Momentary Language

Anderson Cooper - Terror Baby Killer

It's difficult in an age as media-savvy as the current one not to be jaded by seeming examples of nobility or courage on the part of journalists.

Given the way that everyone seems to see themselves as their own brand and to calculate their every action for the purpose of brand-promotion, it's hard to take those examples at face value as truly being courageous or noble.

And certainly, someone as aware of the history of American journalism as Anderson Cooper is probably has a poster commemorating Edward R. Murrow's take-down of Joe McCarthy on See It Now (more on that here) hanging on his bedroom wall.  Indeed, Cooper's just got to be on the lookout for opportunities to channel Murrow -- what else is the source of Cooper's whole "keeping 'em honest" persona?

Still, to see Cooper's calm, implacable demolition of Rep. Louie Gohmert's McCarthy-esque terror baby nonsense, one can't help but be impressed.

"I love the loneliness of it. Love the language in it - the frank language."

There's a great interview with Matthew Weiner, the creator of AMC's excellent Mad Men, here.

There are so many nuggets offering insights about the show that you just have to read the whole interview yourself, but -- to cite merely one example --  I was struck by how unsurprising many of Weiner's cited influences were, how clearly those influences are reflected in the show:

I love John Cheever.

...

There’s a lot of movies. There’s a movie called ‘The Best Years of Our Lives," which was made in 1946, about the reality of soldiers. It won the Oscar that year. It’s a very unflinching look. The audience had just come out of the war and so had the characters in the movie. I love "The Apartment," obviously, very important. It was very much of its time – very topical, trying to get it right. Not a period piece but trying to make it seem exactly as people’s lives were at that time.

...

"Catcher in The Rye" has got to be at the bottom of the entire show. It's the first book I ever completed reading. I read it many times. I fantasized about living in New York. I loved the WASP-iness of it even though it’s got these Jewish undertones to it. I love the loneliness of it. Love the language in it - the frank language.

Proof that the USA in the '70's was another country ...

The profound differences between Europe and the United States are, as Tony Judt has put it, "nowadays asserted with increased frequency and not a little acrimony on both sides of the Atlantic."  I've often thought that we in the US squandered an opportunity, most particularly in the 1970's, to become a different country -- one more like Europe (or Canada).

Musical proof of that thought is this performance by Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street in 1972.  It seems so alien to what could be produced now -- particularly on children's television -- that it's like the breathtaking, brilliant, but utterly foreign product of some lost civilization.