Just watched the president's appearance last night with Jay Leno. It was better than the last one but it was still someone asking a political figure questions that the political figure wanted to be asked before a TV camera and was quite prepared to answer.
I understand why some hosts want to engage in such "interviews" for the ratings value and the prestige. I understand why other hosts want to boost their chosen candidates or leaders by having them on and lobbing them softballs. Leno would probably be the best example of the former; Sean Hannity typifies the latter, having inherited the mantle from Keith Olbermann. (I liked Olbermann's commentary and reporting but did he ever ask anyone a question the interviewee didn't know was coming?) And of course, I understand why the politicos love those opportunities. I understand it all…but don't like it.
I don't see a lot of interviewers or reporters out there who strike me as fair in the sense that they'll ask tough questions of everyone. If there are such people, they don't get the guests; not when there are so many venues where a political figure can appear and get a hot stone massage. These days, Reince Preibus of the Republican National Committee seems to be angling to cut down on Presidential Debates next time around, the theory being that the G.O.P. hurt itself with all those debates in which Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain tried to outdo each other dragging the party not to the right but to the nutcase right. It would not surprise me if next election, we never see the major candidates get into a situation where they can't control the questions asked of them.
In the above photo, the guy with the glasses is Stan Freberg. The fellow at right is his clothheaded friend Orville who accompanied Stan on his occasional forays into ventriloquism. His other lines of work have included doing voices for cartoons, recording hilarious and best-selling satirical records, producing brilliant funny commercials, writing books and articles, and just being one of the cleverest minds in all media. Today is his birthday and I wanted to wish him many more.
I've been fortunate to know and work with many of my heroes. He and his terrific wife Hunter came to my birthday party last year, which was not so much my birthday party as it was an excuse for my mother to meet an awful lot of my friends while she still could. (It was darn near the last time she was well enough to leave her home for anything non-medical.) A lot of people said to her, "It's easy to see Mark got his sense of humor from you." Sometimes, she would reply — and she wasn't kidding — "Actually, I think I got mine from him." But at times, she'd point across the room to Stan and say, "I think Mark got his sense of humor from that man." She wasn't kidding about that, either.
I first knew Stan from his records, which achieved the highest honor you can have as a satirist. People even loved and laughed at Freberg records when they didn't know the material he was spoofing. Beginning at around age eight, I bought them all and played them over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. They are all deeply embedded in my memory. A few years ago, Stan, Hunter and I were riding in a limo in San Francisco and he challenged my claim that I knew every one by heart. I said, "Name one." He chose "B-B-B-Ball and Chain," which is a fast-talking, impossible-to-sing tune with about eighty words per square inch. I sang it for them and didn't miss a syllable.
Stan intersected with most of the things I loved as a kid. He was the other voice, the guy who wasn't Mel Blanc in a ton of Warner Brothers cartoons. He and the brilliant Daws Butler were Beany and Cecil and everyone else on Time for Beany. He was involved with the early MAD magazine. He was in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He was even an unwilling participant on The Soupy Sales Show. I first "discovered" Stan when the puppets on that program would mime to Freberg records.
I am hardly the only person who feels this way. Going places with Stan is like what traveling with The Pope must be like. People grovel before him and figuratively (occasionally, literally) kiss his ring.
One night a few weeks after Stan's first wife passed, I dragged him out to dinner — at Matteo's, a very famous, old school Italian restaurant on Westwood Boulevard here in L.A. I picked it because he liked it and, to amuse myself, because it's about 200 yards from the former site of the record store in which I purchased my first Stan Freberg LP.
I haven't been to Matteo's since it changed ownership a few years ago but under the old owners, the foyer was practically a shrine to one of their past customers, a fellow named Frank Sinatra. When you came in, the maître d' would often act like he was granting you a rare privilege when he said, "I'm going to seat you in Mr. Sinatra's booth." That was impressive until you learned that at Matteo's, every booth was Mr. Sinatra's booth.
As he led Stan and me to "Mr. Sinatra's booth," we passed a wall of Sinatra photos. One of them was this picture…
It's from a party thrown by Capitol Records, back when they were one of the biggest entities in their industry. The gent at lower left is Glenn Wallichs, who was one of the company founders. The other men were their top recording artists back then — in the back row: Sinatra, Danny Kaye, Gordon MacRae and Nat King Cole. In the front row, we have Wallichs, Dean Martin and Stan. Stan's the only one in the photo who is still with us.
