Iconoclast

Terry Teachout discusses our pop culture and how we are sickly sweet -- the latest example being Johnny Carson.

I particularly like this thought:

I like what Rex Stout made Nero Wolfe say in The Black Mountain when he had occasion to speak frankly about his recently murdered best friend:

I pay him the tribute of speaking of him and feeling about him precisely as I did when he lived; the insult would be to smear his corpse with the honey excreted by my fear of death.

On the other hand, take Oprah. She has done more to make our pop culture (can we differentiate pop culture from culture?) bland and vanilla and politically correct, than even Phil Donahue. The most controversial thing I can ever remember Oprah mutter is that mad cow disease is bad and learning about the disease "just stopped [her] cold from eating another burger."

Ooh! Stand back!

Give me straight talk.

Flush PC and give me more Terry Teachout like I noted earlier.