Day: November 6, 2003

A friend of mine wrote and asked me if I remember the ranks from the old Merry Marvel Marching Society, and how one attained them.

My recollection is patchy. I know there was Fearless Face Fronter and Permanent Marvelite Maximus. But there were about four others, and I don’t recall the order or what qualified you.

Anyone out there recall?

And before you post, make sure no one else already answered, so we don’t have twenty entries saying the same thing.

Thanks.

PAD

Off switches on their televisions.

Or channel changers.

Here’s a fact: All the people on this board currently discussing the yanked Ronald Reagan biopic? They haven’t seen it. Everyone’s depending upon what other people have said. Biopics, movies about real events…their accuracy is routinely challenged. People see it and then decide for themselves.

But not in the case of Ronald Reagan.

Don’t let yourself get buffaloed into thinking this incident is anything other than just another case of someone else deciding on your behalf what you should be allowed to see or not see. They’ve come to the conclusion the biopic is inaccurate. But they don’t trust *you* to come to that conclusion independently. They figure, y’know, you’re not as smart as they are, or clever, or knowledgeable.

So CBS, which just last Sunday was laughing over how silly it was that they dumped the Smothers Brothers because they jabbed at the establishment, did it again. They bowed to conservative pressure, just as Warner Bros. did when the Nixon White House insisted that the song “Cool Considerate Men” be excised from “1776” because it made conservatives look bad. The CBS eye blinked.

And this business that James Brolin shouldn’t have been cast because of his *political beliefs*? Oh my God. That is the single dumbest casting debate I’ve heard since the notion that the casting of Vanessa Redgrave as a concentration camp resident in “Playing For Time” was an insult to Jews because she harshly criticized Israel. I mean, are we *really* back to that now? Politicizing casting? Paging Joe McCarthy. Joe McCarthy, come to the Senate, please.

It’s not just that it’s about Reagan. I’d have just as much contempt for them if they bagged a Clinton/Lewinsky biopic because liberals squawked (which, by the way, we all know they wouldn’t.)

PAD