Book Review: THE GREATEST COMEBACK by Patrick J. Buchanan (Random House, 2014)

Say what you will about the trajectory of Pat Buchanan's political career; a narrative of how his career began was long overdue, and he has now finally given it to us.  Joining Richard Nixon as a researcher, speechwriter, and all-around gofer in 1965, Buchanan was on board for RN's tortuous climb out of the political abyss, culminating in his razor-thin victory in the election of 1968.  This set, and will probably remain, the standard for all political comebacks.  Drawing upon an extensive collection of memoranda, Buchanan walks us step-by-step through Nixon's resurrection.  The coverage of the '68 election campaign itself is a bit less compelling than that of the earlier years, and Buchanan (perhaps understandably) puffs up his own role in the process a bit, but there's enough new and interesting material here to intrigue even those like myself who have read other versions of this story before. 

Arguably the most poignant passage of the book concerns Nixon's foreign tour in 1967, which included several stops in Africa.  At the time, a number of promising African leaders seemed to be emerging, and they gave as good as they got in their conversations with Nixon.  Sadly, most of these individuals were fated to wind up exiled, dead, or both.  Who knows what might have happened had they survived and gained power.

Buchanan hints that a followup volume concerning Nixon's presidency may be on the way.  As a speechwriter's memoir, William Safire's BEFORE THE FALL will be a very tough act to follow, but Buchanan has the advantage of having been present through the end of RN's presidency, whereas Safire left before the Watergate scandal began to metastasize.  Here's hoping Pat follows through. 

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 84, "Bubba's Big Brainstorm"

Oh, it's bad, all right... but, with apologies (is that the right word?) to GeoX and Greg, it's not THE WORST, for several nontrivial reasons.  Hear me out, I promise to make this as painless as I can:

(1)  The plot is reasonably coherent and logical, at least until we get to the land of the Ancient Thinkas.  Bubba's technologically augmented brainpower, and other characters' reactions to it, are built up in a reasonably sound fashion.  There can be no comparison with, for example, the grab-bag of Barksian, pseudo-Barksian, and just plain wrong-headed anecdotes that constituted "Once Upon a Dime."  Nor is there any single aspect of the story that is as egregiously idiotic as the "Cancel every deal!" madness that fatally disfigured "Yuppy Ducks."

(2)  The idea of an advanced ancient civilization that fell victim to... well... excessive civilization is a first-rate one and would have made for a superb story-pivot in a better ep.  The Atlantis of Disney's ill-fated (and, in my view, seriously underrated) 2001 feature film isn't all that far removed from the Thinkas' degenerated realm, though the fine details in the former were worked out with more success than those in the latter.  It doesn't make sense, for one thing, that the Thinkas' descendants have completely forgotten everything related to the history of the "ancient ones" but still know how to use those laser spears, or electric cannons, or whatever they are.  (How lucky for them that the weapons didn't break down or malfunction during that degenerative interregnum, eh?)  For the Carl Barks enthusiasts in the audience, the cluelessness of the tech-garbed natives furnishes an amusing contrast to the spirited Cura de Coco primitives of "A Spicy Tale" (UNCLE $CROOGE #39, September 1962), who gleefully await the instructions from "Tutor Corpsman" Donald that will lift them out of ignorance and onto the lofty plinth of comprehending contemporary pop culture.

(3)  While the Nephews are poorly characterized here -- seriously, straight-A students one minute, unable to complete a simple picture puzzle the next? -- and their bilious kvetching about the super-smart Bubba gets real old real fast, they're not AS badly characterized as they were in "Yuppy Ducks."  Heck, HD&L fans should be positively ecstatic at the boys' report cards after the strong hint in "Raiders of the Lost Harp" that they were struggling in school.

(4)  Frank Welker's riff on William F. Buckley, Jr. as the voice of genius Bubba is truly something special, even for that preternaturally gifted dialectician.  The use of Buckley as a voice-source bespeaks a certain level of faith in the sophistication of the audience (or at least its older contingent).  While Buckley was still very much in the public eye in the late 80s, he wasn't quite as prominent as he had been in the 60s and 70s, and his long-running PBS series Firing Line was winding down.  DuckTales deserves credit for eschewing the use of a generic "arrogant nerd" voice and going "full full-of-oneself" with this parody.  I've long since found that I don't have to enjoy what Buckley-Bubba is actually saying in order to mine a great deal of enjoyment out of this portrayal. 

 

(5)  There are one or two decent jokes scattered about here.  "You may now pass 'go' and collect 200 fish skins," for one, never fails to get a chuckle out of me.

The above being said -- or, should I say, being tremblingly brought forth for consideration by the "Brainstorm"-bashers -- there's no doubt that this ep does get a whole lot of things wrong, starting with the moral.  Ugh, that hideous moral.  DuckTales didn't partake of a whole lot of moralizing, and that was a very good thing at the time, since so many of the Smurfs-influenced "happy little get-along friends" cartoons of the 80s had well and truly put the stink on that approach to cartoon-making.  What morals DT did dispense tended to be innocuous, decaffeinated ones such as "be yourself," "have faith in your abilities," and "family is more important than money."  Up until "Brainstorm," the biggest mistake that the series had made with morals was plugging them into pre-existing stories where they frankly weren't needed, such as in "Down and Out in Duckburg."  "Brainstorm" blew such errors completely out of the water by getting its "intellectuals are all head and no heart" moral wrong.  Even had genius Bubba been portrayed as a thoroughly despicable character, this simplistic contention would have been a tough sell.  The problem is that Bubba is much more what Greg and other pro-wrestling enthusiasts would call a "tweener" than an out-and-out nogoodnik.  He does make with the egotistical comments, but, seriously, are they all THAT much more offensive than what we would later hear from Darkwing Duck?  As both Greg and GeoX point out, his ability to save the gang by solving various conundrums in the Thinka pyramid makes the negative reactions of HD&L, in particular, seem somewhat hypocritical.  The killing blow, so to speak, is the conversation between Scrooge and Bubba right before Bubba reverts back to his old self, during which Bubba (1) claims that his treasure-hunting efforts were only meant to please Scrooge and (2) voluntarily decides to murder his intellect for the immediate good.  The irony is that, were genius Bubba really as cold-hearted as Scrooge claims, he would never have decided to revert back in the first place (arguing that "the world can't be deprived of a genius like mine," or some such) and might even have decided to keep the treasure for himself (on the grounds that even Scrooge is too primitive-minded to make the very best of his gains).  There was no good way out of this emotional cul-de-sac.  In order to get out of the dilemma of dementalizing Bubba, the whole point of the episode had to be undercut... which means that the point probably shouldn't have been made in the first place.

