Here's an amazing (to me) article over on the Newsweek site. A reporter who has covered the California recall election writes about how bad the coverage has been.

Over on Salon, Eric Boehlert makes a very good point about the current downtrend in the popularity of George W. Bush. It's that it started on September 7 when he unveiled the price tag for rebuilding Iraq: $87 billion…

Within days of Bush's prime-time address, his approval ratings, and the support for his reconstruction plans in Iraq, began a steep decline. In retrospect, it's clear the speech became an unlikely presidential turning point — and possible tipping point — and one the White House has yet to recover from. Pollster Stan Greenberg told the Wall Street Journal he couldn't "find a parallel moment" in history when a president's approval rating dropped so dramatically following a nationally televised debate.

Here's the full article which I think is correct. Iraq sounded like a great American triumph to many until they started to realize what it will end up costing us to have deposed Saddam Hussein. I'm sure we're in for a roller coaster ride of viewpoints on this, as well as a lot of up and down on Bush's favorability rating. But it's interesting to note that, like so many things in this world, people change their minds about a war when they find out there's no money in it.

I am informed by several folks who seem to know that the Australian DVD release of Hellzapoppin' is region-free but it's also in PAL, meaning that it won't play on most American equipment. If you have a machine that will play PAL format, fine. If not, you'll just have to either buy one of the VHS bootlegs that abound or wait for Universal, which owns the film, to put out a DVD in our format. As far as I know, there are no plans in the offing for this.

I find myself strangely uninterested in the outcome of tomorrow's election. I think the recall is a gimmick form of democracy based on a flukishly bad law. The public should be able to recall elected officials but it shouldn't be this easy. (Have you noticed that absolutely no one outside of California is proposing that their state's recall standards be changed to match ours?) I'll vote against it but I don't have any reason to be positive about Gray Davis. Ergo, his ouster won't bother me that much. I suppose what I like least is the feeling that his unpopularity is based not on what he's done but on the fact that he comes off poorly when he speaks in public. I suppose that's a disqualification from public office but I wish it wasn't as big a factor as it usually is.

One aspect that I don't see being considered in the news coverage is what one might call the Jesse Ventura Factor. When voters of his state elevated "The Body" to the governorship, it was interpreted as a strong vote against the traditional Democratic and Republican machines. That was because he was an Independent but it was also because he was viewed as an outsider, and Minnesota voters were apparently seized by the desire to stick an outsider in there. (It was a short-lived notion. By the end of his one term, Ventura was pretty unpopular and would have had a hard time winning another.)

Now, Schwarzenegger's a Republican but only by a technicality: Pro-choice, pro-some gay rights and gun control, etc. Since there's no primary in this election, labels of Democrat and Republican are less important than usual and I suspect that a significant number of Arnold voters don't care about party affiliations. They just see him as an outsider, and perhaps they believe a certain image of him as a heroic figure.

Perhaps I'm reading one of my own prejudices into the situation but I think there's a pretty big block of voters out there who really don't like Democrats or Republicans, even if they're registered as one or the other. The recall has empowered that sentiment and they're voting for the most independent guy they think has a chance to win, as many of them once flocked to Perot. To them, voting down the recall means that the Democrat-Republican establishment wins again. Ultimately, I don't think they'll like Arnold any more but at the moment he's an Impulse Buy, not because of what they think he'll do — they don't know and don't care — but because it's a rare chance for voters to beat up on a politician. They don't want to let that get away from them.

A friend currently performing in a Vegas show says that the number one question being asked there is no longer, "Do you want insurance?" but "Have you heard any news about Roy?" Many answers abound, ranging from "It's better than they're reporting" to "It's much, much worse." What seems pretty certain is that the "Siegfried and Roy" show is closed indefinitely and no one's betting that it will ever reopen. Beyond the obvious tragedy here, it's sad to think about how many lives this accident has impacted. Most of the 150-180 people who worked on the show are suddenly unemployed at a time when no other show is hiring.

So far, I haven't seen any of the news stories mention that Dreamworks is deep in production on a CGI-animated series for NBC called Father of the Pride, all about a family of white lions who appear in the Siegfried and Roy show in Las Vegas. I have no idea if it'll be abandoned or altered but obviously, the lives of those working on that program will be impacted, as well. In fact, the ripples may reach anyone anywhere who's involved with dangerous performing animals. There are even silly but significant concerns: Someone on Late Night With Conan O'Brien is probably checking Monday night's rerun episode to make sure there's no Siegfried and Roy gay joke in there.

Years ago, I heard someone talking about what it meant to do a good job running a business…any business. He said, "One measure of being a good executive is to make sure that if you get hit by a car tonight, someone could walk in tomorrow morning and begin doing your job and keeping the company functioning." It probably doesn't work that way all the time in most industries but it almost never works that way in show business.

I probably shouldn't have to post this but I will: The articles to which I link and the websites I recommend will not necessarily show you viewpoints with which I agree or even "facts" which I believe to be true. They will, at best, show you articles that I think are worth reading, even if you (like I) ultimately decide they're full of mule excrement.

