#65 - Linda Richman is neither Rich nor a Man - discuss.

Well, actually, since she's both, I'm wondering what her ActBlue Account looks like

(ps - new audio format of this piece is above if you prefer listening to it!)

I have a real soft spot for SNL. I don’t know if it’s my proclivity toward contemporary American history (I guess all American history is contemporary in the global context?) or my admiration for writers who can churn it out at a pace that is impossible for me, or the space for creativity to still make mistakes or maybe, and most probably right now, a way to laugh at the present, even and especially, when the present is devastating.

I, of course, devoured all of the musical specials associated with the 50th anniversary of SNL (Miley Cyrus & Brittany Howard are a precision duo, and let’s keep it going). Questlove is an American icon and understands better than anyone else how to tell historical stories through music. I love that he’s a dreamer AND a doer - that he produces these incredible pieces and is still up there behind his kit. Questlove has a magical mind - one that I’ve been lucky enough to bear witness to since I was a young teenager (many years ago, I wrote about my lifelong love affair with The Roots).

Last night, we sat down on the couch at 8 pm to watch the 50th anniversary special. Weirdly enough, there was something special about sitting down to watch something particular on network television. I looked to my husband and said, “It feels good to laugh,” before I fell into a second screen abyss of “should I move my money out of the market and buy land?”

Like the Eagles winning the Superbowl, celebrating 50 years of a show that is known for its satire of American life and American elected officials feels like a rebellious act, even though it shouldn’t. Football isn’t political, and I don’t particularly like it, but as we celebrated the citys win last Sunday night, we saw a woman with a “Go Birds. Fuck Trump” sign. I doubt you would have seen the same in Kansas City, where the wife of the quarterback is an avid Trump supporter. When you are living in a world where some people support Domestic terrorism and some don’t, everything is political. I digress.

As legacy outlets are both being censured by the Trump administration and by their own billionaire cowards, journalists are moving to independent writing en masse. They have vowed to speak the truth and are moving away from places where the truth is only true if it agrees with the sitting administration. This, like the mass resignation of lawyers over ethical dilemmas, is both heartening and terrifying, leaving way for loyalists to fill gaps within our crumbling system of checks and balances.

It is also all I could think about last night as I watched the SNL special. Though you can argue that SNL, along with all other legacy media outlets, are complicit in getting us to where we are, you can choose to look at it a different way. You can choose to look at it as a place where even the politicians vehemently disagreeable and unqualified would make fun of themselves (Sarah Palin, I’m looking at you). You can look at it as a place where making a mockery of what was happening in the world was a welcome reprieve from what was actually happening in the world. Not a way to bury your head in the sand, but to find solace in the fact that you weren’t the only one wondering to yourself day in and day out “Is the world burning, or am I going crazy over here?”

Watching the show last night felt like watching the musicians play on the Titanic. How long until it is taken down by the new administration who refutes any mockery, any negative press? How long until it is taken down by the new administration who believes that they ought to be the arbiter of art and culture?

I know I quote Angels in America too much here, but Kusher is and was someone who could see it all before it was even there. Lately most days I feel like I am walking around like Harper Prior, the over/under medicated wife of a closeted Mormon, who has hallucinations all day long. One of her favorites to elicit is a travel agent, Mr. Lies of the International Order of Travel Agents. She subconsciously summons him in her mind to inquire about a trip to Antarctica to see the holes in the ozone, which the radio tells her, just keep appearing. Mr. Lies chalks these holes up to “rootlessness, motion sickness,” and tells her the only cure is to “keep moving.”

But Harper can’t decide if now is the right time. I think about bits and pieces of this ramble often:

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“I'm undecided. I feel that something's going to give. It's 1985... fifteen years to the third millennium. Maybe Christ will come again or maybe the troubles will and the end will come. And the sky will collapse and there'll be terrible rain and showers of poison light. Or maybe my life is really fine... maybe Joe loves me and I'm only crazy thinking otherwise. Or maybe not. Maybe it's even worse than I know. Maybe I want to know, maybe I don't. The suspense, Mr. Lies, it's killing me.”

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Mr. Lies suggests it is time for a vacation. Last night after wondering how long it will be until SNL, or NBC at large, is censured, I laid in bed trying to understand how we are meant to keep moving as our Vice President refutes a meeting with the Chancellor of Germany for a meeting with the head of the AfD, their right wing party. I lay in bed wondering how any American, much less those who consider themselves Patriots with a capital P, feel positively about Russian state television praising the Vice President’s speech - his criticism of Europe’s lack of free speech, or rather their restrictions on hate-speak. I lay in bed wondering how it is possible to keep moving when we have an administration that is unequivocally not Anti-Facist or Anti-Nazi. I lay in bed and wonder how we keep moving when there is no question that the economy will endure a devastating collapse, it’s just a matter of when. I lay in bed and wonder how we get ourselves out from underneath the incredible weight of Musks Billions. I lay in bed and want to have faith in the supreme court, but do not. I lay in bed and want to think the Supreme Court might be able to stop this destruction, but I’m not sure - even if all the justices do the right thing - that they would be able to stop this. I think - Antartica sounds good, let’s go see the holes in the ozone.

Last night on SNL, my favorite character, Linda Richman, famous for her “big whoops,” and egregious use of Yiddish said, “What if there are no big whoops, what if life is just a series of small agonizing whoops?” She’s not been wrong yet.

I read an article yesterday - “Do It For Gilda,” where the author Adrienne LaFrance asks us to choose urgency in life like Gilda did: “This is the lesson of Gilda Radner’s too-short life: For God’s sake, don’t bother with fear. Just go for the thing you want, with your whole heart. Each of us gets only so much time on this planet, and none of us knows for how long. Life can be terrible this way, and sad, and it isn’t fair at all. But it is funny, anyway. Really, really funny.”

I have fear, a lot of it. It comes at night when the quiet of life’s series of small agonizing whoops starts to settle in for the day. And sure, sometimes it’s possible to laugh now at the insanity of all this, to find the humor in the arrogant tweets, the babymama drama, the almost comedic lack of intelligence.

And I can’t help wonder what Gilda would say now, standing in the face of a coup. It can’t always be funny. It can’t always be without fear. I felt a few pangs of sadness watching the show last night - wondering if this self-congratulatory spectacle that did in fact, succeed in making me laugh should have better served a resistance narrative. I wondered, with all of the liberal millions in that room, who is working to create a world where we continue to be allowed to laugh? Because the truth is, this is my biggest fear - that this domestic terror will continue until there is, truly, nothing to find funny at all.

I think, like Harper and Linda and Gilda, there’s never been a better time to find the coping mechanism that works for each of us.

Chic Schmaltz La Vie,

LCF