Oedipus Tex

Long gone are the days when Ma Bell or ComEd or Indiana Gas and Electric or any other utility would get a compliment like this: "Johnny Carson was like a public utility. At the end of the day, you wanted him to be there."

David Letterman was paying tribute to the recently departed King of Late Night with these words, but he managed, unintentionally no doubt, to give a nod to the ol' phone company as well. That utilities, which still include carriers despite their best efforts to the contrary, could be thought of as being as comforting and dependable as Johnny Carson is quite a compliment.

Of course, one couldn't climb in bed with the phone company every night and fall asleep, or start a little hanky panky to anything like the sound of Doc Severinsen's band. But truth be told, Ma Bell was even more dependable than Johnny--and for much longer.

However, compliments to utilities or even references to Ma Bell are not long for this world as time marches on.

Ma Bell died years ago after losing a bitter custody battle over her children. Her memory is starting to fade. However, her spirit has been resurrected lately in nostalgia-peppered news accounts of SBC's Oedipus complex, which is being played out in the take over of AT&T.

It won't last long, though--maybe a year or two after the acquisition is complete. Then the last of the hackneyed headlines declaring "Ma Bell: Finally dead at 130" or "SBC hangs up on Ma Bell" will have run their course. And soon thereafter, the Bell Company era and all references to it will slip at last into history--which, by the way, thanks to the quixotic implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, is being taught less and less in U.S. public schools.

And thus, when the last Class 5 circuit switch is retired in 2019 (or somewhere around there) and is noted by a journalist as the last from an era dating back to the days of Ma Bell, some kid, sitting in his virtual tree fort, flipping through images returned from his holographic search engine over his personal WiFi6 network from SBC-Huwaei, will wonder aloud: "Who is Ma Bell? What does she have to do with my search on Letterman's final show and what in the name of Cerf is a telephone?"

E-mail me at tmcelligott@primediabusiness.com.