2.  Joey Bishop.  April 1967 – December 1969.  ABC.  **
I have no good feeler for the cultural context or reads on Joey Bishop.  He was Carson’s regular guest host, than he was his competitor for a few years.  The youtube clips available are heavy on one of lasting gifts to us all — Regis Philbin, his sidekick.  Jack Paar clearly favored him over Carson.  I guess he slumped back to Carson’s guest host role, did some game shows, hung out with the “Rat Pack”.  Somebody tell me what I’m looking at when I’m looking at Joey Bishop.

3.  Merv Griffin.  August 1969 – February 1972.  CBS. **
He had done his show in syndication and locally before CBS signed him up.  He did so again after CBS dropped him.  I gather stations slotted him in late night less often the second time through, and he found his rhthym in the morning.  Years later, Cosmo Kramer made use of his show’s trappings and kept the Merv Griffin Show alive.

4.  Dick Cavett.  December 1969 – December 1972.  ABC ***
I think he should have been allowed to roll through most of the decade of the 1970s with his talk show effort.  He developed a cultural cachet and relevance for the times quite apart from Carson, and the list of his notable shows on youtube is telling.  His big fault was that he made less money for ABC shareholders than Carson made for NBC shareholders.  But he’s one of the few on this list that you can sell on dvd.

5.  Alan Thicke.  1983 – 1984.  Syndication, Metromedia. *
Was there any point in launching with an ad campaign about taking on Johnny Carson?  Maybe Alan Thicke could have had something good working here, but his set up sounds rather counter-productive.  Apparently the show was filmed twice in week in sets of three, and then aired as late as ten days after filming.  Metromedia’s lunges at fourth television network sure were Mickey Mouse efforts.

6.  Joan Rivers.  Fox.  1986-1987.  **
I’ve already tapped this one, defended it feigntly.  Fox needed to make a splash to clear affiliates.  She did.  If her ratings weren’t all that good, it could be pointed out she was on a programming island on the best non-network television station in each market.  As for the show itself — a lot of show business glitz, I suppose.

7.  David Brenner.  1986 – 1987.  Syndicated.  *
The low point apparently came when his guests didn’t show up for a program, so he extended his monolouge for an entire program and post-hoc labeled it a Daring New Experiment in Television.  Brenner went on with a good relationship with Cason, who didn’t take his shot against him personally.

8.  Ross Shafer.  Fox.  1988. *
Slot him into this mix because he was settled on at the end of this run as host.  Falling low in the ratings, he filled his show out with gimmicks — all kind of interesting enough.  Though why would I want to watch a Reunion of the Gilligan’s Island cast when I could just go ahead and watch Gilligan’s Island?

9. Pat Sajak.  CBS.  * 1989-1990.
I both see what CBS thought it was doing, and appreciate the Mediocrity of the purpose.  Carson had been a game show host who could provide a breezy late night format.  Sajak?  He’s a game show host with some of the same skill!  Why, once Carson retires, he’ll be right there for people to turn over toward.  And so with his promise to “not looking to raise the level of TV”, he delivered the lack of interesting programming that he promised to deliver.

10.  Arsenio Hall.  Syndication.  1989 – 1994.  ***
Too obsequitious to his guests, too preening to female guests, and for the life of me I don’t remember any skit he did.  But for a moment he filled this vacuum, a vacuum excentered by his spot in syndication.  He moved into his host of Fox affiliates, buffered by a good selection of ABC and CBS.  The schedulinig advantage fell apart when the vacuum became glut — CBS signed Letterman, Fox screwed things up with Chevy Chase, but before then Hall threw out a lot of academic scholars, forcing his audience to think a tad.  He provided ample peiod pieces for VH1 reminisces: it is Milli Vanilli for the first time singing and not lip-syncing the song their name was attached to.  And Bill Clinton on the saxophone.

