's.

Hey, if it's good enough for the Executive and Legislative branches of government, it's good enough for me.

Matt Brady over at Newsarama is all over the story of Carmine Infantino suing DC Comics over a number of characters, including The Flash and Batgirl, which he designed. This new report includes a link to a copy of the actual complaint. I have no comment yet on anything in it except that Mr. Infantino's lawyer doesn't seem to know how to spell the word, "villain."

I felt persuaded by this article by Fred Kaplan on how (he says) George W. Bush has used "Clintonian tactics" to convince many of Saddam Hussein's participation in 9/11 without actually claiming it. But if someone comes across a good article that casts a better light on Bush's sentence structures, please let me know.

As I said a few weeks ago, I probably won't go see Michael Moore's new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. I like a lot of what Mr. Moore does but sometimes he plays a bit too loose with the truth for me. (Though I will admit he is sometimes quite effective that way. Not long ago, when he called George W. Bush a "deserter," he almost single-handedly reopened the debate on Bush's National Guard service and goaded many reporters into digging further into it. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing but it is sadly exemplary of one way in which our press responds. If Moore had made a more temperate, accurate statement, he would not have had as much impact.)

Being a Free Speech fanatic, however, I will defend to the death his right to make his movie, and the right of anyone to exhibit or view it without undue pressure or suppression. I will also defend — not that this will probably be necessary — the right of others to call it a pack of lies or distortions or whatever and to march up and down in front of the Cineplex with signs to that effect. And I will say that those folks would have a bit more credibility if they waited until they'd actually seen it, or at least had a better tally of its alleged misrepresentations, before they began condemning it.

The other thing they could do would be to refrain from a tactic that annoys the hell out of me now, just as it bothered me back in the days of Vietnam protests. That's the cheap, dishonest trick of conflating criticism of our leaders with an attack on our fighting men and women…or even spinning an attack on some of our soldiers as an attack on all of them. The anti-Moore e-mails I'm receiving all lead with…well, here. Let me quote the first paragraph of one…

"Bash America" filmmaker Michael Moore is about to unleash an attack on the U.S. Military, the heroic men and women of the Armed Forces and our Commander-In-Chief via his film "Fahrenheit 9/11." Inexplicably, more than 1,000 theaters have indicated they will proudly broadcast what The Guardian calls an "anti-war/anti-Bush" film – beginning June 25th. And the number keeps growing each day. The goal of the film is abundantly clear: to undermine the war on terrorism.

The only parts of that I'll bet are accurate are the release date and the fact that it's an attack on George W. Bush. I doubt it's an attack on the heroic men and women of the Armed Forces. Perhaps it's an attack on those few zealots who engaged in torture but I'd hardly call them heroic. Since Moore's stated goal is to contribute to the ousting of Bush and his cronies, I think it's safe to say the film is anti-Bush…but if one thinks, as I do, that Bush has mishandled both the war in Iraq and the one against terrorism, there ought to be a way to say that without having someone claim you're blaming America or bashing brave soldiers. And when people come back with that line of reponse, I always think they don't have much to say as a genuine rebuttal. How about if we show respect for the troops by not hiding behind them?

Another piece by Terry Jones, this one about what constitutes torture.