TELLING THE TRUTH

And the winner of moveon.org's "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest is "Child's Pay" by Charlie Fisher. Not a word is spoken, yet the ad tells the truth in simple, powerful terms. It conveys the message that the Maximum Leader is willing to saddle America with a trillion-dollar debt. You'll be seeing it on national television soon.

Made by a 38-year-old ad executive from Denver, according to a moveon.org press release, the 30-second spot "features young children working in difficult service and manufacturing jobs -- washing dishes, hauling trash, repairing tires, cleaning offices, assembly-line processing and grocery checking, followed by the [printed] line: 'Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?'" Side note: Fisher used to be a registered Republican.

The other winners were all consolation prizes. The Funniest Ad ("If Parents Acted Like Bush"), though cute, is not really funny; the Best Animation Ad ("What I Been Up To ...") is not very imaginative, though it's marginally better than its rivals, which isn't saying much; and Best Youth Ad ("Bring It On"), though it's superbly done, matches the Maximum Leader's own stridency and is unlikely to persuade anyone not already convinced of its argument.

Finally, since I made such a big deal about it yesterday, I feel obligated to report that last night's live Webcast from the Hammerstein Ballroom was pretty boring unless you liked the noise that passed for music. I didn't. The only part of the show I did enjoy were Al Franken's remarks about what the Maximum Leader knew, if he knew it, and whether he understood what he knew or didn't know.

Postscript: Here's a thoroughly reported and far more sympathetic review of the evening than mine.

January 13, 2004 10:39 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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