91 years ago

Editor’s note – Colleen O’Brien’s column this week uses many different formatting styles. To preserve those styles most efficiently, the column is posted as a .pdf. Click on the link below to read the column as formatted.

~a column by Colleen O’Brien

Excerpts from The Jefferson Bee, February 29, 1928

[The following is a story about the influence of radio. It was printed on the front page, left hand column, often a spot for opinion as opposed to news. The headline, “Seasonable Sermons,” by V.E. Lovejoy, subtitles, “Thoughts upon Topics which Are very much Alive in America at Present,” is an ironic harangue about radio, and it was the advertising that had blossomed by then that got to the author. It seems he wrote from a crystal ball and surely has been rolling in his grave for the ensuing decades.]

“Maybe what this country needs right now is this new and wonderful thing, whereby we hear voices half way around the world, turned over completely to the uses of money grabbers. This great and amazing God-given revelation, the radio, in-doubtedly [sic] planned for man’s edification and pleasure, should be given over to the “money changers” and devoted entirely to the business of separating the people from their cash…

Click here for the entire column.

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