My One Minute of Fame

People don’t talk that much about thirtysomething anymore. It makes sense. Copywriters and art directors don’t conceive print ads anymore in red brick agencies while wearing yuppie suspenders. I guess I could’ve ended that sentence at “copywriters and art directors don’t conceive print ads anymore” and it would’ve been an equally summation of our times.

Lately, for reasons I hope soon make sense, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the episode where Gary dies. Please don’t yell at me “What?! Gary died? Why didn’t you yell ‘spoiler alert?’” For chrissakes, you’ve had 3 decades to catch up. Copywriters were wearing SUSPENDERS the last time this show aired.

“Gary dies” has become a cultural shorthand for the now incredibly popular narrative trope of unexpectedly killing off one of your main television characters. It’s a hallmark of nearly every prestige steaming drama. But at the time it was virtually unheard. I don’t know why I added “virtually.” It was unheard of.

But what most people, besides my wife, forget about that episode, what made it exponentially more impactful is that right before Gary died, Nancy was given a clean bill of health regarding her long battle with cancer.

Great news was juxtaposed with tragic news. The wonderful and the horrible excited side by side. Much like life itself.

These past couple months, I’ve been sitting alone pondering this concept. The duality of human existence. The ying and yang of simchas and sorrows. In other words, “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life. The Facts of Life.”

If you think you’re noticing a pattern, you’re not wrong. Set aside those Talmuds. I do emphatically believe that all human behavior can be explained by a careful reading of 80’s broadcast television.

In this case, I’m referring to the phenomenon where good news is invariably tempered by bad news. I don’t know whether it happens karmically or cosmically or your subconscious mind not wanting you to get a big head.

But it sure seems to happen a lot.

In mid-December, I had four of the biggest days of my career. Maybe not my actual career, the one I pay mortgage with. But my online profile as a progressive pundit definitely reached its zenith. And totally by accident.

It was a Friday night. And President George H. W. Bush had just passed away. Mind you, I hated him as a President. I aggressively campaigned against him both times. Heck, I attended two Dukakis rallies. That’s how much I didn’t like him.

But with age, the passage of time and what later became of the GOP party, I grew to admire, what I perceived to be Bush’s fundamental decency and love of country. I’d seen some post-presidential interviews I found endearing and had read a little of Jon Meacham’s biography.

The truth is I came to admire the first President Bush. It didn’t mean I absolved him of his AIDS policy or his Willie Horton ad. But I appreciated his public service. And I said so in a tweet. An anodyne, benign tweet that included all the caveats about not liking his politics or his policies.

It couldn’t have been more banal. And it engendered a firestorm of backlash on the left. How could I whitewash his warmongering? How could I endorse his appointment of Clarence Thomas? None of which I was doing.

So I followed the original tweet with another simple post about how I couldn’t believe the number of followers I’d lost just trying to say something nice about a man who just died and had served his country for decades

I went to bed and thought nothing of it. And I was shocked to discover that like a montage in a Jon Favreau chef movie, my tweet had “gone viral.” Not only did it become my most viewed tweet ever, it became a minor cause celebre in the liberal pundit/ MSNBC universe I had forever aspired to be noticed by.

Preet Bharara somehow found it. And said that he would follow me to make up for the folks I’d lost. And he encouraged his friends to do the same. Soon I was getting notifications from every talking head I admired: Nicolle Wallace. Mini Rocah. Frank Figliuzzi. Sally Yates. Eugene Robinson. Clint Watts. Malcom Nance. Professor Laurence Tribe!

It was a true out of body experience. My follower count grew from 90 thousand to 120 thousand. In one day!

And that wasn’t even the highlight.

That Monday, a friend of mine from high school suggested I read Frank Bruni’s new column in the New York Times. It seemed like obvious advice. I’m a lefty coastal Jew — I always read Frank Bruni’s column.

Once I finally did, I was flabbergasted to discover that I was mentioned in his first paragraph. And the second. In fact, his whole column was devoted to the hubbub surrounding my two tweets. And he was employing the reaction to them as a symbol for the lack of civility in our public discourse. What??!!!

I had finally made it in every way that truly mattered to me. For one weekend, I was involved in shaping our political narrative.

I was riding high. I, against all odds and reason, felt like “somebody.” I was feeling good about myself. And for reasons of both nature and nurture, that’s hard for me to do.

And then I fell. Not from grace. Not from the public eye or the front pages.

I actually coughed so hard from bronchitis that I momentarily lost consciousness. And when I looked up I was on the floor, with my foot bent the wrong way. I broke my ankle in 3 places resulting in a 6 hour surgery and months of recovery.

I had gone from in the limelight to on the ground in record time. My great news was immediately followed, not by tragic news, but certainly news that qualified as a big bummer. Our Christmas family vacation was cancelled. So, it felt, was any momentum generated from being the political “it boy” for a mere nanosecond.

So I’ve started to wonder (as I have unlimited time to sit and to wonder) why bad things so often come immediately on the heels of good things? Is there some subconscious component meant to keep our egos in check that us morals have, but politicians and local weathermen don’t?

That would suggest I was destined to “fall” if not actually fall because something positive happened to me. More likely, it’s that good and bad co-exist in all of our lives (if not usually to such a clear-cut extent).

When was the last time you got to experience pure, uncut bliss? And how long did it last? Probably not super long. Because instead, the tapestry of life’s rich pageant seems to always have been made of equal parts positive and negative.

Last March, I had a devastatingly painful day in court. The next day, I was granted the biggest promotion of my career. Profound sadness and great elation existing side by side.

Similarly, a decade ago, my son’s pre-K graduation and the meeting with the rabbi to discuss the memorial following my father’s suicide, were scheduled for the exact same moment. At the same location! Two different rooms along the same hallway. And i was running back and forth between an incredibly hostile family debate and pre-schoolers doing Israeli folk dancing, like I was some sort of bereaving Mrs Doubtfire. But again, isn’t all of life some less-heightened version of that.

As little as I know about Israel, I’ve always admired the way they integrate the concept of death into their daily lives, treating it as an integral part OF life. They observe Yom HaZikaron ( a solemn Memorial Day) the day before Yom HaAtzmaut (a festive Independence Day celebration). Life and death, celebration and solemnity, side by side.

So, I guess the point I’m trying to make is we never as thinking, feeling humans get unblemished euphoria or victory or bliss. There will always be drawbacks and demerits. And the key is to still allow yourself to enjoy those moments when they present themselves.

Because let’s face it, hobbling around on a fractured ankle kinda sucks. But it hurts a lot less knowing that Nicolle Wallace is following your recovery on Twitter.