Just One More Russert Story

A lot has been said about Tim Russert in the 72 hours since his sudden death. Though he was obviously well-loved, and though I considered him by far to be the best and the fairest of the mainstream media interviewers, after the first few hours following the stunning news, I began to find many of the reminiscences repetitive and a little bland. Nice guy. Loved Buffalo. Loved what he did. Loved his family.

But this morning, one stood out to me for some reason. I found myself touched by the sweet rememberance of former NBC News president Michael Gartner, the man who pushed Russert out from the backstage shadows of NBC into the limelight. In all the stories over this weekend, this is one I hadn't seen told.

Finally, I told him he should be – had to be – the moderator of Meet the Press, which wasn't doing well.

"No way," he said again.

We argued. We debated. We fought. He raised objections, I shot them down. At the end, he said, "Look, I can't do it. I'm ugly." "Well, I said with a laugh, I can't argue that one (he had a chubby face that looked like it was made out of Play-Doh) but I'm not looking for a handsome guy, I'm looking for a smart one." Finally, he agreed, and in 1991 he became moderator of the show.

...The show made him rich and famous. I don't know how rich, but a few years ago, when he signed a new, long-term contract with NBC, he called me up to tell me, and he remembered his reluctance about taking the job. He laughed, and he said: "I thank you. My wife thanks you. My son thanks you. And my unborn grandchildren, however many there will be, thank you." It must have been a good deal.

Around The Horn

Sorry the blogging has been so light. It seems to be one of those seasons of life when blogging is difficult to get to. In the middle of an election season, no less! My daughter keeps reminding me that I need to get to the TV shows that I purposely left out of my top 10 sitcoms of all-time. In the meantime, until I can get to that, some links I've been enjoying today--with free annotation!:

• Every preacher needs to read this excellent post at Pyromaniacs from Dan Phillips.

• This was published months ago and I missed it, but the New York Times has a fascinating piece on the "conversion" of noted former atheist Antony Flew to theism (or really Deism, more accurately). If the story is to be believed, evangelicals might be taking advantage of a confused old man to bolster their case against atheism. (HT: Heidelblog)

• Doug Wilson has been beautifully contesting N.T. Wright's notions of Christian solutions for Third World problems. Wright advocates the traditional liberal responses (e.g. aid, debt forgiveness, etc.), but as Wilson aptly points out, "just do something--anything" is not a wise or helpful course of action:

  Turns out that food aid to Africa isn't doing what liberal guilt motives insist that it must be doing. Many of the things we do over there just make things worse. Let's go over that again, so that the point is not missed or lost in the confusion. Many of the things we do just make things worse.

  Wilson goes on to cite this interesting article for details. (For other excellent entries in Wilson's series, see here, here, here, and here.)

• Here's a good article about how Ted Kennedy is awfully fortunate that he's not limited to the European-style universal health care he's dead-set on sticking the rest of us with. For example:

  Consider, too, the chemo drug Kennedy is receiving: Temodar, the first oral medicine for brain tumors in 25 years.
  
  Temodar has been widely used in this country since the FDA approved it in 2000. But a British health-care rationing agency, the National Institute for Comparative Effectiveness, ruled that, while the drug helps people live longer, it wasn't worth the money - and denied coverage for it.

  But, of course, as is often the case with liberals, Kennedy's "solutions" are for everybody else.

• In an effort to figure out what all the hubbub is about and enter the 21st century, I'm now what feels like the oldest person on Facebook. Just being there makes me feel like some kind of creepy predator. But other than that, it's great. Stop by and say hi. Or however it works. I hope someday to conduct all of my human relationships exclusively via Facebook.

Continuing The Blatant Self-Promotion

Okay, so the interview I did with Jerry Newcombe did air on C-SPAN 2 last night, and according to their Book TV schedule, it will air again:

Sunday, June 1, at 9:00 AM
Sunday, June 1, at 7:00 PM
Monday, June 2, at 4:00 AM
Saturday, June 7, at 8:30 PM

Just in case you missed it. The part with me starts about 35 minutes in (though of course it's all good). And if you're really dying for entertainment, you can watch it now on their website.

