Yesterday, an old reporter passed away. His name was Jimmy Breslin, and he was a
Pullitzer Prize-winning veteran of the smoke-filled sausage-fest copy rooms of
the 20th century. Breslin was known for
presenting sympathetic views of the "common man."
Upon his death, articles and tributes circulated around the
internet. Many called attention to his
most famous column, a piece written two days after the funeral of JFK. Breslin
chose to catalog the emotions surrounding the burial of the slain president
through the eyes and actions of the man who dug Kennedy's grave.
I read through that column, sitting at the breakfast table
on Sunday morning. It was a beautiful
piece of writing; the like of which we are not likely to see again, in this
rush-to-publish, sell-the-soap, poke-the-hornet's-nest era of journalism we are
now forced to endure.
Most poignant was Breslin's description of Jackie Kennedy walking down the
streets of Washington DC behind her husband's casket:
"She came out from under the north portico of the White
House and slowly followed the body of her husband, which was in a flag-covered
coffin that was strapped with two black leather belts to a black caisson that
had polished brass axles. She walked
straight and her head was high. She
walked down the bluestone and blacktop driveway and through shadows thrown by the
branches of seven leafless oak trees.
She walked slowly past the sailors who held up flags of the states of
this country. She walked past silent
people who strained to see her and then, seeing her, dropped their heads and
put their hands over their eyes. She
walked out the northwest gate into the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. She walked with tight steps and her head was high
and she followed the body of her murdered husband through the streets of
Washington."
His clear description brought back my own memories of that day.
I was only eight years old, and yet, I remember. The television was on all day, and we watched
the proceedings, live. Every
minute. Young as I was, I absorbed the
tragedy, and the solemnity, and the painstaking formality of the ceremony.
Half a century later, sitting at the breakfast table with my coffee and my iPad and my memories
on Sunday morning, a thought occurred to me that was almost unendurable.
Since last November, I have secretly longed for some fatal
tragedy to befall our hapless joke of a president. Honestly. And I can't be the only person in
America whose thoughts have fluttered around this abhorrent and perverted hope. Despite the cyclone of all things crass, idiotic,
dangerous and anti-presidential that emanates from and swirls around him every
minute of every day, he remains essentially untouched. The sudden cessation of his existence would
seem the only way we can possibly be shed of him. The very fact that he could
induce me to wish death upon another human being makes me loathe him even more.
But when I thought about the pomp and solemnity and honor...the tragic beauty of
the state funeral for John Kennedy, our last President to die in office; and
pondered all that being put on for Cheeto Jesus...I nearly lost my breakfast.
Unimaginable. Unconscionable. Sacrilegious. To even conceive of that sort of tribute and
respect and national mourning applied to the loathsome toad who currently
sits behind the desk of the Oval Office.
Never.
Thanks to Jimmy Breslin, that old-school, cigar-chomping journalist of the last century, I no longer wish death on the
SCROTUS.
Not unless we could simply
throw him back into the sewer he crawled out of and let the rats and maggots take
care of him.
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