I wish we had commercials these days like this one. This is Stubby Kaye selling Corn Chex…

The new word being trampled to death in our public discourse is "biased." It used to mean "unfairly prejudiced for or against someone or something." Now, it seems to mean "having a different opinion than me." If I think my Congressperson is good and you don't, I can say your view doesn't count because you're biased. Only people who think my Congressperson is good are unbiased and therefore have valid opinions.

This is especially true when those biased people who don't like my Congressperson have held that opinion for any length of time. In fact, the longer you believe something, the greater your bias. For quite a while, I've believed that Charles Manson was a dangerous psychotic. But you can't take that opinion seriously because, obviously, I'm biased against him.

"Hate" is also starting to get warped, especially when used in the phrase, "He hates America." It's become one of those insults you use when you want to condemn a person and don't have anything of substance. As I think I've said here before, I don't think it's fair to throw that put-down at anyone unless that person has actually said "I hate America" or "I despise America" or "I loathe America" or something like that.

If you don't agree with me, you're biased and you clearly hate America. No, I can't prove you do but you can't prove you don't. That's what's so great about it as an insult.

Robert Rose has a follow-up question to this installment of Rejection which I recently posted…

You mention: "…I think I usually managed to hit that sweet spot between being Too Cooperative and Not Cooperative Enough. Writers often lose work by being one or the other." This got me curious as to how you would define "too cooperative." My guess is that it might be that the writer is writing exactly what he or she is told and not bringing anything original to the project. There might be times and places where that is useful, but generally when you're hiring someone for a creative position you expect them to be creative.

Obviously a writer who insists he's right about everything and is overly resistant to editing and input from the buyer is going to have problems. But I can imagine that perhaps a writer who never pushes back at all at proposed changes might be seen as lacking any confidence in their own ideas and work. Is it something along those lines, or were you thinking in a different direction?

You pretty much nailed it. One piece of sage advice I got in different forms from any number of older writers was, "Your job is to write, not take dictation." Some writers think the "safe" thing to do is to take whatever the producer or editor says, embellish it a little and give them back their own words and ideas. I suppose that works at times but the usual result is a bad script for which the writer gets blamed. Being too cooperative can also involve being a "yes man" or being unwilling to stand up and defend your own work.

Generally speaking, the people who hire you expect you to hand in something in which you take great pride. If you're too willing to change it, they think, "Gee, he doesn't care about it." That is not a good thing to have them think of you.

Right this moment, I can't think of a story about a writer being too cooperative but I will. I have way more stories about writers being too unwilling to rewrite or change things. Of course.

Marlon Brando prefers not to talk about movies…

I just read this news item…

The Trump administration Wednesday formalized work requirements for recipients of food stamps, a move that will cause hundreds of thousands of people to lose access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP.

This doesn't become effective until April 1 and that surprises me. Why is the Trump administration missing an opportunity to take away poor folks' food just before Christmas?

William Saletan explains how even the House Republicans' report on the Ukraine impeachment inquiry — the one intended to show why he was innocent — proves he's guilty. Not that it will make much difference in how anybody votes on impeachment.

• It's not just Lindsey Graham. It's everyone in politics behaving like some blackmailer has something really, really bad on them.

One of my favorite singers sings one of my favorite songs. It's Audra McDonald with "Make Someone Happy" from the Broadway show, Do-Re-Mi — which starred one of my favorite comic actors, Phil Silvers. Favorites everywhere…

Matthew Yglesias provides an overview of what Donald Trump has accomplished in his first three years in office. It's not a bad list if you think the purpose of the government is to make things better for the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and defenseless.

Politifact itemizes six key findings in the public impeachment hearings.

Here's a report from another Fact Checker. Trump keeps claiming that whatever election tampering and mail-hacking was done in the 2016 election came from Ukraine, not Russia, and involved a Ukrainian company called Crowdstrike. Even his closest aides have told him this is wrong in so many ways, including the fact that Crowdstrike is an American company. The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler would like to award sixteen of his paper's non-coveted Pinocchios to Trump but must settle for the maximum of four. This is a good item to forward to any friends who'll tell you that Trump never tells lies. They'll probably argue that it's not a lie if he really believes it.