Okay, that's the last I'll have to say about C-SPAN. At least until the next time I make fun of it after watching a guy standing at a podium in a Border's store speaking to seven geeks in Braintree, MA, one of which geeks actually bumps the camera in the middle of the show. Then I'll talk about C-SPAN again. But in the meantime....

C-SPAN Update

After about a million revisions (these people ain't kidding when they say "subject to change"), C-SPAN's website is now showing that the program I did with Jerry Newcombe about his book How Would Jesus Vote? will air TONIGHT at 8pm Eastern on C-SPAN 2's "Book TV."

Might the airdates for this coming weekend still be valid? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Nobody seems to know. One begins to think that C-SPAN has spent so much time covering Congress that they've become like Congress. But anyway, tonight it is, until the next revision which will probably come later this afternoon. Or perhaps midway through the program.

At this point, your guess is as good as mine.

C-Spanning The Globe

If you're interested in this kind of thing, you can see yours truly on C-SPAN 2 next Sunday, June 1st at 7pm Eastern. (It will also air at 9am Eastern that morning, but I know you'll be in church then. Right?)

I'll be interviewing my good friend Jerry Newcombe about his new book (which he wrote with the late D. James Kennedy) called How Would Jesus Vote?

(Unfortunately, on short notice, they weren't able to come up with a controversial title for the book, so they went with this one instead.)

If you're not able to watch it, I'm sure there will probably be repeated re-airings for insomniacs at 3:12am every second Wednesday of the month for the forseeable future. I'm told that these times are "subject to change," which they already have at least once. I'll keep you posted.

Hey, c'mon. You knew you were going to be watching C-SPAN 2 anyway. Why miss it?

Back Home Again With Indiana

I was a little concerned when I heard they were making a new Indiana Jones movie. After the way Sylvester Stallone has been destroying the memories of once great film franchises, the prospect of senior citizen Harrison Ford doing whip tricks at the nursing home was disturbing to say the least.

We went to the opening of the film last night, and as it turns out, I needn't have feared. Granted, I didn't come in with particularly high expectations, but I found the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to be loads of fun and solid entertainment, which, while not matching the greatness of the first film (or even, perhaps, the third one) is a worthy entry in the Indy franchise. It's actually better than the second one. (Which brings up a movie-making corollary. Never, ever cast a family member in a film. See: Capshaw, Kate. Or Coppola, Sophia.)

The obvious issue to be dealt with is Indy's age, and it's handled winningly, which is why the film works. Indiana Jones movies have always been tongue-in-cheek, so they have a built in advantage in this department over, say, the dead-earnest "Rocky" films. It also doesn't hurt that Harrison Ford has kept himself in good shape and doesn't look like a 65 year old guy up there. It's great to see him and Karen Allen together again (and bless her for letting herself age gracefully like a normal person rather than the typical stretch-faced Hollywood star), and the kid what's-his-name adds some fun.

There is, of course, some weird, cultic spirituality on display, but that kind of thing has always been prominent in the archaeology-premised series anyway. More bothersome were a couple of gratuitous s-bombs from the kid. Still, if you're a fan of the Indiana Jones series, you'll find a lot to like in this one. And Spielberg is like a kid in a candy store, stuffing every theme and fantasy he's ever dealt with basically into one film (though now that I think of it, I didn't see a shark's fin). It's gonna make about $300 million bucks, I expect.

A Beautiful Mind

If you've never seen this video before, I highly recommend that you take five minutes and have a look. It's an autistic guy who, after flying over a city he's never been to before for 45 minutes, can draw the entire thing in astounding detail days later. It's really quite incredible.

This Is What The Internet Is For

You'd be sad for me if you had any idea of how much this video delighted me of a guy in his backyard doing impressions of every significant St. Louis Cardinals batting stance of the past 25 years:



Check the links afterwards--he's done other teams and eras too.

(HT: ESPN's Bill Simmons)

Laugh Tracks

I see that AOL appears to have named "TV's Best 50 Comedies of All Time." Most of the programs that should be on the list are on the list, but the numerical rankings are in some cases spectacularly misguided and wrong. "The Dick Van Dyke Show" at 33, just behind "Welcome Back Kotter" and "Will & Grace?" Are you kidding me? Somebody down there needs to put down the crack pipe and smoke a rock of historical perspective instead. Or something like that.

