But ask yourself: is it more far-fetched that Jim Brown would guest-spot on I Dream of Jeannie, or that a show about an astronaut living with a bottled sexpot, one that made no reference to sex, much less racial strife, would rivet America’s attention in the summer of ’67, when riots erupted in every major city? Which is weirder: an I Dream of Jeannie with blacks or without them? Answer: they’re equally weird. Yet the second has haunted syndicated airwaves for two decades, while the first would punch a hole in the walls of rerun worlds as familiar to us as the little screen itself.
