The IOC: On The Case!

From CNN.com:

The International Olympic Committee has banned Iraq from competing in the upcoming Summer Olympics because of what it says is the government's political interference in sports.

CNN received a copy of the letter, which was sent to Jassim Mohammed Jaffer, Iraqi minister of youth and sports, and Ali Mohsen Ismail, acting secretary general of the Iraqi general secretariat of the Council of Ministers.

"We deeply regret this outcome, which severely harms the Iraqi Olympic and Sports Movement and the Iraqi athletes, but which is unfortunately imposed by the circumstances," said the letter, signed by two IOC officials.

It's good that now the IOC is cracking down on government interference with the Iraqi Olympic team. As opposed to back when when the IOC used to allow them to participate, when the late Uday Hussein was running things for the Iraqi Olympic Committe:

As president of the Iraqi National Olympic Committee, Uday allegedly tortures athletes for losing games. He sticks them in prison for days or months at a time. Has them beaten with iron bars. Caned on the soles of their feet. Chained to walls and left to stay in contorted positions for days. Dragged on pavement until their backs are bloody, then dunked in sewage to ensure the wounds become infected. If Uday stops by a player's jail cell, he might urinate on his bowed, shaven head. Just to humiliate him.

And, of course, the IOC has scheduled this years games for that bastion of governmental non-interference, China. Way to stay on it, IOC. The world rests a little better because of your vigilance.

(Undoubtedly, however, this little Iraq problem can go away if some moolah finds it's way into the right hands. For more on the utter sham that is the bribe-hungry International Olympic Committe, go here.)

Bush Kills A Poor Guy

The odd story of a burglar who got stuck in a ventilation shaft in a sports bar trying to make his way in after closing hours--presumably to clean out the cash register--has been in the news here in South Florida.

I'll let the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, in a story that has to be read to be believed, take it from there:

The man, identified Monday as Benjamin Rodriguez, 46 and homeless, had been dead up to 72 hours before his body was discovered Saturday, according to officials and state records. He was found upside down in the shaft, with his arms at his sides, according to the Broward Medical Examiner's Office.

His death left people wondering why anyone would take such a dangerous route, and if perhaps this is a reaction to a rough economy.

This seemed to me about the oddest possible angle somebody could put on this story. But the Sun-Sentinel's account offers opinions aplenty:

"That's crazy. It sounds like a horror movie," said Estefania Nevial, an accountant's assistant in the strip mall just south of Mayo Street. "I couldn't believe it. I guess that's how desperate people are."

I guess so. The bad economy forced him to climb down a ventilation shaft to try to rob a bar. Local officals agree:

"Desperate times bring desperate measures," Hollywood fire-rescue spokesman Battalion Chief Mark Steele said. "People will do anything right now. We're seeing a lot of weird calls. Every day you jump on that truck you're going to see something different."

Ventilation man was suddenly forced into a life of crime by the economic downturn. We want change! We want change! Barack Obama certainly wouldn't have let this man die. In order to save these people, we clearly need change to get us out of this sluggish economy perpetrated by the Evil Bush.

Almost as a footnote, the story adds:

Florida criminal records show Rodriguez has been arrested 22 times on various drug possession-related, theft and criminal traffic charges dating back to 1991. His most recent arrest was in June, when the Broward Sheriff's Office picked him up on a warrant charging grand theft, resisting a law enforcement officer and traffic violations.

Huh. That's one long, crazy, burglary-inducing recession.

Revered By Whom?

In all the furor surrounding Jesse Jackson's recent overheard comments about Barack Obama, the thing being largely ignored is the thing I find most offensive: this clown is supposed to be a minister.

Of course, as with his friend/rival Al Sharpton, we all know that the title "Reverend" is just a fig-leaf cover for his real work, which is race-baiting and hucksterism. If there were any holdouts on the issue of Jackson's piety, I think they were pretty conclusively dislodged earlier this decade by the news of his illegitimate child. (Though to his credit, Jackson was embarrassed enough about the incident that he announced he was dropping out of public life for a period of time, which ended up being exactly one weekend.)

Nonetheless, it's unseemly for someone who claims to be a preacher of the gospel to be speaking this way. In reality, the only "gospel" Jackson is selling is the good news that a corporation that it will not be boycotted if it pays him hush money. Theologically, Jackson is not a Christian. As a graduate (though he never completed the work and was awarded the degree in 2000 because of "life experiences") of the Chicago Theological Seminary (which recently launched it's Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Queer Religious Studies Center), Jackson holds to a liberal theology that, as the scholar J. Gresham Machen pointed out, is an altogether different religion from Christianity, despite stealing some terminology.

So I shouldn't be surprised. Jackson's not about Jesus. He's about Jesse.

The "Pregnant Man"

Undoubtedly, you've heard the story the media has been relentlessly hyping about the so-called “pregnant man.” "Thomas Beatie," has made the rounds of the tabloids, gossip shows, cable news networks, and predictably enough, Oprah. Some have even called it a miracle.

