Death Lessons--I

I was a fourth year medical student doing my neurology elective at Columbia’s Neurology Institute in New York City. It was an exciting time for me. I had a sublet across from the Blue Note Jazz Club. I took the bus to work by day and the subway to parties by night. The pulse of the city was a far cry from UCONN’s sleepy Farmington snore. I was happy to be there and eager to learn. Learning for a physician, clichéd as it may seem, is a lifelong process. It does not happen at a steady or predictable pace and can be about things you never saw coming. In the first two years of medical school it is force fed through lectures and books organized around subjects (anatomy, physiology) or organ systems (musculo-skeletal, cardio-vascular). In the third and fourth years, and for the rest of a doctor’s life, it comes from contact with patients.

Thirty years later I remember a patient I saw at Columbia. He was a 41 year old upper class New Yorker getting chemo and radiation therapy for an advanced brain tumor. His very attractive, but pale and anxious wife sat nearby as I interviewed and examined him. He seemed happy to see me. Hospitals, especially tertiary care hospitals, are cold and impersonal, and the waiting between contacts with caregivers can be so painful that medical students are almost always welcome. There is something very comforting about their clean white coats, insecure looks and plain ignorance. Patients often open up to medical students while holding back information from their more arrogant and hurried physicians.

Despite his brain tumor, my patient was awake, alert and it seemed, in complete control of his faculties. We talked about his illness, his work, his life. I didn’t really know all the questions I should have been asking, but we both had time and just kept talking. For some reason, one that I still regret today, I asked him about depression and whether he had thought about suicide. I didn’t even ask the question well. There was something about Hemmingway, I think. In any event, he gave me a big smile and started to answer, but his wife started to fidget in her chair, clench her jaw and glare at me. At the time I told myself that I had every right to ask a terminal patient about depression and that asking about suicidal thoughts was a doctor’s responsibility. I now feel that it was unnecessarily cruel to the wife and that as a student, not one really caring for the man, I did not have the knowledge or power to help.

The next day my preceptor told me that the patient’s wife complained about me, specifically my opening up the topic of suicide. She asked that I not see him again. I was not censured in any way. Senior physicians are very protective of their medical students and, at least on paper, I had done nothing wrong. He told me that the patient actually liked me. Sadly, the story did not end there. That night the young man, whom I today imagine wearing a tux out in New York society, went into a coma. His brain had swelled and herniated down his brain stem.

I left New York City with mixed emotions. I loved the Neuro Institute with its bizarre Movement Disorders ward—dozens of people even weirder than the ones who roam the streets downtown. I was proud of myself for braving the late night parties even though the women were way too cool for me. I was surprised and happy to receive an A and a glowing recommendation from my preceptor. Still, I was ready to get back to the normalcy of life in New Britain. On some level I still felt like I had caused a brain to herniate and a wife to be doubly distressed.

One month later I received a letter forwarded to me by my preceptor. It was from the young wife who had just buried her husband. She wrote to thank me for talking to her husband. He really did enjoy my company and conversation. She said that before my visit she did not realize how sick he was or that his death was a near term possibility. She said that my breaching the topic of death in some way prepared her and allowed her to project her built up anger, frustration and fear onto me. I don’t think she apologized for anything. She wished me luck and encouraged me to keep talking to my patients.

I said it already—you don’t always learn what you set out to learn. Sometimes the person you are caring for isn’t even your patient. Sometimes the things you learn are about yourself.

Get Up, Stand Up

Valentine’s Day plus two finds me sitting at home in my chair soaked in the early morning sunshine that enters through the blinds left open by my wife to prevent me from drifting downward into a wintery withdrawal. Her intentions are good, but this American Jew is of Russian descent and enjoys the embrace of a long, cold, snowy winter. Imagine Zhivago at his desk in Varykino. This is exactly what I need, nature slowing my pace, touching me with a bit of sadness that when bathed in sunlight awakens my poetic muse.

