elsa's boyfriend sacked

Dick Gordon, host of public radio program "The Connection" broadcast on Boston's WBUR and syndicated to many other NPR stations across the country (including my local NPR station), has been let go from the station and the show cancelled. Dick, one of Mental Archipelago's featured boyfriends, shall no longer grace my weekday mornings with that smooth 'n' smarmy voice discussing every possible current events-related topic with that magical balance of plasticine concern and skeevy sensitivity. When Dick talks to his guests, he sounds like he is seducing him or her into a hot tub. I bet you don't have to be around him too long before he puts his tongue in your ear.

The reasons stated by WBUR's official press release amount to little reason at all, though this Boston Phoenix medialog entry quotes WBUR spokeswoman Nancy Sterling saying that "the performance of the show has been flat for a number of years." This op-ed by a Harvard prof Howard Gardner printed in the Boston Globe Wednesday describes it well and parallels my own thoughts on the move.

I don't know if I'd call Dick the best in public radio programming, but as Gardner points out, it's his idiosyncracies that make him appealing. Also, I spent many a lonely day in the dark, fume-ridden closet of a darkroom at The Job I Hated during which the discussions on "The Connection" and other NPR programs were both the only thing to keep me from going completely insane and my first hook into being a regular consumer of news.

And now where am I going to hear US3's "Cantaloop" on a regular basis?

It's not like I still own a tape single of that song or anything...