Quote of the Day
It's important to remember that every day about 295 million Americans get up and fail to tune in to Rush Limbaugh. ~Garry TrudeauThe Greensboro News&Record scored an email interview with the somewhat reclusive Garry Trudeau. The quote comes from a larger graf that deserves to quoted in full.
There's still plenty of moderate, reasonable discourse, but it competes in an ever-expanding universe of commentary. There are over 120 million blogs now -- and hundreds of cable stations. So it's true that no one voice is going to be as influential as it once was. It's important to remember that every day about 295 million Americans get up and fail to tune in to Rush Limbaugh.So it is. And it keeps changing faster all the time. I recall reading once, probably sometime in the late 70s, that in the sum total of man's knowledge, half of everything we knew occurred before 1900 and the other half happened in that 70+ years. I'm betting that timeline has shortened since then.
Back in the late '70s, I created an animated "Doonesbury" special for NBC. The network declined to order another because of disappointing ratings. The show had 21 million viewers. On an average night, "The Daily Show," a huge hit, pulls 1.5 million viewers. It's a different world.
As with most things, it's been a blessing and a curse.
[More posts daily at The Detroit News]
posted by Libby Spencer at 8:08 PM
2 Comments:
Great story, Lib! The N&R is a terrific paper, or at least was for many years when I foraged for news on Civil War related matters. Glad to see they still are. (Raleigh wasn't bad but too often went with the canned copy. N&R would send somebody out to dig up background and get quotes.)
Not surprising that if anybody could get a Trudeau piece, it would be them. :)
Thanks for reading it Xan. I like that paper too. Robinson is a good editor, it shows.
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