Is Trump really trying to dial back U.S. involvement in foreign wars? If you go by his speeches, the answer is yes. But as Daniel Larison notes, if you look at what Trump actually does, you get a very different picture.

And Bob Cesca lays out how the defense of Trump's actions in the quid pro quo matter is crumbling as more and more facts undermine it. Enoy.

I'm sorry — for my sake as well as yours — that I didn't know Dorothy Fontana well enough to have any great stories about her. I did know a lot of great stories she wrote and not all of them were for Star Trek, which is the impression you'll probably get from some of the forthcoming obits. But she also wrote for other TV shows including Ben Casey, Kung Fu, The Waltons, Dallas, The Streets of San Francisco, Land of the Lost and oh-so-many more. The length and breadth of her career could easily be drowned out by itemizing her contributions to the love and longevity of Captain Kirk and his merry band, as well as their successors in that franchise.

I knew her best from her service and devotion to the Writers Guild of America West. Things can get chaotic within that organization where some committees can feel dominated by folks who are angry about their careers and are taking it out on the Guild. Any time I was in a Guild meeting room with Dorothy, she was a wise presence, dispensing sanity and selflessness, gently reminding all to focus on the bigger picture.

She was very smart and very principled and, as far as I could see, respected by all. Dorothy Fontana died peacefully last evening at the age of 80 following a brief illness.

The great Gene Kelly spent a lot of time dancing on movie and TV screens, occasionally with animated characters. The best sequence to meld him and a cartoon was in the 1945 film Anchors Aweigh where he performed with Jerry, the famous mouse from the "Tom & Jerry" franchise. Like most of those films, the sequence in Anchors Aweigh was animated under the supervision of MGM animation producer-directors Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.

Flash forward to 1967. Hanna and Barbera now had their own studio producing cartoons primarily for television. Budgets in TV were way lower and time was much tighter. When Bill and Joe's outfit produced a prime-time animated TV special of Jack and the Beanstalk, it was largely written around a character played by Mr. Kelly. That made it just about mandatory that in one sequence, he would dance with one or more animated characters. Could they possibly top or even equal the beauty and technical grace of the number in Anchors Aweigh?

No, of course not, you big silly. I doubt they even thought that was humanly possible; not on a TV budget with a TV production schedule. As with most things that came out of that studio, the optimal goal was to do the best they could, given the time and money they had to do it with…and I'll give them this: They got pretty decent songs for the special.  This, they achieved by hiring the team of Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen — the same guys Sinatra used. The animation was a bit less impressive but generally it served the story fine.

Below is the dance number in which Gene Kelly dances with two "Woggle Birds." The speaking voices of the birds were done by Leo DeLyon and Cliff Norton but I'm not 100% sure they did the singing voices. H-B loved to dub singing voices with professional singers, which is why Yogi Bear and Boo Boo don't sound like themselves when they sang in the theatrical feature, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear. In this Jack and the Beanstalk special, Jack was played by child actor Bobby Riha but his singing voice was supplied by actor Dick Beals, and Janet Waldo voiced a princess whose singing voice was that of Marni Nixon.  Gene Kelly, of course, sang for Gene Kelly.

I believe they filmed this number by having one or two dancers on the stage with Kelly. They could have done it with one guy dancing for one of the Woggle Birds and then duped and flipped the animation traced off that guy's movements. Or they could have hired two actors — one for each Woggle Bird — and then traced from either. Clearly though, most of the animation of the Woggle Bird on one side of Gene is a mirror-image duplication of the drawings for the Woggle Bird on the other side of Gene — or vice-versa. I'd guess they did it with one dancer…a guess I base on the fact that Hanna-Barbera never spent a dime if they didn't have to.

An animator (reportedly Ed Love) traced the stand-in dancer footage for positioning and timing. In the process of combining Kelly, the birds and the background, the image(s) of the dancer(s) was/were to be omitted.

