This is so funny: For some months now, the weblog community has been abuzz with revelations that the Republicans have been organizing some very hokey "astroturf" movements.  These are campaigns designed to make it look like some point-of-view is originating with The People and spreading across the land when it is, in fact, being planted by the party leaders.  (It's called "astroturf" because it's a simulation of a genuine "grass roots" movement.)

One of the big weapons in this cause is www.gopteamleader.com, where you can not only sign up to try and plant news stories and such, you can actually earn points that can be redeemed for caps, t-shirts, etc.  For instance, you get points if you take one of their pre-written letters of support for George W. and e-mail it, via their site, to some local newspaper that will print it.  Dozens of papers have printed letters-to-the-editor which looked like they were studiously composed by average Americans who took the time to research stats and write about their support for the Republican agenda.  In fact, those folks just did a couple of on-line clicks to send a form letter, and collected those valuable G.O.P. points in the process.

This article over in Slate summarizes the whole process.  It also suggests that Democrats log in and use the site's e-mailing capabilities to send Bush-bashing letters.  Let's see how long the Republican site stays up and allows folks to do this.

Mad Art is currently up to #36,789 in the Amazon rankings, and they still say it's not coming out until December 12, 2002.  It is out.  I'm getting e-mails from folks (including a number of the MAD artists chronicled within) who say it's in their neighborhood shop.  It's just the online booksellers who seem to be having problems.

This is the first of several rave recommendations of the sculptures being manufactured by a company called Electric Tiki — and let me give you the link to their website right now: www.electrictiki.com.  A fellow named Tracy Mark Lee started it not long ago and he's already issued a number of lines of must-own statues of comic book, TV and fantasy characters.  My old pal Richie Rich is part of the Harvey Comics line, which also includes several others currently residing in my display case — Richie's girl friend Gloria and Jackie Jokers,  f'rinstance.  You can see the photos over at their site, along with others they have, like terrific sculpts of the heroines of I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched.  But take it from me: They look even better in person.

There's also a wonderful statue of my pal Paul Dini's popular Jingle Belle.  But I'll save that recommendation for another time.

This is the second rave recommendation I've posted here for the statuary of Electric Tiki — and here once again is the link to their site.  This feminine figurine is of Jingle Belle, the popular character created by Paul Dini.  The impish Ms. Belle is the daughter of a portly gent who resides at the North Pole, making up lists of who's naughty and nice, and bestowing gifts accordingly.  Paul's comics, which come from Oni Press, are a load of fun.  So is the Jingle Belle website.  And this peachy new sculpture of Jingle B. (complete with ornament) is mandatory if you're to have The Complete Jingle Belle Experience.  Order at least one now.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has been aiding cartoonist Stuart Helm in his battle against a lawsuit filed by Kraft Foods.  For years, Helm signed his work "King VelVeeda," and Kraft finally decided this was an infringement on their trademark.  They have this alleged cheese called "Velveeta" and…well, you get the picture.  After many months of headaches and legal expenses, Helm and Kraft have settled out of court with the artist agreeing to change his pen name.  Here's the C.B.L.D.F. press release about it — and I must say that, though I am a fervent supporter of this most necessary institution and will continue to support it, I think the C.B.L.D.F. went astray on this one.  There is no threat to my Free Speech if I am unable to market my work under a name that sounds a lot like someone else's trademark.

Yes, I know it's a parody.  And if someone was putting out a MAD Magazine style ad spoofing Velveeta, and Kraft sued, that would be worth going to the mat over.  But I don't buy the notion, expressed in the press release, that Helm was censored, any more than I'm being censored because I can't publish my own Star Wars comics.  The folks at Kraft were being needlessly, almost inanely protective but I don't see this as a First Amendment threat.

For emphasis: I still wholeheartedly support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and think it's vital to have them there, fighting the good fight.  I just don't think this was a good fight.

2003 is the 25th anniversary of Jim Davis's ravenous cat, and there are some nice freebees over on the Garfield website.  There's a screen saver that shows how the feline has evolved over the years.  You can download it or just view it online at this address.  I would recommend doing at least the latter, as it's kind of jazzy and fun.  There are also Garfield answering machine messages which you can download (or just listen to, online) available over here.  Yes, that's the voice of the late, lovely Lorenzo Music and, yes, we still miss him.

Are you sick of getting those e-mails from Nigerian nephews who want to cut you in on their uncle's 38 million dollars?  I sure am, so I delete them without reading them.  If you do this, you may miss this parody that is now making the rounds.  Very funny.

Bill Mauldin, the great military and political cartoonist, has died at the age of 81.  Here's a link to a full news story about him.

Freberg just called to say that his New York gig has finally been rescheduled.  An Evening With Stan Freberg (and his magnificent spouse, Hunter) will now take place May 20-24 at Feinstein's at the Regency — one show, Tuesday through Thursday evenings; two shows, Friday and Saturday.  Reservations and further info are available by calling (212) 339-4095.  As before, you are warned that Feinstein's only seats 140 people, so booking soon might not be the dumbest thing you ever did.  The dumbest would involve missing this chance to see a truly witty man sing and tell stories from his amazing career.

If you're discussing or even mulling matters of tax fairness — before or after the current Bush proposals — you need to look at this chart.  It ran in this morning's New York Times and it shows that, basically, the tax burden as it currently stands on Americans is flat.  Taking into account things like property taxes, payroll taxes and sales taxes, poor Americans are paying about the same percentage of their income to the government as are wealthy Americans.

Assuming this chart is correct: If you think Bill Gates should pay the same percentage of his income to Uncle Sam that you do, then fine.  That's pretty much what we already have.  If you believe in "progressive" taxation — meaning that the rich should pay a little higher percentage — then the current plan from the White House is moving towards the opposite goal.

