SNL, “No Kings”, And Anger
By
Leonard Zwelling
I am thinking about anger quite a lot lately. Once I figured out that I wasn’t depressed, I concluded that I was angry. Then a friend asked me to look beyond the anger. What was the emotion that the anger was covering up? So now, I’m thinking about that.
I have been watching Saturday Night Live since the very first episode in 1975. I was in training at the National Cancer Institute then. My days were dreary, depressing, and long. I hated being a clinical oncologist. I was good enough at it, but it was not as rewarding as I deluded myself into thinking it would be. Genie was right about me on our very first date when she said to me, “you’re no oncologist.”
My career would be salvaged by the recently departed Kurt W. Kohn in January of 1977 who took me into his lab and taught me how to be a scientist and write like an English major, but when SNL first aired, I was not a really happy camper at work even as I loved living in Washington, D.C. after nine years in Durham, NC. SNL was a shot of adrenaline for me and for my friends. We looked forward to Saturday at 11:30 from then on.
I stopped watching SNL in the 1980s. I thought it was no longer funny (this was confirmed when they brought back cast members from the 1980s to the modern show and I found them very unfunny). I started watching again recently trying to catch the zeitgeist of the young and found some of the cast members extremely talented and a lot of fun. However, many of them have since left and are sorely missed this year.
The first three episodes this season have been dismal. The skits were not funny. They were poorly written and amateurly acted. One of the recent musical guests, Role Model, couldn’t sing.
It all made me angry. Then I realized that underneath the anger was a sadness–longing for what had excited me so in 1975. Neither that first SNL cast, nor my relative youth is coming back, but once I realized what the anger was about, I just decided that the easiest thing to do was to stop watching. I believe I will do that, although I will try to catch Che and Jost every week.
The “No Kings” marches of the past weekend involved about 7 million Americans. Contrary to what some knuckleheaded Republicans said, there was no violence, no Anti-fa (because there really is no such thing), and no destruction by wild radical socialists. What was seen is a long parade of well-behaved people with funny signs, crazy costumes, and many an NPR tote bag. The problem I have with “No Kings” is that Donald Trump has no interest in being king. He wants to be an autocratic strongman who is in total control of the American Constitutional government without taking it apart. He likes so much of it under his control. After all, no king would demolish the East wing of the White House with everyone watching.
I am not angry at the demonstrators in the least. I am angry at the Republicans in trying to delegitimize these very lawful demonstrations. Behind that anger is the fact that these politicians are scaring the pants off of many Americans which scares me. My anger is covering my fear. I mean how can you be afraid of anyone with an NPR tote bag? But, I am afraid of those who would demonize the demonstrators.
I think it’s great that the country can still handle such vibrant demonstrations without a wild police crackdown. I am angry that the GOP felt the necessity to belittle Americans expressing their right to assemble and discounting the reality of the many people who don’t like what has happened to their government and feel that the GOP giving up its core principles to worship at the feet of Donald Trump is the travesty that it is. No true Republican could back tariffs, Presidential control of the Central Bank, or demand of that President that the Supreme Court heel to his desires. Under that anger is the frustration at having so many leaders (and the Democrats are not immune) who are genuinely unintelligent or just say stupid things. It’s really a shame. And I fear for my country.
So, in other words, under most of my anger this week is the profound frustration at being in a country that used to be led by the best and the brightest and is now led by some real idiots. It is also founded on witnessing the remnants of what was once cutting-edge television reduced to bathroom and thirteen-year-old boy humor. And there is absolutely nothing that I can do about any of that except realize where the anger is coming from and, in one case, turn off the TV, and in the other case keep searching for real leadership among a political class that profoundly lacks it.
Finally, I am also angry, as readers know, about the state of academic medicine and the condition of the overworked and burned-out faculty at MD Anderson.
Academic medicine as I once knew it, is no more. If the Trump Administration continues to dismantle American science and end grants from the NIH, there will be no academic medicine for long. Furthermore, the intellectual discipline that used to come with the intense training needed to be an academic physician appears to have become lax. That makes me angry, too, but mostly I worry about the care patients are likely to get from these doctors who may not know which end of a stethoscope goes in the ears. Behind the anger is the concern that my core beliefs in my profession are no longer valued.
As for MD Anderson, it too, like our government, is being led by a man ill-suited for the job who has surrounded himself with others ill-suited for their jobs. I would get angry at this, but I have become so used to it, that all I can do is shake my head befuddled at why the leaders of the UT System in Austin put up with this nonsense, but, then again, consider who those leaders in Austin are. I expect nothing of them and yet their decisions leave me breathless in their lack of consideration for the average Texan or for the intellectual good of the state and its university system.
Yes, I am angry about a lot of things, but I am learning to look past the anger to the emotions the anger is covering. I am learning. As I learn I look beyond the anger and see fear, frustration, and grief. Well, at least that makes sense. Maybe I should be depressed after all.
