Paul Krugman — who really is becoming the columnist most conservatives fear, judging by some of the silly attacks on him — gives a long but readable overview of what he sees as America's current and looming financial crisis. Here's a key paragraph…

A result of the tax-cut crusade is that there is now a fundamental mismatch between the benefits Americans expect to receive from the government and the revenues government collect. This mismatch is already having profound effects at the state and local levels: teachers and policemen are being laid off and children are being denied health insurance. The federal government can mask its problems for a while, by running huge budget deficits, but it, too, will eventually have to decide whether to cut services or raise taxes. And we are not talking about minor policy adjustments. If taxes stay as low as they are now, government as we know it cannot be maintained. In particular, Social Security will have to become far less generous; Medicare will no longer be able to guarantee comprehensive medical care to older Americans; Medicaid will no longer provide basic medical care to the poor.

What makes me think he's probably (unfortunately) correct is that while his detractors will fault certain perhaps-arguable calculations, they kind of skip over or ignore this kind of pronouncement. They don't rebut him by arguing either that cutbacks in the safety net will not happen or even that they're a good thing. Anyway, read the whole piece and decide for yourself.

Peter Sanderson concludes his long but on-target review of this year's Comic-Con International here.

My book, Mad Art, gets a nice review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. You can read that review here and then you can order a copy from Amazon by clicking here. (Sorry that I have to resort to such shameless huckstering but I haven't been able to get Fox News to sue me yet…)

Over in his weblog, my pal Daniel Frank notes…

Mark Evanier discusses the factors that will determine whether John Ritter's show will continue. Evanier left out how the Burns and Allen TV show went through four Harry Mortons, the next-door neighbor. The most famous transition was between Fred Clark and Larry Keating, Mortons number three and four respectively. George Burns interrupts a scene with Clark. He introduces Keating to the audience and explains that he will now be playing the role of Harry Morton. Clark and Keating shake hands; Clark leaves and Keating continues with the scene.

Actually, I think I may have led the discussion awry by dragging in times when one actor went elsewhere and another simply took his place. There's something about a performer dying that puts such changes into another category. It seems to mandate that the character be eliminated and not merely recast. And then it would seem awkward and perhaps disrespectful to merely drop all reference to the departed character, so they usually declare him deceased or say he's moved away.

Either way, it reminds viewers that the real actor, for whom they perhaps had some affection or at least familiarity, is dead. So they have to mourn a second time, and a little genuine grief (or at least, discomfort) invades the otherwise-safe fictional environment. In the realm of comic books, people have even gotten upset when a favorite fictional character has been "killed." It's like, "Why did we need that sadness in our lives?"

I remember that on the original Hollywood Squares game show, they had this situation: When panelist Wally Cox died, there were many episodes taped with him that had yet to air. It would have been ludicrous to not broadcast those shows. Not only would it have been a silly waste of resources but it would have been, in effect, destroying Cox's final work. But game shows — then, more than now — maintain the generally-unspoken fiction that they're live or almost live.

There was the feeling, perhaps correct, that audiences would get confused watching and go, "Hey, I thought Wally Cox had died. What's going on here?" so the producers superimposed the words, "pre-recorded" on the screen whenever Cox was in a solo shot. This clarified things for the more befuddled viewers but reminded all that they were watching a dead person. A lot of people wrote in and said, "You shouldn't air this. Have you no respect for the deceased?" The outpouring was so emotional that later, when Cliff (Charley Weaver) Arquette passed away, the Squares people handled it differently…and still got a lot of that kind of mail.

One presumes the complainers weren't objecting to the broadcast of a television program containing a person who'd passed on. No one writes in and says it's wrong to show I Love Lucy since Lucy, Desi, Bill and Viv have all joined the choir invisibule. But in the context of something current, it unnerved some people. A lot of them said, in effect, "Hey, we watch that kind of TV show to forget about death. If we want that, we'll watch the news."