The ep, of course, piles on its attempted moral (perhaps hoping that repetition will help to ram the point home) with the revelation of the "treasure," the book telling the story of the Thinkas' civilization.  The very existence of this artifact is extremely problematic unless one posits that a proverbial "last Thinka" was able to produce it before perishing, a la the "last Sobram" in the Lost in Space episode "The Flaming Planet."  The Sobram was more than willing to include the tidbit that his was a prideful warrior race whose demise was largely self-inflicted; I have a harder time accepting the notion that any Thinka would be quite so honest about his civilization's inability to combat "the monsters of [its] time."  (If the Thinkas really had become as heartless as the book claims, then wouldn't they have found it easier to lie about their past and make it seem as though their demise was less pathetic than it truly was?  Wouldn't such technologically advanced "hollow beings" have been just as likely to build "weapons of mass destruction" to ruthlessly obliterate their foes as they were to have quailed before them?)  The Ducks' decision to leave the book with the natives is, of course, supposed to "atone" for Scrooge's earlier, Bubba-influenced decision to take the treasure away from the "hopelessly backwards" locals, but it comes across as even more condescending than the original neo-colonialist sin.  How is learning about the Thinkas' fate going to lead to the descendants themselves reacquiring the knowledge and skills needed to plug back into civilization, even in a cursory sense?

I probably should have been on my guard about this ep's failings based on the opening scene, in which Scrooge declares himself incapable of deciphering the Thinkas' map.  I'm referring, of course, to the presence of mathematical symbols (one of which is clearly discernable, at least) in the upper right corner of the document.  Presumably, it is these markings which have Scrooge stumped.  I've learned through harsh experience NEVER to place complete faith in a pop-culture creation in which mathematics is equated with esoteric science -- unless, of course, the creator himself has significant scientific "street cred."

The revelation of Bubba's straight-Z report card isn't as surprising as the later discovery that these marks represent Bubba's first-grade grades.  If I were Julie Blurf, I don't know but what I'd be somewhat insulted by this.  In "Bubbeo and Juliet," Julie certainly didn't seem to be a first-grader; at a guess, I'd have thought that she would be around the Nephews' age and perhaps a little older than Webby.  Yet, there she was, taking art class with Bubba.

I'm not sure whether to classify Gyro's pressure-cooker "thinking cap" as a success or a failure.  I mean, it did its job, didn't it? -- it made Bubba smarter.  There's no indication that a design flaw in the "cap" caused the super-smart Bubba to become an obnoxious know-it-all, and Bubba's later self-adjustments of his cranial capacity -- the ones that caused his head to swell to a positively frightening extent -- weren't sanctioned by Gyro.   It's a shame that DuckTales didn't see fit to reproduce Gyro's "thinking cap" from the comics, but I can understand the DT creative staff wanting to avoid having to explain those birds in Gyro's belfry.

"Let's do the Beak Warp again!"  On second thought, let's not.

The rest of a longish Act One follows the subsequent blossoming of Bubba's intellect (and ego), culminating in his cracking of the Thinka map mystery.  It's unfortunate that the ep didn't make more of this latter achievement.  Hearing Bubba explaining exactly how he deciphered the mathematical symbols on the map would certainly have been more interesting than having him spout and scribble various forms of quantitative nonsense in a lazy effort to convince the audience that, yes, folks, he REALLY IS THAT SMART.  ("Pi squared to the 27th degree," my ass.  I can accept "fifth-grader" Huey not knowing what pi is, but Bubba's line is sheer gibberish.)  It's not just those with a mathematical calling who should feel vaguely insulted here; I was unaware, for one thing, that sectioning a pie chart and drawing a sine curve, among other actions, constituted coming up with great "business ideas."

It goes without saying that HD&L don't exactly cover themselves with glory here, for all of Bubba's gloating egotism goading them into acting like jealous jerks.  The HD&L I know might have taken Bubba's intellectual pretensions as a challenge and tried to match him in brainpower (probably with the help of the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook) while demonstrating that one doesn't have to be "all head and no heart."  Instead, they take the easy road and blow him off, even when a failure of his intellect (such as when he has trouble figuring out the ancient computer) might mean their doom.  At least the lads aren't presented as dolts the better to contrast with genius Bubba, that painful inability to solve the puzzle aside.

I'd have to agree with Greg that the inclusion of Launchpad as pilot here would have made the experience more enjoyable.   LP's reactions to the brainy Bubba would surely have been more entertaining than HD&L's, since he is perfectly aware of his own intellectual limitations and has no real problem with them.  Since "Brainstorm" counts as one of the few legitimate adventures (OK, quasi-adventures; we probably don't spend quite enough time in the Thinkas' realm to make that particular cut) of the Bubba-Fenton era, it's a shame that Launchpad couldn't come along for the ride.  Lastly, I fully agree with HD&L; LP would have found some way to fly a plane without wings.  I also think that he would have produced a more interesting crash than the relatively bland one we wound up with here.

