The "Even Stephen" debate on Thursday's episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. If and when they post an online video clip, I'll link to it. (It's the episode with Rob Lowe as guest but nothing on any website tips me as to which reruns in the next few days might be that one. They seem to repeat whatever shows they like in whatever order strikes them at the moment.)

Looks like the Fantagraphics folks have a winner. Since I posted the previous message, I've received an even dozen messages saying, "I went over to their website and I can't find a place to order The Complete Peanuts." That's right, you can't. As I noted, they haven't announced the price yet. That obviously means they aren't taking orders yet. But when they are, I'll announce it here and we can all go over and sign up.

Just realized I haven't mentioned this. A lot of us are about to make a large monetary commitment to Fantagraphics Books, which is about to commence publishing The Complete Peanuts. Two hardcover volumes a year, commencing in April of 2004. Each will contain two full years of Charles Schulz's wonderful strip in chronological order (the first volume will contain more than that). The books will be in a horizontal format and each page will contain either three dailies or one Sunday page, both in black-and-white.

A surprising percentage of these strips have never been reprinted anywhere, not even in those wonderful dollar paperbacks some of us used to collect as kids. Subscribers will get their books early and receive bonus stuff, as well. They haven't announced the pricetag yet but I'll be surprised if we don't all think it's worth the cost.

The early volumes should be of special interest. Most folks are unaware how many changes Charlie Brown and his friends went through before Schulz figured out what he was doing. There are strips where Snoopy talks, wears clothes and is not owned by Mr. Brown. Linus and Lucy change ages faster than a Gabor sister, only in the opposite direction. I always thought Peanuts, like a great many strips, lost a lot of its charm when you got it one-a-day in a newspaper and got it back when the strips were collected to be enjoyed in a continuous read. So I'm looking forward to this and also to seeing the evolution of the characters and of Charles Schulz, as well.

What does it take to be a "Great American?" In this article, Art Buchwald tells us. And I have to admit that this is the first time in about eight years I've realized that Art Buchwald is still writing that column of his.

Here's another article by William Saletan on the implications of the ban on so-called "partial birth abortions." I think he's right.

In the interest of accuracy, I should clarify my earlier item that said the chairman of the Republican National Committee had agreed that the current scandal (regarding leaking) was "worse than Watergate." Here is the exact quote of what Ed Gillespie said on the MSNBC series, Hardball…

MATTHEWS: Well, of course, this whole thing started with something. Do you think this is bigger or smaller than a burglary, a third rate burglary? I mean, the fact that someone being caught exposed as a spy for the United States, do you think that's more serious or not than some burglary like Watergate? I mean, I'm serious. Don't you think it is more serious than Watergate, if you think about it?

GILLESPIE: I think if the allegation is true, to reveal the identity of an undercover CIA operative is abhorrent. And it should be a crime and it is a crime.

MATTHEWS: It would be worse than Watergate, wouldn't it?

GILLESPIE: You know, I just…yes, I suppose in terms of the real world implications of it.

I don't think the way I posted it was inaccurate but one person thought it was misleading. I see so many misleading quotes on the Internet that I wanted to err on the side of accuracy. Here's a link to the entire transcript if you're interested, but I thought that was the only significant thing said in the whole show.

Those of you who are following the sordid tale of Stan Lee Media (a company for which I once worked) may be interested in this article in the L.A. Times. And you might enjoy this one in the New York Post and this one in the Miami Herald. And…oh, heck. You might as well read this one over on Newsmax, a well-known Clinton-loathing concern. Sounds like by the time this is over, everyone will have testified against everyone else.

At least, that's what some folks — eager to avoid another "gate" nickname — are calling the issue of whether someone in the Bush White House committed a prosecutable crime by blowing the cover of a C.I.A. agent.

This story didn't really interest me until someone compared it favorably to my all-time favorite scandal. Incredibly, it was Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, who agreed with MSNBC's Chris Matthews that it was "worse than Watergate."

Ah, Watergate. Now, that was a scandal. And in today's Salon, no less a Watergate central figure than John W. Dean carries the comparison forward.

A scant six days before the election, a number of women have come forward to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger groped them or otherwise committed improprieties of personal etiquette. As with similar charges against Bill Clinton, we really don't know how true the charges are…and it almost doesn't matter. Those who are already politically committed to the accused give him the benefit of the doubt. Those who are already opposed to the guy insist every allegation is as good as substantiated fact. Arnold gave a non-specific apology which I suppose will enable women who were already going to vote for him to feel more comfortable with their choice, and everyone's weighing in on what, if anything, it all means.

