America used to have people who served as conduits between the masses and culture. In a fascinating 2016 article, James Rosen noted that conservative founding father William F. Buckley appeared on The Tonight Show over a dozen times. Rosen observed that “today, the regular presence on the leading late-night TV shows of someone like Buckley, an aristocratic intellectual given to speaking in whole paragraphs, even other languages — he began one ‘Tonight’ appearance with several sentences in Spanish — would seem, in a lineup dominated by actors and pop stars, glaringly out of place. Back then, however, Buckley fit right in, and we were, as a nation, richer for it.”
Rosen celebrates the America that was “a Warholian conflation of High and Low that placed entertainers, athletes, politicians, novelists, intellectuals, psychics and oddballs on the same TV couch.”
That America is gone, but just because the couches now have Kardashians instead of conductors doesn’t mean America’s culture has faded.
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