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September 18, 2001

I STOLE THE above cartoon from the website of my great and brilliant friend, Mike Peters.  And I posted it here because it's the first thing I've seen, in print or anywhere, that made me laugh out loud since last Tuesday.  (Mike's site, where you can see more of his cleverness, is www.grimmy.com)

AND HERE are still more links to articles I've found on the Internet that I thought said something that needed to be said.  As before, I don't agree with every word of them but I respect the attempt to say something constructive.

In the meantime, I have some additional thoughts, which I offer here for whatever they may be worth...

• What does it say about our leaders and reporters that, if you do a search for articles about oppression in Afghanistan and the evil of the Taliban — articles written before 9/11/01, that is — the leading name you'll find speaking out on this issue is that of Mavis (Mrs. Jay) Leno?
• Speaking of late night hosts: David Letterman's first broadcast back, which included a teary-eyed Dan Rather and an almost-sufferable Regis Philbin, was terrific.  It was clearly a difficult hour and the fact that they didn't pretend it wasn't was the kind of honest, human connection we need at this time.  On the other hand, I can't recall seeing a professional broadcaster less at ease than Craig Kilborn, attempting to talk without a TelePrompter and smug jokes.  It was mostly about him and the problems of figuring out what to do on his show now, and reminded me of what Al Franken was parodying with his "Al Franken Decade" routines.
• Bill Maher took a more strident approach, insisting that the time for "political correctness" is past and that it's time to ask hard questions.  It may be...but I'm not sure that his format, with its frequent commercial breaks and tendency to change topics after each, is conducive to answering such questions.  Still, Maher certainly asked one that needs to be addressed when he asked about the logic of airport police busting a TV producer for possession of drugs while, obviously, certain other kinds of, uh, "travellers" are a little more dangerous to society.  (Note: "needs to be addressed" does not imply that it will be, or that anyone will modify their policies if it is.)
• How long is it going to be before someone tries to link Osama bin Laden to one of George W. Bush's — or, more likely, Dick Cheney's — oil deals?  I'm not for a moment suggesting that there is such a link; merely that someone someplace will claim to have found one and we'll spend a lot of time debating over the propriety of such talk.  The way our public discourse seems to run, we're going to hear every conceivable conspiracy theory, up to and including the notion that Lee Harvey Oswald was piloting one of the planes.  (And has anyone noticed that the press seems to have delayed the release of the big Florida vote recount?  It was supposed to be last Monday...not a good time to be unveiling even arguable evidence that our Commander-in-Chief didn't come to the job via a clean election.)
• ABC News has reportedly declared a moratorium of replaying the footage of the World Trade Center towers being hit, burning, collapsing, etc.  If for no other reason, when I watch news the next few days, my dial's going straight for ABC.
• My current favorite political writer, Joshua Micah Marshall, makes an interesting catch over on his excellent website, Talking Points.  It's that Jonathan Turley, the former "impeachment expert" with no credentials in that area has now started appearing in the media as a "terrorism expert" with, of course, no more claim to the title.  But the cable news shows have a lot of hours to fill so he'll, no doubt, be turning up all over.

As usual, I'll post more of these as they occur to me.  (I'm not writing these for you, by the way; I'm writing them for me.  You're welcome to listen in, however...)

LASTLY: Understandably lost in recent news was the passing of Fred DeCordova, of natural causes, at age 90.  Producing and directing The Jack Benny Show and Burns and Allen for TV, and producing The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson were only a few notches in an incredible career that also included motion pictures and the Broadway stage.  For a time, Mr. Carson was firing producers — among them, a couple of his closest friends — at a brisk clip.  When DeCordova stepped into the post, folks were probably betting on how many weeks he'd last, but Fred fooled 'em all.  He lasted more than twenty years in what they called the hottest seat — excepting, perhaps, Johnny's — in all of show biz.

Fred was a strange, frenetic man, capable of both great charm and killer instinct in the same conversation.  He produced a show that introduced some of America's top comedians but seemed to have little talent for spotting comic talent.  Almost every stand-up who succeeded on the show during those years has a tale of DeCordova trying to "improve" perfectly good acts and/or predicting they would bomb.  Still, he never got in their way.  He was mired in "old" show biz and, had he been solely in charge of booking the show, Johnny might never have talked to anyone younger than Jimmy Stewart.  Still, newer stars made it to the couch.  He had a non-charming way of lording his high salary over the poorest-paid members of the staff but, at the same time, he kept the operation operational...though not quite to the end.  Late in his tenure, Fred lost favor with Johnny and was reduced to figurehead stature while others (Peter Lassally, primarily) did the actual producing.  I believe he went unmentioned on Carson's last show.

I sometimes ran into him over at NBC, and he was always willing — even, eager — to chat about his days working with George Burns or Bob Cummings, and he practically worshipped Jack Benny.  Jay Leno retained him as a consultant for a time — in part, I suspect, because Fred had nothing else to do.  "All my friends are dead," he often sighed.  It would be nice to believe they're all, at last, reunited.

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