If the Bill Bennett gambling scandal (mini-scandal, actually) has done nothing, it has made some strange bedfellows of liberals and libertarians. Here's a piece from the National Review that summarizes a libertarian viewpoint with which I pretty much agree.

One of the great voices of animation, Lucille Bliss, is receiving a much-deserved honor. Here's an article about that. Congrats, Lucille!

Dave Mackey (who has a fine weblog devoted to animation here) writes of the Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Andrew Dice Clay…

I believe the cold open and monologue were taken for the west coast feed and subsequent repeats from the dress show. I have the air show on tape somewhere and remember there were differences.

You know, I seem to recall hearing something of the sort back then. I just did a search on the web didn't find anything about that, but I did locate a news story that ran a day or two after the broadcast. Here are some excerpts from it…

Foulmouthed comedian Andrew Dice Clay has apparently lifted Saturday Night Live to its highest ratings all season. The show, which was boycotted by cast member Nora Dunn and singer Sinead O'Connor because of Clay's brand of humor, averaged a rating of 11.6 and got a 31-percent share of the audience in the 24-city overnight Nielsens, NBC said. That was 8 points higher than the Feb. 24 Saturday Night Live with Fred Savage of ABC's The Wonder Years as host, NBC said.

NBC's New York and Burbank, Calif., offices got 1,764 calls against Clay and 198 in his favor in what was probably the highest number of pre-show protests in the program's 15-year history, NBC spokesman Curt Block said. Clay's appearance, broadcast with a five-second delay to allow bleeps, drew heavy advance publicity because of the boycotts. Clay's act has been branded racist and offensive to women and homosexuals.

Security was heavy for the show, NBC said. Guards with metal detectors checked out guests entering both the dress rehearsal and the live broadcast. The only incident in the studio occurred during Clay's opening monologue, when a couple began shouting "Clay, Clay, go away!" They were ejected.

The five-second delay — which NBC also has used during earlier appearances on the show by comics Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison — enabled the network to edit out two potentially offensive words repeatedly used by Clay and other cast members during one sketch, entitled, "Daddy, What's Sex?"

Let's see if the re-airing this Saturday night includes those people heckling Clay's monologue. That might have been a reason to substitute the monologue from dress rehearsal. In the meantime, Tom Collins corrects me about the other episode we're discussing here. In rehearsals, Sinead O'Connor displayed (but did not rip up) a photo of a child. Now that Tom mentions it, I realize he's right.

Her on-air shredding of the Pope's photo brought on a torrent of criticism that some say harmed her career and led to her curtailing her performing. When it occurred, I thought it was a very childish action on her part — one of those too-frequent cases where someone makes what might be a valid, if controversial, statement but does so in a way that does their cause more harm than good. But back then, I also thought she was making a rather vague-but-nasty slam against Catholicism. Since then, I've had her message of the evening explained to me. Apparently — and this was not covered much at the time — Ms. O'Connor was a tireless crusader for raising awareness of child abuse, having once been victimized herself. The tune she performed that evening which culminated in the photo-ripping was "War," a song by Bob Marley that had once been pulled from radio and some record shops because some people felt it was an incitement to violence. In her on-air performance of it, she changed a line about "racial injustice" to "sexual abuse." If that was mentioned in the torrent of press coverage back then, I sure managed to miss it — which was probably as much O'Connor's fault, for not making her point clearer, as it was the fault of reporters. In light of the recent revelations about the Catholic church covering up so many molestations, her actions that evening seem a little less frivolous. I still think it was a sloppy way to make a point, and a nasty trick to play on Saturday Night Live. But at least she seems to have been trying to make a much more valid, important statement than it seemed at the time…even if no one understood it.

Researching this a little on the Internet by the way, I find several reports that say that the F.C.C. fined NBC in the amount of $2.5 million for the incident. This sounds fishy to me. Ripping up a photo of John Paul II while proclaiming, "Fight the enemy!" may be a great way to get everyone pissed off at you but I find it hard to believe there's an F.C.C. rule against it.

Not only is Will Eisner still writing and drawing comics but they're fresher than an amazing percentage of "cutting edge" works by the so-called hot, young talent. Go poke around on his website.

Spinsanity provides some "unspun" numbers about the deficit and tax cuts.

An awful lot of folks, most of them his supporters, either don't seem to be interested or just accept what his press secretary said, despite contradictions. If you are interested, here's one group's attempt to nail it down. It's rather baffling that there could be so much in dispute and no one's trying to sort out the truth.

Here's an article about Conan O'Brien's upcoming episode done entirely in clay animation.

