David Bianculli recalls The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour which went on the air in 1967, developed a strong following against formidable competition…and soon got yanked off the air, not because nobody was watching but because certain people didn't like what was being said on it.

I remember having strongly-mixed reactions to the show. I liked a lot of the comedy on it, especially segments that featured the supremely deadpan Mr. Pat Paulsen. My politics at the time though could probably be best described as extremely Conservative but with an extremely low opinion of the Conservative leaders of the time. (Though my political views have changed considerably, one constant has been my belief that just because someone says things I agree with doesn't mean that that person is a good person, competent, honest or even sincere about what they say. In fact, I'm kinda suspicious of anyone who doesn't think they have some weasels in their own ranks.)

We had a neighbor lady down the street who thought that show was a bigger threat to America than, say, someone dropping a nuclear bomb on us. She used to get upset at things like if TV Guide said Jack Benny was going to be on that program…well, that meant that Jack Benny was a traitor who had sold out to The Enemy. Her problem essentially was a belief that the show involved young people criticizing older people. If you were in your twenties or thirties, you should always defer to people in their forties or older…and Tom and Dick Smothers were very bad people because they had the nerve to find fault with Congress or the President of the United States.

I never even tried to engage her in a discussion about this. I was much younger than she was and therefore not entitled to a contrary opinion. I did of course notice the major flaw in her argument, which was that there were older people who thought the President and Congress were wrong, and all the Brothers were doing was saying the same thing. But some beliefs are more emotion than logic and you waste your time trying to be logical with those people.

I think time has vindicated most of what the Smothers Brothers said and did. Their various "comeback" attempts at TV didn't soar, possibly because they were nowhere near as good as the original show. One time when I was at a party with Tommy Smothers, I heard someone say to him, "In the long run, you won your battle." And he replied, "Yeah, but we lost our show."

• I'm not afraid of immigrants. I am however afraid of the people who want to protect me from immigrants.

A recent interview with one of my favorite performers, Audra McDonald…

Keith Enright has a question about the Criterion release of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on DVD and Blu Ray. As you may recall, I am heard on the commentary track. (If you don't have a copy, I highly recommend it. You can order a copy of it here. And now, let's tackle Keith's question…

Maybe my memory is failing and you can just point me to a previous post, but I'm wondering if you have any further stories about working with Criterion on this? I'm a huge Criterion fanatic and have also loved this movie since childhood. I have the previous MGM Laserdisc boxset as well as the Criterion set and consider them both essential to telling the story of the film.

I think the Criterion set is amazing and I love that you're a part of it. Any tidbits on how you got involved, whether they paid you in discs, or if you were involved in anything that didn't make it to the final product?

There were a few hunks of the commentary track that didn't make it in due to time limits. People think that such tracks are recorded in real time while the commenters are watching it once…and some are. This one was done in long chunks in three sessions and we did some sections over and over until everyone was satisfied with them. Then there was a lot of editing to move certain speeches closer to the on-screen action they were describing. I was very impressed with how Criterion sets a high standard and then spends the time and money necessary to achieve it.

They paid me in money and sent me some discs. And how I got involved is not that interesting a story. My friend Mike Schlesinger was at a film screening and he ran into a friend of his — Karen Stetler, who is a producer for Criterion. She told him, "We're doing a restored version of Mad World." He said, "You have to have a commentary track by Mark Evanier and me." She said fine. They called me and I said yes and suggested we also get Paul Scrabo on the track. They said yes.

We recorded the track over several days…in the same recording studio where I voice-direct The Garfield Show and most of the other cartoons I've done. It felt a little odd to be on the wrong side of the glass but I got used to it after an hour or so.

If I didn't make it clear in past posts, let me state clearly that this was one of the great thrills of my life, being involved in the super-deluxe release of a movie that meant so much to me. Don't tell Karen but I would have paid them for the privilege. If you don't like this movie, fine. I probably don't like at least one of your favorite films and you're not going to convince me it's not wonderful just as I'm not going to convince you that yours is not a great movie. I'm just real, real glad that I had the chance to "give back" a little to this film.

I've decided to try something. Let's see if it works. Rather than post on and off all day about things Trump and his crew are doing that I find outrageous, I'm going to try doing one post per day listing four of them.

Maybe then I won't spend all day thinking about The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight. This will at least benefit those of you who come to this site to read the stuff about comics and late night shows and Frank Ferrante and the evils of cole slaw…and want to just skip over items that remind them who's in the White House and what they're doing. Here are today's four…

1. Trump believes it will help the economy if investment counselors are unburdened by rules that prevent them from screwing over their clients with faulty advice.  Actually, it might be easier to just mail all your money to Goldman Sachs.  Jonathan Chait has more.
2. Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway went on with Chris Matthews and talked about how two Iraqis engineered "The Bowling Green Massacre" and that's why we need to all line up behind Donald Trump, the only man who can prevent you from being massacred like those poor people in Bowling Green.  As Kevin Drum notes, not only was this massacre a fantasy but it's one that some people will refuse to believe did not occur.
3. Daniel Larison notes that Trump's idea of foreign policy is just to act real tough with everyone for no good reason. "Omni-directional belligerence," he calls it and it seems to be based on the premise that acting real tough is the same thing as being real tough…and appearing real tough is better than being real smart.
4. And finally for today: Donald Trump is a lousy cosplayer. His Thor outfit (see above) is just pathetic.

That's Today's Four Bad Things From Your Trump Administration. Tune in tomorrow for four more. Sadly, I don't think I'll have any trouble finding four more each day.

