A few thoughts on Teddy Kennedy

This blog is rapidly becoming a parade of thoughts on the recent dead. What can I say except welcome to middle-age, Mike!

Teddy Kennedy was to his brothers what Wings was to The Beatles; an attenuated, not-quite-satisfying echo of the real thing, but vastly better than nothing at all. He was Seventies Liberalism incarnate, a consolation prize handed out to the survivors, not so much doomed to fail as doomed to suspect that success carried with it inevitable failure...and perhaps outright destruction. This poisoning fatalism is the final legacy of the assassinations, and nobody embodied that more than Teddy Kennedy.

Had Teddy existed without his antecedents (an impossible thought), he would've come out looking a hell of a lot better. Like Jack he was a consummate operator; like Bobby, committed to improving Americans' lives through government. What he lacked was their magnetism, which sprang from a kind of reckless courage. That's not necessarily a bad thing--the reckless courage of Jack and Bobby Kennedy got them (and us) into some trouble. But it did consign Teddy to Triple-A ball. Perhaps he had a smaller portion from the beginning--or perhaps it was forcibly excised by circumstance.

Was he a drunk? Seems so, and a philanderer, too. But most of all, Teddy was a big, fat target for all those faux-populists who hate the Kennedys and everything they say they stand for: privilege, noblesse oblige, sloppiness. Funny thing, all the Kennedy haters I've met have been supporters of other politicians guilty of the same sins. The difference is that the Kennedys had the temerity to inspire people in between bed- and bar-hopping. That's what Kennedy-haters are really angry about--or more accurately, frightened of. Inspired citizens cannot be controlled. They can't be soothed by consumerism or cowed by phantom enemies. The personal behavior of the Kennedys is moot; it is their ability to activate people that made them important, and Teddy parlayed his borrowed glory into a 47-year career in the Senate, which included things like the Americans With Disabilities Act. Hard to argue with that, unless you're a Cro-Magnon.

The psychological damage wrought by the public slaughter of his relatives--not to mention the crushing burden of their legacy, a legacy Ted Kennedy did not want, nor was particularly well-suited to shoulder--had to have been crippling. Adding to this Chappaquiddick (probably a Nixonian dirty trick), and it's a wonder the guy survived at all, much less racked up a lifetime of public service. In his trauma, and hauntedness, and determination to make the best of reduced expectations, Teddy Kennedy stands in for all of us who never believed in Ronald Reagan or his fatuous, fradulent "revolution." Perhaps the end of Teddy Kennedy means the end of the boundaries and burdens forged in the Sixties. I hope so, and I'm sure he would, too.

More on John Hughes

Kate forwarded me this wonderful blog post, where a woman talks about a long correspondence she once had with John Hughes.

The ability to connect with great people--especially great young people--is the best part of writing. I really value the pen pals and e-pals I've picked up over the years, but the normal crush of life can get in the way. If any of you have written me and are still waiting for a response, give me a holler.