Technically, it's a far cry from Anchors Aweigh or any theatrical intermingling of live actors and drawn actors. Mr. Kelly and his dance partners rarely seem to be on any floor or even on a consistent level. The video "smears" here and there and that's not a failure of the videotape or the transfer. That's the way it looked on the air. You'll also see black shadow mattes peeking out from behind the birds here and there and that may be intentional.

I have a 52-year-old memory of seeing this special when it first aired. I also have always had real sharp eyesight and the ability to spot things that are only on-screen for a fraction of a second so please take my word for this: I saw a few ultra-brief flashes of a human dancer peeking out from behind a Woggle Bird. They'd almost completely erased the person's image but a few vestiges remained.

H-B had a history of delivering shows to the network at the last possible moment. Even into the eighties when I worked there, shows would get on the air with mistakes and then they'd fix them (sometimes) for future airings. My theory is that when this show was first broadcast, I did see what I recall seeing and they went back and someone — probably Bill Hanna — asked "Okay, what's the cheapest way to fix that?" And some editor or engineer said, "We still have the various layers of video for this number. In the spots where the dancer shows, we could move the background matte a bit to cover him. It might look like a weird shadow or a weird video error but either way, you wouldn't see the dancer. Then we could recomposite the footage and edit it in."

Or maybe it went something like that. But I'm pretty sure I saw something that isn't there now.  What is is kind of cute.

Julien Neel, my favorite one-man singing group, is back on the 'net after a long absence.  This one's either many months late or many months early…

• I keep reading that while working for Marvel, Jack Kirby wrote an outline for the New Gods and had plans to put those characters into the Thor comic. This is true except that Jack never wrote an outline for the New Gods and had no plans to put them into the Thor comic.

This is a series of articles I've written about writing, specifically about the problems faced by (a) the new writer who isn't selling enough work yet to make a living or (b) the older writer who isn't selling as much as they used to. To read other installments, click here.

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It's been a while since I posted one of these…so long that the 50-year anniversary of my career as a professional freelance writer has passed. I'm now closing in on 50.5 years of supporting myself as a writer of all sorts of things but mainly comic books, animation for television and live-action shows for television. I have occasionally been paid as a director, producer, editor, artist or letterer but I consider those adjuncts to writing. When someone asks me what I do for a living, I say with no evasion and absolutely no shame, "I'm a writer."

Here's another lesson I've learned: Don't get mad at the folks who could hire you and don't. No matter how incompetent you might think they are…no matter how blind to your talent they seem to be…no matter how they run you around and dangle you and avoid giving you a straight answer, don't get mad at them. I have met some great, benevolent and wise editors and/or producers — and I'm not saying that because they hired me because some of them didn't.

Most of those who didn't didn't because I wasn't useful to them. We discussed being "useful" in the previous installment of this column. Now, let's discuss being cautious…

Try to remember this about that person in the hiring/buying position: They usually aren't spending their own money. They were hired to buy scripts or hire writers so they have a boss. They may have numerous bosses and they don't want any of them to say, "Why did you waste all that dough on that lousy script?" One of the reasons that credits and experience matter is that they provide a dandy excuse for those who hire you.

Let's imagine for a second that I'm in a position that I never want to be in: Developing screenplays for a big movie studio.

I've been entrusted with a certain amount of buying power, which means a certain amount of cash. If I buy a screenplay from a first-time writer for $100,000 and everyone above and around me thinks it emits a foul odor and is utterly unusable, I lose a lot of stature in my job. If I do that enough times, I will lose that job.

On the other hand, say I buy a screenplay for $750,000 from a writer who's written a number of hugely successful films. As we all know, his or her past successes do not guarantee this one will be great. Look over the careers of anyone who did write one or two blockbusters and you'll almost always see a couple of gobble-gobble turkeys as well, often one right after the biggest hit.  But that writer's experience and track record do improve the odds a little or a lot.

