How many people called in sick today? Televisions everywhere were tuned in to C-SPAN and cable news, and broadband networks must have been jam-packed with streaming traffic. Today was the broadcast of the year, for all that the year is young yet. Like millions of people around the country, my eyes were glued to the Congressional Oversight Committee hearing. I found it fascinating. It will be, without a doubt, one of those fragments of television that will be replayed for as long as our country is conscious of its own history.
I was a serious-minded child, but not starting until the late 1970s. I was not so interested in grown up issues earlier in that decade, so even if we had had more television access than Armed Forces Network in Germany when I was really little, it is unlikely that I would have watched John Dean testify, and I certainly wouldn't have understood what was happening if I did wander through while my parents watched. (It's possible this happened, but I honestly don't remember. It was that unimportant to me.) Years later, when Iran Contra hearings were buzzing around the nation's televisions, I was busy being a student, but not of current affairs. I was more interested in languages and art history, in both high school and college. In fact, it should say something about how little I cared about Iran Contra that I don't remember exactly when it happened, whether I was in high school or college, and I can't be bothered to look it up. For the Clinton impeachment brouhaha, I was a young mother at our first duty station as an air force family. I knew it was happening, but there were more important things to obsess on, like raising my kids and being the best librarian I could be without that particular masters degree. This is the first big governmental scandal that I've allowed myself to focus this much energy on. I've read and listened to so much, I should get an honorary PhD when it's over. If it were possible to CLEP your way into a doctorate, I'd succeed with both hands tied behind my back.
I won't tell my audience how to feel about what we saw today. There are people I love on wildly divergent points on the political spectrum. They will have viewed today's hearing very differently from each other and from me. I will assert, however, that things will change as a result of things that were said. I realize my song choice for tonight seems on the surface to be a reference to the overarching theme of the scandal. That was secondary. The real reason I chose it was the opening line, a haunting echo of the same lyrics several times over: "Where do we go from here?"
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