We have a total lunar eclipse next week. This article will tell you everything you need to know about it except exactly when it will be visible in your area. This page will figure that part out for you.

On the Record with Bob Costas returned to HBO last week. I think Costas is the best interviewer working today. Even when the subject is a sport I don't follow — and I don't follow any of them — I find him worth watching. And it isn't all about sports.

Several of you have written to remind me that Nora Dunn wasn't the only person who opted out of Saturday Night Live the week Andrew Dice Clay hosted. Sinead O'Connor had been booked as the musical guest that week and she chose not to share a stage with the Diceman. Ms. O'Connor instead appeared as the first musical guest of the following season. Two years later, she appeared again — and that was the infamous episode hosted by Tim Robbins. She ended her second musical number by whipping out a photo of the Pope and tearing it up, much to the shock of the show's producers. (In all rehearsals, she tore up a photo with less significance.)

Also, a couple of folks wrote to say that even the full 90-minute reruns of Saturday Night Live are not always complete, and that lines are sometimes edited. This may be so, but those are probably not strict edits. What SNL has sometimes done with its reruns is to substitute the version of a sketch taped at the dress rehearsal. I suppose they figure that once you get to even the first rerun, it's no longer live so it doesn't matter if they do this. But a couple of times, Lorne Michaels (or whoever) has decided to dump the "live" version of a sketch and insert the dress rehearsal incarnation, which may differ more than a little. They did this when they reran the episode with Sinead O'Connor and the Pope photo, replacing that entire number with the taping from the dress rehearsal.

So if you watch SNL reruns in sequence, there's a show where Sinead O'Connor ends her song by tearing up a photo of someone other than the Pope. Then on the following show, the guest host is Joe Pesci and he comes out in the monologue and discusses how on the previous show, Sinead O'Connor tore up a photo of the Pope, and he even shows the photo and how it's been taped back together. This will someday confuse the hell out of someone if it hasn't already.

There are a great many books about the Marx Brothers — trust me; I have them all — but the best is Joe Adamson's Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo. In response to an item posted here the other day, Joe writes…

In point of fact, the reason there were scenes in the old British 35's that are no longer in the American prints or negatives has less to do with alternate versions than with post-1934 Hays Office censorship — If you know your film history, you know that Joseph Breen made the U.S. Production Code much stricter in 1934 than it previously been, and cuts were made in American prints when Paramount re-issued the film, and the footage has never been recovered or restored. When we made The Marx Brothers in a Nutshell in 1981, we made an effort to find a British print that contained this footage, but were told that they had suffered nitrate deterioration since Allen Eyles wrote the book The Marx Brothers: Their World of Comedy, which I referred to in my footnote. There's a total of about 5 minutes missing, including a scene I describe as being in Kalmar and Ruby's script but not in the film — Well, it was in the film, but not today.

There was also an effort to locate this footage when the first videotape of Horsefeathers was made, but it was similarly unsuccessful. The place to try now is Russia, which was unavailable to film archivists prior to 1989.

I'm in the act of revising my 1973 book and just discovered that Paramount considered reissuing Monkey Business before Horsefeathers, and asked the Hays Office to tell them what cuts would be necessary — They responded with a short list of lines and scenes that are still in the movie today (including Harpo's gag at the Ladies' room) before Paramount explained that they'd decided to reissue Horsefeathers and Little Miss Marker instead — Hence the footage no longer there.

I've found in my research that there's about 5 minutes each missing from Animal Crackers and A Night at the Opera, as well as Horsefeathers, tho I haven't been able to find any evidence of anything missing from any of the others. Look for my revision to contain a number of such treasures, about which I had not a clue in 1973 — but then, neither did the rest of us!

Thanks, Joe. You know, if the folks who own those movies now want to find that lost footage, all they have to do is put out real expensive DVDs of the current version and proclaim them as definitive. Once I purchase my copies, content that I will never again have to purchase these films, the missing scenes will turn up, just so they can put out new versions I have to buy. And then after I buy those, something else will turn up. (Hey, I'm going to have to buy another edition of your book, too…)

I'm posting this offer for my pal, Doug Molitor…

I have some five dozen MAD magazines ranging from 1962 to 1973 (#69-157, though not complete) some in only fair condition, but many in very fine condition (as long as you forgive the inevitable creases on the rear for the MAD Fold-In). Anyone who'd like to buy any or all of them, email me at this address.

Doug is one of the good guys so you can order from him in confidence.