Zhivago wrote love poems to his mistress, Lara, in the isolation of his wife’s country estate as a revolution ravaged his country. He is portrayed as a healer, lover and poet in sharp contrast to Lara’s husband who is a central figure in the revolution, a man of action and ruthless cruelty. Two other characters in the movie, portrayed by no less that Rod Steiger and Alec Guinness, show us different paths to take in life. One is corrupt, lustful and selfish. The other is quiet, reads others well and somehow comes out of chaos in a position of authority. Which one do I want to be today?

     You say you want a revolution

     Well, you know

     We all want to change the world.

That was John Lennon’s view on things. Even two days after February 14th he would never leave us with “just another silly love song”. Thirty years after his death I remember his irreverence, his self-destructive years with acid, his using music as a tool of rebellion and his transformation into a man who stayed at home, cared for his son and asked us to “imagine all the people living life in peace”. He was an artist, not a fighter. Still, he inspired a cultural revolution. I wonder if ever, before his untimely end, he thought it was worth the tumult along the way or the risk (that he in fact predicted) to his own life. For the rest of us “life goes on”. Is revolution really worth the risks? My chair at home sure is soft and comfortable.

We’ve all been witnessing a revolution in the Middle East. I see the crowds of young people in Cairo’s central square and I am awed by their courage. I don’t think I would be so brave. As I watch TV I remember similar images from the 60s of American college students protesting the Viet Nam war. In that same era we marched and sat in to fight against racial inequality. We fought to abolish slavery in the Civil War losing more lives than in any other war. “Four score and seven years” before we rebelled against a foreign dictator and created a nation “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. Our nation was born thanks to the courage of a bunch of rebels. And to our credit, in every generation since, we’ve reawakened that spirit to put ourselves back on course to being a nation of freedom and equality. I say we but I am no Strelnikov. The 60s are now half a century ago. I wonder if my generation of Americans and I have become too comfortable to even recognize a cause that merits our attention and sacrifice.

This very thought has been bothering me and sitting in my subconscious as a slowly simmering blog for the past few months. It started when I listened to the lyrics of a popular John Mayer song, “Waiting on the World to Change”

     Now we see everything that's going wrong
     With the world and those who lead it
     We just feel like we don't have the means
     To rise above and beat it

     So we keep waiting
     Waiting on the world to change
     We keep on waiting
     Waiting on the world to change

He goes on to say that someday his generation is “gonna rule the population”. I felt like telling him that if he and his generation “keep on waiting”, someone else, maybe those courageous Egyptians, or well educated Chinese or enterprising Indians are going to be in charge, not him. But me in my chair, who am I to tell him anything. Don’t I share responsibility for my generation’s legacy, Enron and Iraq?

Then something happened that made me look at America’s younger generation in a new and much more positive light. A nine year old girl was shot dead in Arizona. She had been elected to her school’s student council and went to see her Congresswoman speak to learn more about government. Her death was tragic. Yet, somehow, I felt hopeful. I was confident that she was not the only nine year old out there with the drive to learn the principles that have guided us, and to fight to help us keep them strong. “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” Christina-Taylor Green, five others in Arizona and thousands worldwide cannot have died in vain. We need to make sure of that. Whether by voting, singing, writing, marching, teaching, donating…whatever works for you, but not just waiting for the world to change. Time for me to switch to Reggae and Jimmy Cliff, and “get up, stand up” from this all too cushy chair. Who’s with me?

Getting Old (Lang Syne)

I mean, 'Should old acquaintance be forgot?' Does that mean that we should forget old acquaintances, or does it mean if we happened to forget them, we should remember them, which is not possible because we already forgot?

So said Harry, Billy Crystal, in the closing scene of “When Harry Met Sally” with Auld Lang Syne playing in the background. After years of acquaintance involving on and off animosity, chance meetings, friendship and once awkward sex, he and Sally finally discovered and expressed their love for each other. They are by no means the only couple to get together many years after meeting in their teens. No big deal, but still, I’ve been wondering. What is it that makes us in our later years want to get back together with friends and lovers from high school and college?