When a show kills off a major character like McLean Stevenson's on M*A*S*H or John Amos's on Good Times, such sentiments are voiced. Even though no one actually died, there's always mail that says, "I'm still getting over my father's death. Why did you have to put me through another round of mourning?" It's not the cast change that bothers people. It's the issue of death. They get enough of it in real life, they say. Why have it when it isn't necessary?

I don't think that's a terrible question. Sometimes, as in M*A*S*H, killing a major character may be a sound creative decision. M*A*S*H, after all, was about war and it would have been hokey if no one died or if only day players died. I think on Good Times, Amos quit and for a time, the character was simply away, working on an Alaskan pipeline or something. Finally though, the producers felt that making it a show about a family with a deceased father was a better idea than what they had and they explained the absence that way.

Both of these were elective deaths and the actors involved had not died so there was no loss of real human life attached. Fictional characters were dead, not McLean and John. Still, a lot of viewers felt they'd been put through unnecessary emotion. If and when they announce on John Ritter's show that his character died in a car crash or whatever, some of America is going to sit there and really cry for John Ritter…again.

In my earlier discussion of what they'll do, I left out a couple of questions which one hopes the show's writers are given the chance to ask: Will the show work as a show about a family where the father has just died unexpectedly? Would it work better as a show where the father has just been transferred to Greenland so we never see him again? Assuming ABC isn't ready to give up on the series, there's already economic pressure on the show runners to decide they can keep it flying without that character.

They'll probably decide it's a worthy challenge and try, but it won't be the same as saying, "Hey, folks! Here's a new Harry Morton." (Actually, I sometimes wish we had George Burns on every TV show to break the fourth wall, tell us what's going on, and do things like introduce the new actor. But I guess it would just upset people by reminding them that George Burns was dead.)

As you may know, I have raccoons in my backyard. And possums. And stray cats. And hummingbirds. And the amazing thing is that I'm in the middle of an urban area with no nearby parks or hillsides. Still, creatures great and small show up back there to feast on the cat food I put out. Usually, we leave it near the patio door but last night, we put it out by the pool and I got the above snapshot of seven (count 'em — seven) raccoons. The larger one at left is the parent…the mother, I presume. When I'm around, she never takes her eyes off me. The kids don't care much who's around; they're too busy jockeying for position around the food dish, shoving one another aside and occasionally getting into angry squabbles.

This brood has been coming around for a couple of weeks and I've taken many photos of them, but this was the first time I got all seven of them in one shot. If you would like to help me shoulder the burden of feeding these guys, we have links here that will allow you to donate money to this site either via PayPal or by buying something from Amazon. All donations for the next few weeks will be directed not to silly eBay purchases but to Mark's Feed the Raccoons Fund. And believe me: No matter how much you folks give, the way them 'coons eat, it won't be enough.

My pal Aaron Barnhart has some sound thoughts on Conan O'Brien's tenth anniversary.

Bill Oppenheim writes:

I'm pretty sure Roger Carmel was fired from The Mothers-in-Law and died years later. It was a drug overdose?

Well, since this weblog seems to be in full Death Mode, I might as well answer this. Roger C. Carmel was one of the most prolific character actors of his day. He was on just about everything, often many times, but most folks remember him from his two appearances as the hedonist of space, Harcourt Fenton Mudd, on the original Star Trek. Fans of The Dick Van Dyke Show remember him as Doug Wesley, the accountant who wouldn't give Buddy and Sally a raise because Alan Brady had invested too much money in Martin and Lewis coloring books. (And no, he never appeared in the Gold Key comic.) Anyway, Carmel was a co-star of a situation comedy called The Mothers-In-Law which was on NBC for two seasons beginning in 1967. The main stars, seen in the photo above, were Eve Arden and Kaye Ballard.

It was a pretty good TV show…the last series produced by Desi Arnaz. At the end of its first season, Carmel had a salary dispute with Señor Arnaz and took a hike — or at least, that was the official story. The rumor was that he was using drugs and causing delays in production. Desi gave him two weeks to clean up his act, he didn't and was terminated. I can't swear that's true but either way, he was replaced in the role by Richard Deacon.