And of greater appeal to some folks with this script-buying power that I never want to have is this: If everyone above and around me thinks the experienced guy's script stinks, I'm probably in less trouble. At least I blew the three-quarters of a mil on a guy who's written movies that justified that kind of loot. It's the difference between betting on a baseball pitcher with an E.R.A. of 2.50 and one with no record at all…and it's a decision anyone at my studio would probably have made.

And like I said, it's a great excuse, which is the same reason TV networks do "testing" before they buy a show. They arrange for it to be shown to test groups and audiences whose responses and reactions are monitored and recorded and analyzed. Every so often, testing does yield useful information, especially on shows not filmed before a live audience.   I was involved once with a cartoon show where the testing informed us that something like 68% of viewers found one certain character's voice very grating and annoying and 57% didn't understand one key aspect of the premise. That kind of thing can be handy to know if you apply it judiciously.

But testing obviously doesn't guarantee that a show will be a hit. If it did, networks wouldn't rapidly cancel something like eight out of every ten new shows or whatever the current ratio is. What testing can do however is to maybe save your butt when your pet project does El Floppo. You can say, "Don't blame me. The testing was through the roof on this." It's the same way with writers: "Don't blame me! This guy wrote [Name of recent hit] and signed a three-picture deal with Dreamworks!"

Examples of this principle permeate every aspect of show business.  It's probably present in other businesses, as well — any field where someone has to make subjective decisions about whom to hire. But it's more visible in the entertainment industry because, first of all, hirings and firings are more visible in the entertainment industry. And also, the subjective decisions are usually much more subjective.

I was friends for many years with a wonderful man named Gary Owens who made a ton o' money with his voice. You may know him as a radio personality, as a cartoon voice artist, as a TV host, as a man who did thousands of commercials and promos, or as the announcer of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and many other programs. A joke he heard often from his friends and peers was "I was worried about you, Gary. I heard a commercial yesterday and you weren't on it!"

He always laughed at that line..and why not? If you were a freelancer who went from job to job every day, wouldn't you laugh if someone kidded you about being in too much demand? Oh, what a cutting insult that is for a performer.

He was often in too much demand…and in a line of work where there were and are hundreds if not thousands of other folks who want to do what he did and most of them were highly qualified. In his prime years, a slow week for Gary was, like, three cartoons, ten network promos and his radio show. I know guys who were almost as good as Gary who would be happy with just one cartoon a week.

There was one thing (and I think, only one thing) I didn't like about Gary. We kept having this conversation…

ME: I can't believe how many times I heard your voice on TV in the past week or so…

HIM: Well, yes, I've been very lucky…

ME: It's not luck, Gary. "Lucky" is a job or two here and there. When someone in your profession has ten bookings a week and turns down five more because he doesn't have the time, there's something more than "luck" going on here.

Absolutely. And what was going on was this — which I'll put in italics because it's key to this story: No one ever got in trouble hiring Gary Owens.

No one. He was on time. He was polite. He was patient. If a recording session was running late and you asked Gary to go sit in the waiting room and wait, he would not complain. He would go sit in the waiting room and wait. And then when you did get him in to record whatever you'd hired him to record, he would do as many takes as you said you wanted. He would do it over and over until you were satisfied even when, as was too often the case, you didn't know what the hell you wanted or how to explain what you wanted. And you'd wind up using Take Two.

The only time he wouldn't do all that waiting and all those takes was when to do so would make him late for someone else's recording session. And when that happened, he'd explain the problem so politely and professionally that you couldn't fault him one bit.

And then when you released him, he'd thank you and maybe tell a few jokes on his way out…and when he left, you'd be very much aware that a very nice man had just left and that you enjoyed every second he was in your presence. But more important was that you'd gotten exactly what you needed from him. And your boss would love it…or if by some chance, he didn't, he wouldn't blame you. Because of all the announcers you could have booked, you had the sense to book Gary Owens and no one ever got in trouble hiring Gary Owens. As a writer, I always hope that someone will say that about me.