While it does have its share of moments to shine, Act Three, the big Thinka payoff, is where this ep really falls down, starting with that first native encounter.  The degenerated locals aren't offensive so much as they are incoherently characterized.  They wear the remnants of the Thinkas' civilization as clothing and jewelry and still know how to operate the laser weapons... right.  The chief can barely speak one minute ("Uhhh... What you doin' here?") and is capable of speaking reasonably coherent sentences the next.  Worst of all, even a "primitive mind" would have realized that the arrival of "someone as smart as the ancient ones" represents a golden opportunity to recover the Thinkas' treasure.  Instead, the natives throw the "trespassing" Ducks into the pyramid... which just happens to be where the treasure is located?!  If you're going to do that, then why not ask the visitors to help find the treasure in the first place?  There are bits and pieces of a clever concept here, but writers Mark Seidenberg and Evelyn Gabai evidently couldn't be bothered to construct a medium in which to set them.

The booby traps set by the Thinkas to protect the treasure vault are reasonably clever, with one hideous, cawing, badly-designed exception.  Since the vault is intact, I presume that no Thinka descendant ever made an effort to dope out the musical tones on the ancient computer that neutralized the self-destruct operation (you'd think that some venturesome soul would have tried it, back when the natives weren't quite as bad off as they are now...), or to outwit the "riddle box."  The really peculiar thing about this sequence is the mere fact that the natives follow the Ducks into the vault after having tossed them there.  What motivated them to do that?  Was it the sound of the earth shaking when the self-destruct countdown was activated?  And, if it were, why should the natives even care that some "trespassers" are crushed?  The setup seems like a convenient way to have the natives on hand for the denouement, but the same effect would have been achieved had the natives stayed outside the vault and the Ducks had come out to give them the book in the end.  At the very least, Greg wouldn't have been driven crazy by the idea that the natives couldn't follow the Ducks when the former reached the three-way "fork in the tunnel."  (In truth, based on the visual evidence, I think it was entirely possible that the natives didn't see the Ducks take the center route.)

The appearance of the cockatrice marks a truly painful visual moment.  The design, the animation, the "voice"... all are simply dreadful.  Even the monster of "Ali Bubba's Cave" was well thought out compared to this.  The effect, of course, is to make what is supposed to be a terrifying foe (presumably, similar to the ones that destroyed the Thinkas in earlier times -- though how the Thinkas managed to train this one to be a guardian is beyond me) seem positively ludicrous.  The wonderful, eerily-lit shot of the Nephews and Tootsie trapped inside the crevice is completely neutralized, as is the restored Bubba's ultimate "clubba-ring" of the hilariously homely beastie.  You also have to wonder what happened to the cockatrice after it was thrown into the midst of the natives and subsequently literally backed out of the scene.  I hardly think that it was the type of creature to graciously retreat and allow the characters to dispense a moral that had already been made more than perfectly clear.

In the end, even one of Frank Welker's most memorable performances can't save this badly-conceived production from itself.  It's not the Spawn-of-Hell, "F*** you, DuckTales" travesty that some have made it out to be -- as I've said before, I'm convinced that this sort of fiery reaction is primarily ideologically driven, and there is a difference between disliking an episode because of poor writing and characterization and disliking an episode because you don't happen to agree with the philosophical point it's trying to make -- but the negative portrayal of intellectualism is certainly annoying enough without ladling left-wing animus on top of it.  For me, the saddest thing about "Brainstorm" is its tacit admission that Bubba, as a character in and of himself, is fatally lacking, and that you need to give the character a complete makeover in order to make him remotely interesting.  This is as good as a confession that the inclusion of Bubba in the DuckTales cast was a mistake.  Bubba will be a decidedly minor player in the series from now on, and I don't think that it's a coincidence.

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Bumper #19: "Doughbegon"

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"DuckBlurbs"

(GeoX)  The whole thing resembles some sort of crazed, nationalist rant about intellectuals sapping our National Vigor. And they can't even get that rant right; we're supposed to hold Bubba in contempt for being too cowardly to beat a monster with a club, but wholly unremarked is the fact that, just minutes ago, they would all have been horribly crushed to death if smart-Bubba hadn't been able to correctly answer a series of riddles.

See my point above about HD&L's hypocrisy. 

(GeoX)  As Bubba ineffectually tries to decide which passage to take: "Louie's coin-toss is never wrong, Bubba! We go right!" Yeah! Your élitist commie faggot book learnin' is no match for our good old-fashioned common-sense salt-of-the-earth, uh, blind luck! Christ, guys…

It isn't even as common-sensical as all that.  Why would you use a two-sided coin to choose which of THREE paths to take? 

(GeoX) Also, note the way it's made quite clear that Bubba isn't just smart-Bubba; he's a completely different person (as explicitly evinced by the way he says "goodbye" and "I'm back!" when changing back to "normal"). We don't even want to suggest that Bubba could even potentially have something of the Evil Intellectual in him. God forbid.

That last bit doesn't bother me so much as the mere fact that the "recovered" Bubba is aware of what has happened to him.  That seems more troubling, in a sense, than smart Bubba's dismissal of his "primitive" past life. 

(GeoX) "How long is a piece of string?" "[It's] Twice the distance from the center to either end!" So the answer is "twice as long as half a piece of string?" And only the genius could figure that out? Ducktales' idea of relative intelligence is kind of terrifying.

Hey, at least that was more imaginative than the nursery-school riddles that made up the remainder of the trap-quelling trilogy. 

(Greg) ...Bubba proclaims that he has ideas to boost [Scrooge's] profits as shown on his notepad. Scrooge loves this and offers [to let him] stay in the mansion as a reward. Okay; I got to admit, they booked this scene right since Scrooge loves Bubba as this because it benefits him. And Bubba seems to have no trouble with Scrooge anymore. It doesn't save the rest of this episode; but this scene doesn't insult me like the rest of it.