Carmel died some time later…in 1986. One of his last jobs was doing the voice of a sinister crocodile on a cartoon special I wrote. He was a delightful man and I remember him telling us with childlike amazement that he was being paid a very nice fee to appear the following weekend at a Star Trek convention. The amazement was because he'd done hundreds of roles on different TV shows and in movies that were long forgotten…but those few days he'd worked on Star Trek two decades earlier were still earning him considerable fame and fortune. He'd been on Batman, I Spy, Hogan's Heroes, Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Munsters, Hawaii Five-O, and all those Universal westerns and detective shows, and no one (but for clowns like me) ever asked him about any of them. Star Trek, which at the time hadn't meant any more to him than any other job, was providing him with a tidy income.

There are only a few TV shows that still have that kind of commerce. There's no real money in having been on Bonanza or Mannix or That Girl, but every single actor who's alive and ever appeared on The Andy Griffith Show has been offered tons of money to go down South and sign autographs. There are annual Dark Shadows conventions and a series of Get Smart reunions are now being promoted. You wonder why certain shows and not others.

The Internet Movie Database lists the cause of death for Roger C. Carmel as suicide but as I recall, it was ruled an accidental drug overdose. Some friends found him at home in bed surrounded by cocaine paraphernalia. If you go to that link to look at his list of credits, by the way, I think the TV roles listed there represent about a tenth of all he did. A good actor.

The fine comic illustrator Paul Chadwick writes to say…

Ritter picked one good script, though. The guy never had better chemistry than with Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade. Funny stuff. It was great seeing such a sunny TV personality do dark Southern Gothic. It would be interesting to hear your insider view on what a sitcom might do when the star dies. Shut down immediately? Write it in? Plastic surgery plot? Carry on with an unacknowledged replacement, like Bewitched?

It hasn't been a good week for Billy Bob, who was quoted as a good friend of Warren Zevon's in those obits, and I believe I saw somewhere that he was close to Johnny Cash.

As for what the series should do…well, I have to admit that I've never seen 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter, so I don't know how it might fit to do a storyline where the character died. You can do that easily with a supporting character, like they did when Jack Soo passed away during the run of Barney Miller, or Nick Colasanto died while still a regular on Cheers.

The three big precedents here would probably be Chico and the Man, News Radio, and The Royal Family. In the latter, Redd Foxx died from a heart attack on the set, which was kind of a festival of irony. Not only was it one of Redd's signature bits to feign a coronary but the series had originally been entitled Chest Pains. At the time, The Royal Family had just debuted to good ratings, and I believe there was a feeling that they couldn't give up on a potential hit without trying to keep it alive. The death was written into the storyline and some new cast members were added but it didn't work. Then again, the show might not have held up with Redd.

In the case of News Radio, when Phil Hartman was murdered, his character was written out and replaced by a new, not dissimilar character. The show lasted another season but I think there's a consensus that that's about how much longer it would have lasted even with Phil. Of course, it's easier to replace a guy who works at the office than a character who's the head of a family.

Regarding Chico: At the time Freddie Prinze killed himself, I was a story editor on Welcome Back, Kotter, which was produced by the same company so I observed some of the concerns. There was an immediate determination that the show had to continue…

• NBC wanted that because at the time, they had only two successful situation comedies on the whole network — Chico and the Man, and Sanford and Son. There was no other strong sitcom waiting in the wings and so there was the fear that the network's whole Friday night schedule, including Sanford, would collapse. (Later, when Mr. Foxx walked off Sanford and Son, they went to ridiculous lengths to try to do the show without him…episodes with Son but no Sanford, followed by a series called The Sanford Arms which had neither. And later, Foxx tried a show called just Sanford (no Son) and that didn't work, either.)
• Jimmie Komack's production company wanted desperately to keep it going. Apart from Kotter, every one of their other shows (like Mr. T and Tina) and pilots had either flopped or was about to. So the order came down to keep Chico and the Man alive at all costs.
• And the folks who did Chico wanted to keep their jobs. There was a sense of Why should we be penalized because of what Freddie did? I don't think that's a terrible motive.