11.  Rick Dees.  1991.  ABC.  *
My brother used to tape various interviews with Star Trek actors, mixed in or at the end of his taped Star Trek collection.  So I have one image of Rick Dees interviewing — probably William Shatner, and doing a riff on how his show is “No Budget!”  (Similarly, a Jonathan Frazen appearance on Chevy Chase in recorded — where Commander Riker appears to be high, but I imagine all of Chase’s guests ended up that way.) I kind of don’t know what ABC thought they had with Rick Dees.  Maybe they threw him up with the “Just Because” school of thought — fill time.

12.  Dennis Miller.  Jan – July 1992.  syndication. *
Dennis Miller has certainly had a long and varied career.  He rejuveniated a Saturday Night Live staple — “Weekend Update” — with a large supply of obscure pop cultural references.  He took his supply of obscure pop cultural references to his dreamed about late night talk show (supposedly a more eclectic guest line up — at the time he sold that idea by offering up that he had as a guest the pre-veep selection Al Gore) — and since there is apparently only a limited audience for that, it took him onto cable.  Then Monday Night Football saw good use for his obscure pop cultural references and hired him for a year in service for football play.  Since about 9/11, he has used his supply of obscure pop cultural references in service to the Republican Party, which I guess badly needs them.

It is all starting to make sense.  The Texas Board of Education placing Jefferson Davis’s inaugural speech alongside Lincoln’s — I suppose there’s some historical context to be gleaned from such a thing.  Our current frenzy of the Calhounist Nullification Movement.

The South Shall Rise Again!

It’s sort of about there that I understand Dennis Kucinich’s switch.  He’s up against this crap and would just as well prefer not to have these allies, the troubles this brings to the “Overton Window” and his desire to move it be damned.  I myself am slightly annoyed by Kucinich’s embrace of the act, as against opting to vote for it, I suppose for Overton Window reasons as well where my parcels of admiration to Kucinich springs from.  I’d like to hope he’s lost his Alex Jones base about here   — we’ll see.

he probably stole his own election to the Senate.

Well, Johnson’s defenders — I’m pretty sure this is what you’ll get if you bring up the 1948 Senate election at the Johnson Presidential Library for instance — have/had always maintained that his ultra-conservative strait-laced opponent Coke Stevenson had just as egregious a hand in voting improprieties.  This is not quite right — Johnson’s post-midnight manufactured votes stick out like a sore thumb.

More to the point, Johnson probably “legitimately” won the Senate seat in the Special election of 1941 against sentimental country and western singer and radio personality W Lee O’Daniel, as much as legitimacy can be ascertained in these elections.  Johnson failed to steal the last vote, and his backers in the Liquor Lobby double-crossed Johnson, opting to get the “Dry” O’Daniel out of the state and thus out of their hairs.

So, really, as you can see, four wrongs make a right or two.

Such is the manner Mr. McConnell characterizes the “Self Exeuting Rule”, the rule in which the House is seeking to pass the Senate Health Care Plan — without passing such measures as, oh, the Big bad oh so evil package for Nebraska and Senator Ben Nelson.  A few steps down the process, the Senate will get to vote again — stripped of, for instance, the bad little Ben Nelson vote getter — for the vote count that had it been allowed would have kept our sanity in the first place.

51.  Or, actually 50 and faithful Joe Biden.

McConnell is not correct.  To be correct, his statement would have to be tied to these measures, such as Ben Nelson’s Nebraska pork item, becoming the law of the land.  Or, they’re voting for a “this bill but”.

I’m sure there is a hyperbolic way to characterize this process, but this isn’t yet it.

Jesse Ventura promises never to commit suicide.

Mike Tyson stars on new Animal Planet show about Pigeons.

Bring it on, Ayn Rand Freaks!

Conservative Science

Ides of March top googling

Nay.  This thing ends at Demon Sheep.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who flew with Obama, then walked into an Ohio senior citizen center with the chief executive in time to hear a voice from the audience yell out, “Vote yes.”

A smiling Obama turned to the liberal lawmaker and said, “Did you hear that, Dennis?” Then, turning back to the audience, he added, “Go ahead, say that again.”

“Vote yes!” came back the reply.

