No, seriously, Art Linkletter was still alive? The essence of anodyne avuncularity, the host of shows whose very names promised bland entertainment (House Party, People Are Funny, etc), the guy who interviewed little kids and reliably got them to say things that were naughty but never too naughty to go on the air. (Lenny Bruce found that deplorable — “Using scatological references of little kids, that’s sick to me,” he complained to Esquire. “Art Linkletter: ‘Did you hear that? The little girl said wee wee!’”). About the furthest out he got was in crusading against drugs after his daughter took LSD and killed herself — and come to think of it, acid suicides are also very quaint at this point.
For someone who grew up with Art Linkletter and had not thought about him for years, his death prompts the thought: Art Linkletter lived into the era of Seth Rogan, HBO, snuggies, social media, Ellen DeGeneres, consumer plastic surgery, slow food, Rush Limbaugh, truck nutz… twitter, and tumblr.
There is something deeply weird about that. He must have been aware of the changes around him. How did he react to them? Did he make that little crinkle-browed look of surprise he always made when a little girl said wee-wee? When Morton Downey led the parade of vicious, confrontational hosts onto television, did he wonder what the gosh darned heck was going on? Or did he shrug and switch to Oprah?
Art Linkletter will haunt my dreams tonight.
