Here are two clips from a self-congratulatory special that CBS did in 1978. This one starts with Mary Tyler Moore singing a song all about shows that appeared on CBS. It was written at a time when all the advertising research told the networks that they had to sell their programming with the word "family."

If you listen to the lyrics and considered what shows and stars were mentioned and which ones weren't, you might guess it was written by a gay man who thought the biggest stars were the ones who'd appeared on Broadway — and you'd be right. It was Jerry Herman and some of the couplets are pretty darned clever. At one point, there's a clip from My Favorite Martian and a lyric that goes, "Mr. Walston with antenna…" Quick: Guess what Mr. Herman rhymed with that…

As you can see, the excerpt ends with the beginning of a big parade of everyone they could round up who'd ever been on a regular series on CBS…except Merv Griffin, who claimed they omitted him because someone at the network was sore at him for beating them in a business deal. But don't worry: Here's the clip of that parade. Notice that some of those folks apparently weren't there for the big taping so they were edited in — Bill Cosby and the Smothers Brothers, for example. And it's all announced by the voice of the robot from Lost in Space, Dick Tufeld…

A quick question from Mark Thorson, who is also one of my most diligent spotters-of-typos on this blog…

It is my understanding you have to belong to every union for which you qualify, so a writer-director would be a member of both DGA and WGA. You've written several times about your membership in WGA. Are you or have you been a member of any other unions?

The WGA is my only current union unless you also count ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. And come to think of it, we should count ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

Years ago, I joined the Screen Actors Guild because I was an extra in a sketch on one show, plus I had done a few audience warm-ups on different shows and that's a SAG job. At one point, I got a notice to join AFTRA because of other warm-up jobs I'd done and I filled out the forms and sent them in and they were supposed to do something and send me a bill and they never did…and I never followed-up because by then, I'd stopped doing warm-ups. So I guess I never joined AFTRA.

I went on Honorable Withdrawal (or whatever they call it) from SAG and also from The Animation Guild. I joined the latter back in my Hanna-Barbera, Ruby-Spears and Disney days and even picketed in one strike. But when I stopped working for those studios, I moved to inactive status. That's a much better union now than it was when I was an active member. Back then, I was very much torn between my beliefs, which are basically pro-union, and my feelings that The Animation Guild — which then had a different name — was run badly and to some extent as a puppet of Management. I'm happy to say that's ancient history.

• Trump won't release taxes or medical records or even explain his secret plan to defeat ISIS. But Hillary's the one who's hiding stuff.

The other day here, I mentioned a Red Skelton movie called A Southern Yankee, which was made in 1948. My buddy Tom Galloway suggested I mention to you that it's on Turner Classic Movies this evening as part of their Slapstick Festival. On my set (it may be different on yours), it starts at 11 PM following The Bank Dick with W.C. Fields and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I don't think Mr. Fields, Mssrs. Abbott and Costello or Mr. Skelton were in any movies that were much better than those.

Another great of comedy was represented in A Southern Yankee. At the time, Buster Keaton was out of favor with audiences…or maybe just the folks who then ran studios. He was also out of money so he worked as an uncredited gagman on a lot of movies, this one included. You don't sense the Keaton mind in many of the others but you sure do in this one.

As I wrote here, I once had the chance to hang out with Red Skelton once or twice a week for a while. I kept peppering him with questions about his work and he kept telling me dirty jokes — often the same dirty jokes, each time I encountered him. At the time, Buster Keaton's features were just becoming available to me for viewing at local film fests so I asked Skelton over and over about Keaton. Over and over, Skelton would say something like, "Oh, great comedian but a very sad little man. Oh, so this nun runs into two sailors on shore leave…"

In other words, I didn't get a lot out of them about working with Keaton. But I did hear the story about the parrot in the whorehouse four times, including twice in one encounter.

Anyway, those are three fine comedies there…and the Skelton one is followed by The Inspector General, one of Danny Kaye's better efforts. Then comes Always Leave Them Laughing, which starred Milton Berle and Bert Lahr. This is not one of anyone's better efforts but it does have some nice scenes with Lahr. I wrote about this movie here.

Speaking of Keaton: When he was at his best, he was the best…and on Saturday evening, TCM is running what I think is the best film he ever made and one of the best anyone ever made. It's The General and like most comedies, it's a lot better when you're sharing the experience with a live audience. If you can only watch it on your home TV with a friend or two or even alone…well, you'll enjoy it but try some time to catch it on a big screen with a big audience. Even better.

