A few more points about the JFK assassination…

I set my TiVo to record most of the specials noting the 40th anniversary of the shooting in Dallas. So far, wading through them, I get the feeling that the big story of November 22, 1963 was not that President Kennedy was murdered and that the leadership of the United States changed, but that reporters rose to the challenge of covering it. The news reporting that day is of great interest but it is not of more importance than the event itself. Except maybe to newsmen.

If you are interested in delving into the history of the assassination and the various conspiracy theories and such, there are many websites around. Some claim to be neutral in their view but generally present what they see as a strong case for their side and a token, "straw man" summary of the opposition. Almost all present certain arguable assertions as inarguable…and then if you go over to some other site, you'll find someone insisting the opposite is inarguable. In many cases, opposing views are "proven beyond any doubt" by the exact same piece of supposed evidence. If you'd like to do your own surfing on the topic, this website makes the strongest case I've seen for the "Oswald did it alone" theory, while this one makes the best case for the view that there is too much wrong with that version (and too much still unknown) to accept it. Both sites will lead you to plenty of others, including some that take their positions to ridiculous extremes. Come to your own conclusions…but don't expect anyone else to be swayed by them.

Today's the day when, I guess, we're all supposed to answer the musical question, "Where were you when you heard JFK had been shot?" I was in Mr. Totman's third period math class at Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High in West Los Angeles. The principal, Mr. Campbell, came on the public address system and told us in very cautious, non-alarmist terms what was being reported on the news. For the rest of the day, there was no other topic and no grasping of the situation.

Mr. Totman was the kind of math teacher who was always looking for reasons to talk about things other than math. His mind wasn't on Algebra and he could tell ours weren't, either so we all sat around, pointlessly speculating on what it all meant. Fourth period for me was English and we also just sat around, pointlessly speculating on what it all meant. I recall that our English teacher, Mr. Cline, didn't have any more idea than we did. Then after fourth period was Lunch and again, a lot of sitting around, wondering what had happened and what would happen.

At the time, there was a rule at Emerson that students could not bring radios to school, and the officials had been enforcing the rule with great vigor, seizing radios and punishing their possessors. You would have had an easier time carrying heroin at my junior high school. But suddenly at lunchtime, several students were openly playing news broadcasts on their little transistors and not only was no one confiscating but teachers were among the many crowding around to listen. I went to Mr. Campbell's office and suggested they pipe the radio news coverage over the P.A. system and this was done.

There was a very real fear that the shooting of Kennedy was Step One in a dastardly plot that would lead to more assassinations, invasions, nuclear bombings, whatever. Imaginations ran rampant and even after it became apparent that other catastrophes were not on tap, imaginations continued to rampage about whodunnit. They still do.

For a time in the late sixties and early seventies, I joined the throng that believed in a conspiracy. I even attended a conference of "buffs" (as they sometimes call themselves) and found about 90% of them to have some sort of obsessive, emotional need to defend wacko theories to the death, even sometimes multiple wacko theories that contradicted each other. But around 10% made good, rational arguments against the Warren Commission and I have since seen those arguments grow ever less compelling.

I eventually came around to the opinion that the "lone nut" explanation made the most sense. Yes, there are anomalies and oddments but in this country, we decide murder trials by the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt." We do not demand that every evidentiary point be nailed down because we acknowledge that almost every case does have anomalies and oddments; that if the defense digs hard enough, they can always find something that can be framed as a counter-argument. Reluctantly, for I love to see government lying and cover-ups exposed, I had to conclude that Oswald acted alone, that the single-bullet theory that I had once denounced as science-fiction was probably so, and that Jack Ruby was just a deranged night club owner.

I also concluded that it was pointless to try and convince anyone else of this; that those who had an opinion had already had it bronzed and placed on the mantel. Too many had too much invested in not believing "the official version," and as I have a certain admiration for skepticism, I don't know that this is a bad thing. So I am absolutely not attempting to get you to see it my way; just reporting that I moved from one viewpoint to another. Most people, I am well aware, do not believe it…but they also do not believe in any other particular theory. They believe "they" killed Kennedy without really identifying who "they" are. I'm afraid that is how it will forever be in the history books.

