Joe Posnanski

I’ve long loved the concept of the Beta. It’s a dark side of my personality. I like doing stuff first … being the first to get a new gadget, being the first to get on a plane, being the first to like a new band, being the first to try a new restaurant, read a new book, try the beta version of a Web browser or whatever. While this is not an entirely likable quality, you’ll be happy to know that I almost never actually get to be first at anything. I am way behind on gadgets (I can’t even get a damn iPhone — no thank YOU Verizon Wireless). I haven’t been first on a new band since my semi-discovery of an Atlanta-based new-swing band called Donkey that should have been huge, but instead, well, you’ve never heard of them. And I’m obviously never first on computer stuff.

That’s why I’m so excited to unveil the Pozcars Beta … thanks to the computing genius of Brilliant Reader Matt, there is now an actual Web site (with the unsurprising web address “pozcars.com”) where we can do all sorts of stupid and pointless votes! Very exciting news. The first time, you might recall, I had to do my very own stupid and pointless vote, which took up WAY too much time. Now, the computer does the work for us. This, I’m sure, is what Al Gore had in mind when he invented this crazy Internet.

The Pozcars site is naturally WAY beyond my feeble computer skills, so we’re going to give it a dry run here and beta test it with our first stupid and pointless vote. Let’s get a couple of things out of the way first.

1. You have to be a registered Pozcars voter to vote. My understanding is that if you voted in the first Pozcars Ballot, then you are already registered … I think all you have to do is type in your name and email (assuming it’s the same email that you used before), write “Voter” in the “Why should YOU be permitted” box, submit it, and you should get a password automatically delivered to you. And then you’re ready to go. We’ll see if it works.

If, however, you are not a voter (or you have changed emails) then you will have to be approved. There is a box right there in the registry questionaire asking “Why should YOU be permitted to vote for Pozcars?“ One sentence will do — and it will be reviewed by the Pozcars Selection Committee, and that point passed along to the Pozcars Steering Committee, at which point it will be delivered to the Pozcars Executive Committee which will decide whether or not to approve you. There are, as you might imagine, very stringent standards such as, ”Is this person or has this person ever been a member of the Communist Party.“ This would not disqualify you from being a Pozcars voter, but it could prevent you from writing a screenplay in 1957.

2. The votes — all of them — will work precisely the way the Baseball Hall of Fame vote works. That is, you get to vote for up to 10 of the candidates. And whichever candidate gets 75% or more will earn the Pozcar.

There are some other things that you will have to figure out … Matt has put all kinds of things on there that you will understand before I will. I think you can write your own blog posts, connect with people … hell, I don’t understand it all. But it’s pretty cool. It’s Beta!

OK, so you can go over to Pozcars right now and vote in the Beta Election which is: Who are the hottest TV Moms and Wives ever?*

*We were going to have my wife concurrently do her ”Who are the hottest TV Husbands ever?“ poll, but I’m not entirely certain what ”concurrently“ means, plus this is just a beta vote. I can assure you that our real Pozcars Elections will not all be chauvinistic beauty contests. Most will be just what I’ve always promised the Pozcars to be: Stupid and Pointless.

The hottest TV Moms and Wives Ever Nominees (as suggested by you, the reader):

Meredith Baxter-Birney: Wife on ”Family Ties.“ Super cool Mom.

Shamyl Brown: Mother of a son in The WIre … I guess. I’m embarrassed to say that I’m one of three people left on earth who has never seen The Wire. I feel great shame about this and hope to buy the entire DVD set and lock myself in a room with it for three days as penance. I have to wait for the tournament to end first. And the various Opening Days. And the Masters. But I’ll get to it, I promise, please don’t revoke my ”Still vaguely aware of pop culture” card.

Pam Dawber: Referring here to her odd wife/mother role late in the “Mork & Mindy” docudrama.

Yvonne DeCarlo: At her best as Zipporah in “The Ten Commandments,” but she was still quite striking as Lily Munster.

Barbara Eden: It’s a stretch to have her as a TV wife/mom — but it is true that at the end of I Dream of Jeannie*, she did marry Larry Hagman (or whoever was playing Tony at that time). So we include her.

*I may have mentioned this before, but I Dream of Jeannie represents a kind of 1960s show I just don’t understand. Here you have an incredibly beautiful woman who wants to do anything for you AND can do witchcraft. I mean, seriously, is this a problem? And yet, the guy in the show demands that she STOP DOING THINGS for him. This is especially true in Bewitched, where both Darins apparently enjoy their awful lives working for the idiot Larry Tate in an advertising agency. She could have them on a beach in the Caribbean, but NOOOOOOO …

Lauren Graham: Played Lorelai, the Mom on Gilmore Girls.