The impetus for my musing was a phone call that I received last month from Karin, a Swedish woman who 45 years ago spent a year with my family as our au pair. She called from Stockholm and said that she wanted to see us when she visited New York for Christmas. The call came out of the blue and caught me totally off guard. 45 years ago I was ten years old. She was 19. To me, she was a nice memory. She was cute with many boyfriends, strawberry blond hair and more energy in the dead of winter than I’d ever seen, but still, just one in a series of women who helped take care of me and my four brothers. For her, it must have been different. We were her formative year. She went from being a schoolgirl in a cold family in a cold country to an independent woman in a houseful of adoring boys in a land of freedom and opportunity. When she left us she became a Pan Am stewardess, flew the world, married, divorced, got ill, got better, wrote a book. Now she teaches yoga and writes a yoga-nutrition column. And for some reason, she wants to see us.

Should old acquaintance be forgot? For Karin, the answer is no. She had the courage to make a new life for herself at 19. The idea of getting together with us probably helped her see herself again as a young, beautiful, spirited woman. Romanticizing our youth, nostalgia, that’s one reason to rekindle a relationship “old long since” as auld lang syne translates to from Robert Burns’ Scottish.

“Psychology Today” describes what I’ll call the auld lang syne phenomenon as a reaction to our baby boomer lives in which we move from place to place and job to job in search of opportunity. They say at some point we “crave familiarity. Someone who laughs at the same jokes, understands the same quirks”. Someone who knew us when. Is that why divorced couples often remarry or why a high school reunion can reawaken a first love? Or is it more a reaction to getting old, feeling stuck, being unhappy? My guess is that at some age we get to feeling it’s now or never. For those not used to testing the waters, a familiar port is inviting and considerably less threatening than the open seas.

Hmmm…Now I’m not so sure. Maybe it would be better to let those old acquaintances stay in the past. Regression and infidelity hardly seem like good answers for unhappiness. As Burns wrote,

We two have paddled in the stream,

from morning sun till dine [dinner time] ;

But seas between us broad have roared

since auld lang syne.

What’s to say things would work out with an old flame? If things aren’t going well it makes better sense to concentrate on understanding and fixing what’s wrong in the present, not risking a tenuous present for a glorified past. What did we really know at 19 anyway? Not much, maybe, but everything sure was more intense.

The answer for Burns, one that we embrace in song every New Years Eve, is to share “a cup o’ kindness yet”. Kindness would be a euphemism for Scotch whiskey. I’m no Scot, but I’d say that he means more than just getting drunk together. With that drink we are to remember our past, recognize the “many a weary foot” we’ve wandered since and respect each other’s present life with a handshake, and no more, as a gesture of friendship.

Friends, if I have forgotten you over the past few years, please consider this an apology. I assure you, it was not willful and had nothing to do with Robert Burns or “Psychology Today”. Me and Billy, we should remember but we just forget. Blame it on advancing age and too much caffeine free Diet Coke. Those chemicals got to be bad for you. Call me and we can share a real cup o’ kindness, for auld lang syne.

Bow Wow Wow, You Pronounce It!

Do you remember how hard it was as a child to keep a secret?  I can't say that I do.  I do, however, remember my children filled with excitement, running and bouncing and ready to burst as the secret they were holding inside expanded and finally exploded from their smiling lips.  It's a beautiful thing to see.  I was reminded of this sheer excitement and joy not by my children.  The things that excite them these days are more likely to make me scratch my bald head in confusion or just bite my lip and hope for the best.  No, it wasn't the kids.  It was my mother.

