Biden our time

 

These are words I don't ever remember my mother saying: "I'm happy with the election."

And as I've previously reported here, my mother's interest in the 2020 presidential contest was unprecedented, save perhaps for the 1960 contest, which happened the year I was born. Ironically, sources have described 2020 voter turnout as among the highest since, well, Kennedy vs. Nixon 60 years ago. JFK won the electoral college but took the popular vote by fewer than 150,000 ballots out of 68 million cast, a number the new president was said to have written on a piece of paper and kept in a pocket so he would remember to be humble about how he squeaked by.

Humility is in short supply these days, and I don't mean just the outgoing president. Democrat or Republican, voters in this country are gloating a bit about the result. Donald Trump lost reelection, but he still earned more than 70 million votes, as of this writing. Biden bested him by more than 75 million votes: impressive, but hardly a landslide.

It's no time to gloat, given the precarious state this county is in, with COVID raging again and the economy looking like a bloodied fighter on the ropes whose trainer just sliced the top of his eye open to prevent swelling.

So, when my mother called me this week to say she was on her third viewing in a month of the Judy Garland classic "Meet Me in St. Louis," I wasn't surprised. Besides Garland's aching rendition of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," that 1944 film is just the kind of naively nostalgic fare that, dammit, just makes you feel good. Never mind that the world was fighting its deadliest war during production; the slice of early 20th-century life was the kind of fare Hollywood churned out like the first model-Ts on a Ford production  line.

Shameless, yes. Effective? You bet. "It was a happy time," mom says of the period evoked by the film. It's hard not to buy into that.  

I know when my mother makes what I describe as her "must-see-TV" calls, it is because she wants me to share something that makes her feel good. "Dancing with the Stars." "The Nanny." "My Sunday show," as she calls "Sunday Morning," with Jane Pauley.  

The election result made her feel good, but it didn't make her any less apprehensive about the state of things. She likes to say that at 85, she's already seen the best life has to offer, so she's isn't worried about being on her way out.

I don't buy it. She isn't ready to go, as she made clear during a recent health scare. That ballot she cast by mail was an affirmation of something. 

I'll take a guess by borrowing from the Garland musical canon: "Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe."


MGM


       

          


        

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