A couple of recent e-mails suggest to me that visitors to this page are confused, perhaps because so many sites out there link only to those with which they usually agree. Currently in my "links" listing, I have pages as diverse as The Corner and Tapped, as Media Whores Online and Free Republic. I dunno how anyone could think that I concur with the views of reality you'll find in those venues since they're pretty much mutually exclusive. But I operate on the theory that no side has a monopoly on the truth…and even when you find the truth, it can stand up to the perusal of other possible truths.

If I agree with something, I say so. And if I don't say so of a link to a specific piece, it generally means I think the piece is worthy of consideration. Even if you and/or I both ultimately reject it. Thank you.

It may not burst into the public arena in this form, but an argument is currently building in several companies that either publish comic books or syndicate comic strips or otherwise exploit and merchandise cartoon or comic book-style characters. The argument is over what the target audience is, and to what extent they can market their properties to one age demographic without losing another. For the most part, it's an argument about adult content. One division wants to use a character in a comic book [or movie project] full of extreme violence and/or sexy scenes. Another division says, "Whoa! We have a deal pending with this toy company [or cartoon studio] that's hitting the 4-12 age group and your project will scare them off."

This is not a new debate. In the early eighties, ABC was about to buy a Saturday morning cartoon show based on a popular comic book but they called it off when they saw how violent the comic was getting. The folks in the editorial division of the comic book company felt, probably correctly, that they were producing what their readers demanded. Others at the firm pointed out that the animated series and its inevitable merchandising would have generated a hundred times as much revenue as the comic book…to which the editors replied, "Our job is to sell comics. We can't do that while worrying about what might or might not kill one of your toy or TV deals." Usually, the decision in such disputes has been to at least try to have it both ways, but that doesn't always work. Merchandising and media deals have been scotched because the comic book seemed to be skewing "too adult." Comic book sales have sometimes been harmed because, it is felt, the book was being done for a young audience that buys toys and watches cartoons but doesn't buy comic books.

For the most part, this applies to super-heroes and comes down to squabbles over how much blood and mayhem the heroes can wreak, and how much skin the heroines can show. But it also applies to a few "funny animal" properties and to questions over whether their adventures should include jokes that younger viewers/readers may not comprehend. In some cases, an older property may be perceived as having a certain nostalgia appeal and that brings another set of concerns: Should we do the version of this character that folks who are now thirty recall from their childhoods, or should we do the version familiar to today's kids? And more importantly, can we do something that satisfies both?

As I said, they've generally tried to have it both ways but a number of recent clashes suggest this may not be possible much longer. The current interest in movies based on comic books seems to be inflaming the problem because the movie producers generally have a "rating" in mind. A very successful director is interested in making a motion picture based on a very famous, well-established comic book but he wants to do the film his way, which would doubtlessly incur an "R" rating for sex 'n' violence. That could make the owner of the property an awful lot of cash but it would also probably kill a proposed animated series and several toy licenses for the character. Conversely, there's a property that is wanted for an animated series and a master toy license…but maybe not if the character's comic book is going to keep featuring steamy scenes and aiming for an older audience. (Another question is that of crossovers. If you decide to position a given property for the younger crowd, can you then have guest appearances involving characters who appear in "mature" comics?)

So you have this discussion going on in many offices and there's no easy answer. Like it or not, a certain amount of revenue from doing comic books and strips and cartoons has always flowed from serving the youngest age brackets and no one wants to end that. But there's now more of an older audience than there's ever been for comic-oriented material. A comic book publisher can easily have different lines for different age ranges but a number of recent deals that have fallen-through (or may) have convinced many that they cannot exploit their star characters in all venues at once; that they may have to decide that certain characters are for children and some aren't. How they decide may determine how these companies will define themselves for the future.

Over at the New York Times (registration required), Frank Rich laments that the only artists who have been effective in categorizing 9/11 are those in the White House.

I don't usually recommend books I haven't read yet unless they're (a) by one of my favorite writers or (b) by one of my closest friends. Alan Brennert's new novel, Moloka'i, qualifies on both counts. Alan is a superb author of books, screenplays and plays and a helluva good guy, so I can't imagine not enjoying this effort, which I will read as soon as I get the chance to do so. Publishers Weekly describes it as, and I quote: "Compellingly original…poignant…Brennert's compassion makes Rachel a memorable character, and his smooth storytelling vividly brings 20th century Hawaii to life…a touching, lovely account of a woman's journey as she rises above the limitations of a devastating illness."

If that sounds good, you can order a copy from Amazon by clicking here or, if you're on the West Coast (extending as far west as Oahu), rush to one of Alan's bookstore signings. The whole list of them is available here. Or just go to any book shop and tell them you want the one that looks like Don Ho's undershorts.

Something bothers me about this whole "Arnold the Groper" story and it's something that I guess bothers me about politicking in general these days. In most elections, we hear a lot about the "character" issue, meaning what kind of man is this person seeking the job? Is he honest, courageous, etc.? A lot of the vitriol against Clintons and Bushes has to do not with what they've done so much as what kind of human beings they supposedly are.