Anyway, putting their inane rankings aside (which we'd be forced to do with any list that put "Mork and Mindy" behind "Happy Days," or which put "Friends" in the top 10), here are the annotated top 10 sitcoms of all time as seen by the final authority on the matter: me, John Rabe.

10. Happy Days: Okay, I know it's not cutting social satire or Oscar Wilde wordplay, but Garry Marshall's show launched the career of Robin Williams, spun off "Laverne and Shirley," made the Fonz the phenomenon of the 70's, and gave us added the term "jump the shark" to the lexicon. Ever use the word "nerd"? Thank "Happy Days." (By the way, this has nothing to do with the topic, but go rent Albert Brooks' "Lost in America" sometime for the scene between Brooks and Garry Marshall as the Desert Inn casino manager. "We don't have Santy Claus." One of my favorite funny movie scenes of all time.)

9. Get Smart: I saw some of these on DVD recently (though they've only been released in Europe, apparently, which is borderline criminal) and the humor holds up surprisingly well. When I was about seven, I used to love to watch it because it had gadgets and spies. I came back to it when I was older and discovered that it was really, really funny. A beautiful combination of slapstick humor and sharp writing. If Mel Brooks and Buck Henry got together today to launch a show, who wouldn't watch that? Well they did do it, and it was tremendous.

8. Arrested Development: Huh? You heard right. This show only lasted about 2 1/2 seasons on Fox, but I've never seen a non-animated program with more funny per minute than AD. It was profane and not for the kiddies (or even sensitive adults), and when my friend Bud told me I had to watch it, I resisted because of the loony, slapstick promos I'd seen. After I'd finally watched one, it was only a matter of days before I'd consumed every available episode on DVD. I still keep hoping against hope they'll bring it back.

7. The Bob Newhart Show: Newhart is funnier struggling to say something than most people are saying anything. I'm rolling his other show, "Newhart" into this ranking too because of its finale--the greatest in television history, filmed before an unsuspecting studio audience.

6. The Simpsons: Out of the gate, this program threatened to be overrun by the merchandising bonanza that surrounded Bart-mania. It had fad written all over it. But 19 years later, they're still there cranking out the densest 30 minutes of comedy on television. And it's still funny. Minute-for-minute, year for year, the funniest program in the history of television.

5. Seinfeld: I know it's an easy choice, but there's no way around it--this show took nothing and made it hilarious. It's hard to believe that this month marks the 10th anniversary of the show's departure. Am I the only one who remembers that Frank Sinatra died on the night of the finale? These people managed to upstage Frank Sinatra's death. Now that's cultural currency! To get a measure of its influence, try double-dipping a chip into the dip at your next party and see what happens.

4. The Dick Van Dyke Show: This program did it all. Never straying beyond the bounds of good taste, this show put together great acting, wonderful characterizations, slapstick, sophisticated story structures, and great dialogue into an irresistible package. In many ways this program set the standard for all future sitcoms, and showed Carl Reiner to be a comic genius.

3. The Mary Tyler Moore Show: This wonderfully talented commedienne mostly played the straight man, allowing the best top-to-bottom cast in sitcom history flourish. Watching this program 30 years after it left the air, I'm coming to realize that however many Emmys Ed Asner won for this, it should've been more. It would be hard to find anyone in sitcom history who was funnier while using fewer words. Seasons 1-4 are available on DVD, and they're fairly inexpensive. Buy them and give yourself a treat.

2. Cheers: It took a real hit after Shelly Long left, but no program has better combined hilarious writing with amazing chemistry the way "Cheers" did. I know that there are even people who prefer the Kirstie Alley years. Those people are idiots. But the years when Diane and Coach were there were something to behold. There's probably no program I wish were still on more than this one.

1. M*A*S*H: Yes, the final eight or so seasons became increasingly pedantic, preachy, and maudlin. Unfortunately after about four seasons of success, somebody handed girly-man Alan Alda the reins and the program never recovered. But those first few seasons are at the apex of anything that's ever been done on TV. There has never, ever been a funnier sitcom character than early Hawkeye Pierce. Larry Gelbart's writing is even more amazing the fifth time you hear it than it was the first.

If pressed, I could probably be pursuaded to bump "Happy Days" in favor of "The Larry Sanders Show" or "Curb Your Enthusiasm." But something tells me the list should be confined to broadcast television in order to be authentic. Feel free to add your own choices in the comments thread.

