Larry Gelbart has an article there tomorrow morning, all about flying the Concorde to and from Europe. Here's that link.

Here's a link to another Lewis Black commentary from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. Again, the dreaded RealPlayer is required.

Got a couple of e-mails from folks who believe — as I suspected — that the story of Tim Robbins getting cut off the air on The Today Show might not be all it's cracked up to be. Here's Paul Harris…

It's probably something a lot less devious. NBC has a hard cutaway to local stations at :25 and :55 every hour of Today. They break the network at that point so affiliates can do local commercials and news inserts. These are never preempted unless the full network is in preemption mode (as on the morning of 9/11, for instance) when they don't even break for commercials because of continuous coverage of a major event. So the more likely reason is that someone — in the booth, on the floor, or in Lauer's ear — got the timing wrong, or Lauer ignored the cutaway signals because he was so caught up in what Robbins was saying.

Makes sense, but Standard Broadcasting Procedure would then be for the host, following the break, to say something like, "Our apologies to Tim Robbins for a technical error that cut him off." On the other hand, we don't know that this wasn't said. I just think it's funny that, intentional or not, Robbins got cut off while he was going after Corporate America on NBC, just like a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Tim Robbins got cut off while he was going after Corporate America on NBC.

And don't forget to visit Paul Harris's splendid website after you get through reading this splendid website.

…of hearing about Michael Moore and the Dixie Chicks and whether the right-wing is trying to make criticizing G.W. Bush seem like treason, you might like to read this interview with Roger Ebert.

Maybe I'm misremembering but it seems to me that back when Tim Robbins once hosted Saturday Night Live, the monologue bit went like this: Robbins began criticizing the parent company of NBC, General Electric, and suddenly he was cut off and an announcer proclaimed that Saturday Night Live would never be seen again. Something like that. (I think it turned out to be a nightmare. Lorne Michaels woke up in bed with Phil Hartman…)

If this account is true — and I don't know for sure that it is — then a very similar thing not only happened for real on The Today Show recently but actually happened to Tim Robbins.

Just read a wide range of Internet comments on the controversy. Some called for him to resign, which I usually think is showboating. Good, bad or indifferent, a representative under this kind of fire is there at the service of those who elected him. Only they really have the right to remove him and if they so desire, there are processes by which they can do that, including the next election. I also see a lot of folks doing backflips of logic to try and explain the difference between legalizing homosexual unions and leaping onto that much-mentioned "slippery slope" towards incest, polygamy, bigamy, going to Yanni concerts, and other no-nos. (I am generally suspicious of "slippery slope" arguments. Some are quite valid but some are just ways of masking your inability to argue the immediate. It's like you want to ban cheeseburgers and your arguments are feeble, so you argue that eating cheeseburgers is that fatal first step down the slippery slope to killing puppies. You know, if cheeseburger consumption increases, we would eventually run out of cows, and we'd have to make them out of something…)

What I think bothers me about the Senator's remarks are, first of all, that folks are seizing on the homosexuality = incest end of it while ignoring his more offensive (to me) remarks about the children who were molested by priests, trying to pretend they were mainly consenting teens just shy of the age of consent. No, some of them were quite non-consenting 4-year-olds. Secondly, there's a kind of soft, coded bigotry underscoring this kind of thing.

Analogies between gay rights and the rights of racial minorities only go so far, but I think this one applies. Years ago, a "mole" who worked in the George Wallace campaign revealed that Wallace and his aides had actually rehearsed saying the word, "nigra." It was deliberately picked as a kind of halfway-point between "negro" and "nigger." The idea was to send a message to potential Wallace supporters: In order to get along in the world and perhaps win the presidency, ol' George couldn't use the word he really meant…but you know what he means. If someone called Wallace on it — and some did — he'd feign innocence and say, "Why, shucks, that's just my accent." It was a way of sending coded messages to his people while being able to disavow use of the word.

Now, maybe I'm reading too much into this but during the Trent Lott brouhaha, I thought a very apt comment was that the Republicans were not promoting or advocating bigotry but that they were trying real hard to wink at it and not lose the votes of such folks. It's the same way that their "big tent" philosophy causes them to try and have it both ways on abortion. There's a large chunk of people out there who believe that anyone who isn't actively working against abortion is a baby murderer…and the Republican leadership has done a good job of assuring such folks that they agree while at the same time saying those baby murderers are welcome in the party and that the G.O.P. has their interests at heart, as well.

I initially thought Santorum's remarks were just that of a gay-basher thoughtlessly shooting his mouth off. I dunno. Maybe they were more calculated than that. An awful lot of other prominent Republicans seem to be making the same kind of "have it both ways" remark that assures a certain core constituency that it will do what it can to roll back gay rights and similar causes, while at the same time trying not to alienate that part of the voting bloc that believes — as hard-core conservatives perhaps should — that the government should stay out of the bedroom. When you say you have no problem with homosexuals, only with homosexual acts, that sounds glib and, yes, it has its Biblical antecedents. But in the world of politics, I think it's a way of hinting a stronger position without having to actually say it.

As usual, Spinsanity is right. There has been a lot of misrepresentation and misquoting of the infamous remarks by Senator Rick Santorum. Here's their debunking of some of it.

