Remembrances

9/11 killed newspapers. Newspapers, to be sure, were long on the way out but the sheer power of that one event let Americans know that newspapers simply were no longer good enough. On 9/11, if you will recall, the television became nothing but news on all channels (*) for a few days and from then on Americans looked to cable TV to give them their daily reportage because we could no longer afford to wait til the next morning to be informed. On September 12 people might've still cared but by September 13, 2001, all Americans knew that newspapers were no longer of any use (with five notable exceptions: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today and LA Times).

The cable news era really didn't last all that long. Sure, it's still around but by 2001 the internet was pretty well ingrained in American culture,with handheld devices already on the way. Once you had all the news of the world in your hand, then News became not simply a morning burst or an evening update, but a full time all day preoccupation. With the inventions of Facebook, Twitter, etc., then News became even more tailored to fit to each individual person and the abstractness of the News became ever more personalized, immediate, important.

Now to say that 9/11 itself was instrumental in this changing media landscape is a bit of a reach. It was the changing technology and social landscape that made these changes inevitable. 9/11 as a historical event coincides with these changes even if its effect were merely ephemeral. For example, after 9/11 Americans became shockingly non-political...for about six months. No one wanted to disagree about anything for a while until, to my recollection, about the spring of 2002, when political differences began to re-emerge and harden into the roughly 50/50 split of partisanship that still reigns to this day. The expanding array of channels on the TV and then the explosion of the blogosphere and the podcasting world and social media calcified America's political splits by allowing ever more individuality and seemingly less reliance on the party line (which ironically calcifies the party lines as the only two games in town).

On to the shifting media landscape, let us layer over the shifts in the Republican and Democrat parties of the time. Here's how the Republicans work: they tend to go for the guy that finished second last time and/or the oldest man in the room. This method was interrupted by George W. Bush when he seized on his famous name and his dad's built-out political machine to jump the line in the 2000 election. 2000 was supposed to be John McCain's year but Bush, governor of Texas at the time, jumped to the head of the class and kinda stole McCain's thunder, pushing back his executive ambitions until 2008.

Here's how the Democrats work: they prefer a new face they've never seen before, a rousing public speaker that has no history whatsoever (think Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton). This is hard to come by, so more often than not they end up with political hacks that don't inspire them but seem to be the least bad choice available (think Walter Mondale or Al Gore).

In 2000 when Bush upset the order, he compounded it by bringing along a protege (Dick Cheney) that was clearly not going to follow in his footsteps. So Bush not only upset the order, he upset it in a manner that would remain upset for multiple election cycles, which is kinda devastating to how the Republican Party operates. And on the other side, Al Gore didn't make himself electable until well after his loss in 2000, and even though by 2004 everyone was expecting Hillary Clinton to make a move, she paused rather than rushing ahead, leaving John Kerry to glumly Dukakis his way through the 2004 election.

So in the early 2000s we had a rapidly evolving media landscape and a topsy turvy political landscape, neither of which is directly related to 9/11, but clearly that was the tower that loomed over this evolving time.  What if there was a single person that had the gravitas, the money and the profile to enter that post-9/11 cultural and technological shift and pull it all together? There was one: John F. Kennedy, Jr., except that he died on July 16, 1999.

JFK Jr was the owner/editor of a then-influential political magazine called George. It was a late 1990s attempt to bring politics into the popular culture, to bring Washington down to the mainstream in a manner familiar to movie stars, pop stars and athletes. Now, personally, I wasn't a fan of the magazine or of that approach generally--indeed, I think the main problem with Democracy in general is that it leads the populace to think that they are supposed to like everything, which is simply unrealistic and leads to nothing but disappointment and despair and a bratty petulance amongst the electorate. Nonetheless, I think JFK Jr was well on his way to tapping into a paradigm that he might have had the power to dominate. The thing about JFK Jr that I thought at the time was that he would've been happy to remain a media mogul, a political gadfly that didn't actually have to dabble in the brutal world of politics. He was the kind of guy that could've remained above it all while still being quite influential.

So what kind of moves would he have made in the post-9/11 world? Perhaps he would've failed. Perhaps he would've clung to fading paradigm of magazines and print media, perhaps he would've scoffed at the worthwhile impact of newfangled technologies and the new media world would've left him behind. I doubt it, but let's go down that road for a second. Perhaps he would've tried to buy a paper or a cable news outlet but as rich as the Kennedys are, they're not that kind of rich. The Washington Post was bought by Jeff Bezos and the Wall Street Journal was bought by Rupert Murdoch. The Kennedys are rich but they're not internet rich--which actually suggests to me that JFK Jr would've courted the internet wealth and tried to capture some for himself. JFK Jr would've partnered with people like Mark Cuban and tried to get in on the next big thing.

