Righter's Handbook

So my Comp. Professor totally gets into those random textbook examples...and we'll just wind up discussing the most off the wall stuff. But anyhoo.

Unwanted music is privacy's constant enemy. There is hardly an American restaurant, store, railroad station or bus terminal that doesn't gurgle with melody from morning to night, nor is it possible any longer to flee by boarding the train or bus itself, or even by taking a walk in the park. Transistor radios have changed all that. Men, women and children carry them everywhere, hugging them with the desperate attachment that a baby has for its blanket, fearful that they might have to generate an idea of their own or contemplate a blade of grass. Thoughtless themselves, they have no though for the sufferers withing earshot of their portentous news broadcasts and raucous jazz. It's hardly surprising that RCA announced a plan that would pipe canned music and pharmaceutical commercials to 25,000 doctors' offices in eighteen big cities-one place where a decent quietude might be expected. This raises a whole new criterion for choosing a family physician. Better to have a second-rate healer content with the sounds of his stethoscope, than an eminent specialist poking to the rhythms of Gershwin.

-William Zinsser, The Haircurl Papers