Sublime

becoming a matutinal rite as inevitable as coffee and orange juice. When the New York World—famous for its liberalism and the wit of its columnists—had ceased publication in February, 1931, Lippmann, its editor, had gone over to the Herald Tribune and to sudden national fame. Clear, cool, and orderly in his thinking, he seemed to be able to reduce

mean anything at all. On the front page of the gray old Times, I’m liable to encounter a chatty article about frying with propane gas. CNN lavished hours of airtime on a runaway bride. The magisterial tones of Walter Cronkite, America’s rich uncle, are lost to history, replaced by the ex-cheerleader mom style of Katie Couric. One reason the notion

LOS ANGELES—The