Scrooge's characterization in this episode is not without its own share of problems.  One can easily imagine him falling in love with the super-smart, business-savvy Bubba, or even agreeing with Bubba that the natives don't "deserve" to keep the treasure (Scrooge has a knack for justifying such actions to himself without any outside assistance).  But blowing off the "appointment-less" Nephews when they come to the "Think Tank" and want to play with Bubba?  That seems rather harsh.  Needless to say, Scrooge is quick to recover his senses when his family members are in danger, the better to provide a contrast to the dismissive Bubba.

(Greg) Scrooge can smell the treasure; Dewey only smells trouble as the walls pop up surrounding them and they then for some reason push right towards them. I'm not going to point out the obvious logic break here because it is such a waste of my time...CLIMB OUT YOU F***S~!

"Climb out?  Why, I, I wouldn't know where to begin."

(Greg) Yeah; apparently; the ancient thinkers were so smart that they used picture books instead of complex words with no pictures in it. UGH!

Actually, I don't have a problem with this.  The Thinkas might have reasoned that those who came after them would be less advanced than they were, so why not tell the story in a simple a manner as possible?


Next: Episode 85, "Dough Ray Me."

Book Review: LINCOLN UNBOUND by Rich Lowry (Broadside Books, 2013)

"Getting right with Lincoln" has long been a pastime of American politicians on both sides of the political spectrum.  More recently, progressives have expended much energy in reinterpreting "Honest Abe" as one of their own, someone who would have had no problem whatsoever with the growth of the welfare state and big government in general.  Lowry, the editor of NATIONAL REVIEW, doesn't contend the assertion that Lincoln was, in fact, a proponent of an activist federal government; indeed, a certain segment of conservative opinion regards Lincoln as a villain for some of the drastic actions he took during the Civil War to combat dissension and outright treason in the Northern states.  But he makes the compelling case that Lincoln's activism sought not to lock people into a cycle of dependency, but rather, to give them a chance to better themselves in a dynamic, ever-changing capitalist society.  At the same time, without being preachy, Lincoln, through his behavior and words, exemplified a "bourgeois morality" that would increase the chances for people to find and maintain success.

Lowry believes that today's Republican Party would do well to go back to "first Lincolnian principles" and emphasize the importance of rebuilding an "opportunity society," as opposed to simply opposing the growth of government.  The problem with this, as I see it, is that there is such a crying need for immediate governmental contraction that making simple progress on that front must necessarily precede any efforts towards making the government more efficient, less heavy-handed, and more capable of aiding citizens without trying to dominate their lives.  Still, it is refreshing to note Lowry's recognition that government can play its small part to encourage industry, education, and basic research and to improve infrastructure, provided that it imbibes a little Lincolnian common sense.  On the issue of cultural change, things are trickier, because popular culture is far more pervasive and easily disseminated today than in the 1850s and 1860s, and the "cultural elites" will need a change of heart (and, IMHO, stronger financial competition from cultural products with a friendlier view of traditional Judeo-Christian morality) before they are willing to play a more positive role in keeping the foundations of the culture strong.  Delivering messages of "uplift" imbued with a sense of humor and a clear recognition of human foibles, as Lincoln frequently did, would be a good start.

LINCOLN UNBOUND presents an unconventional view of our greatest President, but one that ought to be seriously considered and debated by all citizens in terms of how it might provide some guidance in our troubled times.

Book Review: COOLIDGE by Amity Shlaes (Harper, 2013)

With abuse-of-power scandals popping like Fourth of July crackers in Washington, this seemed like a good time to kick back and read about a President who has long been patronized for doing too little while in office.  As Amity Shlaes makes clear in this new biography of Calvin Coolidge, purposely pulling back on the reins of government actually requires more effort than is typically expended by a more activist leader.  During his five years in office, President Coolidge certainly found it so.

For all of its considerable detail, I did find Shlaes' narrative to be lacking in certain areas and inartfully crafted in others.  Coolidge's money-saving economic policies get most of the attention, as they should, but there is little on Coolidge Administration foreign policy save for the last-minute drive to ratify the war-"outlawing" Kellogg-Briand Pact.  The U.S. was not "isolationist" during the 1920s in any meaningful sense of the word, but Shlaes inadvertently leaves that impression.  As to Shlaes' style, it is best described as "lumpy."  Characters are repeatedly reintroduced to us, while other figures who might have been expected to get much more attention, such as Coolidge's secretary C. Bascom Slemp, barely rate a mention.  The short-shrifting of Slemp (whom blacks, who at the time were still heavily Republican, harshly criticized) seems particularly unfortunate because he was a Virginia Republican at a time when Southern Republicans were rare; including him as a major player would have added some depth to the comparatively scanty discussion of Coolidge's policies towards the South and black civil rights.

If you are interested in learning about Coolidge's life, personality, and Presidency, this is a fairly decent introductory book, but I still came away somewhat disappointed.  Several more runs through the editorial mill would, I believe, have strengthened both the content and the prose.

Book Review: ROGER AILES, OFF CAMERA by Zev Chafets (Sentinel, 2013)

Zev Chafets' biographical sketch of the founder of Fox News begins with an amusing scene in which Ailes reconnects with actor Austin Pendleton, an old school chum whose life took a very different path.  The incident serves to shake up a reader's preconceived notions of Ailes as well as illustrate one of Chafets' main points: that Ailes, surely one of the most reviled media figures of our age, enjoys "the gift of friendship" with numerous individuals who violently disagree with his network's groundbreaking approach to the news. 