If you don't know what gerrymandering is, here's a real good explanation.

• Trump sending troops to stop people from saying Hillary got more votes; also will invade "Celebrity Apprentice" to shore up bad ratings.

Hey, why do cartoon characters wear gloves? There are a couple of reasons and one of them, believe it or not, is racial. What isn't, these days?

I suspect a lot of folks who voted for Trump are getting increasingly antsy about what they voted for. The ones I know are all decent people who are tolerant of all races and religions. They therefore have to be uncomfy with some of the people who are being added to Team Trump in Washington…for example, Michael Anton, who is now a senior national security official in that administration. As Jonathan Chait notes, Anton is a firm believer that the only "real" Americans are white Republicans and they must do everything possible to fight anyone who isn't one of them. Scary.

Allan Burns was one of the creators of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and here he remembers that experience, including the network's refusal to have Mary be a divorcee.

One of the many groundbreaking things about that series was that it seemed to loosen network control of a series. This was the case with All in the Family, as well. There were so many stories about executives at CBS being dead wrong about those two shows — predicting failure where success was the outcome — that a lot of folks at networks began backing off, letting the producers have more say about what they produced. The trend is recent years has gone in the opposite direction and I've never heard anyone — not even at the networks — who thinks that's a good thing.

Third one of these this year.  For those of you who are new to this blog: When I get so burdened with deadlines that I don't expect to be able to post much for a day or three, I put up one of these nifty graphics to indicate a few speed bumps for the time being.  I dunno why I chose Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup…some connect to "comfort food," I guess.  It signals to you to explore the remote possibility that there's something else on the Internet for you to read besides my blog.  Here are a few thoughts though before I focus on the writing that allegedly pays…

Hey, speaking of getting paid, artist Colleen Doran has a good discussion going about what kind of income one can reasonably expect from the profession of drawing pictures.  Of course, it depends a lot at how good you are at drawing those pictures and maybe on how good you are at marketing them.  But go read what she and her commenters have to say.  I really like that kind of discussion as opposed to the "you can achieve anything if you're determined enough" nonsense that I think does much harm to newcomers. If that worked, I would have married Mary Tyler Moore when I was twelve years old.

I said here that I was trying to write less about Donald Trump so I would think less about Donald Trump.  It may not look like I'm succeeding but oh yes, I am, people!  I could write 7-10 times a day about how awful I think this man is for the country.  Any day I can hold it down to two or three, I'm doing well.  I just saw a whole mess o' tweets from unabashed racists and Jew-haters who are doing happy dances and I'm resisting the urge to write about how being on the same side as certain people means you really need to question your perceptions.  I'm still shaken whenever I agree with Dick Cheney.

I will be back here at a normal posting pace when things clear up and scripts are sent.

Today on Stu's Show, Stu Shostak talks with my buddy Mark Rothman, a TV writer-producer with many, many credits to his name including Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, The Odd Couple, The New Odd Couple, She's the Sheriff, Makin' It and Busting Loose. This is his second visit to Stu's program and I think they'll be talking mostly about Laverne & Shirley this time…but who knows where the conversation may roam with these guys? Mark is outspoken and he and I have been known to have friendly arguments about everything, including where we have lunch. We each think each other's taste in restaurant is rotten…and I, of course, am right and he is wrong. But he's right about other stuff so tune in and hear what he has to say.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there and then. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond. Then shortly after a show concludes, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. And if you act now, Stu may just give you eight for the price of six! He's all heart…

A lot of people seem shocked that Donald Trump is doing things he said he'd do. At least two of my Trump-backing friends — and a lot of people I see writing on the 'net — say they voted for him because they liked some of the things he said and assumed that the stuff they didn't like was just empty campaign rhetoric…things like building that wall or banning Muslims.

Well, it's nice to know that he's not keeping all his promises. He promised to go up against the pharmacy lobby and to negotiate drug prices way down but today he met with "Big Pharma," and now he's against that. Kevin Drum has more.

I seriously doubt Trump will ever do anything that would prevent a rich person from getting richer, no matter how many poor or middle-class people suffer for it. That seems to be his big problem with doing things that help the environment. It often gets in the way of maximizing profit.

If you were a fan of Dan Spiegle's work and would like to honor his memory, make a contribution in his name to the Carpinteria Valley Historical Society. It was a favorite place of Dan's and you can read all about it and get the address over on this page.

I will be a guest for some (not all) of this year's San Diego Comic Fest. What this is is a low-key convention that recaptures some of the magic of the early days of what we now know as Comic-Con International…back when it was mostly about comic books and nowhere near as crowded. It's run by some of the folks who worked on the early cons in San Diego, though it is in no way affiliated with that huge gathering.

The San Diego Comic Fest has an opening night ceremony on Friday, February 17 and then it's open Saturday through Monday, February 18-20. I should be there most of Saturday and Sunday, primarily hosting or appearing on panels about a man named Jack Kirby. 2017 is the 100th anniversary of Jack's birth and a lot of comic conventions this year will be featuring special events and tributes in his honor. You can find out all about this one at the San Diego Comic Fest website. They have some other terrific guests and themes. I'll tell you more about what I'm doing there once the schedule is firmed-up.

My next convention after that will be WonderCon, which takes place March 31-April 2 in the newly-expanded Anaheim Convention Center. Then I have nothing until Comic-Con International in San Diego, which is July 20-23. Later this year though, I expect to be making a couple of rare (for me) appearances at East Coast conventions. I'll be the guest roaming the floor because he has nothing to sell and refuses to sit behind a table all day.