The artist/activist Anna Deavere Smith defines herself as a “hopeaholic.” Save me a seat at the next meeting: My name is Michael, and I am an optimist. But seriously, if optimism is my faith, I fear I’m losing my religion.
This is a new kind of thinking for me. Can you be an optimist and a realist at the same time? Or does that add up to stoicism? Not that I put on a brave face, or that I’m courageous, for that matter. I am not a hero. Sure, I’ve been through some ordeals, tough times. But I always managed to accept life on life’s terms, and up to this point, I found those terms acceptable. I was able to take on whatever came my way, forge through it, no matter what. Now my attempt to make any sense of it leaves me feeling indifferent. I’m numb. Weary. Optimism, as a frame of mind, is not saving me.
Much of what is important in my life grew out of my optimism: embarking on my career, getting married, having children. Another example, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, was once just a hopeful idea, a vision we aspired to make real. We didn’t wonder if it would be successful; we just accepted that it would have to be. We didn’t force our vision into an existing paradigm, but let it evolve, seeking niches and fissures in the neuro-research landscape, reimagining what a world without Parkinson’s would look like. Powered by our good intentions, the few of us who were there at the beginning would spout our mantra for the project: purity of motive. Find a way to relieve symptoms, halt progression, discover a cure, and solve PD.
Optimism and idealism, tempered with realism. To succeed, we’d have to put hard work behind our hopefulness.
This level of positivism used to define me; all scenarios were best-case. So why has a broken arm scrambled all my coordinates? What should qualify as the least of my problems has become greater than all others. What is it that perverts the scale? My arm has been out of the sling for weeks, but my ass is still in it.
I feel like, Enough already. I can’t just stamp it with a happy face and put it in the out-box. The immediacy of the situation calls for fluid thinking, but my mind is muddy. I enter a period of idleness, time that could be spent seeking answers. Instead, I seek a time-out.
Eventually, I will take the advice of my friend George Stephanopoulos and try Transcendental Meditation. But in the short term, it will be TV over TM.
“Sometimes you’re ahead and sometimes behind.” That’s how Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man described the difficulty in following the complicated jazz beats of a Louis Armstrong record. That’s how I feel about time with my family. I can’t always go where they go, when they go there. My participation is syncopated. I want to be a companion, not a responsibility—or worse, a liability. By just showing up, I provide an X factor that can drastically alter their experience. So I pick my moments: when to join in, and when to stay home.
I try to spend alone time productively—reading books, attending to Foundation and other work-related projects, and catching up on email. Or … I can get sucked into the vortex of cable television, Apple TV, and the panoply of streaming platforms. Too often, I choose TV. It’s an easy escape, comforting. It doesn’t require input, or even full attention. Best of all, I don’t have to move. I haven’t fallen off the couch once.
As for my viewing preferences, generally I program my remote control to bounce between news on MSNBC (I find that Rachel Maddow is smarter than me), and ESPN (whoever is running, jumping, skating, or tossing a ball). When I tire of this fare, my remote takes me into the far reaches of the channel listings, on the hunt for something to occupy my time.
My current bingeing habits reflect my state of mind. Hunter S. Thompson observed that “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” During my time as a shut-in, I discover a treasure trove of professional weirdness, starting with BUZZR, a station that exclusively broadcasts vintage game shows. It has to be a cheap way to fill air time; most of the participants are dead, and I don’t think their heirs are rolling in residuals. There’s the late Steve Allen on What’s My Line?, inventing the question “Is it bigger than a bread box?” The late Richard Dawson licking strangers on the original Family Feud. Match Game’s Gene Rayburn (deceased), asking hypothetical double entendre questions, referencing characters like “Dumb Dora” and “Fat Freddy.” It’s every bit as brainless as it sounds, yet, as a diversion, it has its merits. Absurd can be fantastic, as long as we agree that it’s absurd.
I watch grittier absurd stuff, too. I often tune in to the Heroes & Icons network, with its library of old TV Westerns that aired slightly before I was born. My dad used to call them “horse operas” or “oaters.” Now here they are, galloping across my giant seventy-five-inch screen in all of their crisp black-and-white glory.
In the early morning, once I’m awake, Parkinson’s keeps me awake. A shaky man gets no rest. I turn on my flat-screen buddy and I am mesmerized, lulled into a stupor. The rodeo kicks off at 5 a.m., with Clint Walker as Cheyenne. At 6:00, Maverick. Then blam! blam! Two half-hour episodes of Wanted Dead or Alive, with Steve McQueen. My mom says she was watching this Western when she went into labor with me. She refused to be taken to the hospital until the end of the episode. Way to go, Mom. At 8:30: Have Gun—Will Travel, with its killer theme song “The Ballad of Paladin.”