She called me and my four brothers last month and said that she wanted to give a party on the Monday before Thanksgiving.  She explained that she chose the date because four out of the five brothers and their wives could attend.  She said that as we could not all see each other on Thanksgiving, a Monday dinner would allow us to celebrate the holiday, early, but at least together.  She insisted on hosting us at a local restaurant and called the dinner her "Thanksgiving surprise".

I accepted, of course.  I would miss seeing brother #five, his wife and two year old son who live in California, but would see my other brothers who usually spend this holiday with their wives' families.  An early Thanksgiving, fine, but what was this surprise?  I didn't ask.  From her voice I could tell that it was something good.  And something good from (sorry Mom) an 80+ year old, at least isn't something like a broken hip, or worse, the sort of surprise that I fear and almost expect.  My first thought was that she and her 90+ year old beau, after ten years of dating, were going to announce their engagement.  I kept this thought to myself and waited for the surprise day to come.

As it turns out, I didn't have to wait that long.  My mother, in her excitement, just couldn't keep her secret bottled up.  She told brother #5 who wasn't around to spill the beans.  But then she let it slip again to bro #3, I'm guessing because it felt so good the first time and, anyway, the cat was already out of the bag.  By the time she called me, she assumed I knew already that she had sold one of her cello bows and wanted to divide the quite generous proceeds among her five sons as a holiday gift.

The dinner was perfect and the gift will be well spent.  It's hard to imagine that a cello bow could be so valuable.  Yet, I would be happier if my mother could still hold that bow in her now arthritic hand and play her cello.  Some of you know the sound a cello makes in a concert hall but for me it was different.  I was weaned on its songs in the resonant enclosure of my parents' study.  I grew up listening to that sonorous alto voice every day of my childhood.  It is the voice of the depths of emotion, of sadness and tears.  Listen to any movie soundtrack and you'll find that whenever they want you to cry, they bring on the cellos.  Its lower register is the moan.  Its upper notes are the wail.  Bowed in long strokes it is Saint Saens' graceful "Swan" gliding down a still lake in France:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNbXuFBjncw&feature=related

Bowed in rapid bursts it is Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Flight of the Bumblebee":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5GkX70hrzo&feature=related

My mother was a professional musician.  She played in orchestras and taught college courses.  She played quartets in the house.  Rarely, she took on a student.  Mostly, she practiced.  And practiced and practiced.  She says that growing up she never had to be told to practice.  As the young wife of a physician, her hours alone with her instrument brought her comfort.  As the older mother of five sons they brought her peace.  Once a year she would bring her cello into my school classroom and put the Swan and Bumblebee on display.  Twenty years ago I saw a book lying on a table in my parent's den, "Learning to Bow".  I thought for sure that it was an esoteric tome about cello technique.  My mother got a good laugh when she explained that the book, by my brother's friend Bruce Feiler, was about his year teaching English in Japan and that in this case bow rhymed with wow.  Bowing either way is not so easy and does, in fact, take a life to master.

In this holiday season permit me to paraphrase Bing Crosby from Irving Berlin's "White Christmas":

     What can you do with a cellist
     When she stops being a cellist?
     Oh, what can you do with
     A cellist who retires?

What a silly question.  We're still following her wherever she wants to go... and doing our best to keep up!  Now that's something to be thankful for.

Dance 10, Looks 3

I was walking down Summer Street Wednesday evening and passed a series of downtown restaurants with patio seating. I got half way past the first one and did a bit of a double take as I became aware that at every table there were only women. Next patio, same demographic—20-40 year old women in twos, threes and fours, stylishly dressed, eating, drinking and talking with smiles and animation. It was as if dozens of Carries with their posses as in “Sex and the City” had moved to Stamford. I continued walking to Eos, the new Greek place, for takeout pitas and got to wondering, why all women and why Wednesday? Barbara met me at Eos, and as we waited for our sandwiches, the women kept coming. She noticed it too. Now, Wednesday was the day of the first Yankee playoff game against the Twins. That could account for the men not going out. And as, forgive me for generalizing, most women prefer female company to sitting in front of a TV watching baseball, we agreed that this Wednesday was a perfect date for a girl’s night out.

