September 2009 Archives
09/13/09 1:26 PM
For Larry Gelbart
It was my privilege at the beginning of my career to work with some of the great comedy writers of the World War II generation. My father first and foremost, of course --- his ghost would never forgive me for not putting him at the head of the list --- but also names like Mort Lachman, Norman Lear, Milt Josefsberg, Mel Tolkin and Larry Rhine, Bob Carroll and Madeleine Pugh, Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf. These were legendary figures to me, present at the creation of radio and television comedy, but they were also generous mentors, patient, supportive (if also occasionally Oedipally competitive), and most of all, wonderfully, effortlessly funny. I learned a lot from all of them. Still, despite the respect I felt for their craft and their experience and their irreverence and their shared lore, I can't say I felt daunted or intimidated by them. This may have been nothing more than callow cockiness on my part, but they impressed me without really scaring me.
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09/02/09 1:49 PM
The Unbearable Stupidity of Authoritarianism
This morning, reading this, I was struck all over again by how extraordinarily maladroit autocrats usually are. In the last few months, we've witnessed elections in Zimbabwe, Iran, and now Afghanistan, and in each case the heavy-handedness on display has been staggering. Can't these people at least show a little finesse when they're practicing ballot-box fraud? If they weren't so eager to prove themselves beloved by their people, if they were only willing to commit their thefts with a marginally lighter touch, the evidence against them wouldn't be so cut-and-dried, and their defenders wouldn't be forced to look so much like poltroons and toadies and fools.
