These are the darkest days of the year, I swear.
It’s not just that the sun sets before the lunch dishes are done. I always hated it when you have to turn on your headlights to get home from work in November. Driving after dark has become much more of a chore than an adventure.
Naturally, the temperature gets lower and lower, with sub-zero mornings sure to come. Already, after a few weeks the romance of running a woodstove has lost its charm. Some days it seems easier to leave the thermostat at 65 and don the warmest Polartech in the house. Forget the wood stove. It’s harder and harder to get that morning paper from the lawn while wearing shorts. I cling to my shorts until the first snowfall in a feeble attempt at postponing the winter.
It is a perfect time to wallow in gloom with Leonard Cohen songs. He just passed away adding even more despair to the season. They called him “The Godfather of Gloom” for good reason.
“Everybody knows the good guys lost,” Cohen sang in his “Everybody Knows.”
In a shocking result, even worse than the New England Patriots Super Bowl losses to the New York Giants (ptui), a reality television “star” has been elected to become the president of my United States. As I repeated during the long, ugly campaign, “I am not crazy about Hillary. But I am not crazy.”
My favorite polling outfit, FiveThirtyEight, which predicted every state result in the last election, had Hillary comfortably ahead and pulling away on the eve of this election. I finally gave up at 1:30 a.m. when Michigan was on the ropes. Michigan. It was reported that 90,000 Democrats who voted left the presidential box unchecked. 90,000. That was the election.
It was a race which featured two candidates with astronomical negatives among the populace. They didn’t like Trump. But they hated Hillary.
In normal times when a candidate blasphemed Mexicans as hoodlums and rapists, that would have ended the race. When any candidate praised Putin while attacking President Obama, including making the spurious birth certificate slur, that would have ended the race. When a candidate encouraged Russians to hack his opponent’s email, the race would have ended. When any candidate was sued for running a questionable educational institution, that would have ended the election. When any candidate withheld his tax return, then admitted he hadn’t paid any taxes for years, that would have ended the race.
Normally, a KKK endorsement would have been the kiss of death.
When a candidate went bankrupt in every field he touched, that would have ended the race. When a candidate attacked the members of his own party at every turn, that would have ended the race. When a candidate criticized soldiers with PTSD as “weak,” the race would have ended overnight.
Surely when any candidate admitted his attitude toward grabbing women intimately whenever he chose because he was a reality television “star,” that would have ended the race.
During the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, I would change the channel or simply turn off the television whenever his grinning face appeared. For the next four (or eight) years, I will limit my television time to cable channels. I will consider it a personal affront when Trump’s face appears and I have to accept what my country has done. I have already trimmed my Facebook contacts to eliminate Trump “saps.”
My current Netflix favorite is “Shameless.” I will now watch cable television for all eight years, night and day. In case you missed it, “Shameless” is a show which follows the Gallagher family in Chicago, featuring a shocking mixture of alcohol and drugs, crime, endless sexual adventure, one-day marriages, welfare abuse, murders and maimings. “Shameless” makes life at Cobb Manor look neat and tidy.
This winter will feature “Shameless” and brooding Leonard Cohen songs in the home and car. I might have to buy Cohen’s latest album, released just weeks before his death.
“I ache in the places where I used to play,” Cohen sang in “Tower of Song.”
My fabulous granddaughter, Meara (born on my birthday) remarked the other day that she will be 20 years old when Trump leaves the White House if he serves eight years.
Twenty.
More Leonard Cohen. More “Shameless.”
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the Bangor Daily News in Rockland for 30 years.