By now, I hope you’re wondering where I’m going with this. If I knew for sure, I’d have told you up front, but mostly, it’s that this women thing has been on my mind. It started last month when the New York Jets were criticized by the Association for Women in Sports Media for their lewd locker room remarks to Ines Sainz, a Spanish language female sportscaster. They wrote:

AWSM, the NFL and Jets have been in contact since Saturday evening regarding this situation. Both the NFL and Jets were responsive to our concerns and are investigating the matter. We are awaiting the results of the investigation and further action from the NFL and Jets. AWSM remains steadfast in its long-standing commitment to ensure all women in sports media are treated respectfully, equally and professionally while working in the locker room. We will remain on top of this situation.

The Blogosphere was all a-Twitter with talk of appropriate female dress in the workplace, sexual harassment, locker room behavior and mostly, Ms Sainz who really did look hot in her “painted on” blue jeans and lacy low-cut top. She defended herself by saying that she dressed the way she likes to dress and that her clothes were in her size. From her website pictures, it is clear that she is proud of her appearance, and as a TV personality, right or wrong, that appearance is an important asset. Val from “A Chorus Line” said it best:

Dance: ten; Looks; three.

And I'm still on unemployment,

Dancing for my own enjoyment.

That ain't it, kid. That ain't it, kid.

"Dance: ten; Looks; three,"

I’d like to die!

Left the theatre and

Called the doctor for

My appointment to buy...

Tits and ass.

Bought myself a fancy pair.

Tightened up the derriere.

Did the nose with it.

All that goes with it.

Tits and ass!

Had the bingo-bongos done.

Suddenly I'm getting nash'nal tours!

Tits and ass won't get you jobs

Unless they're yours.

Maybe not politically correct with the ASWM who would probably favor business suits and a brains 10, looks 3 attitude, but I’d say Ms Sainz and her bosses know their business and their audience well enough to make their own decisions. No one had ever heard of Sainz or TV Azteca before. Now they are, albeit fleetingly, front page news.

AWSM are hardly innocent in the Sainz affair. They, not Sainz, raised the stink and went after the Jets players and organization. They are also not above sexual innuendo with their outrageous concluding statement, “We will remain on top of this situation.” This form of aggressive feminism reminds me of the group of female students in my medical school class who sat together in the back row and hissed and booed whenever a professor offended their credo. They actually had a breast surgeon called to the dean’s office where he was forced to defend himself for his lecture in which he showed explicit pictures of breast pathology. The professor, like Sainz, was trying to be provocative. It’s hard to keep from being provoked, but the response to provocation is in our control and is a responsibility that we all share. It was right to remind the Jets how to behave in their locker room. A more gentle reminder would have been nice.

So back to Wednesday and Summer Street. Barbara asked if it bothered me to see all of those women out together without men. No it did not. I liked it. What’s not to like? Haven’t I mentioned in this column that I like women? And I like the idea of women getting together and enjoying each other’s company. It’s good. It’s healthy. We men sure aren’t solving any societal problems in front of our TVs or at the poker table. Maybe the women are figuring it out for us. No, not on their Wednesday night out. No matter. They looked happy and that’s enough. If we’re all a bit happier, Mars and Venus won’t seem so far apart.

Oh Boy, New Math!