I said it before and I'll say it again: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart is the sharpest, funniest show on television. Among the many reasons are the weekly commentaries by Lewis Black. Here's a link to one from a week or two ago. (You need to have RealPlayer installed to view it.)

While you're over at Joe Sent Me, check out this interesting column on your better dining options in America's airports.

Reminds me of a time I was flying east with my mother. We had an hour stopover at the Cleveland airport and since Mom hadn't been able to eat the in-flight meal, I wanted to get her some food. I went up to a lady at our gate check-in podium and asked, "What's the best restaurant in the airport?"

She said, "Well, down by Gate 12, there's a Burger King."

I said, "No, we have some time here. What's the best restaurant in the airport?"

She said, "Down by Gate 12, there's a Burger King."

I said, "That's the best restaurant in the airport?"

She said, "That's the best restaurant in the city."

If you're interested in what's going on with the airlines and their various bankruptcies and financial shenanigans, my old pal Joe Brancatelli covers that beat better than anybody. He has a rundown of some of the current messes over in The Brancatelli File. It's part of the Joe Sent Me website, which covers the world of air travel in an independent, take-no-prisoners manner.

And yes, this is the same Joe Brancatelli who was once active in comics fandom and who had a column in Creepy and Eerie magazines. He used to report on the comic book business so he is not unfamiliar with greedy people in high places who don't know what the hell they're doing.

First, the Rio Hotel in Vegas decided that their thong-wearing cocktail waitresses weren't enticing enough and decided to replace them with ladies who'd also sing and dance as they served watery booze. Now, Treasure Island on the Strip is dumping the little pirate show out front and will be replacing it with a sexier version which includes, rumor has it, some scantily-clad women (details here.)

What's next? A sex-change for Siegfried or, more likely, Roy? Penn and Teller go topless? Elvis impersonators who do on-stage all the stuff Elvis did off-stage? I tell you: I worry for the values in that town.

As noted here, a developer has proposed some plans for the old Hanna-Barbera building at 3400 Cahuenga, some of which involve tearing the thing down. Some groups are trying to drum up support to save the structure as a landmark and as a tribute to Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.

I worked in that building for years, and still have a tremendous affection for the early cartoons that were produced there — though more so for the ones H-B did before that, out of a studio down on La Brea. Still, I find it hard to see how any of us will be that much worse off if there's a big Ross Dress-for-Less shop on the property instead. Yes, it might be nice if that bit of history is preserved but to the extent that's true then the folks at Time-Warner — which owns Hanna-Barbera and is phasing out that brand name in favor of that of Cartoon Network — ought to just come up with the bucks to do this. I've lost track of whether they still have custody of 3400 Cahuenga or if they sold it to Universal, which I believe was reported some time ago to be acquiring it. Curiously, the article I'm linking to doesn't tell who does currently hold the deed. But if Time-Warner doesn't own it, they could — and they could put an actual, working cartoon studio or other Hollywood-themed business in there. I don't see why it should be up to anyone else to save the place. And if they won't do it, it probably isn't worth saving.

This is kinda interesting. The 1927 classic movie, Metropolis, has been broken down into a "walkthrough" such as they do with branching role-playing and videogames. Click here to see it. And thank Buzz Dixon for the tip.

Well, they were in the forties and fifties. And during most of that time, their publisher was a woman named Helen Meyer. She reportedly had very little to do with the content of the books, above and beyond saying things like, "Let's do more issues of that Uncle Scrooge comic," but that was important. And she and the other folks at Dell Publishing did a great job of marketing and distribution. Anyway, she has just passed away at age 95 and here's the New York Times obituary.

You are perhaps curious/baffled about the relationship between her company, Dell Publishing, and Western Printing and Lithography, which was the firm that created the contents of those comics and printed them. Here's an explanation.

The other day, The Comics Journal daily weblog, ¡Journalista!, noted that a Reuters report on the current Marvel/Sony lawsuit had made reference to "artist Stan Lee." (Actually, it made reference to "San Lee," but that isn't the kind of mistake that gets anyone — not even Stan — upset…)

In this case, the "artist" reference is a bit unsettling since the artist who did co-create Spider-Man, Steve Ditko, has gone spectacularly unmentioned in all the publicity about the movies. So not only is he not getting credited (let alone, paid) but folks are acting like the non-drawing Mr. Lee created the much-merchandised visual and drew the early comics, as well. Reporters are enormously sloppy about things like this even though it's very easy to check.

This is more than a matter of folks being denied their due. Money — and therefore, financial security — are often linked not only to what you do but whether you get your name on it. Moreover, a lot of relationships between collaborators have been harmed and even terminated because one guy seemed to be getting more than his share of credit. It is important to note that, while sometimes one participant does things to screw the other(s) out of recognition, it also sometimes happens due to bad reporting.

Stan Lee, of course, is not an artist and has never claimed to be one. But I just did a Google search for "artist Stan Lee" and got 117 hits. A few are cases where the word "artist" just happened to come before his name and was not intended as a descriptor. Still, there are at least 100 instances where someone thought Stan was the artist, and some of them are from pretty important sources. This kind of mistake does more damage than you'd think.