IN APPRECIATION OF ROBERT OSBORNE, WHO DIED MONDAY AT THE AGE OF 84: “The man who brought classic movies and Hollywood history to a generation will be missed.”

What’s fascinating about TCM is how culturally, it’s almost the Fox News of the Time-Warner empire: while CNN and HBO act as if all of America was nothing but Black Armband History except during the years Obama was in office, TCM is a reminder how just awesome a product the (mostly conservative) founders of Hollywood could create, until they were pushed out by the socialist Young Turks of the late ’60s. (Who aged far differently from the genteel Osborne, as witnessed by last month’s Oscar embarrassment involving Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. As Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader of all people eventually lamented, “It was fun watching the applecart being upset, but now where do we go for apples?”

Well, other than TCM, that is.