I have to admit that I feel really bad about Tiger Woods’ car accident yesterday, but how long does it take to report the few known facts about it? Yet it took up twenty minutes on CNN – CNN! – yesterday, and it was being carried simultaneously by most of the networks at the top of the hour. I know, because I was at the gym, and could see the story playing out with the same images across most of the monitors.
I mean, I’m really sorry for the guy and all, but other things happened. There was plenty of political news. The networks didn’t even give us the full 360 degree view from the Mars rover. And I don’t recall any of them covering Ferlinghetti’s death.
He was 101 (!), and was one of the lesser lights of the Beats. He opened the still-operating City Lights bookstore in San Francisco and published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl! Prosecuted for publishing obscene material, he fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court, and won. He claimed he wasn’t a Beat poet, but he certainly was a poet, publishing A Coney Island of the Mind.
I have to admit that I haven’t read his stuff (I have read, and loved, Ginsberg), but I certainly knew his name and reputation. One of the signs that the post-Animal House TV series Delta House was at least trying to transcend the network TV straitjacket was that they name-checked Ferlinghetti in their pilot episode.