The discussions I read today seemed to be missing a thought that occurs to me, which is that this isn't so much an issue of sex as the other great aphrodisiac, which is power. Obviously, a man who makes unwanted contact with a woman is a boor and maybe even a criminal. But when we talk about a potential elected official doing these things, the salient issue may not be Abuse of Women but Abuse of Power.

There are plenty of illegal and/or immoral things we might like to do but don't because we fear the consequences. Even a person devoid of personal ethics can be smart enough to behave because he doesn't want to be arrested or sued or slapped or even scolded. But suppose we remove the possible penalty. Suppose you could do it and there's little or no chance of you being punished. To refrain out of simple human decency in that situation would be a greater display of character.

Years ago on a show I wrote, I walked in on the make-up and hair people exchanging war stories and cautioning one another about certain Big Stars. Generally speaking — exceptions are rare — such crew members are in a position of total vulnerability. If they clash with the star…well, it's a lot easier to get another hairdresser than another star. It doesn't happen often but sometimes, the star decides to be an asshole for the same reason dogs lick their genitals: Because they can. Groping people is one offense but there are plenty of others and, nine times out of ten, the abused person has to just take it. They know that if the star points at them and says, "Either that person goes or I go," they go. That day, I heard one make-up lady tell a horrible story of sexual harassment verging on rape, committed by a Very Famous Actor who knew damn well there was nothing she could do about it.

Later that very day, I saw another Very Famous Actor fondling this lady and asking her unwanted questions about her sex life. She did her best to daub make-up on his face without getting felt and strained to divert the conversation into professional areas. But the V.F.A. knew he could get away with it so he was going to get away with it. Later, I saw him screaming at male crew members, ordering them about and obviously enjoying their subservience and the fact that they couldn't answer him back. It wasn't that this man had a problem with women. He had a problem with not being answerable; of having no concept of decency for the sake of decency.

I'm not suggesting any of this applies to Mr. Schwarzenegger. I have no idea what kind of governor he might make. (So far, the biggest gripe I have about him is that I don't think any of his supporters do, either.) I just thought I'd throw out the idea that when the issue of a politician or candidate supposedly mistreating women pops up, it may not just be a sex thing. It may be that like too many rich and famous folks, they've come to feel that they have some sort of cosmic Get Out Of Jail Free card. Hubert Humphrey once said that the moral test of a government was in how they treat the sick, the needy and the handicapped. I think the moral test of a Big Person may lie in how they treat the Little People. And in whether they behave like human beings even when it's not absolutely required of them.

Paul Krugman on the way the White House deals with those who say things they don't like.

Given how many hours of how many cable channels are given over to rerunning old TV cartoons (about half of them, Scooby Doo), it's interesting how many good-to-great shows of the past are unavailable. One, which is almost forgotten, is the 1966 Lone Ranger cartoon series produced for CBS by Herb Klynn's Format Films. Format produced a number of shows in the sixties before being shoved aside by the Hanna-Barbera juggernaut. The Lone Ranger probably hastened their fall. It was not considered a success, a fact the industry attributed to its unique graphics. The artwork, done mainly by artists who'd worked on cartoonier cartoons, was very stylized and simple. The major sources of design inspiration were Roy Crane, who did the Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer newspaper strips, and Jesse Marsh, who drew the Tarzan comic books. Both of those men illustrated adventure tales in broad, simple terms that some found stunningly effective but others dismissed as childish. The artists at Format Films simplified the Crane/Marsh approach further for animation and also tried something else that was then largely unprecedented in TV animation: Large black areas.

As I said, the show failed. A good argument can be made that it would have failed no matter how it had been drawn. It had a bad time slot and the Lone Ranger was never particularly popular with kids of that generation. Moreover, by 1966, westerns on TV were on their way out and there was never any interest in animated cowboys, before or since. (A 1980 Lone Ranger show animated by Filmation didn't click, either.) Still, somehow, the graphics "took the fall" on the '66 show and thereafter, anyone attempting an animated adventure show went for a less cartoony style and often removed black from the palette used by the cel painters. The 1992 Batman: The Animated Series may have been the first show to reverse the trend. In light of its success, it might be time to haul the '66 Lone Ranger cartoons out of some vault.

For more info on the Lone Ranger's history in animation, check out Jackson King's overview over at Jim Hill Media. It's what got me thinking about the show again and prompted me to write this.

I think the redesign of this site is completed. But I've been wrong before.

Michael Kinsley poses some hypothetical questions.