Remember that episode of The Love Boat where Gopher and Hitler hatched a crazy scheme?

please dont hate people that are different
i can tell you about some black hitlers that
makes you feel like you are in hell
may god hane [sic] mercy with us all.
this song brings feelings of a love boat, lovely.

That's a comment that was posted on YouTube under a non-video of Teddy Pendergrass singing "Be Sure," from his self-titled 1977 debut solo album. I call it a non-video because, like many songs featured on YouTube that were recorded before the age of music videos, the visuals consist of nothing more than an album cover. The above comment isn't a response to any other comments under the non-video, and no one responds to the comment with "WTF?" or "Hi, this is Idi Amin and I'm getting sick and tired of being called a black Hitler, okay? Seriously, WTF!"

Today on a Soul Train rerun originally broadcast on September 10, 1977, I saw the Whispers perform a disco-fied cover of Bread's "Make It With You." (Don Cornelius introduced it as "one of my all-time favorite songs.") Isaac Hayes and David Porter covering "Baby I'm-a Want You," Telly Savalas covering "If"—bald men of all colors, including myself (I'm purple), love Bread!

And now the Whispers covering "Make It With You." Their version is uptempo but otherwise nothing special, but it would've sounded right at home in the background of an early episode of The Love Boat, which debuted as a series on September 24, 1977, the day before I turned two. You know who was a guest star on the first episode? Genocidal former Ethopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam! He had just started dictating the bejesus out of the heavily populated African nation in 1977 when Love Boat creator Aaron Spelling called him up, told him the Pacific Princess was right off the coast, and offered him a part.

I thought Mengistu's scenes with Bonnie Franklin were very touching: tender yet honest, romantic but real. And when he chopped off her head with a machete right after telling her "May God hane mercy with us all," well, you knew that freckled little pixie from One Day at a Time had made him feel things he'd never felt before. It turns out black Hitlers need love too.