• The Sentinel (Carlisle, Pa.), on Johnny Carson • Journal Star, Peoria, Ill., on Social Security The Sentinel (Carlisle, Pa.), on Johnny Carson Carnac the Magnificent. Art Fern, host of the “Tea Time Movie.” Floyd R. Turbo, concerned citizen. And
• The Sentinel (Carlisle, Pa.), on Johnny Carson
• Journal Star, Peoria, Ill., on Social Security
The Sentinel (Carlisle, Pa.), on Johnny Carson
Carnac the Magnificent. Art Fern, host of the “Tea Time Movie.” Floyd R. Turbo, concerned citizen. And dear, sweet, lovable Aunt Blabby.
All of these were characters played by Johnny Carson, the recordsetting host of “The Tonight Show” who died this weekend at the age of 79. But Carson won’t be remembered for the roles so much as he will be remembered for being himself.…
As a fan and a student of comedy, he championed the people who could make him laugh. The simple device of inviting a young standup comic over to the desk instead of cutting to a commercial was Carson’s stamp of approval — and one that seldom escaped his audience’s notice.
Competing TV networks coveted Carson’s audience, and it’s a tribute to him that they could never carve out much of a slice of it for long. From Joey Bishop to Merv Griffin, from Dick Cavett to Chevy Chase, from Pat Sajak and Joan Rivers to Arsenio Hall, there are enough of them to create a museum of failed latenight talk show hosts.
Carson was never too hip for the heartland, never too uncool for the coasts. Despite his occasional fights with the network to raise his pay, shorten the program and bring in guest hosts more often, he never seemed tired of the show and he always made it look easy. …
Journal Star, Peoria, Ill., on Social Security
The father in your neighborhood who developed Lou Gehrig’s Disease at the age of 33 collects a Social Security check if he can no longer work. So do the young mother disabled by multiple sclerosis, the 55yearold former hospital aide whose back gave out after too many years of lifting patients, and the 22yearold with Christopher Reeve’s limitations but not his money. You might call individuals such as these the silent minority of Social Security recipients. Unable to work when things get lean, often burdened by high medical (and sometimes by high caretaking) bills, sometimes raising children, too young to have invested much, they may be the program’s most vulnerable. As the nation ponders the future of Social Security, we need to hear, and to talk, much more about them.…
Yet the disability side of the Social Security program has been largely forgotten in our obsession with the retirement side.
…As this suggests, nothing about Social Security reform is simple. There is great risk of hurting badly those struck down early, before they have a chance to revel in what Wall Street might endow. No reform should pass, or be proposed, that shortchanges the most vulnerable.
