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01/24/2005 Archived Entry: "Johnny Carson"

I usually like to hit them when they're down. I'll make an exception to Johnny Carson.

I am just old enough to enjoy for Carson to actually mean something to me. In college I remember a friend, a couple of years older than me, referred to Johnny Carson as "that old man who thinks he's funny." That nettled me, but I kept it to myself. I didn't want to look square by admitting I liked the Tonight Show.

When I was around twelve, my father was going to bed earlier and I was going to bed later. I discovered the Tonight Show, and I felt like I had discovered real adulthood. This was a different adulthood than my parents; this was an adulthood with men and women dressed nicely, chatted comfortably with one another, and knew just how much sophomoric humour was enough.

Don't watch old Tonight Shows. That's as pointless as looking at other people's family snapshots. Carson's style now is not Carson's style. His style was based on a sense of the now. Watching him now is nostalgia, and he wasn't about nostalgia. I like to think that not only was longing for retirement when he quit the show, but he understood that the show needed a youthful energy and he couldn't pull that off forever, and so he left the show despite protests, enjoyed many years of quiet retirement, and died. Well done! May David Letterman (who owes everything he is to JC) be so wise.

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