But since people rarely read past headlines, I've found there to be some confusion on the matter among many folks. Is a man miraculously pregnant?

Well, not quite. The fact is, Beatie was born as--and lived 24 years as--a female named Tracy LaGondino. She did modeling work, and was even a finalist in the Miss Hawaii Teen USA pageant. When she decided she wanted to be a man, she had some cosmetic surgery and took some male hormones. But as even Beatie herself told Oprah, “I opted not to do anything with my reproductive organs because I wanted to have a child one day.” In other words, biologically this person is female, and still capable of carrying a baby, just as she was designed.

What we’re seeing here is not a result of some confounding medical phenomenon, but rather the outworking of silly "social science" programs that have been darkening college campuses for years. In such programs, originally instigated by the feminist movement, there is a push to separate the concept of gender from biological sex. In this view, while sex is biologically determined, gender is not, but rather is a social identity we choose for ourselves. Some choose one gender, some choose another, and some change their minds. Whatever you decide you are is what you are, and none of it is tied to your biological makeup or immutable.

While such ideas might make sense in the halls of addled university gender studies departments (and in fact, it's actually a lot of fun to Google "gender studies programs" and just look at the bios for faculty at the schools that pop up, where you'll never see a more hilarious stew of pseudo-scholarship and pretense), most people still tend to know better. According to a Reuters story, “The couple said an earlier attempt at pregnancy failed when he developed a tubal pregnancy, resulting in surgery that removed his Fallopian tubes.” The story went on to say that Beatie was artificially inseminated.

However somebody wishes to identify themselves, only confused reporters and gender studies professors would call someone a "man" who has Fallopian tubes, a womb, can be inseminated, and is pregnant. The fact that Thomas Beatie calls herself a man doesn’t make it so, because male and female are not simply arbitrary identities we can shed at will. There’s no miracle here, and there’s no medical mystery. It’s simply the normal pregnancy of a gal who likes to dress up and identify herself as a man.

Kill And Eat

I've noticed with passing interest the phenomenon among my fellow evangelicals of adopting fad diets that market themselves as somehow being "biblical." Certain authors (not to mention "Christian" chiropractors and dieticians) have made a mint putting Christians back under the Old Covenant law.

The unexamined assumption here, almost universally believed, is that God gave Israel the dietary laws primarily for health reasons. But such a view of the law is not sustainable by the text. As if God somehow wanted to take away these health blessings from the church when He pronounced all foods clean again in Acts 10:15.

Nonetheless, such diets have found a fertile market among food-phobic evangelicals. In a fascinating ongoing series, Doug Wilson looks at how we got that way and why it's wrong. Start at the bottom and read up.

Around The Horn

Some links for the weekend:

• Maybe everybody else already knew about this, but I just discovered this amazing site where you can watch episodes of classic and current television shows (like "Hill Street Blues," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The Office") as well as movies (like "Raising Arizona," "The Jerk," and "The Usual Suspects").

• Salon offers this complete de-pantsing of Keith Olbermann, who spent ten minutes on his program in January comparing President Bush to the Third Reich for wanting to amend the Foreign Intelligence Survellience Act (FISA) to give telcomm companies retroactive immunity for warrentless surveillance conducted under presidential authority. When Barack Obama said the other day that he also thought maybe it was a good idea, Olbermann turned out to be all for it. But while Salon strips Olbermann bare, at least they leave his toupee largely intact.

• Jonah Goldberg at NRO must have read my blog yesterday. His piece on the Supreme Court nails it, saying, "Today, that despot has a name. It’s Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy rules — thanks to his status as the court’s swing vote — as the true King of America." Commenting on the despicable act committed by President Bush--who is sworn to defend and uphold the Constitution--in signing McCain-Feingold while admitting the unconstitutionality of it, Goldberg also writes:

  Aside from a legalistic-yet-lawless despotism that makes the meaning of our Constitution hinge on how much fiber Justice Kennedy’s diet has on a particular day, the result of this pathetic state of affairs is that the first branch of government doesn’t take itself seriously.

• Mona Charen is equally excellent, writing:

  In fact, when you consider that the court is pretty well divided between four liberals and four conservatives with Justice Kennedy swinging from one side to another as the spirit moves him, we now enjoy a Republic of Kennedy. All this fuss and bother about the presidential race is misplaced. The most powerful man in the land is someone most Americans couldn’t pick out of a lineup.

• Canada's National Post points out a difficult but obvious Canadian truth: Mike Myers just isn't funny anymore, and hasn't been for some time.

Have a great weekend, and don't kill each other stampeding into the theater for that new Pixar film, "We Print Our Own Money Now."

Keith Olbermann Salon Keith Olbermann's toupee Jonah Goldberg Mona Charen NRO Anthony Kennedy Supreme Court Mike Myers

The King And I

So I see that the United States Supreme Court has narrowly decided to allow us to keep the Second Amendment for at least a little while longer, with King Anthony once again the swing vote in a 5-4 decision.

