Kevin Drum notes that Donald Trump's approval rating is not too impressive. 54.3% of the country disapproves whereas 41.2% approves. That's not a record low but it may be a record low for a president who's been in office less than four months. And this is before the outrage du jour of disclosing classified info to his Russian comrades.
This is not specific to Trump but I always assume that the disapproval number of an elected official is a lot more solid than his or her approval rating. The approval rating includes a lot of people who voted for the guy or gal, approved of his/her agenda — or at least what they thought that agenda was — but are deeply unhappy with the non-delivery of that agenda. Whenever a news story suggests that Trump is lying or flip-flopping or that he just doesn't understand things we hope our presidents understand, his supporters have to be wincing in political pain. He doesn't seem to be able to get that wall started or get all those aliens who scare you deported. He's spending time and government money playing golf and defending what he said 48 hours ago.
Or another way to put it is that the disapproval rating represents people who've given up on the official and the approval rating represents people who have either great optimism or stubbornness…and haven't. It's usually possible for that elected official to reverse a downward trend but Trump is so polarizing — and so determined to defend absolutely everything he says or does as correct — that I doubt he can do it.
Drum also notes in this post that Gay Marriage, which was supposed to destroy the moral fiber of our nation and bring God's wrath down on us by now, continues to gain favor among Americans. Even Republican support for it has moved from 28% to 47%. Any day now, it'll be over the 50% mark with Republicans…unless of course it destroys the moral fiber of our nation and brings God's wrath down on us. Seems like it's safe.
Hey, speaking of Lewis Black: If you've never seen him perform live, you're missing a very wonderful experience. Tomorrow morning, tickets are going on sale for concert dates between October 6 of this year and November 19. He'll be in New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. The schedule is on this page.
Now, here's what you do if he's playing close to you and you wanna see him. Join his fan club, which you can do on that page. It only costs $20 and you'll save way more than that if all you ever do is buy two tickets to one of his shows — and you'll also get better seats. Sign up today and then tomorrow at 10 AM Pacific Time, go to that same page and order tickets.
It's a great deal but you've got to act fast. When he played Los Angeles last year, I paid $75 apiece (plus some handling fees) for four spots in the center of the third row. Scalpers were later offering worse seats for $300 each.
Bob Schieffer interviews Lewis Black. This is from 2009 when Mr. Black was out promoting his book on religion and the lack of much of it in his life but many topics are addressed…
Just one Trump link today but it's an important one. David Roberts thinks some people are digging too far to analyze The Donald and construct a complex profile of his strategies and motivations. I think it's pretty simple. It's the old Flip Wilson premise of "What you see is what you get."
He really is that petty. He really feels it's all about saying whatever works at a given moment, never mind past inconsistencies or having to follow up tomorrow on what he says today. It worked to a certain extent when he ran businesses and it worked fine to get him into the White House. It doesn't work now that he has to operate within a different system of laws and limits. The man's used to being able to expect blind loyalty from everyone around him and to be able to fire anyone he wants who won't give it to him. And he doesn't seem capable of change…
In honor of the day, here's a rerun of a post I did here on October 9, 2012. It's the story of my mother's career as a TV star, which did not last long. A lot of careers as TV stars have lasted even less time than hers did…
One day in 1992, completely out of nowhere, my mother made the oddest request. She asked, "Do you think you could get me a job as an extra on a TV show?"
I wouldn't have been more surprised if she'd asked me, "Do you think you could arrange for me to be shot out of a cannon?" She was 70 years old, widowed and retired, and she seemed well adjusted to that life. At no point had she ever expressed the slightest interest in show business or working again, nor did she need money. She had my father's pension and if that had been insufficient — which it never was; not with a good health insurance plan as well — she had me. This was more like a whim. When she'd worked at the grocery store, she'd worked with a couple of folks who'd done extra work and it sounded…well, maybe not so much fun as interesting.
I warned her. There were extra jobs and there were extra jobs. Some required walking back and forth hundreds of times in shots or running or moving about. She could walk then but being 70, she had her limits. She said, "I was thinking…maybe in the jury in a courtroom scene. There are a lot of shows on these days that do scenes in courtrooms and they need older people because older people sit on juries." That made a fair amount of sense. Not a lot of walking for extras who play jurors. I asked her if she had a show in mind. She said, "Well, the one I really love is L.A. Law."
