Congrats and sighs of relief to my longtime friend (and one of the best artists in the realm of fantasy), Bill Stout. Bill has just come through a nasty brush with cancer and he reports on his weblog that they got it all. In fact, his weblog has a very candid, chilling diary of his experiences. The accounts may be too raw for some people but if you want to brave it, go to this page, locate the entry for November 16 and then read sequentially upwards to the happy ending. I'm horrified by what he's been through but glad we'll have Stout around for a long time.
And good thoughts go out to a great veteran comic book writer — the man who gave us The Doom Patrol, Deadman, Stanley and His Monster and so many more. Arnold Drake has been hospitalized with a couple of broken bones and I'm told he's doing well. I'll call him tomorrow and try to get you all a more complete report, as well as an address for Get Well wishes.
My Congressman at work. I don't know why more people aren't outraged at evidence that some companies have taken tax money for war-related work, gouged us on the amounts and then either not done the work or done a slipshod job. Shouldn't these be the kind of scandals that unite us all? Is there anyone who doesn't think this kind of thing is shameful?
Here's a new CBS poll on Bush and Iraq, and here's Mark baffled about something.
21% of Americans approve of the job George W. Bush has done handling Iraq, as opposed to 75% who disapprove.
31% of Americans approve of Bush's overall job performance, as opposed to 63% who disapprove.
So, uh, what's on the minds of those people who think he's done a rotten job with Iraq but still think he's been a good president?
I'm serious with this question...well, sort of serious. I can understand thinking Bush has botched the war badly. Actually, I can understand that from two fronts: I can understand thinking he made a colossal mistake taking us to war in the first place and I can understand believing the war was the right move but that it's been lost by bad strategizing and/or not committing sufficient troop strength and/or mishandling the occupation. I can even understand (again, sort of) believing that Bush has made all (or mostly) the right decisions and that he's been a good Chief Exec. I don't agree, of course, but
But this presidency has become all about the war. It overwhelmingly dominates every poll about what Americans think is important and it impacts the runner-up answers like The Economy and Immigration and Combatting Terrorism, and probably not in a good way. How does someone disapprove of the war but approve of the guy who started it and ran it? I mean, even if you think Donald Rumsfeld's the one who screwed up, Bush is the guy who picked Rumsfeld, okayed everything he did and insisted, long after members of their own party were calling for the man's head, in keeping him on.
Now, it may be that the poll is just full of manure...but I don't think that's it because there's a similar gap in all the polls. My suspicion is roughly as follows: There are, of course, a lot of people out there who believe in the over-all, non-Iraq goals of the Republican Party. They've lost faith in Bush himself and they wish we'd never invaded Iraq and could get out without it helping the Democrats. When they're asked about the war, they don't want to encourage its continuance so they say no, they don't approve of the handling of the war. But when they're asked about Bush, they don't want to repudiate the domestic issues he seemed to stand for. They still think a G.O.P. in the White House is the ticket to lower taxes, banning abortion, more God in public settings, no gay marriages, etc., so they answer that they approve of Bush. But it's not him they like. They just don't want to have him seen as a failed president because some of that failure will rub off on their non-Iraq agenda.
Does that make any sense? Or is there some other explanation I'm missing here?
Are there people reading this who disapprove of Bush's handling of the war but approve of his over-all presidency? Would one of them like to send me a message I can post here explaining this? I'm really curious.
The New York Times has corrected its obit on Sid Raymond. They now quote his favorite joke in a way that makes sense. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read this earlier item on this site.) Naturally, we would like to take credit for this...so we will.
The Times credits Sid as having provided the voices of the Terrytoons magpies, Heckle and Jeckle, and several folks have written to ask me if this was so. Yes, it is was...briefly. There are one or two cartoons in which Raymond appears to have done the voice of Heckle and/or Jeckle.