While I'm glad the Court got this one right, it should be noted that they have absolutely no authority anyway to strike down one of the provisions of the Bill of Rights, and so regardless of what they might have decided, the right would still exist. The notion that we would be having to wait, 219 years after the ratification of the Constitution, for a court to tell us whether the Second Amendment will remain operative is absurd, and it's reminiscent of the kind of monarchy from which the nation's founders were trying to extricate themselves.

Because we are a nation of laws rather than men, and because the supreme law of the land is the Constitution, citizens would be not only have been right, but even obligated to disobey the Court's ruling had it gone the other direction. Ironically, the very purpose of the amendment was to prevent a tyrant from waving away our rights on a whim, which the Court was one swishy (as usually) Anthony Kennedy vote away from trying to do.

Because the Court has chosen to insert itself in all the major political battles of the day and rule by fiat (with the help of the liberal advocacy groups that decided the democratic process wasn't going their way in the 20th century), one unelected man--Anthony Kennedy--is now the most powerful person in the land. Whichever way the wind happens to blow the famously vascillating Justice Kennedy is the way our constitutional rights go that day. Today the wind was blowing in a good direction. Tomorrow it may not be. Such a setup, of course, makes an utter mockery of the Constitution, a situation that's not changed when Kennedy follows the broken clock rule and happens to get a decision right.

Supreme Court Anthony Kennedy Second Amendment

Around The Horn

Some links for a Monday afternoon:

• My fellow evangelicals tend to think that the core message one is trying to communicate is one thing and the form that message takes is entirely another. But while Marshall McLuhan may have overstated it with his maxim "the medium is the message," it becomes more and more clear that the medium affects the message in powerful ways. This must-read article in the Atlantic Monthly wonders if the Internet, which admittedly contains a wealth of wonderful and helpful information, might be entirely rewiring the way we think. (HT: Carl Trueman)

• King Kaufman of Salon takes a specialized look back at the late George Carlin's work particularly dealing with sports. (And of course beware of Carlin's normal R-rated, frequently blasphemous language.) As a former sports talk host, I found Carlin's contributions to the never-ending, time-killing "sport/not-a-sport" discussion were invaluable. My favorites: "Swimming isn't a sport. Swimming is a way to keep from drowning." And also, "Tennis isn't a sport. Tennis is just ping pong standing on the table."

• Speaking of sports talk radio, it looks like the premiere duo in the genre might be breaking up.

• Is it just me, or does the mainstream media seem to be studiously avoiding questioning Barack Obama's sketchy relationship with Islam earlier in life? Oh, I guess it's not just me. The outstanding journalist Melanie Phillips wonders about it too.

• Comic actress Dodie Goodman has died. Raising the question, Dodie Goodman was still alive? I felt similarly last week after hearing that Cyd Charisse had died.

...Like Church Bells

Today's Chutzpah Award goes to South Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-Embarrassment). He says in today's Sun-Sentinel that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be impeached, adding that they "should not only be impeached, they ought to be jailed for what they did to this nation."

And of course, Alcee would know, having been himself impeached and convicted by the U.S. Senate as a federal judge in 1989 for soliciting a $150,000 bribe. He became only the sixth federal judge in the history of the United States to be removed from office by the Senate.

Alcee Hastings impeachment

U2, President Bush?

Now that my kids are at the age when they've become far more internet savvy than I am, they direct my attention to things I'd never have found on my own. Lately, they've pointed me to some unusual videos, like this oddly hypnotic clip of George W. Bush doing the U2 song, "Sunday Bloody Sunday." It starts out amusing, and then becomes transfixing. Somebody spent months editing this thing. It has to be seen to be believed.

He Liked Me, He Really Liked Me

One of the sad television spectacles of this past weekend was Keith Olbermann's desperate, ongoing attempt to hitch himself to the Tim Russert wagon, as if the two were so close that he was in the habit of sitting between Russert and Russert's son at Buffalo Bisons ballgames.

But one column reminds us today that only days before his death, Russert was actually distancing himself from Olbermann. The column cites a New Yorker profile of Olbermann which chronicles the incredibly long string of former colleagues who utterly hate the guy. Indeed, long before he became the host of "Pravda" (or whatever they call it) on MSNBC, Olbermann was primarily known in my former industry of sportscasting as a pompous, utter tool who usually got fired from jobs in six months.

Anyway, in the New Yorker story, Olbermann's close, personal friend, confidant, and mentor Tim Russert is quoted as saying, "What cable emphasizes, more and more, is opinion, or even advocacy. Whether it’s Bill O’Reilly or Keith Olbermann or Lou Dobbs, that’s what that particular platform or venue does. It’s not what I do."

The article also makes clear that Tom Brokaw thinks Olbermann is a nutcase who's a long-term detriment to NBC's news division. Whether or not Olbermann's on-air behavior is a detriment to NBC, I'll leave to others. But I will say this: the guy's toupee definitely is a detriment.

Keith Olbermann Tim Russert Keith Olbermann's toupee

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