A few thoughts on John Hughes

Last night at 11:45, my wife was in the bathroom, washing bits of Burbank off her face. I was in the bedroom twenty feet away, petting my cat, looking at the moon outside our window. Kate and I were doing the married thing, getting our stories straight after a long day. I’d just come back from seeing Le Cercle Rouge at the Aero, my third night of classic French cinema in a row. She’d gotten home from Breaking Bad at a reasonable hour for once, and we were actually managing a conversation, not simply pleasantries mumbled over the oncoming hoofbeats of unconsciousness.
Matter-of-factly Kate asked, “Do you think John Hughes did cocaine?”
“John Hughes the director? Why not?”
“Why do you say that? Because he worked at Lampoon?”
“No, more for when he was in Hollywood. The Eighties, he must’ve—it was practically floating in the air like pollen. Not that I ever heard stories about him or anything. Why do you ask?”
“Because of his heart attack.”
“John Hughes had a heart attack? Really?”
“Yeah, he died. Didn’t you know?”
“No, I didn’t.” My ignorance of entertainment news is rapidly becoming legendary, although I think it’s only remarkable here in LA. Kate’s pals from USC film school still laugh over the time they discovered I didn’t know what Beyoncé looked like. Of course, they can’t sing “This Diamond Ring” by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, so I ask you, who’s the impoverished one? “Wow. John Hughes. That’s a shame.”
“Sorry you found out this way,” my wife hollered into a towel.
“It’s all right. We weren’t close.” Like everybody I vaguely resent it when God moves a piece of the furniture without checking with me first, but it’s not one of my major preoccupations. Still the news did knock something loose inside. As I was falling asleep, I found myself thinking about sitting in the Lake Theater in Oak Park, Illinois, watching The Breakfast Club. It was 1985, I was fifteen, and miserable on a cellular level—but not, at least, for those two hours. The film gave me the heady narcissistic buzz you only get before you realize you’re not just a person, you’re also a demographic. This was intensified by my surroundings; Oak Park was as Hughesian a suburb as was possible without being an actual location. In fact, "the breakfast club" nickname for detention comes from New Trier High, my school’s bitter rival, but showing our natural superiority, we Oak Parkers decided to be big about it.
Because of the time and setting, I thought my connection with Hughes’ movies was a little bit deeper and more genuine than other people’s—but of course every teenager thought that then. They probably think it now, too; I know my younger brother and sister thought it a decade later, during that summer I was living at home and they were watching a VHS of The Breakfast Club so constantly we all thought (read: hoped) it would snap.
In the media’s constant scramble to access our emotions, anything the least bit popular is retroactively anointed a maudlin touchstone status. Granting that this is a lazy, manipulative endeavor, I must admit that, for me, Hughes’ movies really are a touchstone. When I want to show my future kids what being a teenager looked (and sometimes felt) like, I’ll show them The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink. It feels odd to type that—isn’t there something more intellectual, more classic or profound, that would convey it better? Nothing I’ve discovered so far, and believe me, it’s not for lack of looking. (Did I mention I’ve been to the Aero three nights in a row?)
That’s not to say that seeing Hughes movies now make me feel good. For the most part, it doesn’t. The evening I saw The Breakfast Club, I was lonely as a person can be. Maybe that’s just what being fifteen is; I can’t say for certain, having only endured it the once, but I can admit that those years still bite at my heart. It was a time when I desperately wanted to connect with somebody, anybody. I worked terribly hard to be a nice person, to accept others, to try new things, in the hopes that it might happen. I’m not just talking about romance, though that’s the most intense form of what I was looking for. I mean someone who saw me, and accepted me, and encouraged me in what I liked to do. At forty, I think of this as a basic human right. If it had happened to me at 15, I’d probably be a happier person today. Instead, I began my habit of going to see movies alone, as a way to pass the time and soothe myself.
Watching the poor kid hook up with the rich girl—watching them connect, if just for the once—this spoke directly to my longing. Yes! That’s the kind of thing I want! I don’t care if we’re from different backgrounds, I’ll adjust, I promise! Just give me a shot! Sitting there eating popcorn (this was before I became allergic), The Breakfast Club gave me hope—a false one, as it turned out—but living in hope is a much, much easier way to be alone.
Even at their best, John Hughes movies were Hollywood product, and bear all the shortcuts and contrivances of that form. At the same time, they’re so carefully observed, and so essentially respectful of what it was like to be that age in that time, that there was genuine comfort in them. Comfort’s not a small thing. If I go to see Bardot tonight (and make it four in a row), I’d be happy indeed with two hours of comfort.
Hughes’ films’ flaws are those of their audience. Teenagers do perceive the world in types, arranged to form castes, and if you fall outside of those types, or run afoul of those castes, you will be watching movies by yourself. This offends the adult world; trapped in their own types and castes, they need to think of youth as a time where there was more freedom to experiment and experience, rather than less. But Hughes knew better; and it’s because he spoke to teenagers like me in the language we understood, he entertained us, and made us laugh, and feel comfort, sitting there in the dark. That’s quite a lot, and I appreciated it a great deal. Still do. R.I.P.