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Yesterday, my iPad was dinging, so I glanced at the lock screen, and saw what you see above.
My reaction was trite. It was highly unoriginal. It was what the writers for a B movie would have written for Walter Brennan to say, or Lionel Barrymore, or maybe Ed Asner in his MTM show period (Lou Grant!). I showed it to my wife saying, “Really? That’s the most important thing going on in the world at this moment?” Yeah, it was a lame response, but I was off my game. It threw me to see these publications prioritizing this news so much: The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Washington Post… even The New York Times! I guess those were the ones I saw because, well, I don’t have a People app to pump such notifications to me. But still. I felt like I was in yet another sequel to “Freaky Friday,” in which The Gray Lady switched places with, I dunno, Teen Beat.
After a few seconds mildly brooding over it, I forgot about it.
That was, until I saw today where someone I respect personally had tweeted about the news:
… and other people I respect just as much — see Mandy there? — responded in a similar vein. (You can see more of those responses below.)
Now, let me be perfectly clear, my fellow Americans… I do not want anyone to think for a minute that I show you this and say these things in order to criticize these smart people, or hold them up to any kind of ridicule. (Although “Never forget where I was” is what you say about the Kennedy assassination, or Pearl Harbor, if you were around for that. Come on, folks! Now back to what I meant to say…)
It’s rather the reverse. It kinda reminds me that lots of smart, analytical thinkers in this world are better-rounded human beings than I am.
Sometimes I worry about that. Not often, but sometimes. I wondered about it back during my days on the editorial board. All of my associate editors were smart people, and most of them were good at feeling and writing about things that moved so many millions of other humans, but tended to leave me cold. You know, like professional football and 21st-century pop singers (as I’ve previously explained, rock and roll died around 1993, when MTV abandoned its mission of showing music videos 24 hours a day).
For instance, when Princess Diana was killed and the commoners reacted in ways I found peculiar, I was entirely in agreement with Her Majesty the Queen: She kept her distance and did not publicly emote over the death of her former daughter-in-law. “Bloody well right,” I thought. “Her Majesty’s a pretty smart girl. She knows what she’s about.” But my man Tony Blair, exquisitely attuned to the Zeitgeist in his early days as PM, warned her she’d better change her mind or see the end of the monarchy. He was probably right — he usually was. But my gut reaction was with Elizabeth Regina.
But I was the editor of the editorial pages, and I had enough Blair in me to realize we should probably say something — and something far more empathetic than what I was thinking. So… who should write the editorial? It wasn’t going to be me. It had to be one of the people who knew how to “resonate” to the culture of the moment. But someone else on the board volunteered, and really got into the subject, just resonating like crazy. Which I knew I couldn’t do, and didn’t want to do.
Which probably made my colleague who undertood how people felt about the lady and could reflect it back to readers with complete sincerity a better person than I was. I dunno.
When I was younger, I could do that resonating thing. When I was younger, I was sometimes the one guy called upon to do it. At The Jackson Sun back in 1977, the paper’s editorial page editor, having no idea how to react to the death of Elvis (and John Lennon, three years later), came to me — and I was a news guy in those days, not an editorialist. So I knocked out those pieces, and felt honored to have the opportunity.
As you know, I still love pop culture. But I guess I’m picky about it.
I can’t work up excitement about a pop singer to whom I’ve never listened (seems like a sweet young woman, but I don’t even know her songs) and a man who plays a sport I generally ignore (but hey, how about them Red Sox?).
But just as Elizabeth was the queen, Elvis was the King. Even more so, in a way. One E was on the throne by birth and tradition; the other E was raised to that position by the will of the people of the world…
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That quote in the first notification in the top image, from The New York Times, at least made me TRY to understand:
“Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” it said.
In other words, a lot of the people going crazy about this are so young that they see these two kids as elders.
So I tried to imagine that. I tried thinking about when I was very young and very impressionable. I thought, So I’ll make Petula Clark my English teacher (given her nationality), and of course Johnny Unitas my coach.
Nah, it still doesn’t work. And back then I loved football, and the Colts were my team. I didn’t start hating the game until what happened to them in Super Bowl III…
I loved it! When Travis began getting Taylor’s attention, he was very humble about it and knew he had to be careful and serious – not about conquest or winning, but to be sincere and respectful. It didn’t hurt that Coach knows her family. I’m not so into her music or a groupie for either one of them, but I’m impressed by their phenomenon. Taylor herself has been precocious, savvy, and generous. I hope their marriage will be inspirational and long lasting.
Also, a word about what causes people to have such strong attachment to celebrities. I think a lot of it is TV, which is less of an influence on me. I mean, I’ve loved television my whole life, but didn’t watch the kinds of things that might expose me to such current figures, like TV “news.”
Back in 1985, Charles and Diana came to America, and there was wall-to-wall TV coverage of their stay here. I would not normally have seen it, but in the newsroom at the paper in Wichita, there were always TVs over near the newsroom clerks. They watched the local news shows each just in case they broke something we needed to know about. On this day, someone had it on showing the royals at some event in Washington, I suppose. As I was walking by, I paused briefly to look at it. The camera was, of course, on Diana, even though she wasn’t doing anything but quietly sitting in a chair along the wall. I had always wondered why she was so widely appealing, because I couldn’t see it in still photographs, or in accounts of what she did and said. Pretty young woman, but what of it?
But seeing her sitting there looking about, I was unexpectedly impressed by her grace in the smallest moves of her head and neck, the way she held her chin down and peered out at the room through her eyelashes. Her magnetic shyness. The vulnerability. The charm. Again, the grace. I hadn’t seen any of it before. Wow. I had had no idea of the power of adding motion to image, and was as impressed by that discovery as I was by her.
As for Taylor Swift… I first got a glimpse of how appealing she was a couple of years ago watching that Capitol One commercial — the one with the multiple Taylors. Just a glimpse, but at least it gave me a clue to her celebrity. Not as impressive as the Diana incident, but it was something.
Oh, and while I’m thinking about how little I know about Ms Swift, I went overboard in the post — I do actually know ONE of her songs. Several years ago when I was doing some work for Providence Hospital, they wanted a video to promote staying healthy by, I think drinking smoothies or something. Because they were good for the heart. Someone on the Providence staff had wriiten new lyrics to Taylor’s “Shake it Off” (I see she was pretty cute in that video, too.)
So I listened to the original. Nice, light pop. Bouncy. Sort of like “Call Me Maybe” a few years back. Or, to reach back to the days when there was still rock and roll in the world, the Archies. The genre was called “Bubblegum” back then.
Which is not to dismiss her. Maybe some of her other stuff is better, deeper. I just don’t know. I know hardly more about her than Donald Trump knows about, say, history…
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10161088024431138&set=pob.100002144590900
He DOES sound fast…