There are scripts that qualify as national treasures, and Mel Brooks's THE PRODUCERS is high on the A-list.  It is the ultimate, over the top, gleefully politically incorrect, good-hearted, goof-ball, completely nutso musical tour de force that defies description.  Like a great moment in history, you just have to be there.

The version presented by the Broadway Series at the Ohio Theater---itself a national treasure---does this jewel justice.  The staging is beautiful, the acoustics fine, the cast a delight, the  costumes and sets all they should be.  In short, it's a wonderful evening in a setting that can't be beat. 

If you don't know the story, don't worry, there's not much to tell.  A down-on-his luck producer named Bialystock hooks up with a liberated accountant named Bloom to scam a show funded by horny old women.  They want it to fail, and wind up with a bomb called SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER that turns into a blitzkreig.  What more can be said?

AUSTIN, Texas -- Oh 2004, 2004, bird thou never wert. Was it really that horrible a year, or does it only seem that way?

Abu Ghraib, the endless trials anent Kobe Bryant and Scott Peterson, war in Iraq looking worse every day, Howard Dean eliminated over a whoop and a presidential race so devoid of joy that the high point was when the president claimed God speaks through him -- leaving us to contemplate the news that God doesn't know how to pronounce nuclear and has yet to master subject-verb agreement. "Performance enhancing drugs" in baseball. Ray Charles died. Karl Rove is Man of the Year. We're all overweight. Swift Boat Liars win the presidential race for Bush. Then just to round things off nicely, a terrible natural disaster. What a bummer.

But, look at it this way ... the Boston Red Sox won the championship. Eliot Spitzer is scaring the spit out of the insurance industry (check out those year-end bonuses on Wall Street, El). The Greek Olympics went well. Maybe we could end the payola by just having them in Greece every time. Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France for a record sixth time, a symbolic victory for cancer patients everywhere.

Ohio-based journalist Harvey Wasserman reviews the ongoing controversy surrounding the presidential vote in Ohio. Representative John Conyers - the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee - has called on The Associated Press and the five broadcast networks to turn over raw exit poll data collected on Election Day in order to investigate any discrepancies between the data and the certified election results. [includes rush transcript]

Check it out today

I JUST READ AN ARTICLE BY GARY BECKWITH ABOUT THE WITHHOLDING OF THE RAW POLLS BY THE NATIONAL TELEVISION NETWORKS,I SUGGEST WE POST SOMEWHERE ASKING EVERYONE TO START FLOODING THE NETWORKS WITH EMAILS,SAYING WE WILL BOYCOTT THEM AND THEIR ADVERTISERS,WE WILL TURN OFF OUR TELEVISION SETS IF THEY DO NOT START TALKING ABOUT IT ON THEIR NEWS PROGRAM,I HAVE ALREADY DONE THIS,BUT AM NOT SURE HOW MANY OTHERS HAVE DONE IT OR DOING IT,WE ONLY HAVE A FEW MORE DAYS TO GET THIS DONE,LETS START PUTTING PRESSURE ON THEM,WHO KNOWS,WITH PRAYERS IT MIGHT MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

Harvey Wasserman, last week Christmas Eve, on Democracy Now two days in a row railed against John Kerry for his failure to join the Ohio vote recount battle. On December 23rd it was reported on a blog carried by Dailykos.com that late Thursday afternoon Kerry had filed suit and joined the battle, this news was not carried by any of the mainstream media, neither was it reported until today by FreePress. I think if you claim to tell the truth, you tell the whole truth and not partial truth. Wasserman should apologise to Kerry and the listeners of Democracy Now for failing to uncover the entire story. This situation is serious enough without compounding it be accusations against the person who it affects the most.