But not for the money. JFK Jr had money, seizing new technologies would've been for the reach, the influence, not the money. So what kind of influence would he have sought? He was a Democrat, to be sure, and in the partisan hardening of the early 2000's, he surely would've opposed George Bush and doesn't it seem plainly obvious that he would've adored the rise of Barack Obama? Think back on it: if JFK Jr was on the scene at the time, doesn't it seem plausible that the two would have been intertwined? (**)

And by 2016, with the Republicans still in disarray, with no reasonable replacement for Mitt Romney, and reaching deep into the media swirl to come out with a reality show star, doesn't it seem quite possible that following the Obama years that JFK Jr could've thought to himself, "I'm the guy, this is my time and I'm not letting no Donald fuckin' Trump become president!"

Yeah...kind of a counterfactual reach--one I did not even expect to make when I sat down to write this! Again, I was working on the notion that JFK Jr would've studiously AVOIDED a life of true politics, preferring to be a removed influencer, a guy floating above it all. But clearly he would've loved Obama, not hard to imagine that he would've wanted to be for Obama what Arthur Schlesinger was for his dad. And unlike Schlesinger, JFK Jr would've had the backing, the gravitas and the money to run in Obama's shadow. Imagine that...it's not hard to imagine.

Now in counterfactuals we are blessed by knowing how the world turned out. It was not predictable in July of 1999 where the media and political (***) scene would've gone. It was not predictable what kind of world JFK Jr would have entered had he not gone down in a plane crash. It easy 20+ years later to look back, see what happened and reimagine how JFK Jr would've fit into it. It's not easy to look ahead from that moment and know.

And that not-knowing is where we find ourselves now with the death of Kobe Bryant. Yeah, this is actually a remembrance of Kobe Bryant--and Gianna Bryant, a name I'd never heard before last Sunday afternoon--because when I first saw the story of his death in a helicopter crash in Los Angeles, the celebrity death it most reminded me of was JFK Jr. I've had this thought experiment about JFK Jr in my head for years but now trying to play it forward to a new out-of-nowhere celebrity death is a totally different thing.

Why Kobe? Because like JFK Jr he was insanely popular, much admired and respected and super fuckin' rich. Kobe was a competitive man, a man interested in the world, in the future and his influence would've most certainly gone beyond sports. It's easy to say Kobe would've been involved in making movies (****) but I think he would've been involved in tech companies, internet start-ups, maybe even apparel or music or other popular culture industries, maybe even medicine or other science interests. Dude, Kobe had money and the interest in the world and the competitive spirit to make big differences in sectors and industries and cultures that we can't even begin to predict.

Clearly Kobe was a devoted father, clearly spent a ton of time with Gianna in particular and was invested in his children in the way he was invested in himself. And perhaps this attempt at a counterfactual shouldn't be applied to Kobe but to Gianna. She was on her way to a privileged education and upbringing, she would've mingled with the greats because her dad was a man that could go anywhere, therefore she could go anywhere. Was Kobe gonna be president of the USA? No, I don't think he would've ever been interested in the gig (what a fuckin' dead end job!). But these Bryant daughters were built to be assassins and it's not at all hard to imagine that Gianna Bryant may well have transcended all of that and moved into a life of public service. Indeed, the three surviving daughters will miss out on Kobe being in their lives, but they'll still be treated like royalty and will have numerous opportunities to expand on their in-born Mamba mentalities. Perhaps their inspiration going forward isn't a life of sports or entertainment media, perhaps they become great scholars in law or science. Hey, man, I wouldn't put anything past the children of Kobe Bryant, perhaps the most single-minded achiever of my lifetime.

I started this with the thought that the real tragedy of last Sunday is that we're gonna miss out on Kobe's second act and just like JFK Jr, I am convinced he would've had one. Perhaps he would've failed it in his efforts, perhaps even become a laughingstock, but Kobe would've done something and now we'll never know what he might have accomplished. Or what he might have accomplished through Gianna. Likewise, JFK Jr would've done something....I dunno what, but it would've been something. And society missed out and now we're missing again.

And, yes, counterfactuals are a trite thought experiment but I talked myself into believing JFK could, in fact, be POTUS right now. But outside of Seinfeld re-runs, who thinks of JFK Jr these days? The real tragedy of last Sunday is the thought that Kobe's influence might not last beyond the rest of this NBA season. That's fucking tragic, that's a loss for all of us, whether we were fans of Kobe or not.



(*) I remember ABC News, CBS News and CNN on virtually every channel. I suppose Fox News and NBC News must've been there, too, but I don't recall them. Only C-Span (and the Weather Channel?) remained, everything else was pure news. Also, even more shockingly upon reflection, it was commercial-free for at least 2-3 days. Indeed, the first commercial was something like a signal that normality was returning.

(**) This all depends on JFK Jr's reaction to the viability of Hillary Clinton. Either he would've been her main supporter or he would've sought to rid the world of more Clintons and backed away from her. Hard to say where this counterfactual-within-the-counterfactual would've gone.

(***) Check out where George W. Bush was as of July 12, 1999. The morphing of the Republican Party had already begun when JFK Jr perished.

(****) Man, doesn't it seem plainly obvious that once Lebron retired from b-ball and dedicated himself to making movies (which he certainly will) that he and Kobe would've been perfect partners? Man, that's a duo that really could've done a lot for several more decades. Damn!