"Johnny Carson, our nation urns its lonely eyes to you." The quote is from yours truly on this wet Saturday morning of late spring. We're in that netherworld of weather where we can't be sure what's coming.
Johnny Carson? He passed on a long time ago of course. He smoked heavily in a time when people sort of shrugged at such vices. I mean like drinking alcohol too. Johnny had guests on his TV show like Dean Martin who at least pretended to love alcohol. We laughed at the jokes connected to that. We laughed at Foster Brooks.
And so I invoke the name Johnny Carson to address American cultural history and particularly pop culture which of course can influence our behavior. Many of us abused alcohol and unlike Dean Martin and Foster Brooks, were not pretending. "Outlaw country music" went through a wave of popularity, actually approved by the Carters in the White House. The president had a brother Billy whose name was a brand of beer.
Waxing nostalgic here? Well not really. Of course it's not nice to feel ashamed of our cultural past. Our elders dove in with the norms of the times. And we don't like to be hard on them. We'll rationalize that life was tough for the older folks and so a few vices or failings were OK. Ah, the days of the World War II generation who had been through so much. Had literal PTSD in many cases. The initials had not gained currency yet. You think there wasn't an epidemic of PTSD after the Civil War? World War One?
Our elders have faced the burden of providing for the next generation as it develops. We cut them slack and it's justified. Well, except that Mothers Against Drunk Driving came along and took care of a certain problem. Ambitious lawyers finally fought and won against the tobacco companies.
The "monoculture"
I am a baby boomer. For us folks "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" was a staple when growing up. I bring up the show not just to stimulate a little warm nostalgia which it certainly can do. No, the show if watched in "retro" fashion today would be like a lens into our cultural past. It would be a lens into the U.S. "monoculture" that lasted for a long time. It is close to being gone now.
The monoculture meant there was a true sense of shared culture. Think back to "Look" and "Life" magazines as prime examples from the print media.
Good or not so good?
"Shared culture" sounds like a positive thing, right? It was really a mixed bag. But right now as I reflect in the year 2026, I find myself pining some. The good outweighed the bad IMHO - actually it was all like a sedative. Well, smoking cigarettes is literally a sedative. We need some forces at present to get people calmed down.
The "monoculture" of our entertainment world gave way to "niche programming" and my what a miracle this seemed to be. What could be better than having your own particular tastes catered to? We couldn't resist thinking this as the number of TV channels proliferated. MTV! Channels in December that ran the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" ceaselessly because the movie had fallen into the "public domain." The movie was not all that good. But kids who were force-fed this movie can't help but feel fondness for it now.
Beyond "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" there was the endless panoply of "network TV entertainment shows." The prime time shows that came and went with such frequency, it was kind of depressing. And my, there was the phenomenon of "TV ratings." The western staple "Bonanza" did super for a long time.
"Bonanza" was pretty vapid and one-dimensional. It followed the nature of TV and movie westerns always wanting to impress morality on us. Especially the kids. You might say the Judeo-Christian ethic. Which can only be good? Not so fast. After years of such fare being dished out, we ended up with an American culture that was hopelessly passive about the Vietnam war. This even with the facts of the war coning at us daily. Americans collectively sat on their hands, even when our young men were being sent into the meat grinder.
Just think if the U.S. had not followed the siren song (or whatever it was) for getting into that war. Today we can maybe suggest there is a siren song for getting involved in the "endless Mideast wars." The current U.S. president talked for a long time like he and his MAGA crowd would avoid this at all costs. The more things change, the more they. . . You know.
So now we may have a major new wave of inflation coming at us. After we've already been flummoxed by this.
Alas, "niche programming" of our contemporary age has given us "conservative media" like Fox News. This empowers all the know-nothings out there, people who try to lead by emotion. In the age of Johnny Carson entertainment, the far right political stuff was marginalized. Would see pamphlets given out at an oddball county fair booth, for example. Today there's the litany of "conservative" podcasters, e.g. Jesse Kelly.
Will niche programming in the media be our undoing as a nation? People get attention today who in past times would not have had a prayer. Are people conscious of this?
Richard Nixon was brought down because the old system worked, the system with rules truly based on the Judeo-Christian ethic or framework. Today? Hell's bells, look at the endless abominations committed by the president and really his whole "menagerie" around him. And he has Supreme Court justices playing along.
In the Johnny Carson era, America went along with a political norm that had "liberals" in an important position because this of course guaranteed that "the little guy" would be taken care of. This was actually very important to the World War II generation, which had the GI Bill among other things to celebrate. The WWII generation could be pretty collectivist. Today "collectivism" is like an obscenity. No man is an island? Oh yes they are.
So we're ready to wade into an ever-worsening inflation situation because we refuse to insist that our current MAGA leadership be kicked out. We passively read the new batch of headlines every day. The suggestion to convict/imprison Barack Obama, James Comey and others? Well, yawn.
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| Johnny Carson |
Johnny Carson avoided politics except to "tease" whatever president was in office in an innocuous way. It was simply irreverent. Down deep, Johnny Carson and his audience had faith in the nation's reassuring foundation, you night say our pulse.
The Johnny Carson show began at 10:30 p.m. Mercy! My bedtime today is considerably earlier. I'm a little ashamed as I recall how I always felt I was missing something if I didn't stay up for a portion of the show. Totally escapist fare. If a movie actor like William Holden started getting into the weeds with cinema craftsmanship - as I observed him doing once - you just knew that Johnny would feel uncomfortable and he'd want to steer the chat back to the normal superficiality.
We ate it up, we laughed, then we went to bed. Today we can call up endless "podcasts" at that hour including the far-right (political) ones. I suspect a lot of people do that. Is this the same folly that America experienced when we sat on our hands during Vietnam?
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - musicstuff 54@gmail.com
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