By Meta Commerse
After going through the last decade or more with my mother’s aging, decline and eventual death, I had what felt like a mountain of impressions and thoughts to consider, take in and learn from. There she was, the one I loved most of all, dwindling before my eyes. In stature, in words, in memories, and eventually in life. What would my life be without her? Where would this leave me? More importantly, what was this time and process like for her?
Today, less than one year after Mom’s passing, I recognize these lessons coming up for America. But they aren’t landing well enough to be learned. President Biden, 81, stepped aside out of “love,” and then endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, to run for office instead. Was the real reason aging? Did that tough job bring him to his knees and make it unlikely for him to complete another term? If so, he would likely have taken a political beating for admitting it. So, everyone exhaled, and nobody pressed the issue as we transitioned the general election cycle from dread to joy.
Patriarchal Newsflash: No man in power admits aging and decline.
Bill Clinton, now 76, spoke at the Democratic National Convention with a tremor in his left hand. He tried to keep the hand out of sight but it would not cooperate. (I know tremor first-hand and the natural attempts to minimize its appearance until you just accept that it’s there!) The PBS Newshour Politico commentator, Amy Walter, had only this to say about President Clinton’s speech, “Was this the Bill Clinton of 1996? No.” Is that the expectation? That he would always give the same level of performance until he just disappears one day? Are Americans so averse to aging and its tolls as they increase with time that we cannot show grace and respect to elders at this life stage? Is it death that makes this part of life so repulsive?
Isn’t there a course in journalism school on aging and our embodied flesh? How in the world do journalists learn to make room in their thinking and find compassionate responses to elders without a forum in which to explore and discuss this? At a time when we have more aging people than ever before, however will journalists manage to find healthy language to relate to and describe leaders in public service who are declining and facing the very real prospect of stepping aside, in ways that honor, normalize and serve these things?
Phil Donohue died last Sunday morning and there has been nothing, NOTHING to show tribute. This man meant everything to boomers. As a talk show host, he was a pioneer in daytime television broadcasting. Yet, the folks in today’s media do not appreciate this because he was before their time. They have reduced his contribution and our love for him to a pitiful two-minute blurb. Ah, but they did say that his radio show in the early 00s was quickly cancelled because he opposed the war in Iraq. Doesn’t everybody know that this is what our generation did — oppose war — especially war fought in our name? In all fairness, this teeny blurb included President Biden placing the medal of honor on Phil in his wheelchair. Where is the full-hour interview of Phil Donohue that honors his work that paved the way for Oprah, Montel, and Sally Jessy? Where is the PBS Documentary on the groundbreaking work of Phil Donohue, the talk show host who cared enough to become as important as that cup of coffee and get us all talking every weekday morning? It’s not okay to be so out-of-touch with television history as to ignore Phil Donohue’s passing.
It’s not okay in the Twenty-First Century to be averse to natural death.
Ase’