Keith Olbermann has a new show on the web. Once he gets fired from this one, he's going to just go door-to-door and rant in folks' living rooms.

None of that however means he's wrong in most of what he says. I'd quibble with a few of his statements about Donald Trump here but even if you throw out anything even slightly questionable, it's still a helluva case against the Republican nominee…

When Jersey Boys vacates the August Wilson Theater in New York next year, it will be followed there by a musical based on the movie Groundhog Day. The producers plan to begin previews of the show in March…and then in the spirit of the film, the actors will do the same thing over and over and over and over…

Here's a replay of a piece I stuck up here on 5/13/10, a month before the Little Orphan Annie strip went bye-bye. This one got a few people mad at me and wondering if lack of cole slaw in my diet had made me demented. Others wrote to say I'd said something they were thinking but it seemed kind of unAmerican to admit to not loving Little Orphan Annie. If nothing else, I helped make it safe for those who want to admit to that…

The Little Orphan Annie newspaper strip ends on June 13. It started August 5, 1924, the creation of cartoonist Harold Gray, and I have to say that its appeal has long eluded me. I know its popularity had something to do with the taste then for Horatio Alger melodrama and that it really became a smash during the Great Depression…but I never understood why people of that era were so infatuated with the thing.

It's nice to think that an affluent industrialist might take in a poor, parentless waif…but Daddy Warbucks always seemed like the worst kind of rich guy to me, filled as he was with patronizing speeches about how if you're not wealthy, it could only be because you haven't worked hard enough. It also never struck me that Annie had a particulary happy life. She always managed to look sad and homeless, even though her dialogue was peppered with clichés of optimism and hope. And of course, every few weeks something awful would happen to her and she'd be a sad case until someone came to her rescue.

I have friends, some of them scholars of comic strips, who love Orphan Annie and when I tell them I always found it a talky, reactionary bore, they tell me, "Oh, no! Read these weeks of it and you'll see how wonderful it can be!" So I read those weeks of it and I always decide it's even more of a talky, reactionary bore than I'd thought before.

Perhaps my problem was that I first read the strip in the sixties when Gray really sounded like he was cribbing dialogue from pamphlets for the John Birch Society and there was very little in the strip besides that. It was just Daddy Warbucks standing around, lecturing people about some strange, friends-of-Richard-Nixon interpretation of the American work ethic. And then every so often, Gray would think of something awful to do to Annie and she'd be a sad case until someone came to her rescue.

Gray died in '68 and that's when Little Annie truly became an Orphan, handed off thereafter from one creative guardian to another. While I'm sure others will argue, I thought it was one of those rare cases when a strip got better when it was no longer done by its creator, particularly when Leonard Starr was in command from 1979 to 2000. Some of the others were good, too…though as Annie lost papers, they weren't playing to much of an audience. I read a few of those sequences and liked them more than anything I ever read by Harold Gray. I also preferred the Broadway musical and the movie made from it…though I didn't like either that much.

At times after Mr. Starr quit, the syndicate tried to find someone who'd write and draw it for rates commensurate with its income as a newspaper strip, which meant Depression Era wages. At one point, they got so desperate that they even offered the gig to a writer-artist team, of which I was the writer. I told the artist, "Well, if you want to do it, I'll do it," and then hoped he'd say no as I pondered what the heck I could bring to a feature that to my mind had outlived its relevance some time around when the New Deal kicked in.

I sat there with my eyeballs probably as vacant as Annie's, pondering for almost a half-hour before the artist called and said (to my relief), "I just found out what the job pays. Forget about it." I assume the others who then took it on got more than they'd offered us. They must have.

While writing the above, I was interrupted by a call from a nice lady from CBS Radio who interviewed me about Annie's demise. I pretty much said what I just wrote above but she threw me when she asked what I thought would take Annie's place in the world. I should have said, "I don't think Annie has a place in the world and hasn't for a long time."

Instead, I muttered something about how, well, I guess someone could come along and whip up a strip to cheerlead for victims of the current economic downturn. If they could just get everyone who's currently out of work to follow the strip, it could make its creator as rich as ol' Dad Warbucks.

Republicans are charging that Hillary Clinton is running for Obama's third term. Jonathan Chait wonders what's wrong with that? So do I.