I would agree that a person's strength of character is important but I also don't think any of us have enough information to truly judge the character of most famous people. This is especially true of public figures who employ whole crews of public relations experts. One of the things that always bugged me about Clinton-bashing was when people who'd had little or no direct contact with Bill or Hillary would take a few third and fourth-hand nuggets of gossip and then purport to explain and analyze the intimate details of their marriage. They always reminded me of a line from one of my college professors who often said to a student who offered some theory, "You don't have sufficient information to formulate a worthwhile opinion."

During elections, we sometimes hear talk of a candidate "defining" his opponent. They said George Bush (the first one) did a good job of "defining" Michael Dukakis. What this concept suggests to me is that one candidate is able to formulate an unappealing caricature of his opponent and to get the public to accept it as accurate. Last presidential election, the Bush side was able to convince a lot of people that Al Gore's plans for Social Security and Defense were irrelevant; the problem was the man himself. He said goofy, untrustworthy things about inventing the Internet and having inspired the book, Love Story, and you don't want to vote for a guy like that. The Gore forces meanwhile tried to sell America on the notion that George W. was a drunken fratboy. Neither side was completely unsuccessful but they should have been. Those portraits were drastic oversimplifications of complex human beings, and they were formulated by taking a couple of anecdotes of questionable accuracy and then spinning them for additional impact.

I've worked with some pretty famous people and it always amazes me, first of all, to see people who know them less well than I do (or not at all) feel qualified to "judge" them in a manner I would never have attempted. It's not so much that the outsider's view is right or wrong but that it's based on almost nothing. Paul McCartney has spoken of his "pizza friends." These are people, he says, who once delivered a pizza to the Beatles, were in their presence for under sixty seconds, then went out and gave long interviews about what he, John, George and Ringo were really like, based on the observations of that minute. When I hear pundits speak about what kind of man Bill Clinton is…or Bush or Arnold or any of them…I often feel like I'm hearing from "pizza friends." We buy these accounts, especially if they conform to pre-existing prejudices, because we don't like to admit that we really don't know. And also, they're handy to bash or boost the people we want to bash or boost.

Did Arnold grope those women? Probably. Is he therefore the slimy, arrogant pig that some are making him out to be? I dunno. There may be a lot more to him (and those incidents) than we know or than we're ever going to know. As I mentioned earlier, to the extent I'd be concerned about someone who did that, it wouldn't be because of his attitude towards women, per se, but because of his attitude toward general decency when no force can make him behave. Ultimately though, I don't think it would be fair to presume that's true of Schwarzenegger and to not vote for him because of that. Instead, I'm not voting for him because I have no reason to think he's any more qualified than any randomly-selected person off the street, and also because it bugs me a little that someone would try to treat the governorship as an entry-level position into politics.

I think that's a valid reason. It's at least a reason based on something I know for certain. I don't buy the claims of his supporters that he has true leadership capabilities and the ability to get things done. Those claims are the public relations constructs. They come from the same kinds of p.r. campaigns that told us O.J. Simpson was a great role model, John Wayne was a war hero, Rock Hudson was a ladies' man, etc. Sometimes, the public image is true, at least to some extent but often, it isn't or it's woefully incomplete. I think in the long run, we all might be better off to assume we don't know for sure and to pick our officials based wholly on what they've actually, inarguably done and what they say they want to do. And if they haven't done anything or won't say what they want to do, don't pick them at all. Which is the main reason I'm not voting for Schwarzenegger.

William Steig was a prolific author of children's books and he drew wonderful cartoons for magazines, most notably The New Yorker, for 70+ years. But the obits (like this one) will probably all focus on the fact that he wrote and drew the book, Shrek, which was freely adapted into the hit movie of the same name. If you'd like to know more about the other work he did, you might want to visit his website.

A few days ago, I wrote about a show in Vegas that made the audience extremely uncomfortable. What could be worse than that one? I dunno…how about watching Roy (of Siegfried and Roy) getting ripped to shreds by a tiger?

What an awful experience that must have been for the audience. I mean, it goes without saying it was horrible for Roy, and we can all hope it isn't as bad as the early news reports make it out to be. It was also obviously a shock to everyone backstage. But I find myself thinking about the poor people who paid $110.50 for what had to be a traumatic, ghastly experience.

News stories say the paramedics were called at 8:20. The show starts at 7:30 so the accident must have occurred about halfway into the proceedings. The show is full of wild animals coming darn close to the audience and several "fakes," meaning places where they make it look like something's gone wrong when it hasn't. When I saw it many years ago, there was one point where a befuddled lady was brought out of the audience and walked dangerously close to several lions and tigers.

She was a plant, meaning she was an actress on the show's payroll, but I don't think everyone realized that. Whatever, the audience last night (probably 30-50% children) had to have gone through great emotional whiplash, first thinking that Roy was being mauled by the tiger, then realizing it had to be a trick…then really realizing it wasn't.

And at some point, a lot of those people had to have thought, "My God…if they couldn't prevent that tiger from attacking one of the stars, maybe they couldn't prevent it from attacking someone in the first row." A lot of Vegas vacationers are probably not sleeping well at the moment.