I’d like to continue the theme from my last blog about comedians and their role in bringing us the news, albeit with a certain slant. But first humor me with a brief departure, still in the realm of popular culture, to this season’s premier of TV’s Mad Men. In this episode the creative director of a new, breakaway advertising firm blows an opportunity to promote his company in a magazine interview. When he defends himself before his board by saying that his work speaks for itself, he is told, “turning creative success into business is your work and you failed”. I took this harsh criticism personally and wondered if by writing a blog “with no agenda”, I am in essence failing. Samuel Johnson, a great writer and a man of many quotes said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money”. To me, unlike to admen and pundits, it’s not that black and white. Admen love to force us into clear cut choices, their brand or brand X. One of the best ad campaigns ever, the one in the 70s for Miller Lite, took two choices and pointed them both to their product: “Tastes great…Less filling”. It was a heads I win, tails you lose angle that caught on and led to America’s acceptance of light beer. Interestingly, the advertising firm responsible for the campaign, McCann Erickson, was also the firm that, in Mad Men, made the hostile takeover at the end of last season. No takeovers here. I plan to keep writing without monetizing or expecting anything in return except your (mostly) kind comments.

In 1964 David Frost imported a comic news hour from England, That Was The Week That Was. Despite a solid core group of comics plus guests such as Woody Allen, Steve Allen, Bill Cosby, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, the show only lasted one year. Instead of using skits as SNL would later do, TW3, as it was called, used songs to comment on current events. The main songwriter was a Harvard graduate and math instructor, Tom Lehrer. He got his start as an undergraduate where he wrote “Fight Fiercely, Harvard”. He entertained classmates, performed at clubs, eventually recorded an LP and had 300 made for sale around Harvard. (This was just like Bert and I at Yale. See 11/09 blog, Cay-ent Get They-uh From He-uh.) In 1955 he was drafted and served two years at the NSA. His big contribution to army cryptography was the invention of Jell-o shots. He continued his songwriting and performing but never gave up his day job. His songs were clever, in the vein of Cole Porter or Yip Harburg. When he heard that TW3 was looking for songs he wrote one for National Brotherhood Week:

     Oh, the white folks hate the black folks,

     And the black folks hate the white folks.

     To hate all but the right folks

     Is an old established rule.

The TW3 regulars performed this song and 8 others including his best known "New Math":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNCUuh8_VhE

When TW3 ended, Lehrer was left with enough proven songs to make a second album, That Was The Year that Was. This was released by a major label, promoted nationwide including appearances on the Tonight Show, and made it into the Benjamin household where it joined Allan Shermans’ My Son The Folk Singer and Nut in our collection of comedy albums.

Though both Lehrer and Sherman sang funny songs, they were very different. While Lehrer was clever and precise, Sherman was Hamish and a bit of a slob. He was an LA TV producer who wrote humorous lyrics to popular tunes and performed them for his friends. He lived next door to Harpo Marx, whose friend George Burns heard Sherman’s songs and got him a record contract. His themes were those of 1960s American Jewry. His first album, My Son The Folk Singer, parodied our imperfect assimilation into American society where we retained our old world speech patterns, strong family ties, boorish manners and thrifty ways:

     Shake hands with your Uncle Max, my boy

     And here is your sister Shirl

     And here is your cousin Isabel

     That's Irving's oldest girl

     And you remember the Tishman twins

     Gerald and Jerome

     We all came out to greet you

     And to wish you welcome home

The juxtaposition of these lyrics and Sherman’s accent with the melody of an old Irish tune was hysterical. It was pure side splitting shtick when he replaced “Meet Branigan, Fannigan, Milligan, Gilligan,Duffy, McCuffy, Malachy, Mahone,” etc. with

     Meet…

     Merowitz, Berowitz, Handelman, Schandelman

     Sperber and Gerber and Steiner and Stone

     Boskowitz, Lubowitz, Aaronson, Baronson,

     Kleinman and Feinman and Freidman and Cohen.

His next album, with its hit song "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" made him a star. Even JFK went around singing his songs. Sadly, he died at the age of 48, having too well assimilated into a life of overeating, smoking and booze.

So, what was it for me as a kid, Lehrer or Sherman? Yankees or Mets? Flintstones or Jetsons? Tastes Great or Less Filling? Vicki’s Manhattan or Marty’s Brooklyn? The answer? “Oh, Boy!” I liked them all. That was the real new math, “So very simple, That only a child can do it!”