She couldn't have picked an easier show for me. One of my best friends, Alan Brennert, was one of the Supervising Producers on L.A. Law. I phoned him up and twenty minutes later, my mother had a job. I told her I'd take the customary 10%.
It was also a good pick for geographic reasons. L.A. Law shot at the Twentieth-Century Fox Studio which was about five blocks from where she lived. When I resided in that house and had meetings at Fox, I sometimes walked to them. That is, by the way, a really good way to upset the guards at the gate. They always had a drive-on pass ready for me but there were no walk-on passes and they didn't know what the heck to do.
She was quite excited about her job. One of the things she said to me was "I wish I'd thought of this a few years ago before Jimmy Smits left the series. I love him. I'd love to have watched him work." I avoided telling her something Alan had told me; that the Special Guest Star on this particular episode was, as luck would have it, Jimmy Smits.
The day before the gig, she got her first inkling that maybe extra work wasn't something she would love. An assistant phoned and gave her a call time of 6 AM. She briefly considered retiring then and there but decided to soldier on. She was to bring several changes of clothes and report to a certain gate at that ungodliest of hours. Which she did. She drove over that morning and they told her where to park. It was on the opposite end of the lot from where L.A. Law filmed and getting from her car to the stage, she got quite lost. By the time she found where she was supposed to go, she was exhausted from hiking the length and breadth of a pretty big studio.
She was put in a room with the other extras, all of whom were seasoned veterans at this kind of work. They were cordial to her but not particularly welcoming, especially when they found out she hadn't gone through the usual extra casting process. Extras take great pride in their art or craft — whichever they see it as. The notion that someone could just waltz in and do it via an "in" seemed to annoy some of them. It was like, "Hey, we had to work to get here." But no one was rude to her. Not openly, that is.
An hour or so later, the director came into the Extras Room and looked them over. He made a few suggestions about wardrobe and makeup…and designated my mother to be the foreperson.
Now, understand: That just meant she'd be in a certain chair on the set. Other than that, nothing about her participation on the show had changed. But many of the other extras quietly (and later, audibly) objected. It is the dream of almost every extra in almost every job to be upgraded; to have the director or producer suddenly decide to give them a line or two to utter. It makes the money they're being paid go way up and it magically transforms them from Warm Bodies into Actors. They tell tales of it happening, just to reassure each other that it can — "Didja hear? Last week on that Clint Eastwood movie, Jody was upgraded to an Under Five." That is a very big deal.
My mother didn't want an upgrade. She never thought she was an actress. She was a little old lady who could look like a juror sitting there. That was the extent of her ability and she knew it and if they'd tried to give her a line, she would have said, "I can't do that. Give it to someone else."
Still, the other extras were worried. Picking her to be foreperson increased the chance she'd be given a line from…oh, about one chance in ten thousand to one chance in five thousand. Maybe not quite that much. But she heard one of the other extras go up to the Associate Director soon after and tell him, "Listen, that woman is not a professional. If they decide they need a juror to speak, it really should go to one of us." As it turned out, they never needed a juror to speak.
An hour or so later, they were herded onto the set. My mother just sat there in the jury box, delighted to be watching Jimmy Smits addressing the jury. They filmed for about an hour, then the extras were told to return to the Extras Room for a while. Mr. Smits had to rehearse his big, six-page scene before filming would resume.
They all settled back in for a while and my mother listened in on the conversation. It had turned to the topic of Recent Jobs From Hell. One extra told about having to work all night in a scene where rain was being simulated so they were hosed down every two minutes. Another told of a director making them run back and forth for hours in 100° weather, inhaling smoke from smoldering smudgepots. Yet another had a tale of bad food and no toilets on location. As my mother listened, extra work began to sound less and less appealing.
Just then, the Associate Director came in and said, "Mr. Smits would like you in the jury box while he's rehearsing." All the extras started to get up but the A.D. said, "No, just the foreperson," meaning my mother. Smits just wanted her there. As she made her way out to the set, she heard one of the extras muttering, "They'd better not give her a line."
