Running errands on a recent Sunday afternoon, I had the radio tuned to the local NPR station, WAMC. Normally I’d be listening to one of the dozens of podcasts I subscribe to—like everyone else, I imagine, an idiosyncratic mix of my interests: film, soccer, longform journalism, food, history, comedy, books, tech, politics—but it was a quick trip and I was suffering from decision paralysis. (Sometimes having other people decide what’s in your media diet can be a refreshing abnegation of authority. In fact, I’m old enough to remember a time pre-YouTube, pre-streaming services, pre-podcasts, when one’s media choices were quite limited. We went outside more—and played charades quite a bit.)
The regular program was then preempted in the classic manner. An excited-yet-somber voice declared: “We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special news bulletin.” There had been an attempted assassination of one of the presidential candidates at a rally in Pennsylvania. (Somewhere, an unseen hand forwarded the Doomsday Clock one minute closer to midnight.)
Not much more was known at the time. Some bystanders claimed to have seen blood on the candidate’s shirt. Others said that as he was led off by Secret Service agents he pumped a fist in the air. The facts were unclear. As NPR cautiously reported the events of the day—thank you NPR for your journalistic restraint, maddening as it was to wait—I pulled into the driveway.
Bursting through the door, I ran out to the deck, where Lee Anne, oblivious to the news, was sitting in an Adirondack chair doing the crossword. Clancy, also ignorant of the world-shaking events unfolding, was dead asleep on the couch. “A presidential candidate has been shot at a rally in Pennsylvania,” I breathlessly shouted, startling Clancy awake. “I’m going to turn on the radio.”
Clancy got up to lick my knees. He does that. His capacity for moral outrage is narrow but his tongue is as wide as a farmer’s tie.
“Oh no,” said Lee Anne. “But we don’t have a radio.”
This was true. We had a clock radio in our bedroom for many years, the same one I had on my childhood nightstand when I would lie in bed and scan the dial for odd frequencies to keep a scared-of-the-dark kid company through the night. Sometimes, I’d hit on a real doozy, like Dr. Demento, the DJ who helped launched the career of national treasure Weird Al. Dr. Ruth’s “Sexually Speaking” show, which was broadcast after midnight on Sundays. I didn’t understand the half of it—clitoris, erectile dysfunction—but it certainly stirred the imagination of a curious boy.
But with the advent of cell phones, we didn’t need the alarm clock anymore, and Lee Anne and I didn’t listen to the radio in bed. So up into the attic went the clock radio. (I wonder if I might possibly tune in 1981 if I turned it back on.)
In addition, a couple of years ago I packed up all our analog stereo components—tuner, CD player, dual cassette deck, turntable—and brought them to my office, where I naively thought I might listen to all the vinyl I own. (A man can picture himself in moments of repose that never materialize.) The stereo now sits in a disconnected heap on the special credenza I bought for it.
“And by turn on the radio,” I said, “I mean download the WAMC app and stream it through our Bluetooth speaker.” I did that.
We sat on the deck, listening to the story gather focus in the chaotic aftermath of the latest eruption of murderous rage. A 50-year-old man was killed shielding his family. Several others were wounded. While I was (and continue to be) no fan of the presidential candidate, political violence will only beget more violence, which the candidate’s followers already proved themselves capable of on January 6. The death of the candidate might fulfill the darkest dreams of some of his political opponents (and some of my closest friends), but this shooting was no red-letter day for those of us rooting for the survival of the republic.
As the day dragged on and it seemed that night might never fall, a feeling of such utter wretchedness settled over us that we ordered Domino’s pizza: an “ExtravaganZZa” (pepperoni, ham, Italian sausage, beef, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, and black olives), plus Philly cheesesteak-loaded tots to amp up the culinary degradation. A pizza so overloaded with toppings it was limp in my hand. The tots, well, the less said about the tots the better. Let the meal match the hour.
Coda
A week later, again on Sunday afternoon (can we please have one day of the week without tsuris?), we found out that the other presidential candidate decided to bow out of the race. We learned this the new-fashioned way—via multiple group text threads bombarding us with hastily written articles. There wasn’t event time to turn on the radio, not that we had one.
This article appears in August 2024.