You Can't Beat That

Chevy Chase spoke last week at a 25th anniversary screening of his movie Fletch. During the movie, he sat with the audience, squirmed in his seat, made uncomfortable faces and tried his best to show his discomfort with the attention and exaggerated adulation given by the Avon Theater’s pretentious artsy audience. After the screening he owned up to not being an actor in the vein of Sean Penn or Robert DeNiro, and said that he just tried to be himself in his films, making wise cracks, improvising, falling down, basically doing the same things he had done from Elementary School to Saturday Night Live to get laughs. When an audience member stood up, mike in hand, and took five minutes to comment and finally ask a question, one whose only point was to show how knowledgeable and perceptive he was, Chevy was brilliant. He rolled his eyes, stuck his finger down his throat, hanged himself with his tie, and when the question finally came, answered it with a quick quip and moved on to the next question. It was a merciless strike at pomposity that made us all smile. It reminded me first of Woody Allen’s coup with Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBtXfBdEXEs

It reminded me second of why I like Chevy Chase. It’s not because he’s a great actor. In every one of his movies, all lightweight comedies, someone else was always funnier. Sure, he’s a comedian, but more for falling down (his classic SNL parody of Gerald Ford) and smirking than for quickness and wit. Though many thought he’d inherit Johnny Carson’s job as host on the Tonight Show, Johnny said of Chase, "He couldn't ad lib a fart at a baked bean dinner". Johnny missed the point. Chevy was surrounded by the best ad libbers ever. He was hired as SNL’s head writer for the likes of John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray. He played straight man for Richard Pryor in a racially charged skit that included the N word and ended with a bug-eyed, boiling over Pryor hissing, “Dead Honky”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl9I7IUFKu4&feature=related

YouTube won’t even show the original.  It’s too hot. Chevy never had to be the funniest guy on stage and never could. And he never tried to be. We liked him because he was willing to be the tag along, second fiddle, prat-falling straight guy. His line, “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not” wasn’t directed at Belushi, it was aimed straight at us. He was the dumb schmuck lucky enough to be up there on stage with greatness. He was one of us. While Belushi and Pryor have crashed and burned, Chase has grayed, gained some weight and rolled back onto TV for NBC in some sit-com that I’ll likely never see.

If Chevy was great in any comedic role, it was as host of SNL’s Weekend Update. In the tradition of Laugh-In’s Look at the News, he satirized the week’s news stories. Even better, Update introduced editorial comments from the likes of Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella (“Never mind.”), John Belushi (”But nooooo...”) and many other cast members and guests. When Jane Curtin took over Chevy’s role in 1976, she added Point/Counterpoint which immortalized her as everyone’s favorite “ignorant slut”.

News today is even worse than in 1976 and it is not surprising that most of our 16 to 30 year olds get it from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. Despite being a comedian, Stewart has been voted our most admired and trusted news anchor. He has a keen nose for political hypocrisy and probably invented the technique of using video clips to catch politicians making blatantly contradictory statements. He, like Chevy, says nothing and instead, rolls his eyes to make his point. He lacks Chevy’s physical presence. He is short, slim and a bit of a Nebbish. Of course, it follows that he is a Mets fan. While Chevy is a New York blue blood, descended from the Mayflower, Stewart, nee Leibowitz, grew up in New Jersey, proposed to his wife in a crossword puzzle, at times sucks up to guests and has socialist leanings. His gift, more than his razor sharp wit or his willingness to let his righteous anger show on stage, is his heart. After 9/11 he showed that heart at a time when he knew we were not ready for comedy:

The view... from my apartment... was the World Trade Center... and now it's gone, and they attacked it. This symbol of American ingenuity, and strength, and labor, and imagination and commerce, and it is gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the South of Manhattan is now the Statue of Liberty. You can't beat that.

No argument here. I’m happy my kids get their news from Stewart. As Chevy would say, “Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow”.