She sat in the jury box for about 40 minutes as Jimmy Smits practiced his long, long speech, pleading his case to her. In the finished show, it wouldn't look that way at all. In fact, you'd never even know she was the foreperson. But on the set that day, Smits argued his view of the matter on hand as if his life depended on convincing Dorothy Evanier. She later told me, "If it had been up to me, he would have won the minute he opened his mouth."
When he was properly rehearsed, the rest of the extras were brought in and the cameras moved into position. Unnoticed by my mother, Mr. Smits went and changed his footwear.
The floor on the set was wood and in the earlier scene, his shoes had made a bit too much noise for the microphones. For just such an occasion, they had special socks that looked like dress shoes and the actors would often wear them to cut down on footstep sounds. Smits was wearing a pair of these as he launched into his big, impassioned, just-rehearsed scene with the cameras rolling. There was a shot of him approaching the jury box and my mother. It never got into the finished show but no one knew at the time it wouldn't. It would have been a shot of Jimmy Smits and my mother with him unburdening his soul to her. Imagine that if you will.
Just as he was reaching his emotional peak, my mother suddenly looked down and made a face as if to say, "What the hell is that on his feet?"
Someone screamed, "Cut!"
Someone else scurried over and told my mother she should be looking at Jimmy Smits, not at his feet. She was embarrassed. A few of the other extras grinned a bit and my mother later reported she could hear them thinking, "See what happens when they hire a non-professional?" But Smits himself told her it was fine; that they were shooting the scene a couple different ways and would be cutting from one take to another. She hadn't ruined anything…or so he assured her.
The rest of the shooting went without incident. They were in and out of the Extras Room a few times, sometimes waiting in there for hours unsure if they'd be needed again at all. But there was good food available and my mother had brought along a few books…so all in all, not a horrible day.
From L.A. Law. That's my mother in the red blouse.
Around 6:30 PM, more than twelve hours after she'd reported for duty, the A.D. came in and released the extras, meaning it was time to go home. My mother was gathering up her things when Jimmy Smits walked in, handed her a rose and thanked her for helping his performance. I have never met Jimmy Smits but as far as I'm concerned, he is the most wonderful human being ever in show business…and that includes me. My mother called his gesture the best moment of her acting career.
It was also the last moment of that career. It was dark when she got out and she was exhausted and it took forever to make it back to the car. The next day, she told me, "If a nice man hadn't come by in a golf cart and taken pity on me and given me a lift, I'd still be there."
All the time, she recalled something one of the friendlier extras had said to her at one point. He'd said, "This show treats us better than any other show in town." Taken in concert with the horror stories she'd heard, that seemed to be true. When I asked her when she wanted me to get her her next job, she said, "Never. I figure if that's as good as it can be, I'm going to quit while I'm ahead."
When the show aired, she got a call from a friend back east who recognized her. That was probably the second-best moment of her time trodding the boards. She also liked a VHS tape I made for her of the episode. I don't think she ever watched it because she kept forgetting how to use her VCR but she really liked the special label I printed up for it. It said, "L.A. Law starring Jimmy Smits and Dorothy Evanier." She looked at that often and occasionally would complain to me about the order of the names. I found that cassette the other day when I was cleaning out a shelf at her house and I thought I ought to tell this story here.
This is Charlie Rosen's Broadway Big Band and guest vocalist John-Michael Lyles. The song? A rousing rendition of the Kander and Ebb "New York, New York." Give a listen…
There's a saying in Washington that it isn't the crime that brings you down, it's the cover-up. I think it's more often the cover-up of the cover-up…and Trump may still find himself in deep trouble for the cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up. He's sure convincing a lot of folks that he's terrified of an investigation. Here are some links…
There are dozens of articles out there pointing out how the White House can't muster a coherent story and how they're all contradicting each other. Here's William Saletan with one of those.
Trump was wondering why the Civil War couldn't just be settled easily. If he was the kind of person who read, he could read this and find out.
Matt Yglesias annotates Trump's amazing, uninformed interview with The Economist.
A chat with John Dean about the similarities between Watergate and what's going on these days. I think the comparisons only go so far, at least so far. But there is a parallel between two presidents desperately wanting to halt an investigation.
