When Talk Wasn't Cheap

I never thought I'd be writing something kind about Tom Snyder. Not that I ever had anything against him, I just basically took him for granted, enjoyed the SNL parodies, etc. and thought he was a bit of a blowhard.

But looking at old clips of him on You Tube (I recommend the one with Howard Stern) one realizes quickly how low the level of discourse on talk shows has become these days. I know we all know that but when you watch some of those clips, it really sinks in.

Today's late night talk is just one giant promo for whatever movie, CD, TV show, the guest has coming out. Host makes lame jokes, guest tells prepackaged amusing anecdote, then on to commercials and the next guest. Interviewing skills are no where to be seen. I'd say they've been lost but that would imply that Leno and even Letterman had them in the first place. I know TV critics all drool over Letterman but heck watching some of his clips on You Tube with Pete Townshend and Warren Zevon I see that even Dave is not all that probing. And that was Dave in the 80s and early 90s when he still had some power over who came on his show.

Snyder may not have been all that deep for his day either but by today's standards he is the Edward R. Murrow of talk.

I really don't want to use this as a forum to sit and whine about how much better everything used to be in them days. It was. We had better ghettos in New York in the 70s. The Yanks had characters. We had Son of Sam, not some random nuts who shoot up schools. And I walked five miles to school in the snow.

Great piece in the new Vanity Fair on Rudy's wife number three, basically confirming everything I had suspected. Lots of unnamed sources, but I'm willing to forgive in this case because...well because it suits my purposes to do so.