Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:17 PM

One bit of rhetoric I found extremely offensive is the comparison of a President of the U.S. to Hitler, whether done by the left or the right. Jonah Goldberg writes an excellent column on why such a thing is effectively Holocaust denial:

If your son is murdered and I claim that it never happened, I am denying the existence of a crime. But if your son is murdered and I compare that tragedy to losing your car keys, that is a form of denial, too. And this is precisely what the "Bush equals Hitler" crowd is doing.

The Nazis murdered millions of men, women and children. Their victims weren't "collateral damage" in a war, and they were not executed after a long and fair trial. The Nazis sent their victims to gas chambers and ovens in boxcars. Nazi scientists injected dyes into the living eyes of small children to see if they could be made "Aryan." They made soap out of people.

What on earth has George Bush done that deserves such comparisons? [...][W]hen you say he[Bush]'s no different from Hitler, you are also saying that Hitler is no different from George Bush. And that means that Hitler's crimes were no worse than George Bush's "crimes." And whatever you think of what George Bush has done or might do, if you think any of it is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, you are in effect saying the Holocaust really wasn't that bad.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:42 AM

Not only is TCM running Airplane! (uncut, I presume), it is also showing Zero Hour!, the movie whose main plot Airplane! was spoofing.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:05 PM

Another might-have-been movie: Walt Disney planned to do a comedy based on former Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev's tantrum that he couldn't go to Disneyland:

It recounts -- in a light, breezy manner -- how the Soviet leader had flown all the way to America to meet with President Eisenhower. But -- in reality -- Nikita had come to the U.S. just because he wanted to go to Disneyland.

So Khrushchev flew into Southern California, all excited that he was finally going to get his chance to visit "The Happiest Place on Earth." Only to discover that -- due to safety concerns -- the State Department had canceled his trip out to Anaheim. Moviegoers were then supposed to see a slightly comic take on the Soviet Premier's infamous tantrum at 20th Century Fox. And then ...

Well, then the film morphs into your typical Walt Disney Productions live action comedy of the 1960s. First Khrushchev is seen moping around his hotel suite in downtown Los Angeles later that evening. Then the Premier realizes that Disneyland is only 30 miles away. More importantly, that the theme park is open 'til midnight that night.

So Nikita decides that he's going to sneak out of his hotel and somehow make his way out to Anaheim. Using a goofy disguise, he gives both his Soviet security detail as well as his State Department handlers the slip. Then Khrushchev somehow makes his way out to Disneyland, with all of his handlers in hot pursuit ... and hilarity ensues.

The full article (which also details what happened in real-life) is here. The link came from another article on the same site detailing Bob Hope's dealings with Walt, including Hope's spurious claim that he incited the Disneyland tantrum by telling Mrs. Kruschev "You should really try to go to Disneyland. It's wonderful."
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:12 AM

I understand that comic strips have a two-three week lead time. But how could any one involved in humor not know that the "A lot of people are running for governor in California! It's crazzzzzy!!!!!" joke would have been played out by now? Garry Trudeau not only didn't foresee that possibility but thought the joke was worth doing not once, not twice, not thrice but four times!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:00 AM

From the "Brush with Something" Department: I just realized I was a member of the gym where Arnold had his gangbang. Maybe I would have worked out more often if I knew stuff like that was going on.

Meanwhile, Matt Welch has Bill O'Reilly using the Oui story as an opportunity to act like a loon about the Internet again.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:10 PM

The brilliant pilot Lookwell starring Adam West as an Adam West-esque actor who played a seventies TV detective will be airing on Trio this weekend. Details here and schedule here. I talk about the show here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:57 PM

From the "The Left is now entering Vince Foster-ville" Department: From a Village Voice article complaining about the upcoming Showtime 9/11 docudrama:

Bush's approval rating was hovering around 50 percent on the morning of September 11. Indeed, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have done so much for Bush's presidency one might reasonably suspect they're being held in a witness protection program.

Reasonably? Reasonably?
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:49 PM

My objection to Alabama's Ten Commandments display is the same as it's always been to Ten Commandment displays: I want equal time for the other 603 commandments that they leave out.

This page gets more specific on the matter:

For some reason, many people have the impression that there are only ten commandments. Everyone has heard of the "Ten Commandments," or at least they've heard of the movie.

I'll tell you a secret. There's no such thing!

Nowhere in the Torah is the phrase "ten commandments" used at all. When referring to these ten, the Torah always calls them the Aseres Had'vorim, the "Ten Statements," or the "Ten Words." In Aramaic, that comes out as "Aseres Hadibros," which is what we usually call them. It means the same thing: the "Ten Statements."

