a perspective to think about re TRP and his pervasive pop culture

[Mark Kohut]

from yesterday's NYTimes obit of Ray Browne, the 'father' of popular culture studies in the US....

"His reply to his critics was simple and eloquent. “Popular culture is the voice of democracy, democracy speaking and acting, the seedbed in which democracy grows,” he said in an interview in 2002 with Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900 to Present). “It is the everyday world around us: the mass media, entertainments and diversions. It is our heroes, icons, rituals, everyday actions, psychology and religion — our total life picture. It is the way of living we inherit, practice and modify as we please, and how we do it. It is the dreams we dream while asleep.”

A friend of mine studied with him and says he was a nice guy as well.....