Two quotes with one kind of rhetoric…

While there are many reasons young Muslims sacrifice their lives — including the honor and money bestowed onto their families after their death — it is the martyr's afterlife that captures the imagination. […] Candidates for martyrdom were told the first drop of blood shed by a martyr washes away their sins. They could select 70 of their nearest and dearest to enter Heaven; and they would have at their disposal 72 houris, the beautiful virgins of paradise, Hassan recounted in the New Yorker.

Paul Hill, the unrepentant anti-abortion activist who murdered a doctor and bodyguard at a Florida abortion clinic, was scheduled to die by chemical injection on Wednesday in an execution he said would make him a martyr. […] "The sooner I am executed … the sooner I am going to heaven," Hill said in a jailhouse interview. "I expect a great reward in heaven. I am looking forward to glory. I don't feel remorse."

As I once wrote about such folks: If there is an afterlife, I have a feeling they're in for a big surprise when they get there. And if there isn't an afterlife, they're in for a bigger surprise.

The 2003 Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon racked up $60.5 million in nationwide pledges for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. That's a record but I wonder how often any sort of major telethon doesn't set a record. I worked on one major telethon about twenty years ago (not Jerry's) and the attitude of its operators was that at its end, they were going to announce a total of at least 10% more than the previous year, regardless of what was actually pledged. The explanation was that a telethon will ultimately collect somewhere between 75% and 105% of its pledge amounts so there was plenty of wiggle room there. No one could ever prove they hadn't received that many in pledges. The producer could have run out to a pay phone, phoned in a couple of huge fake pledges and put them over the top. And it wouldn't be his problem if the money for them never actually came in.

But Jerry's $60.5 million is probably legit and as such, it's an admirable piece of change, made all the more amazing when you consider that the telecast had some clearance problems this year. In many large cities it was either not on or was relegated to some UHF station way up the dial and out in the sticks. Many of the cities that did carry it didn't air all 21.5 hours, cutting away for large chunks to air a baseball game or even normal programming. At one point, though it was being "carried" by three different stations I get on my satellite dish, none of them had it on.

I watched intermittently, fascinated at the sometimes-odd array of acts that popped in, many of them people you just don't see on television anymore. Julius LaRosa sang a couple of numbers. So did Steve Lawrence, Charo, Jack Jones and Nancy Sinatra. At one point, I tuned in and caught Fyvush Finkel doing a rousing (i.e., loud) rendition of "L'Chaim" from Fiddler on the Roof and later, Charlie Callas made funny faces as he lip-synched the "I Remember It Well" number from the movie, Gigi. I like some of those performers, and I was delighted to see some of the better stars of Vegas, like Bob Anderson and Lance Burton. Still, I suspect if you're under 40 and not a frequent visitor to Las Vegas, you could watch for a pretty long stretch without seeing anyone you'd ever heard of besides Jer. At one point, I found myself wondering to a friend on the phone why the line-up included so few stars you'd ever see in contemporary (as opposed to rerun) television programming. The best I could surmise was that this is Jerry's show business: The stars he knows, the ones who come out of his tradition of entertainment. And since Jerry is the show, the show is Jerry.

He's awfully good at it, especially when he and/or his guests get off the topic of what a wonderful thing Jerry Lewis is doing for His Kids. For some reason, this year I found myself enjoying the little moments when a corporate executive would come out, awkwardly plug his company and proudly present Jerry with a check for some vast amount of moola. Mr. Lewis has been criticized for trampling on the dignity of folks who have afflictions and/or are confined to wheelchairs. If you browse the 'net, you'll find a number of angry essays by such people, bemoaning that he transforms them into objects of pity. I'm sure some feel that way, and of course they have every right to feel how they feel. But I also think Jerry is pretty good at making some folks feel pretty special. Those who were brought on as "victims" of Muscular Dystrophy clearly loved their moments before the camera and the feeling that they were doing something positive to help themselves, and others who are afflicted. Heck, even some of those corporate sponsors and performers who don't often get in front of a TV camera seemed to feel vital and important. I guess I used to watch the Jerry Lewis Telethon because I liked the off-beat performers and the sheer campy ego excesses that came between them. Now I think I watch because I like the off-beat performers and the fact that all those people on the screen, however effectual or self-possessed they may be, may actually be doing something to help other human beings.

We don't get nearly enough of that in this world. In fact, I'm not sure you can get nearly enough of that in this world.

Those of you who've never been to the Comic-Con International in San Diego can get a little idea of how large and diverse it is in this gallery of convention pics.

Joshua Micah Marshall dissects the current administration's strategy for playing fast 'n' loose with the truth. (Quick summary: They decide what they want to do — cut taxes for the rich, drill in Alaska, topple Saddam Hussein, etc. — then pretend that that is somehow the answer to an unrelated problem that the public wants solved. I think Marshall is on to something here.)