As we passed the photo in Matteo's, I said something like, "Hey, Stan…there's you with Mr. Sinatra." The maître d' turned in shock and gasped, "You…you actually met him?" (Stan not only met Frank, they were close friends. Stan was even the opening act one year when Sinatra did a tour of Australia.)
We had a lovely dinner. When it was over and I asked for the check, our waiter said, "It's been taken care of." I thought Matteo's was comping us but no. A minute later, he came over with a napkin on which another diner in the restaurant — one, the waiter said had already left — had written in ballpoint pen…
Mr. Freberg…you don't know me but your work has meant so much to me over the years. It's an honor to pay you back in even a tiny way by paying for your dinner tonight.
Stan gets that kind of reaction a lot and with good reason. Anyone with that body of excellent work deserves it and more. Happy Freberg Day, Stan!
James Engel sent me a link to this great photo of Johnny Carson. It's identified as him backstage at The Tonight Show but I don't think it is. For one thing, Johnny never wore anything that casual on The Tonight Show. Secondly, it sure doesn't look like backstage in a TV studio. It looks to me like backstage at a Las Vegas showroom or some other performing hall. But it's a good picture…
Bill Carter on the battle between Time-Warner and CBS…
Several media analysts suggested the standoff might be protracted, with predictions ranging from about 10 days to as long as six weeks.
Translation: Nobody has a clue how long this thing might last because there are no precedents and no real insights into the financial stubbornness of both sides. Make a guess. Yours will be no worse than any of the experts or "several media analysts." Yes, the fight might be protracted. It might also be settled this evening. As Jack Germond used to say, "The trouble with the news business is we aren't paid to say 'I don't know.' So we have to say something even when we don't know."
Let's go to the 2012 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony in London as Monty Python's Eric Idle favors us with a medley of his hit…
[EDIT, AN HOUR OR SO LATER:] Okay, it played when I embedded it but now it doesn't. If you want to see that clip, you'll need to go to this link at YouTube. Sorry.
Kevin Drum discusses fact-checking. The deficit is falling. In fact, it's falling at a pretty good clip, even though a lot of folks think it's likely to start growing again. So when Eric Cantor refers to our "growing deficit," is he wrong? I'd say he is because he's deliberately (it seems to me) painting an incomplete picture. If he said, "Yes, our deficit is falling now but there's good reason to believe it will begin to start growing again," he'd be accurate. But his goal pretty clearly is not to admit anything is good news under Obama…so I say it's a lie. Or a willful distortion, if you prefer.
The problem, of course, is that he said it on Fox News where no one, except Chris Wallace on token occasions, is going to say to him, "Congressman, you refer to our 'growing deficit.' The Congressional Budget Office says the deficit is shrinking at the fastest rate in over 60 years." And then he'd say, "Yes, well, that's a short term look at the problem and here's why…" and it all might result in a true picture of the situation, especially if anyone noted that projections of future deficits are not the same thing as current reports of what's actually happening. The deficits might not increase the way Cantor (and to be fair, some Democrats) expect.
As for Politifact and a few others like that, I think they're usually accurate if you carefully parse the claims they're analyzing but they sometimes don't look at what the public is likely to hear. In the above example, all most viewers are going to hear from Cantor's statement is that the deficit is currently growing. Which it isn't. You know, when the stock market goes down, we say it's going down. We don't say it's going up because we know that eventually it will.
We're still following this battle between CBS and Time-Warner, fantasizing there's some way we can get our CBS-owned channels back but both sides in the dispute can lose. My guess would be that most subscribers think it's all just a matter of corporate avarice and that Time-Warner — because they seem to be satisfied with the status quo and no price increases — is the lesser greedhead by a slim margin. CBS Channel 2 has now disappeared completely from my TV and been replaced by what I think is the Starz Kids channel. My TiVo, of course, has no idea what it's showing.
There's a lot here I don't understand. One thing is why if Time-Warner wants to keep the good will of its customers and put pressure on CBS, they don't give that cherished Channel 2 spot over to free access to a great premium channel that everyone will love. The Showtime channels (owned by CBS) are off but some of us would be really happy with a free channel that showed the same kinds of things. That seems like it would be cost-effective to Time-Warner based on how it would get the public on their side.