There was brief talk of just casting another actor as Chico. One thing which I think scuttled that was that at Freddie's funeral, a woman ran up to a grieving Jack Albertson (Prinze's co-star) and handed him what Albertson thought was a photo of Freddie. Albertson said, "No autographs now," and the woman said, "No, this is a picture of my son. He looks just like Freddie Prinze. Give him the job!" That struck everyone as so grotesque that they decided to look for another way to bring in a kid who could be called Chico (to keep the title and theme song intact) and they wound up bringing in a younger actor who The Man kept calling "Chico." Those episodes are largely forgotten today but the change kept the show alive for more than a year, sans Prinze, and I would guess it was considered a successful recovery by NBC and the producers.

I assume they won't try just having another actor come in and take over the role on Ritter's series. It sorta worked on Bewitched, replacing Dick York with Dick Sargent but York hadn't died so the replacement wasn't a reminder of a real death. Same thing when Richard Deacon replaced Roger C. Carmel on The Mothers-in-Law or several other examples. Bewitched was also such an unrealistic show, filled with special effects and unreal characters, that going from York to Sargent may not have been all that jarring for most viewers. (No one seems to have noticed when, mid-run, they changed the actress who played Gladys Kravitz but again, that was a supporting role.)

With a more realistic show and an actor as important to the series as I assume Ritter is to his, they probably won't just recast. Eight Simple Rules seems to be important to ABC's Tuesday night lineup so they'll probably try and keep it going with a storyline change and a new character or two…but they may not. Someplace in some filing cabinet at ABC, there are detailed breakdowns of the show's ratings that yield a view, perhaps an accurate one, of how strong its audience is. There may even be testing to determine how many viewers are tuning in to watch John Ritter and if they don't have such numbers, they may have a fast survey done. Assuming the show looks like it still has legs and that it might doom Tuesday to lose it, they'll regroup. Standard Operating Procedure would probably be to try and bring in some strong, experienced star (possibly a woman) to play a relative or other guardian who assumes the parental function and explain that Ritter's character is away or deceased. After a decent interval has passed, we'll hear what they're going to do.

If you read the Esquire article to which I linked earlier, you might want to also read this piece by the photographer who took the photo that was under discussion.

I don't expect anyone to be able to answer this (or even to care about it) but yesterday, the Trio satellite TV channel reran an episode of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In that had as its special guests, Debbie Reynolds, Peter Sellers and Johnny Carson. But it didn't say that in any of the TV listings, including the one on the Trio website. This listing read:

Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In – Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, guests Debbie Reynolds, Coslough Johnson and Johnny Carson.

Coslough Johnson is the brother of series regular Arte Johnson, and he was one of the writers on Laugh-In. He wasn't billed on this episode as a guest and I didn't notice him appearing on-camera in it. So why is his name in the current TV listing instead of Peter Sellers? I can only guess that Coslough did a bit part in the episode. Perhaps I missed it (he looks a lot like Arte) or perhaps it's been cut from the current syndication prints…or it could even have been chopped out of the show before it originally aired. Such cuts are not uncommon. Then, the theory would go, when the syndication list was made up, someone went back to the files to get the names of the guest stars, and there was an old contract in there for Coslough, or his name was on a call sheet. Then (still theorizing), that person thought that was the name of some famous performer, better known than Peter Sellers.

This kind of thing happens more often than you'd think. And it wreaks havoc for historians of this stuff.

Here's an L.A. Times article on why their polling results differ so from the Field Poll. As they note, when you factor in the margin of error, their poll says that the recall is supported by between 47% and 53% of California's likely voters whereas the Field Poll says it's between 50.5% and 59.5%. Thus, the two polls are not really in conflict, at least on that question.

Mark Fiore has a wonderful animated Flash political cartoon about 9/11.

Here's a link to an obituary for Jay Morton, who was a writer for Max Fleischer's cartoon studio, and who is said to have coined the opening of the Superman cartoons where they said, "Faster than a speeding bullet…more powerful than a locomotive, etc."

