One of the many things I find funny about politics is the way folks will try and spin almost any event as a victory for their side. Here's a trivial example: The other day in a short press conference, Bush had the following exchange with a reporter for the Associated Press…

REPORTER: Sir, in regard to —

BUSH: Who are you talking to?

REPORTER: Mr. President, in regard to the June 30th deadline…

As this was initially quoted on the Internet, it sounded like Bush had scolded a reporter for referring to him as "Sir" instead of "Mr. President." Almost immediately, if you browsed political blogs and chatboards, you saw two diverse opinions on what it all meant. The pro-Bush folks were whooping with delight that Bush had slapped down an insolent reporter and made him show some respect. The anti-Bush folks were saying how petty Bush looked for insisting that he be addressed as "Mr. President" instead of "Sir." (What's the difference, you ask? Well, some of the right-wingers have suggested that some reporters avoid addressing him as President because they're still trying to sell the idea that Al Gore earned that title.)

As it turns out, both sides were probably claiming something that did not occur. A more thorough report on the incident reveals that Bush had suddenly, unexpectedly, called on the reporter to ask a question and the guy, unprepared for it, was caught talking on a cell phone. So when Bush said, "Who are you talking to?", he wasn't complaining about not being addressed as Mr. President. He was joking about the fact that the guy was talking to someone else. That's something else altogether.

This brings me to today's testimony by Condoleezza Rice which is getting spun like a Duncan yo-yo across the 'net, with both sides seeing things that probably were not there. Just read one site where right-wingers were cheering how she body-slammed and humiliated her interrogators; another, where left-wingers were declaring her an obviously-fibbing failure. Based on the last hour or so (which I caught) and a few excerpts from the first part, I think both are wrong. If she did Bush damage, it was only for what she didn't do…make any kind of serious rebuttal to Richard Clarke. But she also helped Bush in that she pointed up some of what is to me an essential absurdity — the contention that we can look back and affix blame for 9/11 to specific actions or inactions. I'm afraid I don't buy all this hindsight and attempt to assign guilt to anyone who wasn't part of Al-Qaida.

Yes, there are things we can probably learn from discussing our pre-9/11 shortcomings. But when I hear folks talking about improving the handling and distribution of intelligence, I think they're overlooking an essential question: Is our intelligence any good in the first place? I mean, didn't some of our intelligence tell us that Saddam Hussein had all these Weapons of Mass Destruction? That they could be readied and used against us within 45 minutes? That they were definitely, absolutely in all those places that Colin Powell identified to the U.N.? If that was the quality of intelligence we were getting before 9/11, why is anyone suggesting that better distribution of it between government agencies might have stopped the suicide hijackings?

On the other hand, maybe our intelligence is much better than that. Maybe the pre-war intelligence on Iraq was 95% correct about those weapons and 5% wrong, and all those hawks in the White House — Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney and (of course) Bush — chose to believe the 5%. If so, that would probably be a failing of human beings, not of the system. I think we should forget about investigating whether someone could have prevented 9/11 and instead ask how we can avoid sending American soldiers into battle without our leaders having the slightest clue as to what weapons the enemy has or where they have them. Regardless of how things turn out in Iraq, that's no way to run a war.

The folks who brought you the movie version of Chicago are planning a remake of Damn Yankees. Okay, I don't think there was anything wrong with the first film of Damn Yankees, either…but a fresh interpretation might be fun. And I'd hereby like to nominate Christopher Walken for the role of Applegate.

The Carnegie Deli in New York — maker of sandwiches so tall they oughta come with a step ladder — was briefly closed last night for a couple of health code violations. Every time I've eaten there for the last ten years, no matter where they sat me, Jackie Mason was at the next table. Why isn't that a health code violation?

…but this one is too funny not to note. At a fund-raising dinner for George W. Bush, folks paid $2000 for a sumptuous meal but were not given utensils with which to eat it.

Beginning this weekend, TV Land will be running four shows produced by my occasional employers, Sid and Marty Krofft, on the "Kitschen" programming block. Friday night, they have the first episodes of H.R. Pufnstuf, Lidsville, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and ElectraWoman and DynaGirl. Saturday night, they have the second episodes and then, assuming I've been correctly informed, the following Friday will offer the third episodes…and so on. The festivities begin at Midnight, at least in the East, so someone is figuring to attract adults who remember these shows, as opposed to kids who might be discovering them today…though there might well be a lot of those. There was always something wonderful and weird about Krofft shows and in the mid-seventies, when I was asked to go to work for them, I jumped at the opportunity. I didn't write any of these shows but I'm now going to jump at this opportunity to watch them again.

