Riiight. I think the last time I stayed up to see in the New Year was, well, in the Stone Age sometime. Older than dirt, that’s me.
I watched a bit of TV after sitting through what became a progressively more and more depressing local newscast: no end in sight to the government shutdown, overflowing trash on the National Mall, the port a potties unspeakable, nascent maneuverings in Congress to get out of this mess. The Brits are sliding into anarchy, might be the Wars of the Roses all over again (move over Game of Thrones). Meanwhile everyone in the Brit Establishment hates Meghan Markle. God, I miss John Lennon just now.
There was more, of course, but it’s too heartbreaking to go into. To counteract this negativity, I ended up watching Chappaquiddick on Netflix. Almost all the characters featured in the movie were dead and the late 1960’s now seem as distant as World War I. Strangely, this was comforting. Little did the characters know that they were marching straight into Watergate, but that’s the curse of knowing the future when you talk about the past. Or is that the past and the not so past?
Anyway, the film painted Senator Kennedy as a man crushed under the weight of the chaotic 1960’s and his demanding father’s overwhelming political ambitions. By the film’s storytelling, old man Joe never mellowed even in the face of life ending infirmity.
Personally, I think Ted Kennedy acted the coward; definitely not presidential material. At the time, his constituency let him off the hook. Judgment finally arrived when he failed to defeat the failing Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Democratic primaries, some ten years later. He dodged a bullet, there. Had Kennedy won, he would have been the one who lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980 ushering in Republican hegemony until 1992. As it is, Jimmy Carter bears that burden.
No justice there.
To counteract this, I ended up with Fawlty Towers which begins to describe the post-Watergate world. By that time the 1970’s had begun to pall. The comedy is brilliant but the jokes are jingoistic, even by British standards. It was an era, ironically, when you could say what you wanted on television. Outside of running gags about ill-adapted Spanish people and absolutely disgraceful portrayals of Irish people, the most shocking the thing was the women’s fashions.
All of Sybil Fawlty’s (Prunella Scales) hideous clothing, from a tight little purple suit to outrageous golf outfit (checked pants and all) to sequined evening sweater is spot on. I saw most of it in the local mall this week. I’m not kidding.
The future? People, we’re stuck in an everlasting feedback loop. We don’t progress; we just go around in huge circles. We just don’t have the wits to see it. On that hopeful note, I’m off to the mall. Those checked pants (boot cut, low rise) were on sale at Target. Saw them out of the corner of my eye as I was rushing around to buy wrapping paper and cold medicine. Time to usher in the future by stepping back into the past.
Confused? 