Post Election Talk; Instant deja vu
Airdate:
Wednesday - November 8, 1972 (Airdate Confirmed)
WOR Show Original Airing
(NOTE ABOUT TIME REFERENCES: Since there are many different copies of shows out there from different sources, all time references are from the beginning of one single recorded copy, since various copies, depending on when the recordee started recording, had news at the beginning or shortened themes. The times would vary from copy to copy.)
First Spoken Line After Theme Ends
What a fantastic bummer of a night. . .
Show Description
[ Courtesy: GROK Summary - - ]
Shep walks Sixth/Seventh Avenue in a downpour with a “philosophical” dislike of umbrellas (a girl once hit him with a malacca-cane one). Dead, inverted umbrellas litter the street—false security that failed the one night they were needed. Rain, he says, makes cities and stories darker; Sherlock Holmes and Poe work in rain, not Sunday afternoon sun.
Peeling McGovern posters already look like period pieces. One still claims the “Youth Vote” will swing New York. That myth, he says, joined the old mythical farm vote.
Every election carries built-in nostalgia. Ten years on, a kid will find a “We Want George” button in the junk closet (dead tennis rackets, unused Christmas guitars) and ask Dad who George was. Dad will mist up about Marsha, Gloria Steinem, Bella’s hat, and “how tough it was,” the way old Stevenson, Dewey, and Alf Landon people still do.
Elections are sporting events: people remember Bobby Thomson and Jackie Robinson’s pigeon-toed lead better than their own kids. Vice-presidential running mates vanish fastest. He quizzes the audience: Goldwater’s VP (Miller), Nixon’s 1960 VP (Lodge), Stevenson’s two running mates, Landon’s VP. Pundits drop last week’s thesis (youth vote, moon dust, lunar bacteria) the moment returns come in.
Before every election people swear they will leave the country if X wins and that Y will destroy America. Almost no one leaves. Presidents are not kings; the Senate still eats bean (or pea) soup and blocks things.
Winning does not fix your life. A friend who worked hard for a winner still lost his job and his wife. People project private unhappiness onto campaigns and feel personally rejected when their candidate loses—the clerk crying over a $200,000 office. Plato’s two sides of man: the abstract civic self and the guy waiting at the cleaners. Weep not for McGovern or Shriver; they’ll be fine.
This Show