I don't know if that's true but Mr. Morton had another achievement in the world of comic books. Those of you who read my history of the Fox and Crow comics (reprinted in my new book, Wertham Was Right) saw the name of Jay Morton in the following context. I was writing about how cartoonist James F. Davis moved down to Florida to work for the studio. There, he began moonlighting for a company called Editorial Art Service that was run by two men named Sangor and Hughes and which produced comic book material for various publishers…

A writer at Fleischer's named Jay Morton had a connection with Sangor and Hughes. He wrote stories for them and enlisted others at the animation studio to write and/or draw for E.A.S., the work appearing mainly in Standard books like Coo-Coo Comics. Most would moonlight, doing their work evenings and weekends, but a lot of it was done during working hours in the Fleischer studio. Davis became one of many who would hide his comic book pages when a supervisor came by, and hurriedly return to animating Popeye cartoons.

Then in 1941, Paramount Pictures, which released the Fleischers' output, did the same thing to them that Columbia had done to Charlie Mintz. Max and Dave were severed from their own studio and Paramount took control of it, eventually renaming it Famous Studios and moving it back to Manhattan…James F. Davis moved back to New York, but Jay Morton did not, electing to remain in Florida where he became, it is said, enormously wealthy in the real estate trade.

Back in Manhattan, Davis found a scarcity of animation work. But he reasoned that, with the dissolution of the Fleischer/Famous studio in Florida, and Morton's exit from the field, the Editorial Art Service might be getting desperate for material. He approached Richard Hughes and found this to be true. An arrangement was formed whereby Davis would act as go-between, receiving a commission whenever he could enlist animation talent to write and draw for E.A.S.

Davis soon moved out here to work for the animation studios of Hollywood, where he ran the same kind of moonlighting "shop" that Morton had run while at Fleischer's. It was very successful and filled hundreds of comic books with wonderful cartooning. And the idea should be added to Jay Morton's list of accomplishments.

Yeah, I worked with John Ritter…once. But once was enough to see that he was a very nice guy who oozed professionalism. It was a silly, unimportant project for ABC for low money, and he was doing it as a favor to someone. Still, he was on time and prepared, and even though the producer had told him he'd be done in two hours, he didn't complain one bit when the taping ran twice that. That was my strongest impression about him and it stuck with me when I watched him on TV. Three's Company was a silly, unrealistic show but it worked, and I think the main reason it worked was that no matter what he was called on to do, Ritter was a pro, doing it about as well as a person could. He got every laugh in the script and then some, and when it was someone else's turn to get the laugh, he supported them with his reactions. Thereafter, he seemed to have an unerring knack for picking the wrong script. For a time, Penn and Teller once had a "bad movie" film society in New York that would convene every Saturday night in Times Square and go en masse to see the worst thing playing for several blocks around. It was always decided by majority rule except if "The John Ritter Rule" applied, meaning that if anything was playing with Ritter in it, no vote was necessary. The movies may have been bad but I doubt John was ever bad in any of them. Still, his career suffered for a time and it's good to remember that it didn't end there; that he had made a successful comeback with 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter.

The one afternoon I spent with him, he got to talking about some of the guest roles that had preceded his stardom on Three's Company. For a time, he was on everything. Most folks remember him as the minister who married Ted and Georgette on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but he was pleased I recalled a Bob Newhart Show in which he played a waiter in an ice cream parlor, and a M*A*S*H in which he was a soldier who went crazy. He told me that whenever he did a few days on some series, he would envy the actors who were on the show every week and wish they'd make him a regular. On Three's Company, which he was then doing, he knew that every actor they hired for one episode was thinking the same thing, and he told me he sometimes made a point of telling them, "I felt that way when I was in your position. And someday, you'll have a series and you'll be telling the same thing to your day players." I thought that was pretty classy. In fact, he struck me as a pretty classy guy. Still, as I followed his career thereafter, I often thought of the old line about Sammy Davis, Junior: "You wish someone would tell him that you're allowed to turn things down."

Disney unveils DVDs that self-destruct in 48 hours. So how long before someone comes out with the technology to copy them onto regular DVDs?