Sam Smith – Okay, I’ll admit it. I covered my first Washington story in 1957 for a local radio station. I mention this because aged journalism has some characteristics we have chosen to ignore but may be worth thinking about for at least a minute or two.
For example, I’ve kept track of my significant contacts, friends, relatives and fellow journalists and over 200 have passed away - most in the past two decades. Some of these were important sources and some helped me muchly in my work. Some were just fun to be around.
I’m married to a real historian and one of things that fascinates me is how history comes and goes. For example, it is not historians, but journalists, activists, and advertising agencies who mainly determine what we’re meant to be remembering about the recent past. I’ve come to think of this as a time I call protohistory - too soon to be studied seriously but recent enough to earn lots of cliches. .
Real history isn’t easy enough for journalism so we leave that to scholars. Which is why things like World War II and the New Deal don’t get more attention. And I haven’t been asked lately by anyone about my experiences during the civil rights era. Such stories are too recent to make it as either past or present.
My father worked for Roosevelt’s New Deal so between us we lived and worked through a third of constitutional American history. But it’s a record of not much importance. What Trump said this morning is far more significant.
For me (but not for anyone else) this will all eventually resolve itself with my death, which I accept for a number of reasons. One is that I’ve already lived a damn good life even if you’re not interested. Another is that I’ve outlived over 200 contemporaries. And another is that that I’ve come to think of dying as like sleeping but not waking up.
In the end, most of our stories are like the morning newspaper. Read it and throw it away.
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