Al Franken's new book is riding comfortably atop the Best Seller lists, put there in part by folks who are buying it as a way of giving the finger to Bill O'Reilly and Fox News. I just got around to ordering my copy from Amazon, and of course I have a link here that you can use to do likewise and give this site its paltry commission. I didn't buy mine because of Fox News, though that is a perfectly fine reason. I bought mine because I just learned that in addition to the usual Franken "gotchas," this top-selling volume features the cartooning talents of Don Simpson. As I've mentioned here before, Don is one of my favorite cartoonists. Always liked his steroid-crazed super-hero, Megaton Man. Always liked his other imaginative cartoons. Can't imagine he doesn't have some wonderful work in Mr. Franken's successful tome. Here's a link to an article about how Don got such a high-profile gig. I'll write more about the book and him once I get my copy.

Coming to DVD September 23: Groucho Marx: You Bet Your Life – The Lost Episodes. Here's a link to order it from Amazon.

Don Rickles on the Jerry Lewis Telethon…

"God bless. It's good to see you. It's been a lot of years. I was sitting down…Malibu with the wife. It's her birthday. In the sun and boom. And they said, 'It's the telethon' and I knew it's for the kids. You know. But for a minute there, I started to spit up. Because I knew this is a shlep trip from Malibu to see you standing there going, 'Help me, help me.' You know, the kids need help but stop. Don't beg. You were a big star once. You've gotta remember who the hell you are. You don't have to sit there and beg for the kids in the wheelchairs. Let 'em live. God will be good to them. But you don't have to stand here and have a fireman sit here for eight hours, and then you sit with the three million dollars and they're walking around going, 'Bustin' my babe,' for the lousy three million. These guys, they give you the money gladly."

What the hell is this man talking about?

Just watched the opening of the 2003 Jerry Lewis Telethon. They had Jerry arriving on a Harley-Davidson with huge training wheels, flanked by a biker honor guard. Actually, it looked like they just drove around the CBS parking lot but it didn't matter. It's Labor Day and Jerry is back where he belongs.

I never know what I think of this annual event but I can't help tuning in. On one hand, a lot of it seems more devoted to hyping the careers of Jerry and his friends than to actually doing good for folks afflicted with muscular dystrophy. On the other hand, some of those performers are wonderful. As I'm typing this, Fayard Nicholas of the Nicholas Brothers is doing a few steps. Who else is going to put him on a national TV show these days? And everyone I've ever met who has worked on the telethon has had sincerity that was beyond question. That includes Jerry.

There are those who find it horrifying on some levels. They include folks like this guy who feel the funds it makes available for research and care do not outweigh a certain damage done to the dignity of the disabled. There are also those, including folks whose knowledge of the topic I respect, who say that a surprising amount of good is done by the money Mr. Lewis collects. I suspect both views are valid but that the latter has the edge. Ultimately, I suppose it comes down to how you feel about Jerry. I've decided I like him, and I'll be tuning in from time to time over the next twenty-one hours so I guess I like the telethon. I'll report back here if I know for sure.

The rubber duckies are coming! Watch out!

Here's another chapter of Peter Sanderson's report on this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. [NOTE: Those of you who've come here at Peter's suggestion to read about the Ray Bradbury panel will find that info here.]

The conventional wisdom, which is right around 50% of the time, is that Fox News filed its hopeless lawsuit against Al Franken's new book to appease the channel's biggest star, Bill O'Reilly.

So, apart from the fact that O'Reilly seems to despise Al Franken, why did he want the suit filed? A first year law student could have told him that the suit wouldn't survive five minutes in a court of law. (O'Reilly is also a passionate opponent of "frivolous lawsuits" that clog the courts, and has long advocated that folks who file them should have to pay all court costs. Somehow, I don't think Mr. Franken will be receiving a check…)

O'Reilly is more or less in the business of book promotion and publicity. He probably knew that the lawsuit would help usher in The Al Franken Decade (or some shorter period) on the Best Seller List. So why file this suit?

Perhaps the answer can be found in this opinion piece that O'Reilly just wrote. It's about that old interview of Arnold Schwarzenegger that has surfaced to embarrass him. O'Reilly allows that dredging it up is to be expected but doesn't think it's fair. On his show, he turned this topic into a tirade against the Internet and he's right, of course, that a lot of nonsense and slander and gossip does get disseminated via the World Wide Web, but he's wasting his time pointing that out. No one thinks the Internet isn't a repository for inaccurate info, and that's just how it's going to be. All the O'Reilly editorials in the world will do zero to change that.

What he misses is that the Internet has an accurate, archival function, as well. I'm not a regular watcher of Mr. O'Reilly but when I've seen him, it seems like nothing makes him madder than having his own words and seeming contradictions thrown back at him. That's one thing the Internet is great at. The example I cited a moment ago about frivolous lawsuits came off a couple of websites that quoted the Fox News host condemning precisely the kind of action his employer attempted, allegedly at his urging. When O'Reilly yells "shut up," as he often does, it frequently seems to be because someone is attempting to quote something he said and wishes to forget. That was pretty much what his public squabble with Franken was about. Franken was quoting not only times O'Reilly said things that were untrue but times he denied he'd said them at all. For a guy in Bill's line of work, the latter is probably more embarrassing than the former.

