Good Day...

RIP Paul Harvey, an American Legend. You will be missed, you will be missed.

From today's Wall Street Journal Opinion page:

Long before Rush Limbaugh and the rise of talk radio, the most important radio news figure in America was Paul Harvey. For millions of Americans who listened to their AM radio dials while driving to work, or during their lunch break, Harvey's five-minute "News and Comment" broadcasts were for decades a source of credible information and Americana.

Harvey had a resonant voice, as well as a signature style that specialized in the dramatic pause, a sense of amiable humor, and often the surprise ending. His broadcasts weren't ideological, partisan or wonkish, but they were conservative in the sense of representing traditional values. As the counterculture rose in the 1960s and 1970s, he would tell stories about personal responsibility rather than individual license. We can still recall his rising dismay at the inflation of the 1970s and how it eroded middle-class thrift.

Born in Tulsa, Harvey was only 14 when he began working in a local radio station. He went national in 1951, reaching an audience as large as 24 million at its peak. Harvey continued to work to his dying days, and as recently as 2006 an ABC executive told Forbes.com that Harvey brought in more than 10% of the radio network's $300 million in advertising billings.

"I don't think of myself as a profound journalist," he once said, but in fact he was, describing the world as he saw it, with sympathy for the human condition and impatience with politicians who failed in their duties. He died Saturday at age 90 of undisclosed causes, an American original.