Lastly, I came to the conclusion that the death of John F. Kennedy did not mean the end of Camelot. The more I read about Kennedy, the less I think of him, except perhaps as a symbolic figure. If his assassination plunged America into a downward spiral, that was largely because we allowed it to…a mistake we sometimes seem to be making, though not as badly, regarding 9/11. I think the country is strong enough to survive the murder of one man or 3,000 men and women. Still, we sometimes forget that, and it is that forgetfulness that does the real damage.

This afternoon, my pal Earl Kress and I attended a luncheon staged by the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters. The P.P.B. is an organization of men and women with at least 20 years of professional employment in the fields of Radio and Television Broadcasting or allied fields. Five times a year, they stage luncheons to honor someone and today we had a lovely gathering with rotten food to honor Tom Bosley. Those present to fill the dais and speak of their friend and/or co-worker were Marion Ross, Anson Williams, Donny Most, Erin Moran (all from Happy Days), Tracy Nelson (who co-starred with Bosley on The Father Dowling Mysteries), plus Ernest Borgnine, Barbara Eden, David Nelson and Hal Kanter. My favorite moment was when Borgnine got up, pulled out a printout of an Internet database listing on Bosley, and proceeded to quote trivia from it. Later, Bosley took the page and read an advertising banner for Botox.

Speaking possibly of Botox: The main discussion topic among the attendees seemed to be Barbara Eden. Ms. Eden is just shy of 70 and could pass for half that age. Ordinarily, older glamour girls achieve this via some combination of plastic surgery and Industrial Strength Make-up that renders the subject about 60% android. Not Barbara Eden. She either has the greatest genes in the world or the best surgeon…or maybe she has a portrait at home getting extremely decrepit. I was about three feet from her at one point and if I didn't know who it was and someone made me guess the lady's age, I'd have said 40…and not been surprised if the correct answer was 30. This may sound gawkish or frivolous but, geez, it was what everyone was thinking and whispering about. She was there because she lives across the street from Tom Bosley and she described how every morning, she goes outside in a shabby robe and is embarrassed to be spotted by Bosley, out walking his dog. She said she looked like a mess then, and I could hear an unamused lady at the table next to us mutter, "Yeah, right."

Lunch was a miserly ration of processed turkey arranged on a scoop of stuffing to make it look like more. Whenever I eat at a restaurant that does that, I always think of leaving a bad tip and putting the stuffing under it to make it look like 15%. But the show today more than made up for it.

Siegfried Fischbacher has begun advancing a rather surprising theory about the incident that seriously injured his partner, Roy. It was initially reported that the tiger got out of control, mauled Roy and that this triggered a stroke and other damage. Siegfried now says it was the other way around.

As we predicted here, Jackie Mason's new Broadway show is closing in a hurry. It opened on November 19 and the last performance is November 30. Reviews ranged from bad to really bad. William Stevenson over at Broadway.com, for instance, wrote: "Charging Broadway prices for this comic catastrophe is truly criminal. It's only worth paying if you want to be able to say you've seen the worst musical comedy on Broadway in recent memory." For some reason, when I came across that, I had a mental image of Mason reading the notice and saying, "Well, it could have been worse…"

I ordinarily do not believe in reviewing something I haven't seen, and certainly not before it comes out. I wince a bit when a movie or TV show is announced and the Internet Experts chime in and declare it hopeless, just based on a one or two sentence precis. But some projects have such a kiss-o'-death air about them, it's hard to adopt a wait-'n'-see attitude. Just about everything Jackie Mason has touched in his professional career has flopped except his pure stand-up act, and even that's long since lost its potency. It's not that he's getting up there in years…Shelley Berman and Bob Newhart are both older and still very fresh and funny. It's that like a novelist with only one great book in him, Mason has just so much to offer and no more. Some friends of mine and I once put all three of those gents on a list we compiled of The Top Ten Stand-Up Comedians of all time. When I discuss it with folks, I need to underscore that Mason is on there for what he was doing twenty or thirty years ago.