Readers looking for backstage gossip about Fox News personalities and policies will find a few nuggets of information here and there.  Ailes, however, stays in the spotlight throughout, though the book's modest scope ensures that the spotlight is on the narrow side.  Chafets' brief account of Ailes' youth, early experiences as a producer on The Mike Douglas Show, and career as a political consultant will no doubt be superseded at some point in the future by Ailes' own autobiography, on which he is apparently working.  Chafets does, however, do a credible job of explaining how Fox News came to be, how it was initially received, and exactly what Ailes had in mind when he decreed that Fox would carry the banner for "fair and balanced" TV journalism.

One topic that I wish Chafets would have examined in more detail is what a post-Ailes Fox News might look like.  Ailes has chronic medical problems that have made him acutely conscious of his own mortality, so there is every reason to believe that he has a well-planned strategy for handing over control of the network to someone who will maintain Ailes' general approach.  But the unusual stability of Fox' lineup of "talking heads" may hurt the network in the long run.  What happens when firmly established "brand names" like Bill O'Reilly have to leave the stage?  One intriguing possibility is an increased reliance on minorities, thanks to the Ailes Apprentice Program, which gives Fox News internships to several minority individuals each year.  This, at a time when the number of minority journalists has been declining for some time.  If these students stay at Fox and become regular "cast members," will they pull the network to the left, or will they become a countervailing force against the more conventional political views expressed by minorities on other networks?  Only time will tell.

Despite the revelations about Ailes' vast constellation of friends of various political stripes, I seriously doubt that anyone who hates Ailes is going to have his or her opinion changed by this book, but those who come to it with an open mind will find it enjoyable and a fairly quick read.

Book Review: AL CAPP, A LIFE TO THE CONTRARY by Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen (Bloomsbury, 2013)

The contentious, cantankerous creator of LI'L ABNER has deserved a major biography for quite some time.  Alexander Theroux' glorified term paper THE ENIGMA OF AL CAPP (1999) could best be described as "an outline of a rough draft of a synopsis" and was marred by obvious political partisanship besides.  Though Schumacher and Kitchen indulge in their own share of tsk-tsking at Capp's abrupt swerve to the right late in his life, they do a far better -- and, no surprise, much more thorough -- job of placing Capp in the context of his time and explaining why his cartoon brainchild became such a massive hit in the mid-20th century.  Even so, there is quite a bit left unsaid here, and I can easily imagine a more comprehensive biography emerging at some point in the future.

LI'L ABNER is fondly remembered as one of the first comic strips to specialize in social satire.  It's not hard to understand why Capp should have gone that route; starting with the famous childhood accident in which he lost a leg, his rise to fame and fortune was anything but smooth and untroubled.  At a time of socially sanctioned anti-Semitism, his Jewish roots also cast him in the role of an outsider.  The result was a man with many rough edges.  Capp, for all of his surface geniality, was not a nice person, as Schumacher and Kitchen display in ample detail.  Capp's lengthy, nasty feud with his ex-boss Ham Fisher brings to mind Henry Kissinger's comment about the Iran-Iraq War, that it was too bad that both parties couldn't lose.  Fisher paid the ultimate price, losing all of his friends and committing suicide, but Capp's reputation also took a major hit as a result of the decades-long disagreement.  Arguments with family over LI'L ABNER marketing initiatives (Capp was also a pioneer in the public exploitation of his strip), serial infidelity, and the like paint a grim picture, culminating in several sex scandals in the early 1970s that wrecked Capp's reputation for good and all.  Even Capp's frequent parodies of other creators' comic strips, the most famous example of which is the DICK TRACY parody FEARLESS FOSDICK, could be considered a passive-aggressive form of fighting back against perceived rivals, however much Capp might have argued that he admired the original creations.

The major failing here is Schumacher and Kitchen's inability to articulate why, exactly, Capp took such a dramatic turn to conservatism during the 1960s, going on campus to hector students and such.  One comics encyclopedia of note trotted out the cliched rationale that Capp turned conservative after he had gotten rich.  This conveniently ignores the fact that Capp stayed a flaming liberal for a good while after LI'L ABNER's highest circulation figures and most lucrative licensing deals had been achieved.  The "he was a nasty guy" argument doesn't work either, since Capp was what he was for many years before the 60s.  My own opinion is that Capp, like a fair number of old-fashioned New Deal-style liberals, was genuinely appalled by what was going on during that giddy time and determined to attack and parody it, but that his satirical skills had gone off the boil since the salad days of the 40s and early 50s.  (Charles Schulz always argued that Capp's decision to let Abner and his perpetual romantic pursuer Daisy Mae get married in 1952 knocked the bottom out of the strip; Capp was not pleased and did a rather cruel parody of PEANUTS some years later, leading the mild-mannered Schulz to demand that Capp cease and desist.)  Capp had always sought publicity for himself and his strip, but, in the late 60s, the somewhat cruder execution of the LI'L ABNER storylines was mirrored in Capp's partaking of such harebrained stunts as confronting John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their "bed-in for peace."  Creatively, Capp had simply lost it, and the over-the-top insults and radical-baiting made it all too easy for the intelligentsia to write him off as a lost cause.  Had Capp been, say, twenty years younger, his assault on the left might have been more successful.

A fuller treatment of Capp's life and art must wait for the future, but Schumacher and Kitchen's book is a good place to start learning about both.

Book Review: THE STORY OF AIN'T by David Skinner (Harper Collins, 2012)

These days, we are inundated with so many sources of information (many of which are decidedly unreliable, but there you go) that it's difficult to believe that the release of a new "repository of knowledge" could engender intense controversy.  Fifty years ago, things were very different, as we learn in David Skinner's entertaining book about the violent (in an intellectual sense, anyway) reaction to the release of WEBSTER'S THIRD INTERNATIONAL UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY in 1961.  Public intellectuals such as Dwight Macdonald and Jacques Barzun regarded the descriptivist tome, which broke dramatically with Webster's prescriptivist tradition of clearly separating "standard" and "nonstandard" language usages, as a harbinger of the end of civilization, or at least an American "high culture" that seemed to be imperiled by the development of "middlebrow" taste during the years before and after World War II.  While fully recognizing the overblown nature of many of these complaints, Skinner also admits that WEBSTER'S THIRD editor Philip Gove and his cohorts at Merriam-Webster badly mishandled the transition to the new methodology by failing to do a proper job of explaining why and how it had been done.  This PR bungling allowed the media of the day to jump on such trumped-up claims as the contention that WEBSTER'S THIRD had "officially" sanctioned the use of ain't, when in fact the truth was more complicated.

