To What Can This Be Attributed?

Whew! I’m back.

It was touch and go there for a while, and I’d grown gray with worry (as you can see from my accompanying photograph) about never returning, given my pledge to The Times not to show up until Magic Johnson’s late-night series was canceled. Then yo, that happened Thursday.

(Sourcing report: I got the Magic line from a Calendar editor.)

I’m admitting that because Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle got himself suspended for allegedly lifting material from George Carlin’s book “Brain Droppings” without attribution. It’s Beantown’s big smell.

In contrast, I often attribute my punch lines to comics, and just as often they deny responsibility for them.

(Source of that line: my brother.)

This attribution issue is a bit fuzzy, given the complexity of our attitudes about lies and how we accommodate deception when we deem it in our best interests. After all, pollsters say it matters not to most Americans, for the moment, if President Clinton lied either under oath or publicly on TV when denying having “sexual relations” with Monica S. Lewinsky.

Also, the media have been in a collaborative mode since Moses. How many times have the Boston Globe and other dailies run an Op-Ed piece under the byline of a U.S. senator or representative that they suspected or knew in their heart of hearts was probably ghost-written by a congressional staffer? How many comics write the monologues they deliver? And the grimy little sham of TV news--that newscast stars are often credited with stories dug out largely by unseen field producers--was outed when CNN correspondent Peter Arnett publicly denied having much to do with the network’s retracted “Operation Tailwind” expose that bore his name.

Truth is, we’re fibbing all the time, from something as benign as sloganeering (the New York Times boasting of “All the news that’s fit to print”) to reporters arbitrarily changing “source” to “sources” because that is more credible.

That doesn’t mean what Barnicle allegedly did was righteous, only that a columnist copping punch lines from a comic is not as out of step with tradition as you’d think.

More catching up:

* In the symbols department, note that NBC News has hired Diane Dimond as Geraldo Rivera’s co-anchor on “Upfront Tonight,” a 4:30 p.m. newscast premiering Aug. 24 on cable’s CNBC. Will this pair be kicking some news butt or what?

Dimond’s performance will speak for itself. Although she worked for National Public Radio early in her career, Dimond comes to NBC News from the syndicated “Extra” and spent seven years before that being featured on the syndicated tabloid strip “Hard Copy.” She also did a stint on the tawdry “A Current Affair.”

First Rivera, now Dimond. Draw your own conclusions.

* Why such a fuss in some quarters about Showtime airing Adrian Lyne’s remake of “Lolita”? As if pedophiles need to watch a movie to get juiced. Where was all the hand-wringing when the WB’s “Dawson Creek” premiered last season with an erotic story arc about a 15-year-old--just a year older than “Lo”--sleeping with his lustful, unrepentant high school teacher?

* Sunday’s live (in the East) Jerry Seinfeld stand-up special on HBO (“I’m Telling You for the Last Time”) was tenaciously pastel, a genial giggle here and there, but mostly mundane Jerryisms with rounded edges, all meriting the retirement he supposedly was giving them. Nothing here even to munch on. Pretty amazing, really, when you think how often the sitcom champ, as part of a brilliant foursome on NBC’s “Seinfeld,” crafted trivia into high art. What is it with art anyway?

And another thing . . . (attribution: Seinfeld).

At least Seinfeld didn’t drop one Clintrippsky joke. Or did it come when I dozed off?

* But seriously . . . (attribution: Milton Berle). Is this science-fiction or what? For months and months, a master ventriloquist somewhere in the great cosmos has thrown his voice so that it’s heard yammering about the Clinton “scandal/affair/matter” everywhere on TV simultaneously. Or so it seems. There’s been no end to the repetitive droning, much like Bill Murray reliving the same 24 hours again and again in “Groundhog Day.”

Thus, how nice to find on the Central and Northern California coast (where I spent much of the last several weeks) an absence of buzz about You Know What. Clinton, Schminton. Lewinsky, Schminsky. The sea lions just weren’t talking.

I blew back into L.A. refreshed and renewed, thinking good thoughts. But no. I turn on the TV, and SPLAT--deja vu lands on me like a patty of bull poop. Nothing was different. The same stale winds were blowing westward from the Beltway. Crystal balls were still massing at the border. No change in the speculation or the wags, in and out of the media, spewing it on TV. It was as if time had frozen, and that living for a while in an information void (all right, I did keep up with baseball scores) had cost me nothing. Even though the news cycle had continued recycling during my absence, I was as smart as I was when I left. Maybe not that smart, but no dumber, anyway.

What I really missed while on vacation, though--what I think no one should ever, ever be without--was Calendar. What magnificent newspapering!

(Attribution: a Calendar editor.)

* And speaking of Magic Johnson, it’s absurd to conclude, as some are doing, that African Americans have no immediate future as late-night talk/variety hosts based in part on the fat egg laid by the miscast star of “The Magic Hour.”

“No one will take a shot on a black talk-show host to do late night for a while,” a major syndicator told The Times last week.

If so, what could be more pathetically archaic? It’s that mentality that for years stunted the participation of blacks and other minorities in TV.

Instead, the reason for the failure of Johnson’s low-rated hour is a no-brainer that’s unrelated to skin color.

Beyond the high-wattage smile, no talent. Zippo.

With eight weeks to prove himself, Johnson affirmed only that he was far, far out of his zone as someone required to deliver snappy patter and occasional humor in the company of other celebrities. If he had anything worth saying, he disguised it well. No combination of producers or sidekicks, regardless of their smarts, could have saved him. He was a brick in free fall, the lead climber who tumbles and takes everyone else down the mountain with him.

How could this have come as a surprise to the Twentieth Television impresarios watching “The Magic Hour” evolve even before it premiered? Go figure. Johnson’s case is symbolic of TV executives underestimating their audience, of presuming that viewers of any race or ZIP code would enter a state of ga-ga over a guy merely because he was amiable, charismatic (although that was missing on TV, too) and once an extraordinary basketball player.

Some also point to this year’s other black-hosted talk-show failures in late night, “The Keenen Ivory Wayans Show” and “Vibe,” as evidence, along with Johnson, that these guys just can’t cut it. Yet those bombs are a trifling few compared with the oodles of white late-nighters who have gone stinko through the years. Although Arsenio Hall is the only African American to achieve even fleeting success hosting for the late-night, “hip, urban” (read: black) crowd, only a wee handful of blacks (or women, for that matter) have even gotten a shot. With Hall in the mix, in fact, blacks are doing better in late night, percentage-wise, than whites.

* Finally, there is definitely a mix-up. I’ve looked more closely at the photo attached to this column, and it’s not me. This is the mug of a much older man, a dinosaur. If it isn’t yanked immediately, I’m rejoining the sea lions. Either that or the Grecian Formula goes on my expense account.