Do you remember The Mickey Mouse Club?

Do you remember the Mickey Mouse Club? I don’t know how many of us may be left. I thought it was the greatest thing after school, as we all sang “M-IC” See you real soon! “K-E-Y” Why? Because we LIKE YOU! “M-O-U-S-E” The Mickey Mouse Club was where we found tales of Spin and Marty and Davey Crockett, the King of the Wild Frontier. I had my ‘coonskin cap (real ‘coonskin) and Mickey Mouse ears. You probably did, too. And we had Annette, probably the first unspoken fantasy a prepubescent boy ever had. She was an unadulterated knockout and a total sweetheart. That was 70 years ago. The map of the world has changed, but people have not. We have become more coarse, crude and cynical as instantaneous communication can deliver us terrible news without benefit of intelligent perspective, largely because intelligence is no longer much valued. I recall when the New York Times’ slogan was “All the news that’s fit to print.” Years later, and not that any years latter, MAD Magazine (God love them) changed that to “All the news that fits, we print.” The fucking National Lampoon could only WISH that it was MAD Magazine.

We can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but we can certainly take it on ourselves to refuse to forfeit our sense of wonder, our self-respect and our dignity.