Not long ago, I was in Oslo, gazing at a statue of Sonja Henie. I have a little note about it in my journal today. I thought of the traditional exclamation from Car Talk: “Sonja Henie’s tutu!”

When I got home, I was reading the obituaries and saw that one of the Car Talk brothers had died — Tom Magliozzi (obit here).

I listened to Car Talk, on and off, for years. I didn’t care much about cars — I mean, the mechanics of them (as opposed to, say, the artistry of them) — but I liked the show, a lot. That was because of the wit, warmth, and humanity of the brothers.

I think that we on the right aren’t supposed to like them because they did something Democratic at one point. I don’t remember. And I’m not going to Google. (I seem to spend half my day doing that.) But they could not keep me from liking them. And I never heard them talk politics on Car Talk.

I think NPR is basically soft Marxism — or used to be (I haven’t really listened to NPR since the 1980s, except for the occasional Car Talk, or maybe Peter Schickele) — and I would not spend a dime of taxpayer money on it. Are Frontline and Nova still on PBS? They were harder-than-soft Marxism! But I’m glad I got to know Tom and Ray.