He was that guy, wasn't he? I had never heard of him before at the time, so I managed to forget his name despite its distinctiveness.

Hank Aaron received literally tens of thousands of pieces of hate mail in 1973-74. (That seems to have been an out-of-the-ordinary situation even for a black celebrity, though.)

The closet case part appears to be not true.

I have heard the up/down distinction called an "old comedy precept" or words to that effect even though I never heard of it before the last year or so. Am I the ignorant one, or is newfangled terminology being passed off as traditional wisdom?

I think it might actually be connected with the gender gap. I have the impression that today (not necessarily when the books were new) the Harry Potter hardcore fandom is mostly female.

A Treehouse of Horror ended that way (sort of - the witches were placated with gingerbread men).

You often hear that the girls who later made the witchcraft accusations had been involved in asking Tituba to tell their fortunes and otherwise experimenting with quasi-occult behavior, but that seems to be a nineteenth-century legend. The footnote in the wiki article is just a link to the text of Malleus Maleficarum,…

Did anyone else have the Disney's Wonderful World of Knowledge series? It was not arranged in encyclopedia format, but it had a lot of great stuff.

Did anyone ever notice that the Americana entry on television was never updated after c. 1970? The early 2000s edition (which I assume will be the last one ever) still talked about cable as a possible wave of the future and included East Germany on a list of television ownership by country.

In some of the older seasons there are performers such as Chase and Aykroyd who are credited writers, so at one time it was considered worthy of a separate credit. And Tina Fey was of course also both later on, but she started as a writer first.

Technically correct, but it was definitely portrayed by the media at the time as a thorough purge. I think it was still a much higher turnover rate than any subsequent season has had.

I guess it must be a generational marker that I saw this headline (before the picture - my internet has been loading slowly lately) and immediately knew what the "single coldest moment in the history of television" would be, even though I doubt if it really still holds that title today.

You left out a key part. The full exchange is even better - "This would never happen, and even if it did, no one would ever react that way." "What do you mean? This happened to me, and this is exactly how I reacted!"

"You don't assume that 50% of sitcoms writers went to the most prestigious Ivy League schools."

He was one of the most admirable men ever to run on a national ticket - he just was not meant to be a politician.

Trump could not just run in New York (or any other state) without a running mate - he would have to put a placeholder on the ticket in New York only. If Trump won the state, that person would get the N.Y. vice-presidential electoral votes. Booker (or whoever the Democratic candidate would be) would not come into it…

Is it actually a rule now that the non-celebrity must give in the Winner's Circle, or is there just strong pressure from TPTB to do so (just as 99% of pre-Chuvian and 90% of post-Chuvian Jeopardy! players obediently start at the top)? I don't recall that Strahan ever asks "Give or receive?" as Clark and his other…

I remember this one and also the famous classics such as "I learned it by watching you," "this is your brain on drugs," and "no one ever says I want to be a junkie when I grow up," but the one I remember being terrified by, yet have never been able to find, involved a man (a drug user, I guess) turning into a donkey. …

Koski was first. The appearance of Valentine soon after Koski had left during the Dissolve exodus was the subject of much mirth at the time.

It was one of those running jokes that eventually buried all memory of the original comment and its context (at least as far as I can remember). (As is true of most of the running gags here - who coined "canceraids?" I have no idea.)