As reader Paschal Stewart alerts me, they're actually offering Mad Art over at the Quality Paperback Club.  In fact, they say it came out last November and if you're paying the fee to get a membership there, you can buy it for two dollars!  How is it they have copies?  And how can they sell it so cheap?  Simple.  If you study their listing above and look carefully, you'll see that they're selling an edition that has ZERO PAGES!

That's right: No pages!  It's easy to get a book in stock if you don't wait until the insides are printed. And you can sell those copies real cheap — though I'd think an Evanier book without pages should go for more, not less.

How fast are you going?   I mean, right now — connected to the Internet.  You can test your connection speed here.

• Machinery of Mercy by Jonathan Alter, Newsweek
• Is Death Penalty Moral? by Thomas Roeser, Chicago Sun-Times
• The "Closure" Myth by Michelle Goldberg, Salon

The three articles above all deal with Governor Ryan's last-minute commutations of 167 Death Row inmates in Illinois. The last of these is a Salon Premium Exclusive, meaning you have to be a subscriber to read it. You should be but, in case you're not, I'll summarize: A lot of the families of murder victims look to the execution of the murderer for some sort of release and healing, and often find that it either doesn't satisfy or that it makes things worse. Furthermore, the kind of appeals/review process that is necessary for the Death Penalty can put these people on an emotional roller coaster. And if the evident flaws in that process are fixed, it may be worse for those family members. End of summary.

No, I still don't know how I feel about the state putting people to death, but I do think it's interesting that the debate is evolving. When we discussed it back in college, the "pro" argument was almost wholly that it was a deterrent. Later, it moved away from that and towards the position that the family and friends of the deceased deserved the satisfaction of seeing the killer executed. Now, a lot of those families are led to believe that a certain party is guilty, and they work up an understandable anger at that individual, only to see him later exonerated by DNA evidence. Unlike some of my friends, I don't believe the Death Penalty is indefensible but I acknowledge that the defense seems to keep shifting.

And as usual, we recommend Paul Krugman's new column.

Another aspect to the discussion of copyrights is the question of the moral rights of those who create the work.  This article over at Slate discusses the lawsuit by directors to stop a handful of companies from producing "cleansed" versions of movies.  I think the directors are going to lose this one.  There's too much precedence for no one saying boo when films have been cut or altered for TV or to be shown on airlines, and too many other folks who participate in the creation of a movie to say that any one version reflects the creators' vision.

UPDATE: My new book, Mad Art, seems to be in every physical bookstore but largely unavailable online.  Amazon (where it's climbed to #43,363 in the rankings) still says it's due to be released "December 12, 2002."  All the other cybershops either say it's not released or it's out of stock.  I am not particularly annoyed about this.  There's something curiously amusing to me about it.  But do let me know if you come across anywhere — except the publisher's website — where you can actually buy the thing via the Internet.

Not that it's a particularly meaningful statistic but someone asked me who lived longer — Carl Barks or Al Hirschfeld — and I just did the math.  Barks was born 3/27/01 and died 8/25/2000, for a total of 36,311 days.  Hirschfeld was born 6/21/03 and died yesterday morning, so he lived for 36,373 days.  So the life of Al Hirschfeld was about two months longer, and I have no idea why I bothered to figure that out, except for this: It's a little difficult for those of us who are around the halfway mark to comprehend what it's like to live for almost a century.  The more data we have, the better our chances of putting it in perspective.

Years ago at local cartoon fests and seminars, a frequent guest was Grim Natwick, who created Betty Boop and was later the key animator of Mr. Disney's Snow White.  Natwick was born in 1890, and to grasp the concept of that, we had to remind ourselves of other historical markers — like, that was the year the zipper was invented and several years before there were typewriters.  (Al Hirschfeld was born the same year the Wright Brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk.)

Different, odd things enabled some of us to grasp just how long Grim had been on the planet.  Around 1985, I remember him speaking at an event and talking about how, when he was animating, a certain "young punk kid" would come by and tell him, "Mr. Natwick, when I grow up, I want to draw cartoons like you."  The kid was Walter Lantz, who was very much his junior, having been born ten years later.  Everyone laughed that a 95 year old man was referring to an 85 year old as a "young punk kid," but it especially floored us to realize it was true: We all thought of Mr. Lantz as a Grand Old Man of animation…and Grim had gotten into the business a decade before him.  Amazing.  (Grim lived to the age of 100; Lantz, to 94.  Drawing silly pictures for a living seems to be good for the heart.)

The most amazing thing about Al Hirschfeld was not that he lived to be 99 but that he still drew and, from what I've seen, he still drew pretty well.  When I met him, he was a relatively spry 89 but he sure didn't act 89.  He had just returned from a camping trip, and was back in his home — a beautiful old brownstone townhouse with his studio on the top floor and no elevator.  Giving me the tour, he bounded up and down the stairs and it was all I could do to keep up with him.  (Barks was the same way until about age 90.)  Hirschfeld's mind was sharp and inquiring, as well.  My visit was not long after the L.A. riots of that year and, since I was from Los Angeles, he peppered me with questions about what it was like in the city, how it felt to be in the midst of all that, etc.  (I mostly asked him about people like George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott.)  If I hadn't known better, I'd have taken him for 65 or 70.

Satchel Paige used to ask, "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?"  Hirschfeld certainly did not conform to our notion of someone his age, nor did the other gents mentioned above.  We loved him for his work, of course.  But I think some of us also loved him because he reminded us that it's possible to get old without getting old.