I'm so confused.
As it turns out, Dr. Huxtable, the benevolent obstetrician, was spending plenty of time checking out cervixes, but he definitely wasn't birthing babies. Kind of a busman's holiday, I suppose, except he wasn't raiding the pharmacy for epidurals. I ache for his victims, and I ache for all of us, the loyal viewers who truly believed he was a good doctor and an even better dad. How could we have been so duped.
Meanwhile, back on the Korean peninsula, war is over. Just like that. A handshake, a little tap dance across a line in some sand (or concrete), a quick flourish of two pens. Hot Lips and Hawk-eye packed up their MASH tents long ago, but at least the brave healers who fearlessly practiced their craft while grenades exploded around them can finally take comfort in knowing their efforts were not in vain. Big Sigh. Job well done, Radar, but you already know that, don't you?
Television doctors do health care commercials, because we trust their expertise. We care about what Kanye West and his wife Kim K. think about Trump and politics and anything of any import, as if either one of them is qualified to speak about or for anybody but themselves.
Like lots of people, I have fallen for fictional characters, assuming that's just who the actors are. That's what good writing and good acting does. I've never been a fan of reality shows, though, and I've never had much interest in any of the stars, mostly because I've always wondered how something can be deemed "real" when it's so contrived. If a camera were following me around all day inside my house, I'm guessing there wouldn't be dirty coffee mugs in the sink or stacks of unopened mail on my desk or piles of clean but rejected clothes on the floor of my closet. I'd close the door when I pee.
But the latest reality show, the one being played out in the Oval Office and by Tweet and on 24 hour cable news shows, has caught my attention (to put it mildly). Though we have certainly had our share of goofballs in office over the years -- if politics makes strange bedfellows, it's no surprise that it attracts a good number of folks who are already strange, before they ever get into bed -- no casting director worth her salt would ever have cast 45 as president. Or the various and sundry inept cabinet members as cabinet members. Well, unless it was supposed to be a farce.
Countless heads have rolled in the last 15 months, some deservedly so, some not. But where the stakes are highest, Teflon survives, with barely a scratch. Every day, or at least every few days, we think we've seen it all, and we think, finally, the camel's back is broken. Dr. Huxtable has been exposed and might be carted off to prison. The M.A.S.H. units on the Korean peninsula can officially be packed up. We will finally put this president of ours where he belongs -- either in a padded cell or a concrete one with metal bars -- before he seals our fate as the world's laughing stock, or worse, gets us all killed.
It's difficult, though, when so many of us have trouble separating fiction from truth. When we cannot imagine that television doctors are rapists, or that they would not be capable of tending to mortal wounds to the tune of exploding grenades. When quality "fiction" is floated, we get taken in, and the lines become blurred. Unfortunately, it seems, the same goes for bold faced lies. And as long as we have a president who keeps floating utter bullshit, there will be folks who fall for it. And there will be folks, like me, who become so confused they find it hard to believe anything.
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