Another thing I don't get is this…
[Time-Warner Cable CEO Glenn] Britt…called on CBS to stop blocking Time Warner Cable customers from viewing programming on the Web. CBS makes a substantial amount of its programming available on its website CBS.com but has been blocking access from Time Warner Cable's Internet subscribers since Friday afternoon.
Wouldn't it be in CBS's best interests to make those shows viewable on the web? It would stop some fans of ongoing series from drifting away. It would make CBS look like it cared about its viewers. It would cause many of Time-Warner's customers to think, "Hey, we don't need Time-Warner Cable." I know the premise is that if folks can't watch The Mentalist, they'll call Time-Warner and threaten to switch to DirecTV or Dish or (gasp!) roof antennas…but Time-Warner isn't afraid of those complaints. They can just tell those callers, "We could have the CBS stations back in two minutes if we pay them what we want but then your bill will go up."
Not a lot of folks are actually going to switch because they figure that the minute you go to DirecTV — which can involve a lot of hassle, plus often the abandonment of all you've saved to watch on your DVR — DirecTV will be fighting over retransmission fees with Disney and then all those channels will be off. Granting access to Time-Warner subscribers to watch CBS shows on the web would also enable them to insert commercials and plead their case to Time-Warner subscribers.
So far, the impact on CBS ratings is microscopic. Last night, their Big Brother cleaned up in the numbers.
Anyway, let's keep watching the knife fight. It's a lot more interesting than watching anything that's been on CBS lately. All I care about is that they get this settled in time for me to watch The Tony Awards next May. Especially if Neil Patrick Harris hosts again.
Jerry Beck, who's a pretty good blogger himself, informs me that I made the 2013 Time list of the 25 Best Bloggers. I am reminded of what the late Jack Kirby once said to me when I told him he'd been nominated for some honor. He said, "Remember — when you win anything, just thank the little people and get off!" So…thank you, little people. I'm not going to mention any names. You know who you are.
I said in yesterday's piece on my father that one of the things that turned me against the Vietnam War was when Richard Nixon's announced "secret plan" to end it turned out to be illusory. Well, as several folks have informed me, it was illusory in that Nixon never promised any such thing. His fabled "secret plan," which I believe was ridiculed in opposition commercials, was the invention of a reporter who first used the term. Others picked up on it but Nixon apparently never said, "I have a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam." There are those who insist that he pointedly did not deny it because he wanted to make that claim without making that claim, if you follow me. But he didn't say it. Its non-existence was hardly the only reason my dislike for Nixon and that war grew…but we should set the record straight on the one thing.
And boy, it feels odd to correct a fib about Richard Nixon.
My knee's a bit better but I won't be begging, proposing marriage, praying or singing "Mammy" for a while. I also have deadlines looming so for that reason and to prove Time wrong, I won't be blogging much the rest of the day. Gonna post a Video Link and go back to work…
When last we left my father, he had finally become convinced that his son could make a living as a professional writer. Still, he found reasons aplenty to worry about me. There were big worries and small worries but this is the story of, by far, the biggest. Bigger even than his worry about my chosen career.
In 1970, I turned 18 and as was required, I registered for The Draft. The selective service office where I did this was in the same federal building (the one over on Wilshire near Veteran) where he went to work each day for the Internal Revenue Service. So after registering, I went up to that floor to say hello to him. Even though he'd see me a few hours later at the dinner table, he was glad I came by so he could introduce me to some of his co-workers. From them, I learned he'd done an awful lot of bragging in the office about his son, the Professional Writer who was — believe it or not — actually making a living at it.
But he was chilled by the reason I was in the building. The next few days, I noticed him looking pale and older, like he wasn't sleeping. Finally one evening, he sat me down for what was easily the most serious father/son talk we ever had. He said, almost trembling, "I need you to do something for me. If you love your father, you will do this. You will not give me an argument or tell me not to worry about it. You will do this because both our lives, mine and yours, depend on it." I couldn't for the life of me imagine what he was talking about.
Then he told me: "I want you…I need you to do everything that is humanly possible to avoid being drafted. I swear to God, if you get a draft notice…if there's the slightest chance of you being sent to Vietnam, I will have a heart attack and die."
I tried to tell him that he wouldn't but he got so upset that I was afraid he would, then and there. He'd had a heart attack a few years earlier and he also had a bleeding ulcer — mostly, it seemed, from stress at the office.