I first learned of this controversy while reading Henry Hitchings' book THE LANGUAGE WARS, which does a good job of describing the whole descriptivist-vs.-prescriptivist argument for the layperson.  Interestingly, no such caterwauling as that which greeted WEBSTER'S THIRD was heard when THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, which took a decidedly prescriptivist approach to describing the history and usage of words, was published in Britain.  One possible reason why the WEBSTER'S outcry was much greater was that editor Gove also decided to eliminate a good deal of encyclopedic material that had previously been included in the dictionary.  No longer having a single place to go to find lists of battles, names of famous characters in literature, etc. must have been quite disappointing for some people, and WEBSTER'S THIRD new approach to defining words (Gove preferred single-sentence definitions, which led to some gruesomely worded descriptions of such everyday words as air and door) must only have added to the sense of disorientation.

Skinner necessarily has to backtrack quite a long way in order to tell this story in full, but he manages to describe the development of linguistics as a tool for understanding American English, the history of the "English Language Arts" movement, the dramatic increase in American English's vocabulary during the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and the lives and careers of the principal figures in this cerebral scrap without confusing the reader.  The closest thing to a true throughline in the tale is the story of Dwight Macdonald, an "impassioned aginner" who started his career as a radical in the 30s, maintained an idiosyncratically adversarial stance towards American culture throughout his life, yet still wound up delivering a diatribe against WEBSTER'S THIRD that would probably please Judge Antonin Scalia today.  In Macdonald's notorious essay attacking the dictionary, one can detect a fair amount of snobbery, an uneasy feeling that culture had become too accessible to (and, as a result, had been cheapened by) the American middle class.  Nowadays, the tastes of 50s America seem like those of a classic "golden age" to many of us, but a lot of eggheads (there's a 50s-ism for you) sneered at the masses' preferences.  The elite's disdain for WEBSTER'S THIRD as supposedly sanctioning slang phrases and colloquialisms as being every bit as legitimate as formal platform speech was heartfelt, but basically misguided.  Still, their fulminations make for entertaining reading.  In what other capacity would you ever see THE NEW YORK TIMES engage in Red-baiting (by once referring to the offending dictionary as "WEBSTER'S THIRD (Bolshevik) INTERNATIONAL")?  If you are interested in language and/or like to read about intellectuals making even bigger fools of themselves than is normally the case, then THE STORY OF AIN'T will be a pleasant read.

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 15, "Sir Gyro de Gearloose"

If "Hero for Hire" has a rival as the best stand-alone DuckTales episode, then it's surely "Sir Gyro de Gearloose," which swept to the top of the popularity charts immediately upon its initial broadcast and has maintained that lofty status ever since.  Which of these eps is your fave probably depends upon which you think is the greater feat:  crystallizing a new, made-for-TV character's personality, or building upon the existing characterization of a well-loved Carl Barks character.  It's a tough call, but I'd vote for the former, if only because there are so many variations of the basic scenarios (both "Ducky-dependent" and otherwise) on display in "Sir Gyro" that have turned up in various contexts over the years.  What makes Mark Zaslove's mixing-up and dishing-out of these ingredients so delectable is the great sense of balance and timing in his writing.  I'm fully in agreement with Greg that "this is [an] episode I would show as a teaching tool for all new writers to see."

As Barks fans know, there are a number of classic "discontented Gyro" stories in existence, in which the normally amiable inventor sours on his lot and seeks to make a different sort of life for himself.  In "Man vs. Machine" (UNCLE $CROOGE #47, February 1964), for example, Gyro roars in rebellion against the unreliability of machines:

Ironically, the legion of customers that besiege Gyro's lab at the start of "Sir Gyro" -- and thereby cause the inventor to damn his societal status as a lowly "gadget man" -- also appear to be motivated (at least in part) by anger and frustration at the fallibility of Gyro's own gizmos.  Indeed, Vacation van Honk's ire at his fouled-up "automatic dressing machine" motivates the globetrotting goose to *gasp!* actually manifest a bit of personality.  One must wonder: if Gyro were a better inventor, then would that gaggle of gripers have felt it necessary to beat a path to his door?

One could fairly kvetch here that Zaslove seems to be operating under a misconception of what Gyro's main job in Duckburg is.  Gyro has repaired things in the past, but never before have we seen him so overwhelmed with what he would normally regard as mundane busywork.  Given the fact that most of the rest of the episode will see Gyro slip back into his standard role of inventor, the setup for the ep seems just a touch artificial, like the sudden "press of business" on the normally isolated Scrooge that causes the latter to snap at the start of "Tralla La."  This is not necessarily a criticism, more of an observation. 

