One degree of separation from Minow to Gilligan

We'll all miss Bob Denver, best remembered as Gilligan. I was touched and amused that many of the newspaper stories about him noted that the famous sinking ship, the S.S. Minnow, was named for my dad, Newton Minow, former chairman of the FCC, who riled Gilligan-creator Sherwood Schwartz by calling television a "vast wasteland." Long before Gilligan, we had a cat named "Maynard G. Minow" in honor of what I still like to think of as Denver's greatest role, the proto-beatnick Maynard G. Krebs from "The Adventures of Dobie Gillis."