The Hebrew words for "Ten Commandments" would be "Aseres Hamitzvos." But no such term exists anywhere in the Torah or in Rabbinical Writings. Anywhere.

However, in Exodus 34:28, the King James' Bible uses the term "ten commandments" to translate the phrase, which is absolutely incorrect.

The original Hebrew, however, doesn't say that. The Hebrew says "Ten Statements." The same is true in Deuteronomy 4:13 and 10:14.

So get this: Millions of people in the world are confused because of a poor translation in the King James' Bible. They all think that when the Torah refers to "doing Hashem's Commandments," the Torah is referring to those Ten Statements that Hashem spoke at Mount Sinai, and no more! And the truth is, they're wrong!

To be sure, the Ten Statements are also commandments. They are ten of the 613 Commandments of the Torah.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:53 PM

I want a "Dave Grayvis for Governor" poster!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:48 AM

Tom Green's personal ad. (Story here.) He wouldn't answer a question about whether he attends religious services but I know of one religious service he didn't attend.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:16 PM

At a bookstore Saturday, I happened to notice that the spine of the Gene Simmons book Kiss and Make-Up has one-fifth of a picture of Mr. Simmons. My friend and I speculated whether KISS fans were dopey enough to buy five copies of the book to get a complete picture. (Leaving aside the fact that the title was the same as a Paul Lynde punch line when KISS was on his Halloween Special.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:00 PM

A story about a scientific study of astrology. The study took 2000 people born in early March 1958, most within minutes of each other, and compared 100 characteristics. No similarities were found. The study also reviewed studies where astrologers had to match birth charts to a given personality profile and found the results about the same as random guessing.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:14 AM

When I saw the trailer for Anything Else, Woody Allen's latest movie, something seemed off and I couldn't put my finger on it. It wasn't Woody's absence from it; he's had others play the lead before. I finally realize what it was; the trailer features a song that was written in the last forty years.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 3:27 PM

A friend pointed me to an ad from Craig's List whose headline says it all: Actor Needed to be my Boyfriend for TWO Weeks!. Yes, a young lady, to get her parents off her back, told them that she'd be bringing the boyfriend over for a family visit. The only problem is she doesn't have a boyfriend! She offers to pay all expenses and something extra. The ad ends with essentially "P.S. I am not a crackpot."

I see Kate Hudson as the woman, Ben Stiller or a Wilson brother as the actor, Jerry Stiller and Mary Tyler Moore as the woman's parents and Eugene Levy as the actor's favorite uncle who needs some nature of expensive medical treatment (hence his being part of the deception). There will be a montage of wacky people applying for the gig (I'm thinking a cowboy, Tony Randall, a burly Russian guy (with fur hat), the butler from Joe Millionaire, a fat guy, a gay guy, a rude New Yorker, a guy with a mohawk, Tony Randall again but with a fake handlebar moustache). The idea will be so crazy that it just might work. And, of course, someone will be standing in the rain shouting that falling in love wasn't part of the deal.

The sad part is that this is actually the best gig in the tv/film/video/radio jobs section or at least the only one that seems to guarantee payment.

I'm tempted to reply just so I can ask "Is falling in love part of the deal? I don't want to be saying it wasn't part of the deal and then finding out that it's covered in the fine print. I'm not saying I'd turn it down if it were part of the deal. I just want to know where I stand."

UPDATE: Craig's List has since removed the ad.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:20 PM

A review of the Smoking Gun TV special on next week:

I'm attacking it a week early, though, because its particular type of awfulness deserves attention — and advance warning...[Court TV's] taken a concept that was close to perfect to begin with, and dumbed it down into something idiotic and unwatchable.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:11 PM

SCTV is coming to DVD, according to this article (link courtesy of Mark Evanier). Eugene Levy states that obtaining music rights is why it took so long which confirms what Joe Flaherty once told me a couple of years ago when a friend and I asked him when SCTV would be released on video.

Actually, the music licensing may also be the other reason why they're starting with the NBC 90-minute shows. According to Flaherty, when the show started , they didn't concern themselves about music clearance. If they were doing a Towering Inferno parody, they'd just use the theme to Towering Inferno. They were a dinky little Canadian show and nobody noticed. It was only now that it was causing trouble.

Flaherty also noted that back when NBC was rerunning SCTV at 1:35 AM, he'd wonder why they chose the episodes they did to broadcast. He figured out that music rights was the main deciding factor.
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