Coming next (probably after my upcoming vacation): the shows that didn't make the list--and why.

Happy Days Get Smart Arrested Development The Bob Newhart Show The Simpsons Seinfeld The Dick Van Dyke Show The Mary Tyler Moore Show Cheers M*A*S*H Sitcoms

Radio, Radio

If you've been interested in the discussion surrounding the ideas brought forward in Expelled, I'll be hosting a radio program here in South Florida on Friday where my guest at 1pm Eastern will be David Berlinski, the brilliant mathematician and self-described secular Jew who appears in the film (and describes Richard Dawkins as "a bit of a reptile"--he's quite a character).

You can listen live online here--just click on the button in the upper right-hand corner that says "Listen Online." Unfortunately, there's no archived audio yet, so you'll have to tune in live. Again it's at 1pm Eastern. And at about 1:30pm, I'll be talking with Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson about the theology of Jeremiah Wright.

Step Right Up

Challies is doing a great book giveaway this month. You can enter by clicking on the banner below. If you dig the Puritans (and you ought to if you don't), jump in on this one.

Watching The Wheels

Things have been a bit slow for the past few days, so I'll direct you to a few of the things with which I've been wasting my own time:

• This two-part "60 Minutes" interview with Antonin Scalia is simply wonderful. If you have any interest at all in the Supreme Court, you need to take about a half hour to watch it. It's worth it just for Lesley Stahl's astonishment that Scalia doesn't have horns and a pitchfork. Scalia has done himself a disservice by not allowing media coverage of most of his public speeches. This is one engaging, enjoyable guy.

• Want to hear the most annoying song ever--scientifically proven? (And as it turns out, no, it's not "It's a Small World After All")

  An online poll conducted in the '90s set Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid and David Soldier on a quest to create the most annoying song ever. After gathering data about people's least favorite music and lyrical subjects, they did the unthinkable: they combined them into a single monstrosity, specifically engineered to sound unpleasant to the maximum percentage of listeners.

  Now that's science! It's about 22 minutes long (not unlike those annoying and ponderous 70's songs like "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"), but if you listen to it, you have to at least give it six minutes. Trust me.
  (HT: Challies)

• How beautifully ironic is it that Yoko Ono is suing the makers of "Expelled" over copyright infringement for using part of her husband's song that asks us to "Imagine no possessions"? What is copyright, after all, but an assertion of possession? (And, incidentally, I'm confident the usage will prove to be protected under fair use law.)

• Here's an odd tidbit from John Piper that might help you someday if you do public speaking.

The Movie They Don't Want You To See

Today's the day. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed opens nationwide. Documentaries don't tend to last long in the theaters, so make sure to see it this weekend. Find local times and theaters here.

Looking Chipper

Okay, baseball guys, I have a question for you. A baseball-fan buddy of mine stopped by a little while ago and asked me, "Chipper Jones. Possible Hall of Famer?"

My first instinct was to laugh and say, "No, of course not." But I've frequently argued against the notion of basing Hall votes on who "seems like a Hall of Famer." As Michael Lewis' Moneyball makes clear, statistics are always a far better measurement of greateness than the subjective standard of "seems."

So I looked up the numbers. And I have to admit being surprised. Jones is in his 15th season. Among his lifetime numbers:

.308 average
.404 on-base percentage
390 home runs (including six seasons of 30 or more)
1313 lifetime RBIs (including nine seasons of 100 or more, and another of 96)
428 doubles
1157 walks (I know nobody goes to the Hall on walks, but his BB numbers are huge)

If the voting were today, no, Chipper Jones would not be a plausible Hall of Famer (though a very good player). But it seems to me that if he put in four more solid seasons--say .300, 85 RBI's, 25 HR's, he'd have the kind of career numbers that would make him a plausible candidate. In most of the 2000's he was overshadowed at third base by Scott Rolen, who made numerous All Star games because Cardinals fans are better than Braves fans. That's part of why he doesn't "seem" like a Hall of Famer. But if he had four more fairly typical years at his current pace (which is very possible, since he hit .337 last year at the age of 35) , he'd finish with about 500 homers, nearly 1700 RBI's (which would put him ahead of RBI machines like Tony Perez, Mike Schmidt, Andre Dawson, and Ernie Banks) and a lifetime .300 average.

