We don’t wait for anything anymore, not even death. And we certainly don’t waste any time thinking about what is next once someone is gone.
In the 21st century, life is fast paced. I remember reading an essay in college by a 19th century writer who was opposed to the railroad because he couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to, or have the need, to travel at speeds of 10 miles per hour or more. What would he think of the world we live in today where an emerging problem is texting while driving?
Nowhere is our fast paced lifestyle more evident than in the world of cable news where the need to discuss what is happening is always pushing up against the constraints of real time. The need to break the next part of the story often kicks common courtesy to the curb.
I first noticed this uncomfortable situation in 2006 when U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota suffered a brain hemorrhage in the middle of the afternoon at the Capitol. Although the news media had no solid information on why he had been rushed to the hospital and barely any on his general condition, within two hours of the emergency, news anchors were asking political reporters about how his successor would be picked, who the likely candidates might be and how Johnson’s death would affect the balance of power in the U.S. Senate and the president’s agenda.
Today, Tim Johnson is very much alive and as his website says, is “Working for South Dakota.”
Johnson is not the first public figure to be spoken of in the past tense prematurely, but he’s the one who got my attention, because in his case all pretenses of the courtesies surrounding someone’s illness or death were dropped. At the exact moment he was introduced to a national audience as the senator suffering “stroke like symptoms” his replacement was being sought.
Jumping forward to the brain cancer diagnosis of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, the inevitable was contemplated at the speed of light. For fifteen months there was talk of how the Senate would function without its most well-known member. Kennedy himself jumped ahead on the life/death time continuum by writing the governor about changing the law so an interim successor could be named before the special election. If the soon to be departed is willing to talk about it, why should the rest of us hold back? Thus began a very public debate over how the still living Kennedy should be replaced.
It can’t be stopped at this point. We can’t turn back the evolution of how we talk about death and politics. It’s just the way it is and if you are uncomfortable you need to get over it.
There’s another aspect of cable news and death that has the power to change history. The death of any public figure today becomes an instant reality TV mini-series orgy of live coverage. But in the one remaining nod to old school courtesy no one ever speaks ill of the dead during these tele-dramas.
From Ronald Reagan, to Anna Nicole Smith, to Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy — it’s all tragedy and greatness all the time. When it’s all over, the video is packaged and sold as a DVD boxed set, with any controversy removed to make for more enjoyable viewing.
It’s just worth noting that there was a time when we waited for someone to actually die before we plotted life without them. We would even wait for a week after the funeral just to be polite.
Dean Pagani is a former gubernatorial advisor. He is vice president of public affairs for Cashman and Katz Integrated Communications in Glastonbury.
