…the PBS doc The Choice 2004 in its entirety online.

And on Friday, for our readers in the north, CBC’s Newsworld cable channel (alas, not the main, viewable-on-Seattle-cable CBC channel) is rerunning the French doc The World According to Bush, depicting the prez and his family as “one of inconceivable family secrets, painstakingly concealed.”

…to see the most talked-about TV moment of the week, Jon Stewart’s thorough demolishing of the Crossfire twins.

…concerning the sexual harassment suit placed against Bill O’Reilly by a disgruntled female staffer. The charges, if true, are despicable; but, as we’ve all seen, such behavior is too sadly common among egotistical powermongers of assorted ideological persuasions.

However, I was intrigued by a remark by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann (what the hell is this guy with at least two thirds of a brain still doing on a channel that’s actively vying to become more dumbed-down than Fox?). Olbermann compared O’Reilly to one Boake Carter, a controversial ’30s radio commentator totally forgotten today (except for one quotation—”In the time of war the first casualty is truth”).

Boake Carter’s life story, as told by Olbermann and confirmed by a quick net search, has little in common with O’Reilly’s. But it’s still fascinating.

In the early years of network radio, Carter had risen from a local reporter in Philadelphia to a network “editorialist.” By 1932 he had a regular 15-minute opinion show, in which he lectured on the events of the day. As the ’30s depressingly wore on, Carter’s ideology apparently became more stridently anti-Semitic, anti-FDR, anti-liberal, etc. In 1938 his sponsor chose not to renew his contract.

It took a year for him to find another home, on Mutual (the WB of radio networks). On his new show he was pro-Roosevelt and pro-Jewish. He even announced his allegiance to a “Biblical Hebrewism” sect, the Society of the Bible in the Hands of its Creators. But that turned out to be a personality cult of the basest kind. Carter lost his professional reputation, wife, home, and fortune to the cult’s leader. By the time Carter died in 1944, he’d already become a has-been.

Bush’s affected Texas accent mysteriously disappeared. He scowled less. But he still stumbled his way out of answering the questions and into short pre-scripted speeches about whole other topics, speeches laced with code words appealing to the fundamentalists and the Limbaugh listeners. The figurehead of the neocon revolution was reduced to cheap jibes about Ted Kennedy, non-Fox news media, and big government.

Meanwhile, Kerry just got smoother and slicker. Not quite Clinton smooth, but closer. His answers weren’t always well-delivered (or ones with which I’d agree). But he did answer everything, lucidly.

Meanwhile, some ad-industry vets have compiled a short Quicktime video entitled The Ten Year Difference, comparing Bush’s performance in the first debate to his (far more effective) performance while running for Texas governor a decade before.

Long before he played Superman, I’d seen Reeve on the soap opera Love of Life. It was never one of the most popular soaps, but I liked it. It was only 25 minutes long (a newscast filled the rest of the half-hour), so it moved faster than most; but it was still produced live-on-tape, so it lacked the frenetic cutaway editing seen on most of today’s hour-long soaps. Jennifer Aniston’s daddy was a cast member, as were the guy who later played the Twin Peaks killer dad and the guy who played Bogart in Play It Again Sam.

Anyhoo, Reeve was energetic and somehow sympathetic in the role of a slick, two-timing swindler on the show. I could tell he had a big career ahead of him.

Bush’s suit bulge reappeared. But it looked less like the rumored earphone antenna wire and more like a Secret Service-mandated flak jacket, which he probably wears when he’s in public anyway. (Of course, there might still be a wire under that. Just might, I must say.)

And it was mighty disconcerting to see and hear Charles Gibson moderating the proceedings. I don’t want to be reminded on Friday night of Monday morning.

As for the candidates’ performances, Bush improved to the point that he could give off a few complete sentences, some of them even coherent. Yet he still fumbled and sputtered frustratingly, such as when he avoided answering a citizen who asked if he could admit to having ever made a mistake.

Kerry, meanwhile, remained unflappable. And he warmed up in the face of civilian questioners, or made a good act of warming up. He was the smooth, in-the-groove Road Runner to Bush’s awkward, desperate Coyote.

I told this last comparison to an acquaintance, who thought it insufficiently harsh. He felt Bush shouldn’t be interpreted as a cartoon character, even a humorously malevolent one, but as an out-and-out villain. I say, if you can’t have fun with your enemies, you’re letting them psych you out. Which is just ilke “letting the terrorists win.”

…with which to respectfully remember Rodney Dangerfield, who rode the ups and downs of professional comedy for almost half a century; and who, unlike so many Ed Sullivan Show regulars from the ’60s, remained big into the ’90s, thanks largely to a little movie with a puppet gopher.

…I’m currently watching the first Presidential debate. I’m watching it on C-SPAN (and, with a Net connection, so can you). They’ve got a split-screen shot of both candidates on at all times, with no annoying cutaways to the questioners.

Kerry and Bush are giving off the respective auras of my favorite Cartoon Network duo, I. M. Weasel and I.R. Baboon. Kerry’s articulate, level-headed, and cool. Bush is muffing his lines, darting his eyes about nervously, and turning every response into a lead-in to some pre-scripted talking point.

