Goodbye Tom, I Hardly Knew Ye

Bow your heads, please and could we have a moment of silence? Tom Snyder died Sunday in San Francisco from complications associated with leukemia.

When I was young and stayed up to watch my own little black & white TV (not a euphemism, people! Clean it up, damn it!), there was all kinds of good stuff on TV. All kinds of movies, Brit TV, monster movies, and of course Johnny Carson which I got. Because he was silly enough for my pre-teen and teenage years.

Tom Snyder? I didn't have a clue. I barely recognized some of his guests like Elvis Costello and I was too young to get cats like Vidal and Capote. The politicians he had on were even more obscure to me, though I would recognize most of them now, as well as the lower-tier movie stars that were obscure to me back then.

I understood enough of him to enjoy Dan Ackroyd's lampoons of him and especially, the gratuitous smoking. When he came back on the air in '95, I was sorry that I didn't get him the first time around. He was sublime, a real treat and he seemed a little more humble with this go around.

He had on David Milch, it seemed like every other episode I watched, since Friday is typically the only weekday I have off. Yet here was Milch and I was just working out this thing called screenwriting. Tom Snyder had on a working screenwriter that wasn't an author, for Pete's sake. No other talk shows want to acknowledge screenwriters before or since, I guess they're afraid that their staff will revolt.

I used to look forward to Friday's with Tom and for once, there was a talk show for adults...as opposed to Leno being ultra-smarmy or one for drunk college kids (not that there's anything wrong with that, hic!). Then Craig Kilborn's star went through the roof on the original "The Daily Show" and Tom got the boot. The great part about that was that John Stewart could finally catapult to the forefront where his deserved to be and the bad aspect was that we the audience, were stuck with a Kilborn that was on the verge of burnout.

Craigers started to condescend to his guest within months and there was a void for intelligent talk shows for adults, not that everybody in this house doesn't love Letterman. It's just that Letterman is only allowed to be serious for only a few moments each show.

Now mind you, I'm not talking about "The Daily Show" or "The Colbert Report" when I say adult talk shows pretty much begin and end with Charlie Rose. I'm talking about a show that is riff or spoof-free, where thoughtful ideas are exchanged. This something that is missing and now that Tom is gone, the void has somehow deepened.