And Now Your Host, Ross Perot!

Kees-a-me, Eddie!

--Topo Gigio with Ed Sullivan

*

H. Ross Perot may never be President, but he’s already Ed Sullivan.

Perot spent the weekend emceeing his own really big shew in Dallas where several thousand members of his United, We Stand, America, Inc. gathered for a televised issues conclave at which a slew of star Democrats and Republicans gave speeches.

CNN was there for some of it, C-SPAN for all of it, capturing on camera the likes of prominent Democrat Jesse Jackson and GOP presidential hopefuls Bob Dole, Phil Gramm, Pat Buchanan and Pete Wilson paying homage to Perot--as a political sword of Damocles--merely by showing up.

What a showman, what a regular toast of the town. Every time you tuned in, a beaming Perot was on stage in the ballroom, exuberantly introducing a speaker or giving a twanging thumbs up afterward.

“How about that?”

“Isn’t she somethin’?”

“What did you think of that speech? Wasn’t that somethin’?”

“Boy, I tell ya!”

“And now, our next guest. . . .”

So Sullivanesque was Perot that he seemed to have been plucked from a 1950s-1960s time capsule and colorized. You half expected to hear Ray Bloc and the orchestra and see Perot introduce Elvis or do shtick with Sen~or Wences or the little Italian mouse puppet, Topo Gigio: “Kees-a-me, Rossie!”

Like Sullivan, Perot has flourished on television despite having no gift for public speaking nor any natural talent for the camera. He began on TV as a nerd. His success there--at least to the extent that his ideas are being heeded--is a testament not only to his own bullishness but also to the intimacy of this medium that he has learned to manipulate, from network morning shows to CNN’s “Larry King, Live.” He ignores or ridicules questions he’s asked, answers those he isn’t asked. Although the antithesis of Madison Avenue slickness, moreover, his crude visuals and self hype get the job done, as he and his United We Stand, America 800 number, for example, have become inseparable in 1995.

Either Perot or someone serving him knew the score at Dallas. Political candidates on the stump like to advertise their patriotism by having a huge American flag exhibited on a wall behind them. Perot advanced that a step last weekend, instead displaying his 800 number across a massive banner at the rear of the stage--where it was certain to be visible on live TV--as well as on the front of the dais used by speakers.

Although Perot looked as much a candidate for Chief Emcee as Chief Executive, a number of pundits said afterward that the Dallas meeting affirmed his ambition to either shape the course of the 1996 presidential election or make another run for the White House himself. In other words, kees-a-him, America!

If not that, he proved that he could always host his own variety show.

*

Mail Call: A batch of letters arrived regarding a column on Showtime’s “Hiroshima” movie and other TV programs noting the A-bombing of Japan and its surrender to end World War II. A few excerpts:

“I was a commander in the U.S. Navy 50 years ago, discussing with my commanding officer in Pearl Harbor orders to join the fleet in its planned invasion of Sugami Bay and Tokyo. So when the news reached us that the Bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, to say that I was relieved is an understatement, for it obviously meant the end of the war. The loss of life and horrors of the bombing of civilians in one provincial city was not the foremost thought in my mind. I felt that not only my life had been spared but that the war itself was over, and all the useless killing would stop.

“We had been fire-bombing Tokyo night after night with tens of thousands of innocent civilians being burned or boiled to death in the ponds of that city, and I saw no moral difference in being boiled or fried to being vaporized. All war was hell, and now this war would be over.

“I now live with my Japanese wife and two half-Japanese children whom we brought back to have educated as Americans: a daughter who graduated from Stanford and a son who is now working on his master’s degree at the USC School of Cinematography. My older son married a Japanese girl in Tokyo, so that I now have 10 Japanese American grandchildren, which should indicate that I might not be entirely anti-Japanese.

“I do, however, resent the attitude of revisionist PC curators and so-called ‘historians’--with little if any firsthand knowledge of the World War II period, either in America or Japan--in rewriting history to suit their own PC concepts. I want my children, and all other Americans, to learn history as it actually happened, not as it may be popular to commercialize it today.”

HORACE BRISTOL

Ojai

“Your term ‘Truman’s folksy euphoria is jolting’ does not sit too well with me. Had you been able to see me when I read the news that our nation had used the A-bomb against Japan, I’m sure that you would have noticed something much stronger than Truman’s ‘folksy euphoria.’ Only a couple of months before, I had seen all of my gun crews blown away by kamikazes at Okinawa.”

LETTERIS LAVRAKAS

Costa Mesa

“Who the hell are you to call the Japanese internment ‘unconscionable?’ Call it tragic or unfortunate if you will, but who are you to sit here comfortably in 1995 and judge the morality of our leadership in wartime?

“FDR signed the order. He was only one of the finest, most decent men ever to lead this country, so respected he was elected four times. He thought the internment was a good idea. But I guess he wasn’t as wise as you, Howard. Too bad you weren’t in the White House then. Surely you would have done the conscionable thing. How arrogant can you be!”

STEVEN FOSTER

Los Angeles