These old shows from the Eisenhower era are nostalgic, and that can be either positive or negative; while they’re funny and entertaining, they can also be grossly politically incorrect. The bottom line is, I find these shows distracting, a temporary diversion from my malaise, a swinging gold watch in the hands of a hypnotist.
I’m not just a bystander. Although I came in later, I occupy my own place in the pendulous arc of television history, as Alex Keaton, a high-energy young Republican with a serious man-crush on Ronald Reagan. Family Ties was like the programs I’ve been sampling lately, wholly and completely of its time. Occasionally, we tapped into the national zeitgeist and dealt with heavier issues (drug abuse, teen suicide, marital problems), while cringing at the likelihood that the NBC announcer would promote these as “very special episodes.” We figured our audience would decide for themselves what was special, and what wasn’t. We were just amazed that so many fans tuned in every week.
President Ronald Reagan was, in fact, a big fan. The one-time TV horse opera star (Death Valley Days) claimed that Family Ties was his favorite show, probably due to the fact that Alex’s character was such a Reagan devotee. One day our executive producer, Gary Goldberg, received a call from the White House: The press office was lobbying for the Gipper to appear on the show. Now, that would’ve been a “very special episode”; but Gary, the writers, and I were unanimous that the president could guest on the show only if he attended the Monday-morning script reading; rehearsals throughout the week; Thursday camera blocking; the Friday-night show, taped live before a studio audience; curtain call and cast cheers; plus late-night pick-ups. As it turned out, we weren’t that special.
This process—the first look at each week’s script; getting the show on its feet (so to speak); starting to block the scenes on the set; developing the story and inspiring the writers to make it tighter and funnier; locking in the camera moves; and finally, presenting the results to the audience—was a supreme example of optimism in action. No matter how the week unfolded, it was never a question that it would be our funniest episode yet. That was always our default objective: Just be funny.
The audience who grew up with us are now in their forties and fifties. The “hippie-era parents with yuppie-era children” plotline isn’t so relatable to today’s audience, who barely remember President Obama, never mind Presidents Reagan or Nixon. But I’d like to think that young viewers in the 2020s might stumble on Alex Keaton and the Keaton family of Columbus, Ohio, and if they’re not too distracted, just laugh.
Unlike Alex Keaton, my politics couldn’t be further from Ronald Reagan’s, but he became somewhat of a presence in my life and career. Apart from his affinity for Family Ties, he was the subject of a very funny shout-out in Back to the Future.
DOC
Then tell me, Future Boy. Who’s President of the United States in 1985?
MARTY
Ronald Reagan.
DOC
Ronald Reagan? The actor? Who’s Vice President, Jerry Lewis?
In 1986, Ronald Reagan invited me to a State Dinner at the White House. Being a Democrat, I hesitated, but then I thought about it for a while. As ironic as it is to say these days, I had respect for the office. I considered it an honor. As it turned out, he was a genial and welcoming host.
Years later, Nancy Reagan even joined our Foundation in the pro-science side of the stem-cell debates. It was not the conservative position, so a bit of a surprise. People are not always as advertised.
Advertisers, however, know who their people are. We are what we watch—and the commercials slotted into our favorite programs can be revelatory. I turn on a football game, and it sells me beer and trucks; switch to MTV, and I’m in a world of condoms and Clearasil. The strange television landscape that I currently occupy is dotted with commercials—not for coffee, or cars, or Burger King—but for products targeted to geriatrics. Walk-in tubs, the Acorn Stairlift, reverse mortgages, portable oxygen units, catheters that are—get this—nearly pain-free, and the ever-popular adult diapers. Oh my god, is this my demographic? From now on, I can look forward to early-bird dinners and discounts on movie tickets. Sure, I like a good nap now and then, but I’m not ready for a dirt nap.
Maybe I’m just straddling the void; I’m probably the only person who has been featured on the cover of Rolling Stone and AARP in the same year. After all, I’m almost fifty-eight. That’s the average age of diagnosis for a Parkinson’s patient, so by that metric, I’ve been fifty-eight for twenty-nine years. That makes me eighty-seven.
This is how my mind isn’t working.
I’m living the life of a retired person, a decade too soon. My world is contracting, not expanding. In terms of the space-time continuum, I’m closer to my exit than to my entrance point.
My fascination with vintage TV has something to do with the fact that I decide when I want to be in that world, and not in the present. I slip into another reality. It’s one of the million iterations of time travel—to visit a world that’s pre-me. My time hadn’t begun, and therefore it hadn’t begun to run out. And just like the performers in these old shows, someday I will survive myself in reruns.