"You must do everything. Go to lawyers. Talk to counselors. Whatever it costs, I will come up with the money. I am even prepared to quit my job here, sell this house and move us all up to Canada if I have to. But you must…not…be drafted." I can still hear how he said that, pausing between words.
I said, "Well, not everyone who's drafted goes to Vietnam…"
He said, "If you were drafted, I would never sleep again. I would be up all night worrying that wherever you were stationed, they would suddenly decide to send you off to war. I haven't even been able to sleep since you signed up for the draft the other day. That's how much this upsets me."
I promised him I would do everything possible to not get drafted and that was the end of the conversation. That night.
Some context is necessary. In 1970, America was slowly turning against U.S. military action in Southeast Asia. It wasn't anywhere near a majority viewpoint then, which is why Richard Nixon was able to win a landslide re-election two years later. Still, it was growing, especially as Nixon's '68 campaign promises — that he had a "secret plan" to end The War — seemed increasingly illusory. The War wasn't ending. It was multiplying and dividing and every week, there were new stories of massacres and dead Americans and it was harder and harder to explain our objective over there.
My parents had been against it from about half past Lyndon Johnson's term in office. I was slower to come around. It may be impossible for readers of my blog to believe now but back in the sixties, I was pretty conservative. Which is not to say I ever liked Nixon or Ronald Reagan. Even if I did side with most of the causes they espoused, I thought they came at them from the wrong angles with selfish motives instead of selfless. Just because you believe in the message, it doesn't mean you have to respect every messenger who carries it or even his arguments for it. You should always be embarrassed by at least a few of the people on your side.
In high school during the Johnson administration, there were occasional well-attended demonstrations against The War and some pretty feeble, poorly-attended counter-demonstrations in support of it. I was one of the kids leading the counter-demonstrations. Like everyone who finds himself in such a minority of his peers, I congratulated myself on not being part of the mindless majority; of having the courage to buck the crowds. Eventually, I decided that wasn't a particularly good reason.
Neither was that from my viewpoint, the friends of mine backing The War were my smarter friends and the "other side" was full of the dumber people, few of whom seemed to even understand the issues. It seemed to me they were all jumping on that particular bandwagon for the same reason they were all buying bell bottom pants and listening to certain musicians: Because they were "in," because they were what our generation was doing…and in some cases, just because they pissed off our parents.
But sometimes, the folks around you aren't a representative sample. It always helps to remember that remark attributed to various East Coast Liberal types after the '68 election: "I can't understand how Nixon won. I don't know anyone who voted for him." For a time, I didn't know anyone I thought was intelligent who opposed The War. Then by '70, the year I entered U.C.L.A., I knew a few and by '72, I knew enough that I saw the error of my thinking and joined the protest marches. My root distrust of Nixon and his cronies also did a lot to get me to the other side as did many of his actions. If you ever bomb Cambodia, I'll lose my last bit of trust in you, too.
The point is that in '70 when my father asked what he asked of me, I didn't know how I felt about The War. I did though know how I felt about The Army. With all my might, I wanted no part of it.
I still have it. Unburned.
My aversion to the Army had nothing to do with any possibility of being sent to fire guns at people who were firing at me. That wasn't going to happen. I wasn't going to volunteer for that and no one would have been dumb enough to send the guy who would soon be writing Super Goof comics into combat.
But just being in the service seemed utterly incompatible with me. How would I sleep? I was used to having my own room. How would I eat? I had all my weird, defy-all-medical-analysis food allergies. Even Basic Training seemed impossible. One evening, I watched some news footage of fresh recruits on their first day. They were climbing ropes (I couldn't do that) and scaling walls (I couldn't do that) and slithering on their bellies (I couldn't do that) and eating Army Chow (I really couldn't do that). No high school student ever hated Gym Class as much as I hated Gym Class…and even the simplest, non-combat Army life seemed to me like living 24/7 in Gym Class.
I understood all about serving your country. I just didn't think our current leaders were serving that country very well, nor did I see that I could possibly be of any use to them. I wouldn't even have made a good hostage.
One night during this period, I actually had the following dream: I'm drafted but they immediately call me in and some fancy general-type who looks like George C. Scott says, "Evanier! We've looked over your qualifications and we've decided you can best help America by staying here in Los Angeles, dating that cute girl friend of yours and editing a line of comic books designed to educate and entertain the military!"
