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Posted on 09/10/2001 9:17:58 PM PDT by Luis Gonzalez
Jerry’s Kids I just took some time off. Not from my day job mind you, but from the word processing program, and that annoying, thin black line, blinking at the corner of an empty screen.
During my sabbatical, I was far from surprised, but nevertheless delighted at the expected; a most talented treatise</a href></font color> from a most talented man made my absence barely noticeable. He calls me his friend, which is a treasure I hold dear, then he proceeds to tell the whole world every intimate detail that I’ve ever confessed to him about my life in order to get some laughs.
I think I just figured out why Howard Stern plays pre-recorded shows when he goes on vacation.
In all seriousness, the Second Banana was no such thing, but rather, and as stated by a poster, just a different banana from the same bunch. Thank you my friend, Van Williams thanks you as well, it was the most press that he’s gotten in years.
It was a lot of fun, watching someone else going through the motions of “being” the Banana Republican, I got a certain voyeuristic thrill from doing it, something akin to logging on the Internet in the middle of the night, to watch a webcam broadcast of the Big Brother 2 contestants sleeping, and yes, I have watched several of the new “reality-based” television shows, I find them both fascinating and compelling.
Some people say that the father of all reality-based television was MTV’s “The Real World”, others point to Allen Funt and his “Candid Camera” show, I don’t agree with them, I believe the title belongs to Jerry Lewis, and his Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy Marathon. I liked the live and loosely scripted aspect of the show, and back when I was in college, I would literally try to stay up all night with Jerry, I didn’t make it once; the beer may have had something to do with it.
I didn’t watch it because of the entertainment, which was spotty at best, nor did I watch it out of curiosity as to how much would be collected each year, it was a given that last year’s figure would be surpassed, I watched to see if Jerry would make it to the end. I watched every year.
Jerry made it every time of course, at the end, he stood there, ragged and bleary-eyed, holding on to that year’s poster child and crying his eyes out as the band blared “What The World Needs Now Is Love”, and the counter rolled into a dollar figure surpassing the previous year’s tally, then Jerry faced the camera, hoarse, tired, and overcome with emotion, making his way through his signature song one more time; one more time for the folk in the Coliseum, who cheered wildly at the sight of the bedraggled gladiator, survivor of yet one more bout with the lions.
There were magical moments along the way, moments that will live in the memories of all who stayed up late enough, or got up early enough, to have been there. There was Frank Sinatra, the Chairman of the Board himself, surprising Jerry “in the wee small hours of the morning” in 1976 by dragging a slightly inebriated Dean Martin unto the stage, effectively ending a twenty-year feud, and re-uniting what I will always consider to be one of the greatest comedy team of all times. It was without a doubt, what television was supposed to be all about.
But it was always Jerry’s kids that made the show unforgettable, their presence giving meaning and heart to the telethon. I remember one particular child, bent, and twisted, his body ravaged by the cruel attack of the disease, talking to Jerry right before the year’s final total was to be announced. Jerry, with the bags under his eyes and the ever-present microphone, comes down on one knee next to the diminutive wheelchair and asks him what he would wish for if he had a single wish to be granted, what was it that he wanted most in the whole world, the child, with eyes so bright and alive, simply said, “I would wish to stand up.”
But Jerry only put the show on once a year, and the masses liked the entertainment. There where 363 more opportunities each year to capture our imaginations, and the networks knew a good thing when they saw it, they needed something new to titillate us, and feed our voyeuristic needs.
They gave us news magazines, Nightline, the phrase “Based On A True Story”, docudramas and Charles Kuralt; we ate it up. We sat and watched news like we’d never sat and watched news before; the war was brought home nightly, body counts and places like Laos on our screens. The same news brought us the images of our children rioting in the streets of the nation, protesting a war they didn’t believe in, and the images of other children coming home in caskets, killed in a far-off jungle, for a poorly-defined reason. We watched fascinated from our bedrooms and living rooms until the body counts became the news, and the caskets became background.
All the while, Jerry’s kids struggled to stand up.
It was in the mid-seventies that Jerry brought a young girl on stage with him, walking painfully with the help of metal braces on her legs, holding on to crutches that strapped themselves to her arms. She walked to Jerry, with so much effort and determination showing on her young face, that you somehow KNEW that this young girl would be the one, she would beat the cruel disease, and the story would have a happy ending. Jerry knelt holding back tears, the band blared the opening strains of “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, and I cried, I’ll confess to it, alone in my dorm room, watching Jerry sing, I cried.