Patricia Heaton: The wife and mom on “Everybody Loves Raymond,” of course — and, interestingly enough, the daughter of the late Chuck Heaton, who worked for many, many years as a sportswriter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I grew up reading Chuck … he died in February at the age of 90.

Cheryl Hines (late nominee): Wife on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” A grievous oversight.

Helen Hunt: I’m a big fan, and not just of her transcendent work in “Quarterback Princess” but also when she played the marijuana smoking bad girl in “Facts of Life.” She’s here for her Mad About You work. By the way, what the heck happened to her? She won an Oscar for “As Good As It Gets” and, more or less, hasn’t been heard from since.*

*This happens surprisingly often to a certain kind of Oscar winner. How about poor Cuba Gooding Jr.? Brilliant in Boyz n the Hood, wins the supporting Oscar for Jerry Maguire, appears in “As Good As It Gets” (maybe that movie’s the problem) and then he’s in Snow Dogs and then he’s doing underwear commercials with Michael Jordan. Cuba deserves better.

Jane Jetson: Hey, you people were the ones who nominated these people. I personally might have avoided the cartoons. But she’s definitely one of the cuter futuristic animated wives.

Carolyn Jones: Well, Lily Munster is here, so Morticia Addams has to be here too.

Marjorie Lord: She was Kathy, the Mom, on “Make Room for Daddy.”

Lori Loughlin: Played Becky on “Full House,“ which is a show I must admit I was only moderately aware of — I never saw a full episode. But I probably saw enough snippets here and there* to make several episodes, and who didn’t love Becky?

*There should be a word — you know we’re trying to invent words — to describe a kind of television show that you’ve never actually sat down and watched all the way through but caught enough scenes through the years to know what it’s about. For me, these shows would include ”Full House,“ ”Punky Brewster“ ”The Drew Carey Show“ (I’ve seen the intro lots of times — Cleveland Rocks!), that gawdawful thing with Screech in it, lots of others. Maybe we could call them ”Tosmos“ since we never watch them but learn about them through osmosis. I’ll work on it.

Mary-Louise Parker: I’m a fan from her ”Bullets Over Broadway“ days, but I’ve never seen Weeds. It’s not even a Tosmos for me because I have NO idea what it’s about. Weeds? Gardening? She’s the Mom in it, apparently.

Constance Marie: She’s Angie on ”The George Lopez Show,“ which is another kind of Tosmos Show — I’ve never even seen 10 seconds of that show. But from the COMMERCIALS I could probably tell you pretty accurately what it’s about.

Elizabeth Montgomery: Sam from Bewitched. No more needs to be said.

Phylicia Rashad: She was, of course, the lovely no-way-she’s-had-like-five-kids Mom on ”The Cosby Show.“ Interesting to me, she’s only 11 years younger than Bill Cosby. I mean, 11 is a pretty big gap, but I’d assumed it was much more than that. How about that 1980s moment — when Ahmad Rashad proposed to her during an NFL pregame show. So touching. I’m not sure any of us were aware that it was the third marriage for both of them, and that before that Phylicia had been married to someone in ”The Village People.“ I wasn’t aware of it anyway.

Donna Reed: From, uh, The Donna Reed Show. Yeah. I think Donna Reed in ”It’s a Wonderful Life“ is one of the most beautiful women ever captured on film.

Leah Remini: Wife of another sort of show — the ”Why is the beautiful woman married to the slob“ type.* She’s the wife of “King of Queens.”

*I suppose you could say the first of the ”Beautiful woman/slob“ shows is ”The Honeymooners“ where Alice is married to Ralph — but I think the idea there was that Alice was not especially glamorous either, and that the show — perhaps more than any show since — tries to get close to reality. In my opinion, the first ”beautiful woman/slob show” is ”The Flintstones.“

Betty Rubble: Speaking of The Flintstones … I always leaned toward Wilma, but that’s just me.

Suzanne Somers: I’m guessing that we’re referring to her role in ”Step by Step“ rather than her dramatic work in ”She’s the Sherriff.“ I always thought her Thighmaster interpretations were underrated and quite brilliant.

Courtney Thorne-Smith: She’s the wife on another “beautiful woman/slob” show “According to Jim.”

Mary Tyler Moore: The one who started this whole stupid and pointless idea — this is for her days as wife on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”