Anyway, Mason will go off and tour with his stand-up and eventually come back to Broadway with another one-man show. The last time I was in New York, I walked past the theater where such a show was playing and, about an hour before his performance, Mason was out on 45th Street, urging passers-by to come see him. I admire the longevity and the perseverance. But based on the last Jackie Mason show through which I suffered, he'd need a loaded revolver to get me in there. And manacles to keep me.

Max Cleland is the former U.S. Senator who's now serving on the 9/11 commission. He's been very critical of the Bush Administration's actions in Iraq and believes they have tried to stonewall his commission. I found this interview with him to be interesting and informative. It's on Salon so you either have to subscribe or watch some advertising. But I think it's worth it.

I am pleased to announce that we can now retire the Nick Nolte mug shot, which we were all sick of seeing on comedy shows, as the Current Scariest Celebrity Photo. The booking snapshot of Mr. Jackson has easily edged it out for the honor. And I post them here to make a point: I think a lot of the damage done to Nolte's career was not so much in what he did to get arrested (does anyone even recall?) but in that picture. The guy just looked like a lower life form and the photo, which even made it into a bit on the Oscars, kept his humiliation front and center. Neither I nor anyone else watching from afar can say for sure that Michael Jackson committed the crime of which he stands accused. But get used to that mug shot. We're going to be seeing it for some time and every time we see it, it will be selling the notion that Jackson is not quite human, as well as reminding us of the accusation. Whether it's valid or not.

A reporter there just had Jermaine Jackson on the phone and he blew up, declaring Michael's innocence, telling off the media for giving air time to people who claim to represent his family but don't and…well, here. I can back up my TiVo and transcribe it. Here's Jermaine…

First of all, I'd like to say the whole family supports Michael 100%. I'm very disappointed in the system in which things were done. At the same time, Michael is in very strong spirits because he is innocent. We're tired of people…sick and tired of people speaking on my brother's behalf, on the family's behalf, who do not know us. So you put these people on national TV, on international TV, and they say these things and the public is saying, "Oh, wow, is he really like this?" He is not eccentric. We had an incredible, wonderful childhood and what they're doing is bringing him down with the very thing that he loves, his children, his family. Michael is about peace. They don't know us. But this will reveal itself and I am sick and fucking tired of everybody saying these things about my family. Well, we will fight and we will stand up and everybody that knows this family around the world will support us because at the end of the day, this is nothing but a modern-day lynching. This is what they want to see, him in handcuffs. You got it. But it won't be for long, I promise you. I'm sick and tired. Sick and tired.

At this point, the reporter jumped in and said, "Believe me, I have no idea what you're going through…" Jermaine came back with…

No, you do not know because you don't walk in my shoes. You don't walk in my shoes but you put these people on national television to say these things. They don't know our family. We are a family and we will continue to be a family. That's my love right there [referring, I guess, to a shot of Michael then on the screen] and we support him 1000%. I have nothing else to say. Goodbye.

Then he hung up as the reporter, Kyra Phillips, tried to keep him on the line. It was a fascinating, angry outburst and probably not unjustified. One doubts that Michael will be proven innocent at all, let alone as innocent as Jermaine says. But you can understand why a guy's brother would say what he said, and he's right that an awful lot of people who don't know the Jacksons at all are getting plenty of face time.

An interesting contrast. While I was posting the previous item and taking some calls, Jackson deplaned and managed to get into a van without the CNN cameras catching him. They've just caravaned to the office where he will

Oh, wait. They just got a shot of him getting out of the van and heading into the sheriff's office. The newsfolks were practically orgasmic to notice that he was in handcuffs. They're now replaying that shot over and over.

As I was saying: They had copters covering the caravan to the sheriff's office and to fill airtime, they brought in their legal correspondent, Jeffrey Toobin, in split-screen. Toobin was an oasis of actual information, ticking off real legal points, correcting much that had been said in the preceding hour. He explained the actual laws covering to what extent a minor can be compelled to testify in a sexual molestation case. Very interesting, very informative. But now that Jackson has arrived, they've left Toobin and gone back to folks theorizing about Michael's personality, what's on his mind, how he'll defend himself, etc. It's like someone in the control room said, "Enough facts! Let's get back to speculation!" And they've now rerun the shot with the handcuffs about ten times in six minutes.