I was talking about Las Vegas a few days ago here. For many years, there was a terrific balancing act that worked there…Murillo and Ulysses. I believe they were in a show called Splash! at the Riviera when I saw them and they may have played other venues, as well. I just did some searching of the Internet and I cannot find one word about them anywhere…just this video of them on the Jerry Lewis Telethon in 1989. Watch it and then I'll tell you something interesting about them apart from the fact that Jerry didn't know how to pronounce Murillo's name…

Okay now. That's a pretty good act, wouldn't you say? I mean, could you imagine yourself doing either part at any age? Their whole act ran about twenty minutes, as I recall, and featured some interesting variations on what was basically the same trick. But it was a good trick.

I first became aware of them in the early eighties when I worked on That's Incredible! on ABC. They were brought in for a taping and did about eight separate feats which we then edited into about eight different shows. We got a number of acts from Vegas and often, we had a limited time to tape them in the mid-afternoon because they had to speed back through the desert to perform two shows that night.

Later on, I'd go to Las Vegas myself for a few days at a time and I'd use that connection to get backstage. I loved Vegas backstage, especially at the revues where you would usually find showgirls and dancers wandering about naked. Call me shallow or lecherous or whatever you like but I was a big fan of showgirls and dancers wandering about naked. And I also liked hanging out with comedians and acrobats and other "show folks," especially ones that had great stories.

In those days (roughly 1985-1995), you could still meet hotel employees who'd worked there since the days of the Rat Pack; old guys who had endless anecdotes about Frank and Dino and Sammy and The Mob or what passed for it in Vegas then.

Every one of these people had a tale about Shecky Greene doing something insane while drunk. Every one of them had some story about Sinatra doing something really, really nice for one person and really, really awful to someone else. Every one of them had a story where the punchline was "…and it turned out, she was a hooker who'd been working The Strip for years!"

Every one could and would tell you about some guy getting "whacked." "Whacked" was always the term for it. "Murdered" would have sounded as illegal as hell but "whacked" made it seem like some perfectly-acceptable Vegas tradition: "While we were in Vegas, Harry and I saw Wayne Newton and I hit a slot machine for three hundred bucks and we saw some guy get whacked and oh, you should have seen the buffet at the Flamingo!"

So I went backstage to say hello to Murillo and Ulysses…and then as now, I had no idea which one was Murillo and which one was Ulysses, but only the one on the bottom talked much. It was all very show-businessy backstage, more so than at any TV studio where I ever worked in Hollywood.

The one who talked was…well, it wasn't so much that he was thrilled to meet me. He was thrilled for the opportunity to take me around and introduce me to everyone — including the showgirls and dancers wandering about naked — as a big-shot in network television (which I wasn't) and as "the producer of That's Incredible!" (which I wasn't) and as the man who saw him and his partner perform and insisted on paying them huge sums of money (which we didn't) to be on ABC. It was a fun evening.

A few years later, Murrilo and Ulysses stopped playing Vegas or, as far as I could see, anywhere. I had no idea what happened to them and I may still not know. But on one later trip, I was backstage at another hotel and I got to talking with their Entertainment Director, which is what they call the guy who books performers to perform. I asked him if he'd heard anything about them and he told me the following story which he didn't seem too sure about…

Yeah, what I heard was that one of them, I don't know which, got real concerned about how much longer they could continue to do that act. You know, it took a lot of physical training and practice and what happens if one of them sprains something or gets sick? So he went to someone he knew at some hotel and they offered him a job in the company…a real job, not a performing job. A desk job or something. It paid real well and it had a health plan and you didn't have to go on stage or practice balancing all day and worry about your back giving out…and he took it. Then he went to this partner and said, "I've got some good news for you! I'm giving you 100% ownership of the act! I'm quitting and you can have my share! Bye!"

It wasn't much of an act after that. But at least the guy owned 100% of it!

I'm not sure about that story either. I'm thinking that maybe if I post it here, I'll hear from Murillo or Ulysses or someone who knew them. It was a great act and I'd hate to think that's how it ended. Pity the poor guy who practiced for years learning how to do that and now he's on his own…