This whole argument about Hillary Clinton's health is pretty ridiculous, especially the parts where her foes are believing and spreading stories of what's "really" wrong with her that obviously did not come from anyone in a position to know. But as Eric Levitz points out, it's really a non-issue because no one who was going to vote for her or not vote for her is likely to change that vote even if she is gravely ill. (And of course, there's no actual evidence that she is.)

Dominoes. And I don't mean the bad pizza…

Bob Cesca reminds us that once upon a time, Republicans believed that if you opposed the Iraq War, you were a coward and a traitor and you didn't love America and if you sought public office, your opposition alone made you unfit to lead. Here's one of several money quotes from the article…

The party that engaged in a nationwide lynching of anyone and everyone who opposed the Iraq War, including, by the way, anti-war celebrity liberals like Bill Maher, Michael Moore and the Dixie Chicks, has nominated Donald Trump. Apart from being an extreme dilettante and an unstable nuclear weapons fetishist, Trump has been vocal throughout his 15-month campaign that the Iraq War was "the worst decision ever made in the history of our country." That's a direct quote, by the way.

Heck, I can remember when the worst thing some Republicans could say about Bill Clinton or anyone who wanted your vote was that he was a Draft-Dodger who had never served his country.

Here's an interview with Penn Jillette about how he and his partner Teller work together. I find those guys kind of fascinating in the way they work…and how much they work. I don't mean how often people want to hire them. I mean the sheer volume of things they say yes to.

My pal Keith Scott is not only a top voice actor but probably the leading historian out there about those who preceded him in that profession. Here, he writes about Mel Blanc, specifically about Mel's many contracts over the years and how his fame and fortune rose. It has been widely believed that Mel's various deals with Warner Brothers precluded the other voice actors in those cartoons from getting credit — a belief spread by many of those other actors saying that was the case. Keith says it's not so.

Aidan Colvin is a 16-year-old boy with dyslexia, who has been writing to successful dyslexics for advice on how to cope with his condition. He got some sound advice from Jay Leno.

Here's a handy-dandy guide to Donald Trump scandals. In another year with another candidate, any one of these would lose him the support of many of those who now hail him as their savior.

Two film critics rate all of Woody Allen's movies from worst to best. This is one of those lists that you read just so you can go, "Are they insane? They think Interiors is better than Radio Days?" But it does remind us of something amazing; that Woody Allen has made 47 movies…and made them pretty much on his own terms and without pandering to any visible notion of what's commercial.

Two days before 9/11/01, George Carlin performed in Vegas, prepping and honing lines he'd perform on his forthcoming HBO special, which was tentatively called, I Kinda Like It When a Lotta People Die. Ian Crouch fills us in on what happened to that material when a lotta people did die.

Lastly for now: Wen Ho Lee is a Taiwanese-American scientist who in 1999 was indicted, first in the press and then in courtrooms for allegedly stealing secrets about the U.S. nuclear arsenal and passing them on to the People's Republic of China. He spent nine months in solitary confinement and had his life largely ruined by the accusations…but eventually everyone had to apologize to him and some paid him a lot of money, though he probably did not receive enough of either. Lowen Liu looks back on this injustice and how it impacted the way Chinese-Americans view the United States.

John Oliver has an interesting view of birds…

Claude Teacher writes…

I'm a long time reader (started following you when you started doing POV in the CBG), but first time caller. Here is my question for discussion: at what point in the 1970s is the end of the Silver Age?

I've been taking part in a Marvel Reading club where we have been going through Marvel year by year and recently went through the early seventies. A lot of comic book historians debate the point, citing events and trends. So I wonder, as someone who is familiar with a large number of the creators from that period, do you have any insight on the topic?

Yes. My insight is that there are no rules for this and anyone can set the years of the Golden Age or the Silver Age or any other age wherever they want to. In fact, you can just make up your own rules if you like. Personally, I say the Silver Age ended in 1970 and the event that ended it was that I got into the business that year. That's when a certain generation of quality ended.

And really, that's as good a marker as anything. For the end of the Silver Age, you can select the years that DC and Marvel had corporate takeovers, the year Kirby left Marvel for DC, the year Carmine Infantino took over and started a major revamp of DC, the year Marvel changed distributors and doubled the size of their line, the year they started beating DC, the year comic book prices went up to 15 cents, the year the standard size of comic book original artwork was reduced, the year Marvel launched the Conan the Barbarian comic, the year DC put out Green Lantern-Green Arrow, the year the San Diego Comic-Con started or several other events.

That gives you a range of about 1967-1971. I'd still opt for 1970, the year I got in. It's been all downhill since then.