Rod Dreher is one of those conservatives who has been willing to tolerate or overlook a lot of Trump misbehavior and outright lying. If Obama or Clinton had done those things, they would be outrageous and sinister and grounds for impeachment…but like a lot of his fellow right-wingers, Dreher isn't ready to give up yet on getting some items on his Wish List from Donald. It does sound though like he's getting close. And here's one more piece by him.
And this one isn't just about Trump. Fred Kaplan has been unimpressed with what previous presidents have done in the category of Cybersecurity to stop hacking. He is similarly unimpressed with Trump's recent executive order.
Stephen Colbert couldn't be happier about Trump calling him untalented and filthy. I've got a feeling Bill Maher, Seth Meyers, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel, James Corden and maybe even Jimmy Fallon are all wondering how they can get a piece of that.
This question comes from someone who didn't ask to have his name omitted but I think I will anyway. I have to scold this person a little…
Just wondering in your many years as a voice director, have you ever "blacklisted" someone or have you always been willing to give someone another chance? Have you ever hired someone who was "blacklisted?"
I know you have talked about actors in the past that claimed they could not get work because they were listed and I do know that due to several reasons, an actor can get him/herself blacklisted due to their behaviors or unreasonable demands. My question I guess is how do you feel about "blacklisting" actors and actresses.
As Inigo Montoya said in The Princess Bride, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Blacklisting is when a group of people in power form a conspiracy to keep someone from working. It's like when all the networks agreed not to hire actors or writers who had been accused of being sympathetic to Communists. It does not even remotely apply when all we're talking about is one person with hiring power deciding not to hire someone. If an editor at some comic book company decides my writing sucks and they won't use my services any longer, I am not being "blacklisted." I am just being rejected. Every second of every day, some writer or actor is being rejected for a job they'd like to have. That's how it works.
Phrased more properly, your question is probably, "Have you ever decided not to use an actor again and then later changed your mind?" I don't think so. I don't think I've ever decided not to hire an actor ever again. At worst, my opinion of someone has fallen a few notches and they become less likely to be my selection. But there's never any "I'll never work with him again" list.
In most cases when a part needs to be cast, I can think of ten people who could do it. I hire one and if he doesn't work out…well, the next time I need that type, I'll try first to book one of the other guys. I think that's how everyone does it.
One does hear bad things about certain actors and I generally do not let that influence my choices. A couple times, I've been aware that some other voice director had a terrible time with Actor X…and then I hired the guy and he was fine. And when I'm the one who had the bad time with the guy, I don't tell others who might hire him unless I'm specifically asked. The point is it's not "blacklisting." It's just that when you're entrusted with hiring power, it's your job to say, "I think I'll hire Sam instead of Artie." So you make the best decision you can make.
Went to see this lady last evening at the Wallis in Beverly Hills. If there's someone around who sings better than Audra McDonald, I'd sure like to know who it is. She was appearing as part of a new series of shows that Seth Rudetsky is doing. Seth is a Broadway historian and piano player who is also a host on the Sirius-XM Radio Broadway channel. (By coincidence, I am today lunching with the fabulous Ms. Christine Pedi who is also a host on the Sirius-XM Radio Broadway Channel.) Seth is doing evenings with Broadway Divas where he interviews them and also accompanies them singing. The whole event was a delight as McDonald is funny and fascinating when she's not singing and just mesmerizing when she is.
I can't repeat all the stories but one I think I can re-create here is what she said about what it's like if you're in a Broadway show, you're nominated for a Tony (she's won six!) and they want you to perform a number on the live Tony Awards telecast. On Saturday, you do two shows — matinee and evening — so you're finished around 11 PM. It's a tiring day but nothing compared to what you have to do on Sunday, the day of the telecast.
7 AM the next morning, short on sleep, you have to be at the theater from which the broadcast is emanating. You have to get into full costuming and before you leave that theater, you do a complete, full-energy performance of the number you'll be performing on the show that evening. This is not only your final Dress Rehearsal but they record it as a back-up in case there are tech problems that prevent you from doing it live that evening. (She didn't mention it but I assume you rehearsed this number there in the days before. Even though you do it eight times a week in your own show, songs are truncated and changed for the telecast, plus the staging may have to be adjusted for the award show stage, and the TV director and camerapersons need to learn how to shoot it.)
