A look at radio great Jean Shepherd's humorous critiques (from the 1950s) of Americans' phoniness, consumerism, and false sense of "progress."
KD reads Shepherd's essay, "The Night People vs. 'Creeping Meatballism.'" Then (on the same theme) we hear parts of one of Shep's radio shows. He talks about credit cards, Green Stamps, a used atom-smasher for sale, "progress," how many ice cream flavors Howard Johnson's restaurants ACTUALLY have*, and the brief but glorious crime wave of Ronald Medsker.
The Shepherd radio material heard here was originally broadcast on WOR AM & FM, New York City, May 2, 1959. Recording courtesy of www.flicklives.com. Many thanks.
"New World Notes" is produced under the auspices (Latin for "table") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.
* Howard Johnson's flavors: Claimed = 28. Highest number observed = 26, at the HoJo's at the New Bedford exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
This installment of NWN was originally broadcast, as #359, in January 2015. Audio files downloaded from the links, below, may be identified as #359.
You can download this installment of New World Notes--in MP3 and other formats--also from The Internet Archive (www.archive.org). The page with the download links is here: https://archive.org/download/NewWorldNotes359-JeanShepherdVsCreepingMeatballism .
More details, photos, nice links, & other good stuff on the show's Web site: http://newworldnotes.blogspot.com
SERIES OVERVIEW -- Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for. "Date recorded," below, = date of first scheduled broadcast.
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