Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 24,
2005
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
How
the Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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January 24, 2005
Johnny Carson's Brilliant Career
Last
Monologue in Burbank
By
FRED GARDNER
Note:
This column was written in April, 1992, as Johnny Carson prepared
to retire from The Tonight Show.
One of the most disappointing phrases
in the English language, "Johnny's guest host tonight is..."
becomes permanently applicable May 25.
We're going to miss Johnny
Carson. He's one of the few comedians who isn't an obvious neurotic.
He never gets a laugh by scaring or upsetting us. His material
is funny more often than not, and when it falls flat, nobody
knows how to recover so nimbly. He has a sunny disposition and
a mischievous air. His political perspective is one of bemused
disgust. Over the years he has mocked Lyndon Johnson, Nixon and
Agnew, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush, usually for the right reasons.
He has utter contempt for Quayle, and has done his best to make
sure the American people do, too. "Did you see that story
in the papers today about Dan Quayle using military planes to
fly to his golf matches?" Simply by basing a joke on a news
story, Carson enters that story into the national consciousness.
By rolling his eyes in contempt or shaking his head in dismay
he can convey his opinion of a political aspirant. He's had a
lot of influence.
Clinton's "didn't inhale"
line struck Johnny as particularly lame. He shook his head and
grinned at the audience as if to say "there are so many
things wrong with that statement I don't know where to begin."
What he said was: "Can't the Democrats do anything right?"
He joked that Jerry Brown, too, had once smoked pot in the '60s,
"but he forgot to exhale." In the nights that followed,
Johnny never once did a monologue without getting in a "forgot-to-inhale"
shot. He doesn't like Clinton. Said he was glad Clinton came
down with laryngitis and he wished they all would, through November.
The audience concurred.
On April 15 Johnny's monologue
began with a joke about taxes (of course). He said he got a note
from the IRS: "It's April 15th, so send in your form, or
next you'll be sleeping in Leona's dorm." [Leona Helmsley
was then an automatic laugh.] Then hereported that Daryl Gates
was out as chief of police in L.A. -scattered applause- and had
been replaced by the police commissioner from Philadelphia, "a
much nicer guy" with a very good reputation. It was a flat-out
statement of political support for Gates's successor, a black
man named Williams. Gates, Johnny added, had described himself
as "passing the baton." He shook his head at the insensitive
choice of phrase.
"How many of you have
voted on the Elvis stamp?... At last, an election the American
people are interested in... Well, the returns are in and the
voters have chosen the younger, thinner Elvis over the older,
fatter Bill Clinton... Bush was in Detroit yesterday. He asked
'Where do they make the cars?' So they flew him to Osaka... Did
you see that there are going to be 12 weddings on prime time
TV series this year? Apparently fans like to see the stars getting
married. (Turns to Ed) That's been our secret for 30 years."
The monologue ended, as always, with "We've got a great
show tonight" and a run-down of the guests. "We have
Rodney Dangerfield here tonight," said Johnny, his hand
adjusting his tie in the Dangerfield manner, shrugging his shoulders
nervously, doing Dangerfield's voice for a couple of seconds,
just a little reminder that he's a brilliant impersonator (not
to mention a professional magician).
Over the years, when I caught
the Tonight show, I usually liked the monologues and I sometimes
liked the guests, but most of all I liked Johnny's second bits,
the ones he did before bringing on the guests -routines like
Carnac the Magnificent and Stump the Band and the very-little-known
holidays... On a recent second bit he was reading letters kids
had written to him regarding his retirement. A little girl wrote:
"My daddy says he doesn't know how he's going to fall asleep
when you're gone." Johnny looked at the camera and said,
"There was one night daddy didn't fall asleep."
For his second bit April 15
Johnny donned a mortarboard and gave a graduation speech consisting
of cliches and non-sequiturs. "As I look out on your shining
faces I recall what my dear mother said to me as I left home:
'How far do you think you're gonna get in that dress?'... Be
industrious. Don't let your future go up in smoke. But if it
does, tell people you didn't inhale... Remember, charity begins
at home. And so does unsightly shower mildew... No man is an
island. So never tie a boat up to a guy... The eyes are the mirrors
of the soul. But the nose is the cabinet of the sinuses... Cultivate
a serious attitude: I'm okay, you're okay. But Mr. Blackwell's
got some serious problems..."
The guests April 15 were Bernadette
Peters -fast-forward through two torch songs- and then Rodney
Dangerfield doing a series of one-liners about his ugliness,
impotence, aging, etc. Rodney presents a total contrast to Johnny
in that he's all schtick and his jokes rely on humiliation and
discomfort. He's much more enjoyable in the movies, when he can
get away from playing the loser. With Johnny's last show approaching,
the guests have been saying their goodbyes. Liv Ullman was on
and thanked Johnny for all the enjoyment he'd given her over
the years. In a serious tone she added, "And I just want
to tell you that I've always known that you really respect women."
Johnny was taken aback and smiled. He seemed moved, but some
in the audience took it for a reference to his well-publicized
divorces, and laughed. Johnny turned to Liv and asked why, if
he had such respect for women, his three marriages had failed.
She said, "You chose poorly." He nodded thoughtfully.
Marshall Brickman was a writer
for Carson in the late '60s, when the show was still produced
at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. On Marshall's second day
he got hepatitis and wound up in the hospital, where he received
a telegram from Johnny saying "Don't worry, we're saving
your job." Three months later he came back. Walter Kempley,
the legendary head writer had left after a contract dispute.
Nobody wanted the job so Marshall took it and inherited Kempley's
office, his file cabinet full of jokes and his half-full box
of Macanudo cigars.
"It was a great period
for me," says Marshall, who stayed through 1970. "The
place was full of energy. The writers were divided into two groups.
One group worked on the monologue almost exclusively. They came
in, read the newspapers and periodicals, banged their heads against
the typewriters and submitted monologues to Carson. Johnny would
then select from those. The other guys worked on all the other
stuff-- sketches, interviewing odd guests, thinking up what we
used to call the five spot [the second bit as defined above]...
Everything that wasn't the monologue was stuff that I was in
charge of organizing. Then I'd run the meeting at five o'clock
to go over the upcoming show and come up with some last minute
gags. There was a lot of pressure but it's what that psychiatrist
who distinguishes between good and bad stress would call good
stress. The train left at 6:30 everyday [i.e., the show went
on live]. You got instant gratification. It wasn't like a movie
where you write something in January and then find out 18 months
later if it worked.
"Carson was fair, honest,
professional --not like my uncle Murray, who would hug you and
kiss you. Carson was not a kisser. I think his greatest skill
was his intuition. He never gave away a whole lot --in a sense
he's a minimalist. He would not grab you by the lapels and force
you to laugh. Twenty years ago he was brilliantly playing a character
--the guy asking the question you wanted to hear. He's actually
much more sophisticated, much more literate and knowledge able
than he lets on. He put a damper on it because he sensed what
the general audience expected of him."
Fred Gardner can be reached at journal@ccrmg.org
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