http://www.edrants.com/john-lydon-vs-tom-snyder/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=john-lydon-vs-tom-snyder a cultural forum in ever-shifting standing Fri, 03 Aug 2007 02:48:14 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 http://www.edrants.com/john-lydon-vs-tom-snyder/comment-page-1/#comment-236715 Fri, 03 Aug 2007 02:48:14 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=6486#comment-236715 Tan gently, I just finished doing my annual design judging at the California State Fair, and apparently, they’ve got Weird Al lined up for performing at the Fair this year! Since I get in free, I’ll have to go check out Weird Al when he plays.

]]> http://www.edrants.com/john-lydon-vs-tom-snyder/comment-page-1/#comment-236637 Sun, 29 Jul 2007 05:12:02 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=6486#comment-236637 Hey, Ed. I appreciate the point you’re making, and I agree with your point about Rose, etc. (though I’m not sure what a “true representative of public opinion” means, even if I agree with Curtis White when it comes to Terry Gross). But I have to say a little something about Letterman. It’s not quite right to say that he was a “rising standup comedian” at the time. He’d already made his mark on the Carson show, and had already won an Emmy for his short-lived morning show, when he was tapped to host “Light Night”. You’re right that Letterman did not do the long-form interviews for which the Snyder show was known (in fact, he barely interviewed his guests at all when the show first started), and that his show was very silly (cf. “Stupid Pet Tricks”), but it’s misleading to say that he “slipp[ed] into whatever celebrity junket was handed to him”. He was clearly not interested in doing the typical celebrity interviews. In fact, many guests shied away from his show because he wasn’t slobbering over them. He asked some tough–well, more like strange or “uncomfortable”–questions. Not because he was like Dick Cavett talking to some intellectual, but because he didn’t revere the celebrity nonsense. A lot of that changed with the move to CBS, I think, and the new show, while not without its moments, was a different, lesser animal. In any event, it’s not fair to imply that Letterman was somehow an indication that the networks were dumbing down the late night airwaves. His show was one of the best and smartest things on tv at any time of day. Also, Letterman was a big fan of Snyder, and I believe he was instrumental in bringing Snyder back to television.

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