Of course, the op-ed pundits have warned us for the past week not to judge the debates on body language but on message content. There, too, Kerry’s mopping up Bush like just about every baseball team’s mopped up the Mariners this year.

Kerry’s giving solid responses, short and tart but packed with action proposals (or phrases that sound like action proposals). Bush reiterates past buzzwords and demographically-tested catch phrases.

Of course, the cable channels will declare Bush the “winner” of the debate, no matter what.

…and uploaded John Kerry’s Letterman spot in its entirety.

This is the traditional day for celebrating the change of seasons, the harvest, the end of toiling in the fields, the bounty of the Earth, and the enjoyment of work’s happy result.

We can only hope it’s a change of seasons in the sociopolitical sphere as well.

As one potential sign, John Kerry’s come out swingin’, and not just for the mythical “swing voter.”

And on Monday night, Kerry followed his Jon Stewart gig with a 23-minute spot on Letterman. He made a few stinging gags about Halliburton, Ashcroft, Bush’s tax plans, and his own perfect hair. He flung an index card back behind him like Dave used to do. And he gave some serious barbs about the Iraqi puppet regime’s impending collapse, and about how the neocons’ hubris has left the US more isolated and the terrorists more powerful.

He gave a more entertaining performance, and a politically heavier one, than Clinton gave Arsenio Hall in ’92.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN SUPER-MESS-O’-POTAMIA: It might not be true that, as Kerry alleged, the Bushies had “no plan to win the peace.” Canada’s own anti-corporate essayist Naomi Klein claims they’ve had a plan all along—a deliberately brutal scheme of “shock treatment,” intended to impose the purest example of pro-corporate ideology yet seen on the planet. The IMF/World Bank “adjustments” in Latin America and Africa would be just read-through rehearsals, compared to what would be done to (but not necessarily for) Iraq.

As Klein interprets the scheme, the entire Iraqi economy would be sold off to the multinationals, using whatever legal tricks the neocons could write into the puppet regime’s constitution. The alleged site of the ol’ Garden of Eden would become a paradise for investors. As for the Iraqi people: Well, they’d already endured decades of hardship and repression, so a little more wouldn’t stir ’em to revolt.

The problem, as it usually is with attempts to ideologically purify real societies, is that real life refuses to work out according to plan. In this case, the US/UK occupation army never fully pacified all the disparate tribes and sects that wanted a piece of the post-Saddam governance. And few of them were fond of the neocons’ plans for privatizations and mass layoffs. All hell ensued, and continues to do so.

Harper’s still has a wimpy web presence, so I have to link to part of Klein’s essay as retyped by a reader and posted to a political discussion-board site.

…getting relevant again. Witness its piece on “The Bush Campaign’s TV Commercial If He Was Running Against Jesus.”

…offers tips for the aspiring journalist on how to televise yourself in a hurricane.

Our pal and real estate agent Marlow Harris appears next week on What You Get For The Money, a series on the Fine Living cable channel (channel 204 on Comcast Seattle).

…has hewed to the old Holiday Inn slogan, “The best surprise is no surprise.” It’s been a safe, demographically-targeted program thus far.

The only oddities in the spectacle: The relative lack of suburban “country” singers (just about the only celebrity performers at Bush pere‘s conventions), and the prominence of show tunes and disco music at a convention whose official platform endorses homophobia.

The verbal gaffes thus far have been predictable ones. Laura Bush deliberately mistook the Iraqi puppet state for a “democracy.” And Schwarzenneger tried to rehabilitate the spirit and tactics of Richard Nixon.

Meanwhile, the protests in the Manhattan streets may have topped 0.75 million participants, but attract almost no corporate-media attention.

We’ll all watch to see if the broadcast and cable networks will pay kinder attention to the Republican convention than they did to the Democratic convention. You may recall that Fox News and “the networks of NBC” barely acknowledged the Dems’ speakers, preferring to spend time with their own staff pundits’ insult-filled blather.

We’ll also see if and how the Bushies will try to sell themelves to what used to be known as the “mainstream audience.”

This gang of cynical manipulators has worked hard to divide America, then to seek approval from only two castes—billionaires and fundamentalists. How will they re-interpret their hatred and bigotries into a “uniting” positive image?

I know we’ll get a few things:

1) Suburban “country” singers.2) Insult comedians.

3) Arnold Schwarzenegger.

4) John McCain.

5) Slick infomercial segments about the sanctity of (hetero) marriage, the nuclear family, and stem cells.

6) Sappy, insincere promises to help senior citizens.

7) 9/11 references up the wazoo.

8) Flags everywhere.

9) Jesus references everywhere.

10) A Bush speech that’s well-rehearsed, free of flubs, and utterly content-free.

11) Spin-meisters and pundits uniformly lauding Bush’s adequate, content-free speech as one of the great orations in world history.

12) Immediate resumption of the most vile attack ads as soon as the convention’s over (if they’re even paused during it).

Remember: There is no level of sleaze to which the Republicans will not stoop. If they win (or re-steal) this election, I don’t know if there will even be a Presidential election in 2008. There could be some trumped up “terrorist crisis” used as an excuse to indefinitely suspend the Constitution and instill martial law. That’s how serious this is, folks.