I paused in my deadline to check e-mail and found one challenging — no, daring me to predict John Kerry's running mate. Okay, I will: Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. Now, it's back to work…

Barring some breaking news, posting here will be light for the next few days while I finish a seriously-due manuscript and my income taxes. For some reason, doing the latter makes me think it's time to post another one of these…

Here's an interview with one of the cleverest humans on this planet, Larry Gelbart.

I have a half-dozen messages this morning telling me that the most memorable line from Blazing Saddles is: "'scuse me while I whip this out." If you say so.

Someone else asks if it's true that Mel Brooks wanted Richard Pryor to play the lead but the studio refused. That's what I always heard and I wonder if Brooks wasn't lucky that he didn't get his way. Obviously, Pryor is a much funnier actor than Cleavon Little…but Little was more clean-cut and heroic and handsome. And no one can ever say for sure but I wonder if he didn't fit the role better than Pryor would have. A key point in the film as made was that Bart was wholly qualified for the sheriff job but the town wouldn't accept him because of his skin color. Pryor would probably not have seemed so competent.

Actually, Brooks got lucky with a couple of casting replacements. The role of the burned-out gunslinger was originally offered to Johnny Carson (!) who passed on it because he didn't think the script was funny. The studio then ignored Mel's wishes and signed Gig Young for the part, and Young actually showed up for a day or two of shooting but was unable to perform. He had some sort of alcohol-related anxiety attack on the set so he was out, as was Dan Dailey, who apparently was signed at some point but was also having too much trouble with his drinking to play an old drunk. As the story goes, Brooks finally called Gene Wilder in New York, and Wilder hopped on a plane and was in Burbank and before the cameras the next morning. That worked out okay.

So did Madeline Kahn, who got herself fired from the film version of Mame, which was shooting at the same time. She was playing Agnes Gooch and Lucille Ball, who was playing Mame, thought Kahn was hopelessly miscast in the movie. (The rest of Show Business felt the same way about Lucy.) Kahn was axed and she immediately signed for Blazing Saddles, prompting Lucy and others to suggest she had underperformed as Gooch just to get out. If so, it was a good call. Lucy should have tried the same trick.

Time to face reality: I have fallen hopelessly behind in answering e-mail. I just spent two hours, which is all I can spare tonight, responding…and I still have over 200 unanswered recent messages.

I have a major deadline this week, plus I have to get my income tax data collected and over to my Business Manager before he leaves for Brazil with the rest of my money. But I'll try to catch up soon. In the meantime, please be patient. And if you write a message and it doesn't need a reply, that would be a nice thing to mention. Thanks.

Peter Sanderson reports on the recent memorial service in New York for Julius Schwartz. I'm sorry I couldn't get back there for it.

We were talking here the other day about seeing Blazing Saddles when it first came out. That brought this message from Ben Herndon…

I am 50 years old now, but back in 1974 I was attending U.C.L.A. Warner Brothers scheduled a free midnight sneak preview of Blazing Saddles on a weekend night and the Avco Cinema was packed with rowdy U.C.L.A. students.

Westwood Village had been plastered with those great old posters of Mel as an Indian Head nickel type chief — but we still didn't know what to expect. As you may recall, Mel wasn't really "hot" in 1974. The Producers had been released six years earlier, but was still considered by many to be something of a cult favorite.

Anyway, when Cleavon Little launched into that Cole Porter song, the audience went totally crazy. I have never seen an
audience react to this new type of raunchy humor like this audience did. Mel had a unanimous, unqualified, smashing success at the preview. It was the talk of Westwood for weeks.

Twenty years later, I went with Leonard Maltin to interview Mel. He told us that even as the cheering at the end of the film was still going on, the Warner Bros. suits were clustered around Mel at the rear of the theater telling him…"Okay, they loved it, but you'll still cut out the campfire fart jokes, and the Lili Von Schtupp sex scenes, and the n-words…?"

Mel was blithely answering them, "Yes, yes, sure, of course…" but he never changed a frame of film or dialog. The release print was the same as we all saw that historical night in Westwood.

The rest, as they say, is history…

I had a friend who was also in that audience and his report on the audience response was about the same as yours. I saw it a short time later…also at the Avco. As I mentioned, no one really knew what to expect so it was a grand experience. I really enjoy movies more when I haven't already seen half the film in trailers and the other half in talk show clips. (Another such experience I recall was a Writers Guild advance screening of Paddy Chayefsky's Network. The film was not quite as impressive in later viewings but that night, when no one in the house knew anything about it, it was amazing. I happened to be sitting next to Ray Bradbury and at the end, he looked around the packed theater and said, "There isn't one person in this room who wouldn't give his left arm to have written that movie…including me.")