I'm torn regarding Gyro's Time Tub: it's such a neat device that I'm glad it was eventually reused (in "Time Teasers"), but I'm glad it wasn't OVERused.  I can see some of the show's less talented writers falling back on the thing as a convenient vehicle for time-traveling plots.  Not that there's anything wrong with such plots on occasion, but I think most Duck fans would prefer for their heroes to encounter manifestations of myth, legend, and adventure in the present day.  The business about the Tub creating "past[s] that might have been" was included, I think, to avoid having to deal with the same kinds of weird backstory scenarios that Darkwing Duck would later create in the episode "Quack of Ages" (in which we were forced to accept the existence of a medieval St. Canard with "King Herb" in charge) and that Barks would occasionally create in his later years (e.g. the "castle of the ancient Mad Duke of Duckburg" in "House of Haunts").  By lifting Gyro and HD&L's adventures in Quackalot completely onto another plane of existence (or dimension, as posited by GeoX), Zaslove ensured that ancient Duckburg would remain pristine (at least, until time-traveling Ducks and on-the-scene pirates appeared in 1687 Duckburg during "Time Teasers") and made plausible the ep-ending dodge in which Gyro manages to get HD&L back home with only one hour having elapsed in real time.  After all, when you're dimension-hopping, what's a little time-tinkering while you're at it? 

The transition of Gyro and the boys from Duckburg to Quackalot is handled pretty clumsily, especially given the quality of the episode as a whole.  The "conveniently falling junk" that knocks everyone into the Time Tub and starts the device on its temporal trek is followed by a sloppily staged sequence in which the Black Knight repeatedly charges down a path towards King Artie and his wizard Moorloon.  The business is animated well enough; the problem is that Artie and Moorloon just stand there like dummies while the Black Knight canters to the top of the alley and bears down on them.  FOUR times, no less.  Here's a hint, guys:  IT'S OKAY TO STEP OUT OF THE WAY, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO STEP ON THE GRASS TO DO SO.  What would you have done had Gyro and HD&L not used their improvised lance to knock the Knight over? 

With King Artie's blessing of "Sir Gyro de Gearloose"'s unorthodox knightery, we enter familiar territory, creative ground that has been trodden for 125 years, at least: that of the introduction of modern technology and attitudes into the medieval past.  Mark Twain gave us the Ur-version of this story in A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT (1889), Ford Madox Ford followed with LADIES WHOSE BRIGHT EYES (1911), and the subgenre was well and truly launched.  Disney itself churned out two live-action versions of the story, The Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979) and A Kid in King Arthur's Court (1995).  In lesser hands, "Sir Gyro" might have wound up as superficial and forgettable as were those latter gobs of Gothic gauze.  But Zaslove refuses to let it happen, for several reasons.  The most important of these is his broad-minded attitude towards both the representative of modern technology (Gyro) and the denizens of the medieval realm (King Artie and company).  Most of the serious attempts at this subgenre were created with clear satirical intent.  For example, in A CONNECTICUT YANKEE, Mark Twain wanted to ridicule outdated notions of chivalry, which he claimed had helped bring on the Civil War by influencing the development of the hierarchical, battle-loving Southern culture.  LADIES WHOSE BRIGHT EYES took the opposite approach, with the modern interloper growing to appreciate the charms of medieval culture to the extent that he "went native" and tried, much like Gyro, to become a knight.  Zaslove builds his story around Gyro's desire to find his true destiny in the past, but he also provides the all-important counterweight in the form of Moorloon, who is just as unappreciated in Quackalot as Gyro is in Duckburg, and is every bit as sympathetic a character as is Gyro, despite his attempt to enlist the would-be usurper Lesdred in a kidnapping scheme.  In helping the betrayed and imprisoned Moorloon to realize that he IS, essentially, Gyro in a different time and garb, HD&L perform their one absolutely vital duty of the episode. Tempting as it may be to think that this episode might have worked as a Gyro solo, I don't think that it would have; Gyro was simply too focused on his desire to become a knight, and Moorloon was too obsessed with jealousy over Gyro, to come to the realizations of their parallel roles without assistance.  As Gyro's sympathetic friends and as "outside observers" of Moorloon's plight, HD&L were perfectly positioned to be "moral guidance facilitators."  (Also, unlike Gyro's Helper, they have the power of speech!)

    

Giving a particular urgency to HD&L's efforts to help Gyro and Moorloon is the easily overlooked, yet undeniably creepy, fact that Gyro actually appears to be winning the battle against his "true nature" as the episode moves along.  When King Artie and Moorloon are attacked by the Black Knight, Gyro's first instinct is to whip up an invention "in a jif" (as Gadget would say) and save the day.  When the dragon arrives to attack Quackalot, however, Gyro's helping instinct seems on the bum, as he only reluctantly agrees to build the cider pump to douse the dragon's flames.  Artie's ill-received suggestion that Gyro build him a gadget to make "crown-shaped party hats" serves as a tipping point of sorts.  After that, Gyro is completely focused on becoming a worthy knight, even if he has to momentarily surrender to his atavistic instinct for mechanical creation and build a training wheel to help him guide his lance.  He even begins to dream of knightly deeds, indicating that his subconscious is also undergoing a basic transformation.  Given how close Gyro appears to being completely captured by his dream of knighthood, HD&L's decision to spy on Moorloon, and their discovery of Moorloon's plotting with Lesdred, couldn't have come at a better time.

The "magnetic" climax, of course, provides one of the series' most memorable scenes, and it remains so despite Dewey's horrible pun about "magnetic personalities."  (I remember when a DARKWING DUCK story in the unfortunate Disney-Marvel DISNEY AFTERNOON title used that same gag; oh, the catcalls it got.  Perhaps it was because Drake Mallard's "magnetic personality" was presented as the literal reason why he got magnetically stuck to a garbage can.)  I would also love to know how Gyro BUILT the Duck-gone thing.  Even granted that there would be a lot of chain mail lying around Quackalot, how would one "unchain" it to create that giant metallic sphere...  and without tools, yet?  This makes the use of golden planks, ropes, nails, and sails in "Wrongway in Ronguay" seem positively...  believable, don't you think?  Well, however Gyro got the thing put together, the depiction of its influence on Lesdred's legions is exceptionally memorable... and, of course, extra credit goes to Zaslove for foreshadowing this climax by introducing and employing the (much smaller) magnet earlier in the episode.  That there's good writing, folks.

