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Last Summary Update: 11-12-2026

Self Worshipers
Airdate: Wednesday - November 14, 1962

WOR Show
Original Airing

audio

(NOTE ABOUT TIME REFERENCES: Since there are many different copies of shows out there from different sources, all time references are from the beginning of one single recorded copy, since various copies, depending on when the recordee started recording, had news at the beginning or shortened themes. The times would vary from copy to copy.)

First Spoken Line After Theme Ends

I'm sitting here going over gift suggestions . . .

Show Description

[ Courtesy: Gary Hines - - ]   
  Self Worshipers, fake cookies as ornaments for monopoly game, new game-career game, mink ad      
  

[ Courtesy: GROK Summary - - ]   
  ### Core threads

- **Christmas consumer frenzy**: Shepherd mocks the early planning and hype of Christmas magazine issues ("the best, greatest, biggest, most fantastic Christmas ever"), which he treats as pure advertising-budget theater. He highlights absurd gifts (non-edible cookies that "look good enough to eat," oysters guaranteed to contain pearls) and a stamp-speculation scheme the Post Office threatens to kill by overprinting.

- **Games as mirrors of real attitudes**: He reminisces about childhood board games (especially an Indianapolis Race-style spinner game his father insisted they play to the full 500 miles). He argues that what people do in their "odd moments" of play reveals truer beliefs than official statements. This leads into an extended reading and commentary on the rules of the board game *Career*.

- **The *Career* game as cultural diagnosis**: The object is to succeed by accumulating fame, happiness, and money points through occupations (college, farming, big business, uranium prospecting, politics, Hollywood, moon expedition). Shepherd quotes rules about "bumping" other players to the park bench, experience cards ("you have just gone into politics because you have a great handshake," "you have just gone to Hollywood because of your tremendous beauty"), and the rule that you cannot give away happiness points. He notes the absence of ordinary careers (writing, advertising) and the built-in American cynicism about politics. The game, he says, is "almost scary" in how accurately it reflects real desires and attitudes.

- **Secularization of Christmas and modern worship**: He mentions the controversy over a Christmas stamp that deliberately avoided theology. Religion makes value judgments people dislike; credit standing is safer. He then asks what 20th-century people actually worship and identifies two (often contradictory) camps:
  - **Self-worshippers**   -  especially strong among women, whom he describes as more religious and mystical in an emotional rather than abstract sense (Bernadette vs. Aquinas; Aimee Semple McPherson as contrast).
  - **Object/technology worship**   -  literal idolatry of products (the dishwasher as savior from the "evil" of work). The combination of the two produces a "great religious experience" when an object glorifies the self.

- **Mink ad as liturgy**: He reads a *New Yorker* mink-coat advertisement in the cadence of a religious litany ("I saith unto you. . . Love It. Love your mink and it will love you. . . ").

- **Child worship**: Toy catalogs aimed at "young married sociologists" worship both material splendor and the child itself (especially girls) as an object of virtue and purity  - the "tiny Madonna" who sells everything from bathroom tissue to skid chains.

WOR ID

Time	Station ID (All times approximate)
10:25	speaking of fantasy, this is WOR AM and FM New York. . .

Commercials (All times approximate)

Time	Sponsor	Notes
10:32	Maladies Cheese Blintzes and Potato Pancakes

Music (All times approximate)

Time	Music Title	Notes
02:59; 05:01	Toreador Song from Carmen
05:39	La Donna E Mobile
15:32	Unknown - Gothic Music

Engineers, Staff, and Guests in Booth

Time	Engineer, Staff or Guest
05:34	Ed Beaty

Instruments and Special Effects Played During the Show

Instruments Played

None

Airdate History ' - Original' date is earliest known broadcast)

This Show

		Date	Title
		November 14, 1962	Self Worshipers	Original Airing

More Ways To Hear or Buy It

Show	Replay Date
Dustbin of History	November 12, 2026

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"Imagine 4,000 years passing, and you're no longer a memory - Does it seem possible to you?
You better believe it's possible, not only possible but certainty." - Jean Shepherd - October 7, 1971