It's an O.J. world again. If I were Leno, I'd have the Dancing Itos come out tonight and do another number. Just to remind us.

In 1967, editor Dick Giordano was shaking things up at the Charlton Comics Group. Charlton was a cheapjack company that paid writers and artists at rates ranging from poor to involuntary servitude, then printed their wares on presses that Gutenberg had discarded as outmoded. As was occasionally the case in comics' early days, you could treat the talent and its work like dirt and still occasionally get decent-to-good work out of them, plus the intermittent masterpiece. Giordano upped rates a fraction and treated people well in non-monetary ways, and so managed to increase the frequency of gems. One which happened almost as an accident was the one-shot story, "Children of Doom," which appeared in Charlton Premiere #2. It was slapped together in record time by Giordano, writer Denny O'Neil and artist Pat Boyette to fill a void created when another planned second issue fell through. O'Neil was a relatively new author to comics and he came up with a haunting tale set in the days following a nuclear holocaust. Pat Boyette was also rather new to comics and he illustrated it with a striking approach with heavy reliance on black-and-white scenes in what otherwise was a color comic. Pat had actually wanted to do the whole story without color but Charlton execs chickened out and the comic wound up being partially colored. You can make a strong argument that this made it even more arresting and eerie.

I bring this up now because my chum Scott Shaw! covers the book today over in his Oddball Comics column. He gives a much better summary there than I do here, and I suggest you go see what he has to say. "Children of Doom" came and went with very little notice. It didn't warrant a sequel, didn't impact comics of the day…didn't even get noticed by a lot of comic book fans. But those of us who did notice it will never forget it, so it's nice that Scott is again calling it to our attention.

The plane is pulling into a hangar with people inside. They say this is a strong indicator that Jackson is inside.

We're now watching another plane that just landed at Santa Barbara Airport. They're reasonably sure Michael is on this one. A reporter just explained that they had a tip that Jackson had left Vegas on a plane with a certain tail number and the plane now landing seems to have the same tail number. Ergo, they have concluded it's the same plane so they assume Jackson is aboard. Professional newsmen are actually discussing this on CNN. One just said, "This is either Michael Jackson's plane or a hell of a decoy." Sounds very important.

Just watched CNN spend 10+ minutes showing us a Lear Jet landing at Santa Barbara airport. We saw it land, we saw it taxi. We heard a hapless newsguy try to keep talking the whole time despite the fact that all he had to say was that they had information that Michael Jackson was inside and that he was arriving to surrender to authorities. Finally, it turned out that Michael was not on the plane. They now have various reporters discussing the means by which Jackson might be travelling to the sheriff's office.

Bush is in England, bombs are exploding in Istanbul and Iraq, killer storms are flooding the Eastern seaboard…and on CNN, the most important issue is whether The King of Pop is on a plane or in a van. Fill in your own snide remark.

Let me tell you about Floyd Norman. Floyd Norman is a veteran of the animation business dating back to the Disney Studios, circa 1960, and he looks exactly like the sketch at above right that someone did of him. Over the years, he's worked as a writer and/or layout guy for almost every major studio but mainly for Disney and Hanna-Barbera. He did wonderful work for their shows and movies and comic books and comic strips but he really distinguished himself in one category: Drawing insulting cartoons of his employers and fellow cartoonists. For years, it's been a singular honor of the animation business to make it into a Floyd Norman sketch, and all hail him as The Master. A while back, a batch of his doodles were collected into a very funny book called Faster, Cheaper. We now have a sequel. Son of Faster, Cheaper can now be ordered at this website and if you have any interest at all in the cartoon biz, I urge you to do so. (I think but am not sure you can order the first volume here. If you buy one, you'll want the other.)

Are you sick of discovering that you're somewhere your cell phone won't connect? I am. I have Cingular service and once, I was unable to make a call while in a Cingular office. The guy behind the counter just giggled, "Yeah, they don't work here." Anyway, you can investigate where cell phones don't work — or add your own data — by entering The Dead Cell Zone.