Wag-the-Dog Tea Parties

As Fox News, the Wall Street Journal et al are heavy-breathing about Tea Party protests on Tax Day, Gallup discloses that Americans' "Views of Income Taxes Among Most Positive Since 1956."

But reality is no more a deterrent for Rupert Murdoch than it was for William Randolph Hearst when he was stirring up the Spanish-American War in 1898 with a drumbeat of scare headlines. To a message from artist Frederick Remington reporting "There is no war," Hearst famously replied, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." And he did.

In a 24/7 news world, however, Murdoch's efforts seem less like Hearst's than those of the mental case who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt in "Arsenic and Old Lace," blowing a bugle and rushing up the stairs with a sword, yelling "Charge!"

One reason the Tea Parties won't work as a Wag-the-Dog move lies in Gallup's report that Americans who say taxes are too high has fallen from 68 percent in 2001 to 46 today:

"Since 1956, there has been only one other time when a higher percentage of Americans said their taxes were about right--in 2003, when 50% did so after two rounds of tax cuts under the Bush administration.

"The slightly more positive view this year may reflect a public response to President Barack Obama's economic stimulus and budget plans. He has promised not to raise taxes on Americans making less than $250,000, while cutting taxes for lower- and middle-income Americans. The latter has already begun, as the government has reduced the withholding amount for federal income taxes from middle- and lower-income American workers' paychecks."

Add this to the undoubtedly large numbers of taxpayers who, in meeting today's deadline, will find that, as a result of falling income last year, they can expect a refund, and the tax protests look like they will turn out to be as limp as an overused tea bag.

Sex, Power and Aging in the Movies

This weekend, a fine actor named Frank Langella is being seen in a new film, "Starting Out in the Evening," which is getting good reviews in the New York Times, Rolling Stone and points between.

In it, Langella plays a writer and was directed by Andrew Wagner, a college classmate of one of my sons. Thirty years ago, Langella played a writer in "Diary of a Mad Housewife," directed by a friend of mine, Frank Perry, from a script by his wife, Eleanor.

In both movies, the writer ends up in bed with complicated women, as a self-centered seducer in "Diary" and as the vulnerable seduced in "Starting Out."

In the three decades between, as age diminished Langella's sexual power on the screen, it transformed him into a powerhouse of an actor in roles from Dracula and Sherlock Holmes to the evil White House chief of staff in "Dave."

Along the way, in "Eddie," he played the owner of the New York Knicks who hires Whoopi Goldberg to coach the team and, in real life, they lived together for a time as a couple that conjures up marvelous visions of energy and elegance.

Next year, at 70, he will be seen as the famous Unindicted Co-conspirator in "Frost/Nixon," Ron Howard's film of the Broadway play for which Langella won a Tony.

Aging sucks, but it can have its compensations.