RIP Paul Harvey and Philip Jose Farmer

Paul Harvey and Philip Jose Farmer each died last week. Harvey was 90, Farmer was 91. Harvey was staight out of "Babbit," a positive thinking news huckster who was the voice of middle America, until that whippersnapper Limbaugh showed up.

While Harvey was a millionaire big city broadcaster who extolled 1950s white middle class American values, PJF was the one who actually lived in middle America (Peoria). Farmer's fiction was notable for it's dealing with sex, religion, diversity and death.

Farmer wrote Venus on the Half-Shell (1975) , under the pseudonym "Kilgore Trout,"a fictional author who appeared in several novels by Kurt Vonnegut. Some of Mr. Harvey's admirers might find Farmer's fiction dirty or offensive. When I think of Paul Harvey, I think of the unintentional and oblivious mean-spirited
side of the country. The strain of conservativism that doesn't see anything disturbing in U.S. History, other than "liberal fascism."

Here's Paul Harvey's infamous commentary from a few years back.