Because at least one of my friends was unaware of it, I thought I'd mention that NBC is still rerunning old episodes of Saturday Night Live on its Up All Night weekend broadcast. Each week, a "classic" episode is offered. In some cities, it immediately follows the regular SNL broadcast. Other cities insert a show or two between them or don't run it at all.

Assuming yours does, you may want to note that they run the full 90-minute versions. The reruns on Comedy Central and E! are chopped down to an hour by omitting what someone feels are the weaker segments — with some qualifications. To retain the flow of a program, they always include the host's monologue, which is often the worst part of an episode, and unless it's really dreadful, they include the cold opening. But beyond that, whoever makes these decisions is free to dump what didn't work, and they usually pick well. Most of those shows are better without the weakest material but every so often though, a good piece gets dropped for the hour versions and it's nice to see it again, if only because it's fresh.

The episode scheduled for this coming Saturday night is from May 12, 1989 and it featured Andrew Dice Clay as host. The booking of Clay prompted long-time cast member Nora Dunn to walk off what at least a couple of histories of the show recall it as the last show of that season. In fact, it was the next-to-last (Candice Bergen hosted the following week) and Ms. Dunn was not in either of them. A friend of mine who worked on the show at the time recently sent me the following e-mail about it…

It was a very bad show and a bad week. Everyone was really burned out from the season and on the last few shows, everyone's always wondering "Should I come back? Will they even want me back?" Lorne [Michaels] hates it when people decide to leave before he's decided that he wants them to leave. Protocol is to wait until he decides and sends some sort of signal that this would be a good time for you to quit and say you're leaving to pursue other areas. Sometimes, this is true. I always assume that if someone leaves the show and goes straight to a big movie, another series or rehab, they left voluntarily. If they left to explore other avenues, they were fired.

Nora had been with the show for years. She was very good but everyone felt that they'd seen every character she could do. I don't know if that's true but that was the feeling. I don't know for sure if Lorne would have sent a signal but he was pissed that she didn't give him that chance and also that she quit the way she did. Without telling anyone, she suddenly put out this press release saying she wasn't doing show because she thought Dice Clay was a misogynist or something. She didn't call Lorne first. I don't think she ever even spoke to him again. She just put out this press release and she was gone. Everyone just assumed she knew she might not be asked back and didn't want to give Lorne the chance. So Lorne was pissed about that and the rest of the cast members were pissed because they were put in the position of seeming to endorse Clay because they didn't walk out. Well, it wasn't the same thing for the rest of them. Nora was probably leaving anyway so it just meant she did two less shows. The other people wanted to stay.

So they were all stuck with seeming to endorse Clay, whom none of them liked. It was a terrible show the way the last shows of the season can be when everyone's tired and they're trying to get in sketches that hadn't gotten into earlier shows. Clay wasn't very good but it wasn't all his fault. However if Nora cared about hurting Clay, she got the opposite of what she wanted. He got a lot of publicity and it was one of the highest rated shows of the season. Someone even accused Lorne of setting the thing up with Nora as a publicity stunt but I assure you it was not that.

Here's the rundown of the entire episode which is scheduled to run this coming Saturday night/Sunday morning. The pieces marked with an asterisk (*) are the ones that are omitted in the hour-version which turns up on Comedy Central…

• Cold Opening: Parody of It's A Wonderful Life with Andrew "Dice" Clay
• Opening Monologue by Andrew "Dice" Clay
• Sketch: Clay runs employment agency
• Sketch: "The Anal-Retentive Chef"
• Song: Spanic Boys perform "Keep On Walking"*
• Weekend Update with Dennis Miller: Includes Jon Lovitz as Annoying Man and David Spade as Michael J. Fox*
• Sketch: Clay gives sex lecture to his son, played by Mike Myers
• Sketch: Tony Trailer, Disc Jockey*
• Sketch: Jan Hooks announces she's been giving a poor performance in the show in protest of Clay
• Sketch: Clay as "Cool Mite"*
• Song: Julee Cruise performs "Falling"*
• Sketch: "Ridiculous Bull" with Clay as Jake LaMotta
• Sketch: Kevin Nealon explains his light role in show is in protest of Clay*
• Goodnights

Anyway, I'm not recommending the episode because, like the person quoted above said, it wasn't very good. But I like the fact that NBC is running these uncut versions, and I wish they'd run some of the ones that Lorne Michaels didn't produce. Some of those episodes haven't aired anywhere in an awfully long time.

I don't know anyone working in comics today who draws purtier pictures than my pal and occasional collaborator, Steve Rude. So go visit his website and look at some of those neato commission drawings.

Harvey Fierstein on Being a Woman.