Clive Davis won’t return my demo tape, but he did give me a nice link regarding the Weekly Standard piece.

For my part, I enjoyed Clive’s recent piece on mass rituals and the like. It was inspired by the passing of English comedian Ronnie Barker. Reading about him was a welcome blast from the past for RWB, as I spent a big part of my growing-up years in Ireland, and many’s the hour I frittered away blessedly watching comedies on television we picked up from England. (About the hours frittered away unblessedly, we can forget.)

The point about the passing of the days when you could watch something on TV, confident in the notion that just about everybody else in the country was sharing the experience with you, is one I can appreciate. Back in Ireland in my golden youth, it even applied to radio. I remember the fanfare with which Ireland inaugurated its second radio station. It must have been in the very early eighties. There’s something distinctly intense about listening to or watching something in this mass, communal manner, rather than the fractured and multitudinous way of today.

Of-course, the flip-side is the power that is then vested in a relatively few hands, to decide what airs on the precious broadcast waves. In the long-run, I think the world in general is much better off with the democratization of information and entertainment, but that doesn’t preclude the mourning of an era’s passing. R.I.P., Ronnie Barker.

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