Richard Dawson (1932-2012)

He will always be the epitome of the oily TV show host to me.

RIP

He was my favorite on Hogan’s Heroes.

@Mistress Cynica: That entire cast was terrific – watched Season 1 again back in ’07 – still funny.

I loved him in Hogan’s Heroes.

@Mistress Cynica: They don’t make shows like that any more.

Following my recent trend of Dictating the News, I was thinking about Hogan’s Heroes yesterday, how it was criticized for being a Nazi POW camp sitcom, and how nobody cared.

I was trying to come up with some kind of contemporary comparison: Would a sitcom about Gulf War I — now twenty years ago, equivalent to Hogan’s distance from WWII — be even conceivable?

Or, if you really wanna touch the third rail: A Viet Cong POW camp sitcom (McCain’s Heroes?), since that’s now twice the distance.

And no, MASH doesn’t count. That was Korea (standing in for Vietnam), and they were serious.

@nojo: Springtime For Hitler?

@nojo: I imagine a sitcom featuring the zany adventures of a group of Afghan villagers kidnapped and flown to Cuba for indefinite incarceration and torture. How do you guys like “Hamasa’s Heroes” as a working title? Imagine the prison commander’s beautiful secretary falling in love with Hamasa. The prison’s sergeant of the guard as a bumbling fat old American. We are talking sure-fire laff riot. I wonder if Fox would be interested.