Good-bye to All That: When the Outside World Changes Our Inner World

I've never met David Letterman. Likely never will. But I've seen his image and laughed with him, and though it was a rare night I stayed up late enough to see him, I did occasionally watch his show, and somehow, I'll miss him.

I'll miss Jon Stewart, too. Same particulars there. Never met the guy, but I did watch him many evenings and certainly on line when he did something notable. His form of  subversion was less eccentric and more focused than Letterman's and he provided an anchor of sanity through those bad Bush years. He also offered hope whenever Rush Limbaugh and company got too noisy.

I'll miss Stephen Colbert, too. You will say, "Well, he's not really leaving. He's still going to be on TV," but you know it won't be the same Colbert, not in his new spot.  He's history. 

And then there is Don Draper and Joan and Peggy and Betty Draper and Sterling and Pete and Cooper. All gone now. Of course, you will point out, they never really existed, not like Stewart, Letterman and Colbert, not real people.  But they are no more and no less real to me. They are images on TV who say amusing things and whom I've spent time learning. I know them.  They affected me.

I know I've told this story before, but it's relevant here, so forgive me.   When I was 26, working in the Emergency Room at The New York Hospital, I saw a 19 year old mother from East Harlem, with her 5 year old daughter. The mother had a cough and a fever and the daughter accompanied her to the ER.  I  finished examining the mother and was writing her a prescription when the daughter beamed at me and said, "I know you!" 
I looked at her, trying to remember if I had seen her during my pediatric rotation as a medical student, but couldn't place her. 
"You're on TV!" she said. "I saw you."
I looked to the mother who also grinned. "Yes, we saw you. General Hospital."
Chronically sleep deprived, I struggled to understand. Then I got it. These two sat home together all day and watched the day time soaps and they thought "General Hospital" was real life. Now, this was before "Hopkins 24/7" and "New York Med" brought cameras inside actual hospitals.  For these two, the people on the screen were as real as anyone else. 

For me, the folks of Mad Men are as real as the real people, Letterman, Stewart, and Colbert. They are all just images on the screen. And they have about the same impact on my life. They enrich it. 

For that matter, Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly, James Taylor all had important effects on my life. They made the music which formed its tapestry; they are part of my memory bank.  And it's what makes me American, knowing those songs, which I share with people who've never been East of California. 

I spent two months in London, when I was 24. Vietnam was going on and I was not in love with America. By the end of the first month, I missed America intensely. I'd go to Earl's Court where Americans tended to drift for the good, cheap dinners. I'd go just to hear American accents. The Brits, I discovered, are not just Americans who talk funny. They are very different.  And while they knew a lot about America and were well versed in our music, they had never seen our T.V., and they had no idea what American football was all about and they were only dimly aware of baseball as some perversion of cricket, which is a game totally incomprehensible to Americans. This was in a time we were a less global economy. 

All these things, external to me mattered in what was forming internally.  Not an original thought, but it does well up as I consider the changing landscape of TV favorites. 

Impermanence.  Gotta love it.