For two and a half years from October 1968, Harlan Ellison wrote a weekly column for the Los Angeles Free Press, collected under the title The Glass Teat, containing some of the best TV criticism ever written. However, as Ellison pointed out, “make no mistake. I am not really talking about TV here. I am talking about dissidence, repression, censorship, the brutality and stupidity of much of our culture, the threat of the Common Man, the dangers of being passive in a time when the individual is cannon-fodder, the lying and cheating and killing our ‘patriots’ do in the sweet name of the American Way.”
In the introduction to the 1975 edition, he said of Richard Nixon, “we thought the crazy sonofabitch was politically dead when we wouldn’t elect him governor of California in 1962,” and continued, “which brings me to a freaky idea”.
He had in mind a weekly situation comedy about a dead politician “resuscitated by voodoo, who keeps coming to life every four years, a zombie, and keeps getting elected by all the nerds and gits who forget how creepy he was last time around. Now, let’s see, who’ll we get to play the politician? How about Reagan? Nah. Typecasting never works.” A unique, fierce and challenging voice.
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