Once you're done taping that, you race to your own theater and do the Sunday matinee. And right after the matinee is done, you have to shower and do your make-up and get into the fancy duds you'll wear for the Tony Awards ceremony. You race back to the broadcast theater, walk the red carpet, take your seat…
…and then at some point during the show, someone will come down and inform you it's time to go backstage, get back into your costume and then do the number on the live show. Then when that's done, you get back into your gown or tux, go back out and take your seat and wait for your category to see if you get to go up on stage and accept a Tony. By that point, you sure deserve one.
Audra was in great voice and all the songs were wonderful but at the end, she really brought chills to the audience. She supposedly closed with "Climb Every Mountain" and as we were all standing and clapping and she and Rudetsky exited, it felt like one of those bogus bow-offs where the star comes back and surprises us with one more number. I was kinda thinking to myself, "Gee, what can follow 'Climb Every Mountain'?" Then they came back out and she sang "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess. Without the microphone.
The Wallis is not a huge theater but it ain't tiny. It seats 500 and though it has great acoustics, you still need a powerful voice to fill it, sans amplification. We were in the second row and we heard fine…but I suspect the folks in the back row did as well. I cannot recall ever hearing a more robust, beautiful voice hitting every note of a song with such absolute perfection. At the end, people cheered and clapped but for a split-second before they did, you could hear little gasps and exhales of awe. It was worth the whole price of admission just for that song and the accompanying tingles. Wow. And I mean Wow.
It's been a month plus a few days since my wonderful friend Carolyn Kelly passed away. Everyone, including one of her doctors who phoned the other day, keeps asking me, "Are you all right?" Yes, I'm all right. Honest. I've had a ton of things to do like cleaning out her apartments and managing legal papers and I still have some of that…but I had somewhat gotten past Carolyn's death before it happened, if you can understand what I mean by that.
Over the next few weeks here, I'm going to write a few pieces about the experience. If any of them make you uncomfortable, please just skip them and move on to the next post, which will probably be about what a truly horrible president Donald Trump is turning out to be. But I write about some things just to sort out my own thoughts and feelings, and sometimes I post them here because I think/hope that something in what I write will help someone else out there. If it doesn't, it doesn't…but that's kind of the secondary reason for my writing it. The first is usually for my benefit.
Writing helps me. A lot of other things helped me through the period, one being a fine team of palliative care doctors at Kaiser Hospital. Before Carolyn, I lost people close to me including my mother and my father…but I had somehow not even encountered "palliative care." I only knew what it meant from afar. It means — and I am here cutting-and-pasting from another site —
Palliative care (pronounced pal-lee-uh-tiv) is specialized medical care for people with serious illness. This type of care is focused on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of a serious illness. The goal is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family.
Palliative care is provided by a specially-trained team of doctors, nurses and other specialists who work together with a patient's other doctors to provide an extra layer of support. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage in a serious illness, and it can be provided along with curative treatment.
— but I'd never worked with such a team. I can't tell you how impressed I was with the kindness, the understanding, the efficiency and just the general caring from the squadron we had. When I was in for a check-up from my own physician, I mentioned to him how terrific these folks were and he said, "I'll let you in on a little secret of the medical profession. Most palliative care people are terrific. The job attracts the people with the largest hearts and the greatest empathy. You will probably be even more impressed when you begin dealing with hospice."
That also proved to be true. The last week or so of Carolyn's life, two hospice nurses took turns pulling twelve-hour shifts to be with her. I sat for hours with the "night nurse," a young woman of about twenty-eight who was so sharp and understanding, I'm sure she could have worked in any area of medicine she chose. She chose hospice because, she said, it was there that she felt the greatest sensation of actually helping people — the dying person and their loved ones, as well.
Carolyn at an exhibit of Sergio art in 2009
I was reminded of a friend of mine from high school who I've written about here. He's semi-retired now but he spent his entire career as a doctor working in an emergency room. Every time they tried to promote him outta there — even though the so-called "better position" meant better money and hours — he said no. He told me, "They keep wanting to put me in a job where I'll shuffle papers and refer people in pain to specialists. In the E.R., I actually do things to make the pains go away. That's what I became a doctor to do." How can you not respect someone who thinks like that?