In America, 97% of homes had a television set, and in 1977, national “Turn Off the TV” week is a flop, that was the last year that I watched Jerry, and his kids. That was the decade that brought us the televised Watergate hearings, HBO, a Presidential resignation, “super” stations, and controversial television, with a gay man on “Soap”, and an abortion in “Maude”. Television was a mirror on which we watched our own reflection, and we didn’t like what we were seeing. America was humiliated in the eyes of the world, as satellite images of burning American flags and beaten hostages brought the decade of the seventies to a dismal close, images broadcast by the newest addition to televised media, the 24-hour news network was born in 1979 with the debut of CNN.
It was on one of those close-of-the-decade shows that Seals and Croft performed for Jerry’s kids, I was sitting at a half-empty bar, holding an empty glass, and contemplating an empty life, when one of the regulars reminded the barkeep that Jerry was on. The singing duet finished their number and introduced an unknown singer/songwriter, a young man rolled out; body dwarfed and twisted, and sang with the voice of an angel. He sang about hope and about a better tomorrow. I put that empty glass down, and did what Jerry’s kids where still struggling to do, I stood up and walked out that door.
The Eighties watched American pride return to the White House, We watched a president get shot, a Royal wedding, Live AID, the Challenger explosion, and the Iran-Contra hearings. We closed the decade watching live coverage of an earthquake in San Francisco and the fall of a wall, and an empire. We also watched tanks crush the spirit of Democracy in Tiananmen, and thanked God that it could never happen here.
Ninety-three million American homes have televisions as the 90’s arrive; our insatiable hunger for human drama finds a willing partner in cable television. Court Television, Congressional Span, Oprah-Springer-Sally-Montel-Rickie rule the airwaves. We watch the first real-time televised war, and the trial of the century almost non-stop; I survived Hurricane Andrew; sitting up all night in a bathroom with the door nailed shut watching the storm raging outside on my portable, battery powered television.
In a few short decades, we had been transformed into a nation of watchers. A generation better informed and more in touch with the current events of the world than any in the history of man; our reality being fed to us via the ever-growing screens of today’s televisions, as we sit and feed the beast inside us; that beast that secretly smiles at the sight of someone else’s misfortunes, and who, while professing concern and empathy for the victim of one of life’s many cruel happenstances, revels in that “better thee than me” mind-set.
We sat and watched the tanks roll and crush men, women, and children in a small town in Texas, and knew then that it could happen here as well.
We sat and watched a President commit perjury under oath, and do so with impunity, undaunted by the thought of repercussions.
We watched our armed forces reduced to the role of butchers, bombing innocent men, women, and children to detract attention from that lying President.
We watched a Justice Department soil the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the spirit of the Founders in a pre-dawn raid on a home in Little Havana. We see those raids still today, being carried out in the name of the War On Drugs.
And each and every time, with each and every one of these affronts to the Republic, I knew that there was no way that we would not rise as a nation, and say “enough”! But we didn’t.
We sat and watched all these things, this nation of 258 million. All the while, Jerry and his kid’s rolled on, with hope in their hearts.
I have a date tonight; I will stay up into the wee small hours of the night with Jerry, seventy-five year old Jerry, and watch this, his thirty-six year hosting the MDA Telethon, a labor of love that so far has raised over one billion dollars for some kids who simply want to stand up.
The news reports say that Jerry is stepping back, that the event is too much for him. I don’t know how many more times I’ll have this opportunity, so I’ll spend the night with an old friend and forget about the mess that we have made of our nation.
And I’m calling that phone number flashing across the bottom of the screen. I need to help. I need to help because I have faith in Jerry’s Kids; I believe that they will rise up out of their chairs long before this nation will.
But there's only one little problem....
At the close he sang, "When you Walk Through the Storm, Hold Your Head Up High..."</font size>
;-)
I don't understand what you meant......
"At the close he sang, "When you Walk Through the Storm, Hold Your Head Up High..."
A.K.A. "You'll Never Walk Alone"
Thanks Jayne!
Thank you, Luis. You can put into words the simplest things and make it beautiful -- inspirational, warm, and upbeat -- just what I need to cheer me up. Jerry's kids, is eloquently written - humorous and poignant, and radiates confidence and hope that one day Jerry's kids will find a cure.
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