I think that was too subtle.  Obama should have marched out with the “Dennis Kucinich Arm Twisting Marching Band” — consisting of half a dozen drummers — and devoted copious amounts of speech time to “Vegan Congressmen”, “two time presidential candidates who seem inclined toward a third and fourth run” and “shorties”.  Also he might have phrased these with the word “some” as in “There are some Vegan Congressmen who would make the perfect the enemy of the good.”

To turn my attention to other opponents of the Health care push by Obama… there are certainly some weird people out there.

why, hell, sooner or later you dumb bastards will be expecting to actually have the right to vote for them to put them in congress, instead of just leaving it up to the greater wisdom of bill gates, george soros, bill ayers or bill maher.  or, that they explain themselves to you.  hell, who can be bothered with all that?

they do not publish e-mail.  they have web-sites that accept email from their districts only.  far be it for the lazy fucks to actually have to read what their “constituents” say.

i doubt these will be read by my illustrious representatives, but i have sent the following missives anyway, which i thought i would publish here, in case any of them are washington rebel readers.

friends, buy guns and buy ammo, and lay in a proper store of potables, canned veggies, canned meats, and other fat laden edibles.  and, i would also suggest all the rice, flour, pastas and canned butter substitutes you can lay your hands on: butter flavored crisco will do.  buy gallons and gallons of olive & soy oil, and more peanut butter than you could ever conceive of eating, in two lifetimes.  and, do not forget dehydrated potatoes, … , mashed, au gratin or scalloped.  ummers.

it is going to come to that. [...]

dear speaker pelosi:
if the house of representative “passes” health care “reform” on the “slaughter solution,” please be advised that such will be in derogation of your obligations as a member of congress to entered a recorded vote on the merits of such a “bill.”
i believe the process patently unconstitutional.
i also believe it to be a usurpation of dictatorial power by the democratic party.
it will not stand.  and, you incite civil war.

dear representative inslee:
jay, i practiced law w/ you in yakima county, before you sought more hospitable climes for your politics on the wet side.
you court civil war with this “slaughter solution” maneuver.  it is unwise in the extreme.

Well, I guess he’s the one who will be voting that-away.  And… stock-piling his ammo and seeds for the coming Civil War incited by Jay Inslee and Nancy Pelosi, but not stopped by Doc Hastings.

A fake news report in Georgia about a Russian invasion ignited widespread panic and now anger at the perpetrators.

The 20-minute broadcast Saturday night on the Imedi TV station showed footage of tanks rolling into Georgia taken from the 2008 invasion and said that Saakashvili had been assassinated. The station introduced the program as a simulation, but many who tuned in mid-way were convinced the news was real.

The Georgian opposition, depicted in the broadcast as assisting the fake Russian invasion, accused President Mikhael Saakashvili of signing off on the program in a bid to stoke fear and tarnish their image. The director of Imedi is a former Saakashvili government official. US and Russian officials have denounced the bogus report (see video clips from the report below)

“People went into a panic,” Bidzina Baratashvili, a former director of Imedi, told The New York Times, comparing the mock news broadcast to Orson Welles’s 1939 adaptation of “War of the Worlds,” which depicted an alien invasion and panicked many radio listeners.

People in villages bordering South Ossetia, which was invaded in the brief Russo-Georgian war two years ago, began evacuati and calls to emergency services skyrocketed, reports The Georgian Times. According to other reports, people placed emergency calls reporting heart attacks and rushed in a panic to buy bread.

I suppose the best idea might be if a broadcast had happened during the Cold War, during Walter Cronkite’s CBS News, of the Soviets sending a nuclear device into a city in the United States — say, a news-style focus of this “Day Called X“.  That would certainly have scared the multitudes.

A better grasp would align it to a partisan broadcast.  This is being characterized by the Georgian opposition as a political scare tactic by the Georgian government in the days leading to election.  So, I guess, in today’s terms…

… around about October 30, Fox News broadcasts a “simulation” news-cast that the California Appellate Court has mandated marriage licenses be allowed for Human — Horse partnerships.  Round table discussions on the implications of this ruling following — and oh boy is Sean Hannity mad.  Bill O’Donohue expresses his outrage, but alas this was the inevitable slippery slope.

