Bring Back Cavett

I try hard not to be one of those people who opines about "the good old days", which weren't, or "in my day", which is a silly phrase, but...

The art of conversation seems to be waning. Even the most basic of exchanges have been reduced to abbreviated text with no true inflection beyond preloaded emoticons.

In my personal life I have been fortunate enough to occasionally have someone who shares my love of diverse topics in depth, often the twin taboos of politics and religion, but not nearly as much as I crave.

Even topics such as entertainment have devolved to the simplistic, liked it or it sucked, you gonna eat the last slice of pizza?

Not all people like conversation in their personal life so let's leave that domain and focus on the professional talker. We have a 24/7 media culture and hundreds of channels, not including radio. With all of that you would think a golden age of conversation would be upon us but it's not, it's virtually non-existent.

With the exception of Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley, both on P.B.S., it is a wasteland. By the way Smiley's show needs to be expanded to an hour, are you listening P.B.S.?

The time is long overdue, bring back Dick Cavett! Before I go further I owe Mr. Cavett an apology, I'm sorry. One of my guilty pleasures is to visit YouTube whenever I'm near a high speed internet connection. Cavett is all over that site and as he has said, "what a shame I'm not being paid". He's right about that and that needs to be remedied. So many of our great conversationalists are gone, Tom Snyder, Bill Buckley, Christopher Hitchens and more, you get the point. Cavett is still with us, give the man a show, even if it's only weekly. He hasn't missed a beat and is frequently called on the phone for on air commentary and I always think the same thing, he should be the one hosting. I defy anyone to watch his original show and tell me there's anything like it now or as interesting. From the political to the entertainment of the day he wove subjects together in a way that was totally engaging.

If there are no commercial entities with the brains to recognize this treasure still in front of them, then please P.B.S. pull head from twixt thy ass and act. If no hope lay there then appeal is hereby made to Brian Lamb of C-Span, at the very least hire this man to host your In-Depth program for Book-T.V.

CNN, msnbc, Fox, you all suck. I was going to say you're failing to live up to your potential but that's entirely too kind. You spew the same stories on a loop 24 hours a day with hosts who would be completely lost without a teleprompter and pretend to do in depth interviews which last four or five minutes tops. This is for you msnbc, your prison shows are just awful, put something else on the air, even a test pattern would be more enlightening.

What about A&E and Bravo? Yes indeed, what about them?

Perhaps I'm completely wrong and no one cares about the art of conversation anymore. Perhaps I should keep my opinion to myself. Nah, you're entitled to it.