If all that happens, I think he's got a shot. What do you think?

Chipper Jones Baseball Hall of Famer

Old Kentucky Home

Looking forward to attending this conference tomorrow through Thursday. Fortunately, I'm not flying American Airlines, so I have at least a 50/50 chance of getting there.

Here's something I won't be doing on the trip.



Very classy. Very presidential. She's one vacation videotape away from being Paris Hilton. If Paris Hilton were a middle-aged female gym coach.

Okay, This One Got Me

Call me a sucker, but it's hard to watch this and not get a tear in your eye. The Boston Red Sox had Bill Buckner come throw out the first pitch yesterday. And he got about a three minute standing ovation.

Bill Buckner Boston Red Sox

No April Fool's Joke

Presented without commentary: Pat Robertson has now finished shooting a commercial with Al Sharpton for Al Gore's save-the-world campaign:

The ad for Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection is set on a beach, with Robertson and Sharpton saying they "strongly disagree" about a lot of things, but agree on the need to care for the Earth.

On Monday's broadcast of "The 700 Club," Robertson said that when the filming was done, the three of them prayed together at Gore's urging.

Robertson said he agreed to appear in the ad because he believes people should be good stewards of the environment. He added, "Al Sharpton's a nice guy and we had a lot of fun together."

Pat Robertson Al Gore Al Sharpton

Su-Su-Ssudio

It's time for today's edition of "Really Odd Lyrics From Surprisingly Popular Songs." It's generally, though not always, occasioned by my listening to the 80's channel on XM Radio. I listen to the 80's channel because I don't think there are ten songs I know that have come out since 1994, and being a conservative sort, I'd rather be subjected to "The Safety Dance" one more time than try something new.

Anyway, the first entry comes from the big Genesis hit, "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight," which was popular enough to appear in both a Michelob ad and an episode of Magnum P.I. (guest starring Frank Sinatra, no less) back in the 1980's:

I'm coming down, coming down like a monkey, but it's alright.

I saw Phil Collins once in an interview say that the lyrics for his still-ubiquitous hit "In the Air Tonight" were entirely improvised. I think "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" might be evidence that all Phil's songs were written that way.

Second, we have these incomprehensible utterings from Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al," which was a huge hit even despite having Chevy Chase in the video:

If you'll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty when you call me
You can call me Al

Good luck figuring that one out. The song is now 20 years old, and nobody's done it yet.

And finally for today, an oldie-but-goodie from Pink Floyd's only number 1 hit single, "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II":

If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?!

A fair question indeed. One which has yet to be satisfactorily answered.

Classic TV

If, like me, you happen to be an aficionado of classic broadcasting, here is an amazing resource that has been put online by the University of Texas. It's an archive of interviews from "The Mike Wallace Interview," which were broadcast on ABC in 1957 and '58.

You don't have to create an account or log in or anything. The programs are simply right there to be accessed. Among the ones I'm looking forward to watching are Malcolm Muggeridge, Steve Allen, Bennett Cerf, Reinhold Niebuhr, and William O. Douglas.

Aside from the historical value, they're also highly entertaining to watch for the ubiquitous Philip Morris cigarette commercials. In my opinion, the very definition of "classic television" might be "programs in which the host smokes a butt on camera without shame." Which is why Tom Snyder is also classic television.

Mike Wallace Mike Wallace Interview Tom Snyder

Blank Slate

Here's an oldie-but-goodie evangelical trope that I've decided I'm no longer interested in: the ubiquitous "unspoken prayer request." Or to put it in a more positive way, I honor an unspoken prayer request in the fullest spirit in which it's offered: since it's unspoken, I don't speak it.

I mean really, how is that supposed to work? And what is the purpose of it?

“Dear God, please....something. I don’t really have any of the details, but somebody needs something. Because I have no idea what it is or what I’m asking for or even who its for, I’ll never know if you do it or don’t do it, and you’ll never receive any glory from it. But I’ve done my evangelical duty by telling someone that I’m lifting their unspoken prayer request up. So please...do something...or don’t do something...about whoever or whatever needs something to come or something to go away or something to happen or something to not happen. Amen.”

Under what theology of prayer is that meaningful or effective?