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Okay.  I’ll make it a multiple choice problem.  The answer is either: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, or 9.

A comment from Howie G that was notable.  Kind of.
You are so f$$$ked Skullie. I hope yu sht in your pants.
It is a strange and incoherent quasi-threat.  Actually I want to bring up Howie G to get to the odd cult direction this post took.
My role is, chiefly, what ordinary people would consider a mysterious and miraculous hand of history in the making. The hand has written on the wall, and, thus, a would-be shoddy remake of a would-be Belshazzar, is doomed. It will be as if the hand of the future had descended upon the present.
I can’t help but think I see echoes from the latest “Historical Webcast” built up in LPAC land with the headline, ““The Enemy Headquarters Is Focused On Only One Thing: What LaRouche Will Do On Saturday”.  From what I gathered, he seemed to be carving out a mystical being for the members to continue paying tribute to after he croaks.

Okay.  The big news out of Texas.  A Resolution axing all ties with the campaign of Kesha Rogers.  Yelp.  Yelp.  Yelp.  Yelp.  And… if you say so.

It’s probably a necessary step.  You don’t want this to plague you through November, and this is a pretty vicious weed.  I will note that the “statement” published by lpac and onto these blog message comments sections fits into the long line of Larouche alternative history of events, such as…
… see Gerald Pechenuk explain how if it weren’t for the Paul Simon clique forcing Adlai Stevenson III to decline his lieut governor victor in the 1986, Stevenson III would have become president with financial advisor Lyndon Larouche at his helm.  (Link recovered from an earlier blog post.)
… Why, conviently, when we jump to LPAC’s response from Kesha Rogers (available in the comments section over here)…

“Perhaps they should remember the last time Democrats in Texas threw out the wishes of the voters, in 1988, when LaRouche Democrat Claude Jones was elected Harris County Democratic Party chair, only to be illegally removed by County hacks, who rejected the voters’ choice. That decision had a near-fatal impact on the Harris County Democratic Party, giving the Republicans a stranglehold on elected offices which has only, recently, been challenged.

Yes.  That was the cause of Republican Triumphs and Democratic Defeats in the state of Texas…
… post the era of Lloyd Bentsen.

I either would or not like a clarification on the meaning of these things.
which have brought him to his Ides of March. Apparently, for the moment, the fools on the Texas SDEC, are lining up, dutifully, behind the soon-to-be-gone Obama.
Throw that around, historical references in tact.  In a few months we’ll get back to the “Guns of August”.

About there you see why the Texas Democratic Party had to actively disassociate themselves from the candidacy of Kesha Rogers, as opposed to passively disassociate.  With all due respect to P Diddie’s sentiments.  Yes, “it doesn’t hurt her”, in that sense that Kesha Rogers and her controllers of Harley Schlanger in the personality cult of Lyndon Larouche will continue to make their way to far right wing conspiracy joints along the lines of this one , making profit gainable with this curious slice of Americana (note too the common deraugatory phrase “Democrat Party”.)  Indeed, it gives them their storyline of Great Power Jostles from the British Empire.  But they had that anyway no matter what happens, so who cares?

As for the concern expressed at lpac and Ms. Rogers that she can “sue” these “idiots”:  here.  I recommend that the Harris Texas Democratic Party find a meager write in candidate.
Next primaries for the Larouchies: California in June, Massachusetts in September.  Spaced out for fun and profit with the one possible at the start (in March), eh?

Norway’s “Role Model of the Year” wants to ban the Homos.

Meet the New Pope, same as the old Pope

5 items of conventional wisdom that are true.

Netanyahu.

Aren’t they all?

Democratic Congressional Corruption post 06 elections.

Removing Grant from the $50 would be a travesty dishonoring the nation’s bedrock of freedom

The 2004 Democratic Field Sucked.