The big leagues

National Review, May 19, 2008 by Richard Brookhiser

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

YOUNG people read. You bet. I was just in a store that markets cheap crap from Asia--peasant blouses, edgy T-shirts, and sandals, walls and walls and walls of them--and in a corner by the door is a counter of books, impulse buys for the retiring shopper. What are the titles? One is called Pokey Penis--a Music Minus One pop-up book, made of cardboard pages with a circular hole in the center of each. When you poke through, you complete some picture of hot dogs, statuary, whatever. Fun at parties! Lots of books on living green. I knew this battle was lost when Kate O'Beirne told me that all her kids learned at Catholic school was recycling. As there are new sins, so there are new devotions. A book on how to argue with conservatives and win. It's easy, especially if you never meet any. A book on social acquirements for young ladies. The paragraph on artists whose names you should know--with admirable frankness, it says nothing about knowing their art--includes Damien Hirst. Give him credit, his stuffed shark swam all the way to the Metropolitan Museum. Philippe de Montebello, no less, called it "iconic." Shouldn't he have sent it across the park to the Museum of Natural History? The oldest artist on the list was Andy Warhol. Marilyn silk screens are classical civilization. A book on church signage across America--FREE TICKETS TO HEAVEN, that kind of thing: anthropological, but enthusiastic--no use of the verb cling. And, speaking of, a little stack of The Audacity of Hope.

So young people read. But more often than that, they watch TV, and their favorite show just now is The Show.

You all know The Host of The Show. Even if you never watch television, his book has been in every book-selling venue in America (it was also available at Junk of Asia). His glasses frame intent eyes, every black hair is in place. He is good-looking, with just-enough-too-much electricity to make him preposterous. Yet though he is a blowhard, he also has to be someone you want to invite into your living room every night. It is a tough persona to pull off; Jerry Lewis spazzing it up may provoke laughs, but is intolerable in large doses to anyone not raised on Racine. The Host has to be your favorite fool.

Is he ever. I thought I was a moderately productive, moderately useful citizen. Every day brought new work for my hands, and I did the work of my hands and was glad. My colleagues like me, my employers pay me. In serving my little platoon I helped keep the great army of the race stumbling along. But when I first went on The Show, I realized that I had been mistaken. I had been dust, ashes, nothing; only after my appearance did I begin to exist.

The Show tapes, as many shows do, on the far west side, where we store car dealerships and the carriages that serve Central Park. You know you are on a topnotch show from one look at the green room. The strawberries are fresh, the cheese came from a cow, there is milk for the coffee, not little pellets of creamer. By the standards of green rooms this is Lucullan. Another sign of something different is the guides who take you back and forth, and the producers who come out to brief you. Everyone is young, or younger than young. One producer told me she realized that once she passed 30, she became a graybeard. After a taping she wants to go home, while her younger colleagues want to go out and party. I nodded wisely. But all these people are pleasant. Many are the shows where the personnel have the personalities of hostages, or muggers. Good cheer flows from the top.

The audience has been primed by a comic before The Host goes on. When he makes his entrance, the yell that greets him is like knickers pelting Tom Jones. I sat in an on-deck area, behind a drop curtain on the edge of the stage, and thought, what am I getting into? Performing was like the recurring dream of being in a play whose script you have not seen. Yet Host, personnel, and crowd seemed to like it, and home I went.

Then I began to exist. My fishmonger upstate is a young man with a narrow-brimmed hat, earrings, and a beard. He's a great guy, and he gives good char. But when I came in the first time after the taping, his voice was warmer, the timbre richer: "You were on The Show."

It is not just the young. My good friend who runs the online program of a major university asked if I could get him and his companion tickets to be in the audience for The Show. I could have gotten him tickets for NATIONAL REVIEW's 50th-anniversary banquet; but he wanted to see The Show. So did another good friend, the marketing director for a 140-year-old resort. She would have come in from the hills if she could have gotten into The Show.

Waitresses and maitresses d' of course treated me better. I went from being a regular customer, a moderately good tipper, and a distant uncle-figure, to being an uomo rispettato, all because of The Show. My wife benefited second hand. She was at a cocktail party for a friend, an award-winning poet, and discovered that the servants of muses were also fans of The Show.