"Hey, Usurper!  I got yer Purple Reign right here!"

When "Sir Gyro" appeared, I immediately dubbed it the best Gyro story ever done... but, in the intervening years, one worthy challenger has appeared: Pat McGreal and Santiago Scalabroni's "Little Gyro in Quarkland" (UNCLE $CROOGE #314, October 1998).  This is yet another entry in the "rebellious Gyro" sweepstakes, and it's a particularly dark-complected one.  The inDucks English summary of the plot claims that it is motivated by Gyro's despair at all the pollution in Duckburg, but the inventor's despondency appears to go much deeper than that:

No rushing off into "Utopia Elsewhere" is possible here: Gyro realizes that every other country on Earth has "its own share of problems."  He decides to shrink himself down to microscopic size and escape "in into space," but he discovers that the universe is essentially one great big circle; after shrinking through "Quarkland," he emerges into the Milky Way Galaxy and lands right back on Earth.

This is a profoundly conservative message, I think, in that small-scale change serves to combat large-scale despair.  I think that "Sir Gyro" carries a similar message.  Thanks to his journey to Quackalot, Gyro learns that his talents are needed in Duckburg every bit as much as Moorloon's are needed in his own time.  The whole idea is to take advantage of your time, location, and unique talents to make your "little corner" of the world a better place.  "Little Gyro in Quarkland" now stands as my favorite Gyro story in the medium of comics... and I don't think it's an insult to claim that it's every bit as good an effort in its medium as "Sir Gyro" is in its medium.  Yes, it's true, you recalcitrant "old sourdoughs":  DuckTales produced an episode that was SO good that it could be used as a measuring stick against which to judge a high-quality Duck comic-book story of a similar type.

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DuckBlurbs

(GeoX)  Anyway, in The Past, the waterfowl fall in with "King Artie" and Gyro impresses him with the power of Science. The local wizard, Moorloon, gets jealous, however, especially when Gyro's able to stop a dragon and he isn't (though looking back, it's hard to say why not, given that Moorloon is indeed shown to have totally sweet magical abilities later on).

I think that Moorloon claimed that he "[didn't] do dragons," not because he couldn't handle the situation, but because he wouldn't.  Already, we can see here that Moorloon is more concerned with making "that upstart Gearloose" look bad than in performing his supposedly sacred duty of protecting King Artie.  And he hasn't hit bottom yet, of course.  

(GeoX) It's sometimes a little hard to tell who's talking, but it's pretty clear that, when HDL are climbing down a drainpipe and getting captured one by one, the names get mixed up.

Yeah, I think you're right.  It sounds as if Louie says "Louie?" right before he gets grabbed by the Black Knight.

(GeoX)  The exaggeratedly-breathy crane-woman who in the beginning snaps at Gyro when he can't immediately fix her toaster and then at the end hits on him is kind of amusing. Make her a recurring character! Gyro needs a love interest!  

Admittedly, it would be nice for him to have one, but this girl is rather... flighty, don't you think?  (And I'm not saying that just because she's a bird.)  Her overreaction to the failure of Gyro's toaster fix bespeaks a rather high-maintenance personality.  She does come back in the end, which is a credit to her, but how will she react when she and Gyro go on that all-important first date and Gyro suddenly gets an inventor's brainstorm?  Will she be able to go with the flow, or will we see the hauteur and the stamping feet once again?  Too bad we'll never get to find out.

Come up and singe me sometime!

(Greg)  The black knight blocks with all his might and his armor and shield melts...and then we cut to King Artie's castle before he burns to ashes. Which indicates that the black knight inside is dead. Cinema 101 people! When will we learn that?! 

Cinema 101?  How about Physiology 101?  There was a very abrupt cut following the "red-hot armor" scene, so something may have been trimmed here.  Still, unless Lesdred has two or more of those ostrich fellows hanging around, the end product of this scene should have been "Scratch One Black Knight."

(Greg)  I betcha the red dragon comes in through the open window and burns Dewey wieners (both ways) to ashes. I check the DVD....Damn; I'm good. And HOLY CRAP; that flame actually made contact with their heads and they come out with minor injuries which looks like small cuts that are trying to bleed; but cannot. Okay that's it! I'm officially declaring the nephews NUTS! I thought Kit Cloudkicker's one inch bullet away from the head in Plunder andLighting Part Two was nasty?! If this doesn't get cut by Toon Disney; then Disney ought to be ashamed of themselves.

To my knowledge, this scene has never been cut from any print of "Sir Gyro."  A little of the edge is taken off of the scene by the fact that, while HD&L have soot on their faces, their caps are not burnt.

Interesting Moment #1: So we head to Moorloon's room as he is in agreement with Gyro for a change. HAHA! Moorloon tries to bang the magnet on the table; but no dice because it is not metal see. HAHA! However; the real funny part (which for moralists it was heinous) was when Moorloon bangs it on the table he yells: “WORK! WORK! WORK!”. On the DVD version; this is what Moorloon said. In the first run syndication; this is what he said as well; however, the Teutonic/ German accent of Moorloon had him sounding more like “F***! F***! F***!”. And yes; it rhymes with duck. Donald Duck seemed to have the same problem in his shorts in the past. This was the infamous F-Bomb episode of Ducktales (and probably started the Donald Duck F bomb scare later on since no one but Peggy [Charron] watches DTVA allegedly.). And since it was clear as day that the accent was trouble; in the second run syndication it was re-voiced without the accent to make it sound like what Moorloon was going to say in the script. 

Thankfully, the "F-Bomb" version can still be found on YouTube.  I don't know if Barry Dennen did the re-voicing, but the "cleaned-up" Moorloon sounds very little like the original voice of the character.  An unfortunate price to pay, I'd say!

Next: Episode 16, "Merit-Time Adventure."