I say "appears" because those of us who profess to know a lot about animation voice work are all still a bit puzzled by the credits for many films that came out of Paul Terry's studio. A gentleman named Tom Morrison, who also worked there as a storyman, did an awful lot of voices. So did a New York based singer named Roy Halee. The two of them swapped off certain voices from time to time. Both were Mighty Mouse at different times, occasionally in the same cartoon — Halee singing, Morrison speaking. Sometimes, one of them did Heckle and Jeckle, sometimes the other did the magpies and sometimes they split the chores. There are also other, unidentifiable voices in Terrytoons, some of which sound like the director grabbed a janitor and stuck him in front of a microphone.
I'm glad someone was skeptical about Sid Raymond's credit. There's a lot of misinformation out there about the voices on these cartoons. Many sources say that character actor Ned Sparks was the voice of Heckle and Jeckle at one point. As far as I know, this is wrong. Impressions of Mr. Sparks turn up in a lot of cartoons produced in this country in the thirties and forties but I don't think he ever actually did animation voice work. Comedian Dayton Allen voiced the magpies a few times in the fifties, including redubbing old footage to serve as interstitial segments on the CBS TV series, but he's often credited as if he did all the voices in all their cartoons. Also, some sources say that Roy Halee went from voicing Mighty Mouse and the magpies to producing records by popular recording artists, including Simon and Garfunkel, The Lovin' Spoonful and Bob Dylan. Actually, Roy Halee Senior was a singer and cartoon voice and his son, Roy Halee Junior, became a top record producer.
Incidentally — getting back to the first topic for a moment — isn't it interesting that the Times, which published many assertions about Whitewater, and later about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq, has never corrected those stories...but someone there was conscientious enough to fix Sid Raymond's joke?
Here's another cartoon I wrote which should not be on YouTube and which the legal folks will soon have removed. But in the meantime, I wrote it. I can link to it. I can even tell you a little story about it.
I don't think it happens as much these days but those of us who do cartoons have been occasionally pressured, in much the same way a guy with a gun pressures you to hand over your wallet, to include certain "social messages" into our work. There's nothing wrong with trying to include a benevolent moral in a cartoon if — and here come a couple of big IFs — it doesn't despoil the entertainment value and it can be done without a condescending, lecturing tone...and especially IF the message is a sound one.
For a time in the eighties, a lot of us had to include a message with which I did not agree. It was, basically, that the group was always right; that one should avoid the anti-social behavior of not going along with what everyone else thought. This was embedded in many cartoon shows in many ways. On a show I launched called Dungeons and Dragons (the DVD of which is just now being released), I had to make one of the kids a sour presence who always wanted to go in a different direction from all the others. The same network also had a show called The Get-Along Gang, which was about a batch of cute, furry animals who always had to be reminded to get along with the gang. There were other examples.
I thought this was a foolish value to be teaching children. So did the programming folks at the network but it was forced upon them by outside interests. Later, when I did the Garfield and Friends show, things had changed and I not only didn't have to include that message, I could attack it...as we did in this U.S. Acres cartoon. U.S. Acres was Jim Davis's other newspaper strip — the one he retired because it was "only" in 300 papers...an impressive number for anyone but the creator of Garfield. In some other countries, the strip was called Orson's Farm so the cartoons we did were filmed with both title cards, and today's video clip has an Orson's Farm logo on it.
They all took place on a farm where Orson the Pig, Roy Rooster, Wade the Cowardly Duck and others cavorted. In the episode you're about to view (assuming the link is still good and you click on it), the voices of Orson and the agent were done by Gregg Berger, who I should mention also had a small role in the movie I saw last night. Thom Huge was Roy Rooster and the late, great Howie Morris supplied the sound of Wade Duck. All three, with their voices sped a la Bagdasarian, spoke for The Buddy Bears, three extremely annoying characters who popped up every now and then on the Garfield show singing their little tune which was written by Yours Truly and Ed Bogas. Which brings us to the cartoon entitled Big Bad Buddy Bird...
In 1967, two reporters — one of them, a gent named Murray Fromson — filed stories which quoted an anonymous "senior American general" about how badly the war in Vietnam was going for the U.S. The article enraged the White House and the Pentagon, and I seem to recall a lot of their supporters insisting that no general would say such a thing; that the reporters had to have made it all up. Today in the New York Times, in this article, Fromson reveals the name of his source. And it really doesn't matter who it was...only that he appears to have really had one.
December 12, 2006