And then in the dream, so help me, he added, "This being the military, we believe in drastically overpaying for everything so we're going to give you a budget of several thousand dollars a page. Hire anyone you want, pay them whatever you want…and, oh yes, keep the change!"
How much did I not want to go into the Army? Here's how much: Even if that dream had happened exactly as dreamed, I probably still would have packed up my comics and moved to Vancouver.
My father's plea for me to avoid conscription was not because he opposed The War. He did but it was a lot simpler than that. He just had nightmares about his only son being killed. In later years, he would worry the same way because he knew I was on an airplane or driving on the Santa Monica Freeway at rush hour. As much to make him happy as to save my own skin, I went to see some Draft Avoidance Counselors. That was the job description at least one of them had on the door.
There were several such services then operating in Westwood Village, which was adjacent to my current place of learning. They were all free and in each case, I met with a serious, committed volunteer who believed The War and The Draft were both immoral. They looked over my family situation, my health, my next-to-non-existent religious background, my academic record — everything — and suggested applications for deferments, doctor notes I might be able to get, financial hardship forms, etc. I do not recall what I filled out or what I did but I'm sure I didn't do as much of it as my father wanted, though I assured him I had. I did undergo some kind of brief government physical in which I emphasized the flatness of my feet and the expensive special shoes my podiatrist then had me wearing.
And I do recall one moment with one of the draft counselors that stuck with me. I filled out a ridiculous number of questionnaires and he looked them over and said, "I don't think you have much to worry about. You went to University High."
I had to ask: "What does that have to do with this?"
He said, "Uni Hi is primarily white and wealthy. Kids from white and wealthy areas have ways of not getting drafted."
I didn't believe that. I also didn't believe that all the forms I'd filled out and exemptions I'd applied for would make any difference. It was all going to come down to my number in the draft lottery. In a few months, they would be drawing for males born in 1952 and the way it worked was that your date of birth was your lottery number. If your number was drawn in the first hundred, you were likely to go. If you were in the next thirty or forty, you were unlikely to go but it was vaguely possible. And anything over 140 or 150, you were safe. I just knew I'd be safe.
An odd "calm" settled in on me about the topic: No panic, no worry. I was certain, with no basis in reality, that it would never come to that. It was like, "Me? In the Army? It'll never happen." I didn't fret about it because I knew that Fate would never do such a thing to me. And on August 5, 1971, it didn't.
I had thought so little about The Draft that I was unaware of that date, the date they drew the numbers for my birth year. My mind that morning was on what I was going to do the following morning, which was to drive down to attend the second of what we now call Comic-Con Internationals. My friend Tony Isabella was staying with us, in from Ohio, primed to head south to San Diego with me.
But though I didn't know when the drawing was, my father did. He got up early and sat down in the living room in his pajamas to watch them pick the numbers live on The CBS Morning News and, I suppose, other programs. When my birthday of March 2 was assigned #184, he let out a whoop.
I was in my pajamas too, talking with Tony about the con when my father burst into my room and began hugging me, saying over and over, "Thank God, thank God." At first, I honestly didn't know what he was so happy about. Then he told me and while I was pleased, it wasn't because it meant that I would probably never have to go into the military. It was more like the way you're pleased when something you know is not going to happen doesn't happen. Sometimes, it's just plain reassuring to know you were right.
In later years, I got to know and talk with a number of guys my age who did serve in Vietnam. I respected the hell out of them for their service and to some extent envied their ability to do something like that. I know I couldn't…any more than I could have played pro football or become a police officer. I respect the hell out of police officers, too. None of the veterans I spoke with, I'm happy to say, ever had a problem with my not having served. Most were jealous and one even said, after I'd told one of my zillion tales of incompetence at anything besides writing silly stories, "I'm glad you weren't in the Army. You would have gotten a lot of us killed."
None of these vets I knew were guys from my old high school. At our 25 year reunion, I got to talking with one of the organizers of the event. He had put together a display/tribute to honor those of our classmates who didn't live to be at the reunion. There were about 18 in a class of more than 600. I asked how many of the men had died in military service and he said, "None. Almost none of our classmates even went into the service." I had assumed that based on the way the lottery worked, about 30% of males my age were drafted but he said, "No, not with our class. It was less than ten and I think most of them enlisted. The rest whose numbers were picked…they all found ways to get out of it."
