Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye

Johnny Carson died this morning. The news caught me by surprise. I did not even know he was in poor health. Only yesterday I heard a radio commentator say that Carson was still submitting jokes to David Letterman from time to time and that Letterman occasionally added them to his monologue.

1925-1005

Carson and the Tonight Show are inseparable from my adolescence and progress into adulthood. When he began hosting the show in 1961 I was too young to stay up to watch him. When he retired, I was often too tired to stay up to watch him!

For me he was the closest thing to my generation's Will Rogers. He was likeable, politically androgynous, naturally shy, genuinely interested in other people and possessing a wry and cutting humor that was never demeaning. Somehow, when Johnny had finished his monologue I always felt that the high places had been brought low and the low places raised up just enough to make the world seem like a happier and better place than it had seemed just a few minutes before.

Carson put "beautiful downtown Burbank" on the map for every American, whether they actually knew or cared where Burbank was or even if it existed in reality at all. With Carnac the Magnificent and all his other alter-egos Carson drew us out of our depressing preoccupations with the civil rights riots, the tragedies of political assassinations and the angry cultural clashes spawned by the Vietnam War. Hippies and the "Summer of Love," Neil Armstrong walking on the moon & the rise and demise of the Beatles were covered, each in their turn, during his tenure.

Carnac the Magnificent

One night in Winnemucca, Nevada, my wife and I had the strange experience of watching the Tonight Show at 10:00 pm, being broadcast from Utah's Rocky Mountain Standard time which always broadcast his show simultaneously with Central Standard Time (which, in Utah, meant 11:00 pm each night).

To be honest he was just as witty and funny at that earlier hour as he was two hours later someplace else!

It has been said that the popularity of his show caused a significant decline in conceptions and births in the American population. People were more interested in watching Carson than, well....in other things!

It was hard to believe that, when Carson finally retired in 1992, he would, by choice, disappear into his own private world of personal friendships, tennis and a few appearances at selective charity events. The spotlight he reflected so well for so many years had no lasting ownership on his life. He valued and preferred privacy to the adoration of an admiring public and, to its credit, the media loved him enough to respect his wishes to be left alone. It was by his choice that we must say, "Johnny, I Hardly Knew Thee."

Ed McMahon

By contrast, Carson's sidekick, Ed McMahon ("Heeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrreeeeeee's Johnny!") stepped out of the Tonight Show and has since inundated us with TV ads offering us the possibility of being Sweepstakes Winners or talking to us about retirement health benefits. While Carson will be remembered warmly and well, I suspect that McMahon will always be more likely to be associated with junk mail than with anything he accomplished as America's nightly straight man.

Will Rogers

Like Will Rogers before him, Johnny Carson's life was forged in the values of the American mid-West "heartland." Like Will Rogers Carson found his popular legacy in entertainment and settled for life in Southern California. Both men were shy but enjoyed making others laugh. The laughter each of them shared was not contrived but genuine. The laughter came from hearts that were full of optimism, full of a love for America and committed to the ideal that "all people are created equal." And if someone needed to be brought down a notch in order to become equal with everyone else, they were both the first in line to do the job.

In the spirit of Will Rogers I can honestly say that "I never met a Tonight Show with Johnny Carson that I didn't like." For me, every weekday night was the "Best of Carson."

Good-night, Johnny