Ah, Scott Simon, he's such a model of how NPR helps me wake up each day.
This morning he interviewed the author of an epic new biography of the early Hollywood moguls Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg. Little details jumped out at me. First I thought he referred to the hero of Ben-Hur, a recurring Hollywood blockbuster, as "Ben." But when I checked the transcript I found he'd said "Ben-Hur" after all, though his voice dropped almost to inaudibility on the "Hur."
Then he referred to Tarzan of the Apes as a "British novel," though its author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, was an all-American writer. A little later he said that Irving Thalberg died young, "... At the age of 67." Well, he was only thirty years off.
Overall, Simon was at his smug, smarmy worst this morning, chuckling over private jokes that I doubt would be funny even to his inner circle and which he carefully explained for those unfortunate enough to be outside it: "Tarzan the ape man, played by Johnny Weissmuller, who will forever be the best-known graduate of Senn High School in Chicago ... I say that as a Senn grad myself." He's mastered the art of sounding insincere even when he may really be sincere, as in his references to young Judy Garland being molested by Louis B. Mayer.
But like the rest of the NPR personalities, he drives me out of bed in the morning, if only to turn off the radio.