Back to Blazing Saddles. The gag I remember everyone talking about on the way out of the theater was when Cleavon Little's character is riding across the desert to rather jazzy music…and it turns out that it's coming from Count Basie's band, which is playing out there. The joke no longer seems that clever since some variation on it turned up in about half the comedy movies made during the rest of the seventies. Mel even did it again in High Anxiety with a symphony orchestra in a bus. I'm guessing the bit from Blazing Saddles that is most often quoted these days is when Little puts the gun to his head and takes himself hostage. How often have we heard someone compare some real world action to that moment?

Thanks for the message, Ben. When I get a moment this week, I'll post a fun excerpt from the script to Blazing Saddles that never got filmed. If it had, I'd still be back in that seat at the Avco, laughing my butt off.

Eric Boehlert discusses the way the Bush administration has rammed through funding for both the Iraq war and its Medicare program by floating incorrect figures and only later revealing the true costs. This is a Salon.Com story, which means that if you're not a member, you'll have to watch some advertising.

A reader of my websites, Ray Barrington, calls the following to my attention. In this post on my other weblog, written back in December of '02, I was talking about how some companies like to change what their initials stand for. I predicted that the KFC company would begin denying that their initials stood for "Kentucky Fried Chicken" and would come up with some other name. Well, as Ray points out, their commercials are now claiming it stands for "Kitchen Fresh Chicken." Yeah, right.

Over on one of the theater chatboards, there was recently a discussion of cell phones going off in the middle of a performance. There is no disagreement that this is a bad thing. I am still embarrassed over one time when mine did. It was in New York while my friend Carolyn and I were taking in the recent Broadway revival of Follies. I had diligently remembered to turn my little Motorola off before the show started but during the second act, there was a moment when a lady sitting next to Carolyn was so touched that she began sobbing. I usually carry a little pocket-pak of Kleenex with me and being a grand gent, I extracted a tissue and offered it to her. Apparently as I was doing this, I accidentally nudged the "on" button on my phone and at a key dramatic point about ten minutes later — the worst possible moment — I was suddenly ringing.

Fortunately, we were far enough from the stage that it did not distract the players. Humiliated, I grabbed out my phone, ripped off the back and yanked out the battery. Even though my new phone (a Sony-Ericcson) has a "lock" option on it, I don't trust the thing. When I go into a play or movie now, I always remove the battery. Just to be absolutely certain.

Some on the boards are talking about laws that would make it a crime to bring a cellphone into a theater, even one turned off or set on "vibrate." Cities may experiment with such legislation but I doubt it's a real solution. Some people really do need to be reachable during a show — doctors, people with baby sitters, pimps, etc. Others need to be able to check for messages during intermission. Generally speaking, I think most folks who rely on their phones that way know how to use them. The problem is that a lot of folks learn no more about their phones than how to dial and how to answer.

This is not, obviously, a world-shattering problem nor is it ever 100% solvable. But I have an idea I'd like to throw out there in the slim hope that it will reach someone who can make it happen. Cellular companies like Cingular and T-Mobile spend staggering sums of cash to promote their services. I think one of them could drum up some cost-effective good will by setting up an "800" number, free to all, where anyone could call up and speak to someone who would talk them through (a) how to turn the ringer off on their cell phone, (b) how to turn on "vibrate" and (c) how to "lock" the phone off so it doesn't do what mine did and accidentally turn on. (Actually, my Motorola didn't lock. When I picked out its successor, I made sure to get one that did.)

I can imagine a series of commercials in which someone is in a theater during a tense, dramatic scene and their cell phone goes off. The surrounding audience members then beat the guy up while a voiceover says, "Don't let this happen to you…call (800) Whatever and a kind, understanding person will teach you the proper way to turn your cell phone off." If there's time, the voiceover might add, "And if you don't call, remember — you can definitely silence your phone during a show just by removing its battery." It's amazing how many people don't think of that.

When a hapless cell phone owner calls the "800" number, they reach someone with a little database of the pertinent instructions for every current model, and they can look up that phone and explain to the caller what to do, and maybe even call them back to test that they've done it correctly. It wouldn't take a lot to set up such a database or to train a crew to field calls. If I were thinking of which cellular service to sign up with, it would certainly make me think well of the one that set up such a service.

I don't expect this to happen but I thought I'd toss it out there. Just an idea.