O'Reilly is absolutely right that some good people don't choose to stand for public office because they know someone is going to haul out an interview they gave in 1977 or some ancient incident that now seems embarrassing. Somehow, I doubt he'll feel that way the next time Fox News has something damaging to a Democrat, but we'll see. Either way, he's right and the practice is not going away. There will never be a Statute of Limitations on releasing or leaking something damaging about a political opponent…and even if a given politician chooses not to throw mud, the tabloids, as well as websites like Drudge Report and The Smoking Gun, will get it out there. (Actually, with the rise of such sites, politicians don't have to leak smears about their opposition. Whether they like it or not, it will get done for them. Arnold's backers are trying to gain some traction by charging that the release of the old interview was a smear tactic by Democrats. But the actual path of that material into the public discourse is not at all a mystery and could easily have occurred without partisan prodding.)

O'Reilly should know that digging up dirt is here to stay for as long as there's a vote to be won or a buck to be made. What I suspect has him frothing about the Franken book is not that it may be filled with slander, as we define it, but that it's full of old O'Reilly quotes, which one can easily glean from the Internet, Nexis/Lexis and even the Fox News website. And you can't tell a book to "Shut up! Just shut up!" Fox News tried that and it didn't work.

"Broadway" is defined as that which plays in a group of approximately 33 theaters in and around the Times Square area in New York. At any given time, about a fifth of those theaters stand empty, waiting for the next occupant. So at any given time, around 25 shows are playing "on Broadway."

After 8/31 when two plays (Enchanted April and the revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night) close, there will be exactly one non-musical play on Broadway — Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg. Several are scheduled to open in October but for a full month, there will be only one show running on Broadway where no one breaks into song.

I'm not sure what this means, if it even means anything. It might mean that Broadway is reaching a crisis stage in its shortage of theaters. There are a lot of shows that would like to go to Broadway but cannot find a place to play. Last year at a party, I heard a veteran of the business side of theater explain about some of the recent wars, with producers knifing one another to get this or that theater. At least one show a few years ago did a kind of reverse on the scam that Bialystock and Bloom work in The Producers. The show in question opened, did poorly and would ordinarily have closed. But its backers knew that several well-financed production companies wanted their theater and that they couldn't get it until the flop show decided to vacate…so they kept it running at a loss. In effect, they said to other producers, "How much will you pay us to close and let you have the theater for your show?" Eventually, some show was desperate enough to open before the cut-off for the Tony Awards that they paid the flop's producers enough to show a nice profit.

I believe the gent also explained that non-musical plays were at a serious disadvantage in competing for theaters. There's simply more potential profit for a theater when it houses a musical, and that may be what's causing them to dominate. Or maybe playwrights just aren't writing plays. Whatever the cause, I'll be interested to see if it keeps up.

Often on this website, I post photos that I take on my premises, usually shooting through a sliding glass door in the breakfast room. I'm in a highly urban area near no forests, no undeveloped areas. It has therefore been rather amazing how many creatures have turned up back there. Here's a convention that I captured on film CompactFlash card last evening…

Gathered around a big dish of cat food the other evening on my back porch the other evening were six younger raccoon plus an adult, probably the mother. And I find it interesting to presume that the mother is one of the raccoons who can be seen at an earlier age in the earlier photos I posted. My friend Carolyn and I speculate that they live some distance from here and that when they get hungry, they trek on over here. The mother leads them, just as her mother once led her to my cat dish. It's like a rite of passage: "Come on, kids. You're old enough to go to the writer's house and eat Friskies Chef's Blend. Someday, you'll take your children there." And they will too, assuming I don't go broke buying cat food.

By the way, Friskies Chef's Blend is now advertising, "Now! Better Taste!" on its packaging. I have a feeling it's "New Coke" all over again. I really liked the old taste.

Several folks, including Cory Strode and Pat O'Neill, remind me that for eight years, Bill and Hillary Clinton had absolutely no trouble going to a Methodist Church not far from the White House. But Ronald Reagan claimed he couldn't go to church because he was a danger to those around him. (To emphasize: I don't care if Reagan went to church. But I think he said a lot of things that were just as disingenuous as Clinton's famous "I did not inhale" and got a free pass for them.)

I should mention that a past August 28 was also the birthdate of another man who helped me a lot when I got into the comic book field, a lovely man named Chase Craig. Chase was the editor-in-chief for Western Publishing's Los Angeles office and as such was responsible for countless Dell and Gold Key Comics, including the Disney and Warner Brothers titles. If you enjoyed the work of Carl Barks or Russ Manning or Harvey Eisenberg or any of the folks who wrote and drew those comics, you were enjoying a comic book edited by Chase Craig. He set and maintained a very high standard, lowering it only to allow me to work for him for a few years there.  As I look over my dubious knowledge of how to write comics, I have to admit that I learned as much from Chase as from Jack.

Chase was born August 28, 1910 and passed away in December of 2001. Western's books rarely carried credits, and I'm not sure Chase's name ever appeared in any of the thousands of fine comics he supervised. But leaving aside his momentary lapse of hiring me, he deserves to be hailed as a very important person in the history of the medium.