The palliative care and hospice people made it possible for me to do something which I have learned is vital in one's life when you have a challenge like the long, long months in which Carolyn was dying and nothing was going to stop that. I had to keep my own life up and functioning, writing scripts and meeting deadlines…oh, yeah — and earning money. Even with good insurance, what went on with Carolyn was not cheap.
I could not be unavailable when she needed me for something but I also could not devote every minute to her care. Maintaining my perspective and judgment were essential, not only for myself but for her. You can make a situation worse by over-reacting as well as under-reacting. You need to constantly ask yourself, "How big are the problems today?" Only then can you effectively deal with them.
You also have to know what you need to do yourself and what you can/should delegate to others. Others could change her pajamas or dole out pills or prepare her food as well as I could or, probably, better. None of them had as much trust as she placed in me. None of them could make her smile or laugh as much as I could…or reassure her that someone who loved and understood her was watching out for her, taking care of her bills and her apartment, etc. My assistant John could deliver items to her but I had to be the guy in charge.
When they'd done as much as they could do for her in the hospital, we moved Carolyn at first to what they call a Skilled Nursing Facility — and at this one, the "skilled" part seemed mostly correct but not always. It was more often correct when the staff there knew she had someone like me around to supervise and complain.
Then she spent eleven months in an Assisted Living Facility where the remainder of her life played out. The nurses there were great and we quickly found the proper balance of what I had to do for Carolyn and what I could trust them to handle.
They really loved her. So did a lot of the other residents in the facility. Until things got really bad, she was the sunniest presence there, making all assume she was much younger than she was and offering kind words plus that great smile to all. When John or I went to the market for Carolyn, she'd usually ask us to get some candy or fresh fruit she could pass out to the other residents. It seemed to actually help Carolyn — her mood if not her health — to do that.
A number of cartoonists we knew — including Jim Davis, Sergio Aragonés and Scott Shaw! — sent "get well" drawings which Carolyn put up on her wall. Other residents would stop in to see her gallery and be very impressed that Carolyn knew such people. She put one of the Pogo collections she edited in the communal library and got us a few new Groo the Wanderer fans by passing around copies she asked me to bring her.
There was a woman there…I guess she was in her late eighties. The last month or so, she didn't see Carolyn because Carolyn was confined to bed in her room. Every time this woman spotted me in the hall, she'd asked me, "Is she any better? Is she any better?" The answer was always no and I felt bad for this woman that I couldn't say yes.
I mean, I could have engaged in some phony optimism. I did a certain amount of that with Carolyn for months but I knew how it was going to end and after a time, Carolyn did too, especially after Kaiser turned her case over to the palliative care department. She stopped asking me, "Do you still think I'm going to make it?" At some point though, and without discussing it, we mutually agreed to be more realistic. We didn't talk much about dying but we spoke less about not dying…because we both knew that "not dying" was not going to happen.
Friends keep asking me, "Was there a moment when you knew it was almost over?" Yes, several. A year or so earlier, Carolyn had signed an Advanced Care Medical Directive which essentially said that if and when the time came that she was unable to make medical decisions for herself, I would be legally empowered to make them on her behalf. Even if you're in great health, you should have one of these…though as I type this, I realize that I need to make out a new one. Mine still says that if I can't decide for me, Carolyn will.
When the palliative care folks called and said, "As far as we are concerned, you are now deciding for her," I knew she had weeks, not months left. One of her doctors had laid out a timetable for me of what would happen and when. If you added about 16 days to every approximate date he gave me, he was right on the money. In the next few weeks, there were other indicators that the end was closing in on us but that was the big one.
I'm sure someone reading this will write and tell me of a horrible experience with palliative care and/or hospice. Don't bother. I'm not saying they're all infallible or even good. I'm just telling you my story and expressing my gratitude to some fine doctors and nurses. I cannot begin to tell you how much they helped her…and in many ways, they helped her by helping me to help her. I'll write more about this in a few days.
John Cleese is doing five podcasts for BBC Radio called John Cleese Presents. You can hear the first one and all subsequent ones here and I believe each one will be online for 28 days but I wouldn't count on that. Thanks to all of you who let me know about this.
