The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds.
When you think of Lee Sandlin and the Reader, the first thing you probably think of is “Losing the War,” his epic two-part essay ostensibly about World War II but really, like the best essays, about many other things.
Sandlin wrote more for the Reader, though, much, much more. And not all of it was long, serious essays. He reviewed classical music and television, too. For those reviews, he applied the same rigor to his research and writing as he did to his historical essays. Even when the subject was Teletubbies.
“Trips for Toddlers: They’re cute, they’re cuddly, they’re totally whacked on acid” (written in 1998, before the show came to the attention of Jerry Falwell) begins thus:
I’m not a parent, so I’ve only just caught up with the menace of Teletubbies, a bizarre British children’s show that’s been saturating our country since last spring. And now that I’ve seen it, I’m ready to sound the alarm.
Where are cultural doomsayers like William Bennett and Donald Wildmon when you really need them? How come they’re not on Larry King every night denouncing this sinister subversion of American values and demanding that we break off diplomatic relations with Great Britain? It’s all very well to while away the century slagging Clinton, but the 60s renegades at PBS who bought this show are the real threat to our republic.
It gets better from there. Go on, it’s only the first day of February. We all need a laugh today.