Now I'm baffled because I have an entire hole in my knowledge of pop or Oprah-related culture. I have no idea who Michael Beckwith is! But I'm going to look on Google right now. How did I miss this person?

Glad you've read those writers. If you've read Twain, Hemingway, Chaucer, Dickens, Shakespeare, and Poe and liked them, then you've been exposed to lowbrow ideas, scenes, and interactions in volumes. So many of their works are full of those touches. They wanted to sell books and plays just like modern authors do.

As far as radio and TV are concerned, I do watch an occasional Oprah nightime re-rerun when it's about societal matters. But I do think she's sold out in a big way recently, and I think Phil McGraw's show is becoming increasingly "Springerized," which is sad because an understanding of our own psychology is important, I think. This is why nearly everything else I watch, other than "60 Minutes" and news magazine-type shows on the networks, is on PBS these days. And the only radio I listen to other than music is NPR. I agree that there's far too much crap out there.