I’ve read a lot–and posted my fair share–of material on the graying of television’s audience. But I had no idea how bad the problem had truly become. In the late 1980s, television tried to keep my parents’ generation glued to the tube by recycling oldsters such as Raymond Burr, Andy Griffith, Telly Savalas, and the blue-haired cast of The Golden Girls.
But as Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason notes, times change, and new eras call for new nostalgia:
Writing for CNN today, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, and Harvey Wasserman share some thoughts about nuclear power (Note: Don’t think about that last sentence too hard. You’ll hurt your head or bring on the apocalypse or something). They’re worried that the siren song of cheap, clean energy will seduce us once again, when we should be rightfully seduced only by Bonnie’s dulcet tones.
This line in the CNN piece is a remarkably dual-edged sword:
These “new” reactors are the same as the old ones, with a few bells and whistles, and a proven 50-year track record of catastrophic failure.
Indeed, and it’s brave of the “Troubadour-American Community”, as James Lileks dubbed them on Thursday’s Hugh Hewitt show, to admit their own shortcomings. (Audio here, which foreshadows the geriatric rockers’ CNN piece rather well.)
Fortunately, nuclear engineers are a bit more introspective.
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