So maybe there was something to that "white and wealthy" business.
I think that morning of 8/5/71 was the happiest I ever saw my father. He actually danced a little in the kitchen with my mother, twirling her about to unheard but very joyous music. He seemed younger, too. He was still happy that evening and he said to me, "Maybe we should go out to dinner this weekend and celebrate."
I told him, "We can celebrate if you like but it won't be this weekend. Remember, tomorrow Tony and I are going down to San Diego for that comic book convention."
He looked suddenly concerned and he asked, "You're going by freeway, I assume?" I told him we were.
He paused a moment then said, "Please…do your father a favor and be real careful!"
Do you find clowns scary? I used to, a little. I was actually scared of anyone in real life who was hiding behind any sort of mask. Anyway, here's an article about fear of clowns. Thanks to Scott Marinoff for suggesting I link to it.
One evening in 1986, I got a call from Gary Belkin, a friend of mine who was one of the top comedy writers of all time with numerous Emmy Awards and other trophies to prove it. "Any chance you're going to be at the Improv tonight?" he asked. I hadn't planned to go by but he somehow talked me into it.
There was a new comedienne who was showcasing there, testing out the act she would be doing the following night on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. It was potentially her big show biz break — not her first time on TV but the first time that really, really mattered. Gary had been hired to coach and critique her, and he wondered if I could be there to add my opinion to the pile. Since the script I was writing that night was getting nowhere fast, I decided to go in, see this lady I'd never heard of before and hang around for a bit.
The largely-unknown performer took stage shortly after I arrived…and you'd never have known from her demeanor and presence that she was largely-unknown. She was confident without being cocky. She had strong material and she delivered it with confidence and good spirit. When Gary asked me if I had any "notes" to offer, I said, "Yes. Tell her to do it exactly like that." As it turned out, that's what he'd already told her.
Soon after, he brought her over to meet me and I told her something like, "I hope you enjoy tonight because after tomorrow evening, you're going to be spending every waking minute turning down offers." We chatted for a few minutes and I thought she was cute in both visuals and personality…so I did what I usually did back then when I met a woman I liked. I suggested, in as non-pushy a manner as I could manage, that we might have dinner some night. I don't recall the words of her polite turndown but I recall thinking, "Gee, that was about the nicest way any woman ever told me to get lost."
So we never went out…or even spoke again. Still, it wasn't a total waste: I got a joke out of it. The line — and I've used it more than once — is to say of some futile activity, "That's the biggest waste of time since that evening I spent at the Improv hitting on Ellen DeGeneres." Yep, that's who it was and I still think she's terrific. She was terrific the next night with Mr. Carson, she was terrific in all those gigs she got as a result of being terrific with Mr. Carson, and whenever I tune in her afternoon chat show, I think she's real good at it.
I didn't, however, think she was that wonderful in '07 hosting the Academy Awards…and it was not her fault. The job to me requires someone who is a movie star (Billy Crystal, Hugh Jackman), a person of great importance (Johnny Carson, Bob Hope) or, preferably, both (Steve Martin, Frank Sinatra). Ellen has done a few films but she isn't a movie star and she doesn't quite meet my other requirement either. But do they listen to me? Nope: She's been announced as next year's Oscar host. She'll be better than Seth MacFarlane but so probably would anyone chosen at random from the phone book. Hey, maybe she can do a tasteful song called "We Saw Your Dick."
It of course doesn't matter that much who hosts the Oscars. Doesn't matter to the world and I don't think it even matters that much to the Oscars. The show's about the awards, not about the person who does the big, fancy opening then disappears for most of the proceedings. If it can't be someone like Steve Martin, it oughta be Neil Patrick Harris who is, sort of, a movie star these days. Heck, I'd even waive all my rules for him and say he should host every awards show of any kind. I imagine he was bypassed for the Oscars because someone felt he's too identified with the Tonys. It also may be that he'd want to bring in his own producing team rather than the folks who already have that job. But one of these days…
The Cartoon Color Wheel. For some reason, they don't have Mickey Mouse, Betty Boop, Koko the Clown and Felix the Cat where they'd belong, which is smack-dab at the center.
John Dickerson on why Republicans in Congress can't get anything done. It might require a bit of compromise and that tends to dry up campaign donations.
