A Little Perspective

 

With all the screaming, yelling and consternation going on over this Presidential election, perhaps it is time to try and give a little perspective.  Let’s take the Presidential election of 1960.  It was a close election in terms of popular vote and won by then Senator John F. Kennedy.  People old enough to remember the Kennedy years remember all the comparisons of that administration to Camelot.  They were all beautiful and everybody seemed happy.  Now let’s say JFK had lost.  What would have happened?  Well, there would be a whole lot of consternation and gnashing of teeth among his friends and followers but then JFK would have gone home to Boston.  Where he would have written a few books, fooled around with his wife and well a few other women.  Now he had Addison’s disease so he probably would have not lived to see 80 or 90 but he definitely had a few more decades of a nice life, instead of what happened to him. 

Now let’s take Ronald Reagan.  He was elected in two landslide elections.  He had two good terms and went home as popular or more popular than when he first got elected.  But he also got shot and almost died.  If not for the quick thinking of his staff and some excellent surgeons, that could have been the end of him.  Now if he’d lost, well John Hinkley would have shot President Carter.  Think about that because John Hinkley shot the President because he wanted a date with Jodie Foster.  Hinckley didn’t have anything against President Reagan.  It was just whoever was President.  Just in case you didn’t know, John Hinckley never did get that date, even though he’s been out of that prison hospital for a few years.  We guess, Jodie wasn’t impressed.  Maybe, he should have shot the Pope. 

Now let’s take O.J.  Yeah, yeah O.J. didn’t run for President but just try and remember all the hoopla over that.  For over a year people were screaming, yelling and getting blue in the face over, did O.J. do it?  There is a great trivia question and that is.  What was the most watched live event in TV history?  Answer, the slow Bronco chase with O.J. and Al Cowlings in the Bronco.  Now some of you might not even remember it and that’s the point.  Who remembers the chase that had a hundred million people glued to their TVs and who even cares now, if O.J. did it or not?

Now, not to bring the whole thing up again but one thing always bothered me.  According to the Prosecution, O.J. is stabbing his wife to death and this Ron Goldman returning her glasses from some restaurant, walks into it.  Ron then takes on O.J.  Now not to cast any aspersions on a guy who got stabbed to death but if I walked into a scene where some six-foot, three inches tall, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound guy was stabbing a woman to death, I’d run like hell.  Remember Nicole Simpson wasn’t Ron Goldman’s wife, girlfriend, mother, or sister.  She was just someone he knew a little.  Maybe Ron Goldman thought he was Spider-Man.  But I’m pretty sure most people would have run like hell too.  In fact, a whole lot of people would have run, thrown away her glasses and never said a word about it.  This doesn’t mean O.J. didn’t do it.  Just that mentioning something like this back then, would have caused a furor.  How dare you say such a thing about this valiant, young dead guy?  But now?  Who cares?  Who even remembers?  I had to go Wiki to make sure I got the names right here. 

So, when something in the news has everyone going crazy, it is good to remember that at some point up ahead, that it will fade away.  There may be ramifications, as there are with all things.  But all the screaming, the yelling, people getting blue in the face, will most definitely, fade away.  Well at least until the next bruhaha rears its ugly head.

Dicens simile factum est 

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