THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

SLICKER RUBES | 2010-11-08

There was a period in the history of TV when it was not only a monopoly of New York City, it was when no one understood you if you said "New York provincial." At that time "barbarian" and "sophisticated" had exactly the meaning a college graduate is trained in.

To say a New Yorker was not sophisticated was exactly like saying the Pope is not Catholic.

EXACTLY.

Only big cities had TV stations. Then the FCC gave out no more for years. The TV licenses were, of course, "free," meaning the public got no money for these enormously valuable pieces of public property.

Nobody in South Carolina could get TV without an enormous antenna tower aimed at Charlotte. Tiny, broken-down houses would have a sixty-foot piece of metal sprouting out of their roofs. This was so familiar to most of the country that Saturday Evening Post had a cartoon of an outhouse with a huge tower on it.

There was no caption. There didn't need to be.

Finally the moratorium on licenses was lifted. Columbia got three stations almost simultaneously.

There was an immediate catastrophe in popular programming. Molly Goldberg went under. Milton Berle went under. A guy Murray's program, sponsored by Manischewitz wine, went under. The whole program list went under.

But the network programmers, responsible for billions of 1950s dollars, learned not a thing from this. Almost every show was placed in New York.

These are the Geniuses Who Control Everything and Never Make A Mistake. The Learned Elders must have been on acid during that period.

TV Guide, almost the country's only politically conservative magazine, pointed this out in a cover article about 1964, which I remember well. It was a breakthrough. It pointed out that New Yorkers still referred to the territory between New York and Los Angeles as "flyover country."

That article talked about the giant money losses networks were sustaining by their Big City fixation. By "losses" I mean the media monopoly made less money than it could have.

We are not talking chickenfeed here. These were some of the country's top executives, and not entirely by cheating.

Being provincial is routine. But for top executives to lose billions of dollars by being provincial demonstrates that there is no one as provincial as a rube who thinks he's sophisticated.

A large part of our age is explained by rubes who thought they were becoming city slickers by adopting the Little New Yorker mentality.

COMMENTS (5)

#1 backbaygrouch | 2010-11-08 08:44

The only opera that I was ever dragooned into attending was Puccini's Girl Of The Golden West. To my surprise I enjoyed it. Great fun. We were seated in the second or third row off to the left. Opera has never been well financed in Boston and that year the company had rented a small dilapidated theater which provided the most vivid memory of the event. It was compact and crowded.

They brought a horse on stage which caused me great concern. With the lights, the noise from the band, [orchestra to high tone folks], and the high pitched bellowing, I was concerned that the horse might bolt into the audience, specifically to the front row seats stage left. I've seen skittish horses jump the rail into the grandstand at Sufferin' Downs, the local racetrack, the sort of venue I'm more familiar with than La Scala or Covent Garden. A spooked horse in a crowded area is dangerous.

Opera is not a big deal to me, but it has avid fans and is an important strand in the cultural life of Western society. It is worth preserving. Our culture, our race must be nurtured.

For over six decades the Texaco Corporation financed The Metropolitan Opera Company's weekly radio broadcast. And that was a good thing. The firm at the time that Bob refers to wanted to do the same on network television. Their executives approached all the networks and assured them that they would pay top dollar, the highest billing rate charged, to do so with no regard as to ratings. It was a no go.

Texaco's money was not good enough. White civilization was not good enough. Low brow Jew York City fare was to be forced fed to the American people. And that agenda continues to this day. It is part and parcel of the destruction of the White race. Our heritage is on the chopping block. Keep posting the Mantra. Verdi's Aida and Loretta Lynn's Coal Miner's Daughter are depending on you.

#2 Simmons | 2010-11-08 11:25

This is the essence of why I say liberalism is precisely nothing. It is fashionable thinking, key word fashion which means exactly squat.

Two years hence Obama will be so embrassing that no white outside of the crack dens of liberalism will admit to that fashion faux paux.

#3 BGLass | 2010-11-08 11:35

About a year ago, on NY local t.v.--- there was coverage of "Judge Judy" giving "etiquette lessons" to girls in Yonkers: How to say? What could this even MEAN?

In fairness to the supposed rubes of flyover country, it is their VALUE that if you're stupid, gross, a sociopath, disgusting, ignorant, (etc., etc.) you're supposed to take the hint and stop whatever you're doing. In much of Protestant culture, this is communicated with silence and shunning. The first goes first. And you're not supposed to be so eaten with false pride and arrogance that you actually go around showing others things to which even worms don't want exposure.

It could never OCCUR to Flyover Folk that sick freaks do not KNOW they are sick freaks. Pundits and pontificators are supposed to know better. At first, the idea that pure trash would go on t.v. and "run off at the mouth" and expect others to listen was unthinkable, just too alien for generational Americans. Now ---to many--- T.V. officials just seem like the ideological version of naked Africans on the geographic channels, the ones with gords strapped over hardons strutting about grunting commands. The real danger is when they start to suspect that millions of Americans are still left, sitting there watching them--- then they get DANGEROUSLY paranoid, or have psychiatric meltdowns b/c their reality is that psychotically fragile.

Anyway, if Nascar and Loretta Lynn are the "lowbrow" of American culture, then what on earth would that make Maury Povitch, Court t.v., or "The View?" In fact, the Judge Judy "etiquette lesson" thing is still up on yt. ---a favorite ny provincial saved for posterity.

#4 OldBlighty | 2010-11-09 02:51

>To say a New Yorker was not sophisticated was exactly like saying the Pope is not Catholic.

Waging psychological warfare, to get their own way, must come as naturally to these people, as breathing air.

#5 Wandrin | 2010-11-10 10:43

"But the network programmers, responsible for billions of 1950s dollars, learned not a thing from this. Almost every show was placed in New York.

These are the Geniuses Who Control Everything and Never Make A Mistake. The Learned Elders must have been on acid during that period."

If they're motivated more by paranoia than money then they'd keep it all under their thumb in New York no matter what.