“There's a Tear in my Champagne: Dick Clark as Memento Mori”
Op-ed commentary by Richard Speer
(plain-text version)
© 2006
Horns, hats, and alcoholic revelry notwithstanding, New Year’s Eve has always been a downer. In its midnight-black heart, the holiday packs a not-so-subtle memento mori, a reminder that the clock stops for no one. If you squint just a bit as the annual Times Square countdown commences, you can almost see a giant skull-and-crossbones descending rather than a crystal ball. “The year is dying in the night,” wrote Tennyson in his famous New Year’s ode; “Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.” This is depressing stuff, even if you don’t factor in the maudlin “Auld lang syne” and the equally depressing fact that nobody knows the words, much less what they mean.
This past Saturday, Dick Clark gave Americans a new reason to cry into our champagne flutes. Into the confetti-strewn revelry of New Year’s Rockin’ Eve 2006, the veteran emcee injected an ice-cold harbinger of mortality. And that’s a good thing. His speech slurred, voice husky, and breathing labored, the 76-year-old Clark, who suffered a stroke in December 2004, began his first segment with a candid monologue in which he recalled his recuperation. “I had to teach myself to walk and talk all over again… My speech is not perfect, but I’m getting there.” As the program progressed, he seemed to grow more relaxed and fluent, his hand gestures and body language normal enough that if you watched with the volume muted, you might not have guessed anything was wrong. For his part, co-host Ryan Seacrest treated Clark with a winning mix of everything’s-okay bonhomie and deference. “Thank you, boss,” he said at one point, after Clark tossed the show to him.
Still, despite the good face everyone put on the proceedings, an undeniable pall crept back every time Clark appeared on camera, as if, lurking in the endearing, heartbreaking molasses of his speech was the voice of Death himself. This sort of bummer tends to harsh your vibe when you’re in the mood to party, and it made for some jarring, sad-to-celebratory gear changes when the time arrived for the Pussycat Dolls and 3 Doors Down to rock the house. But we need jarring juxtapositions like this, and badly, in a culture saturated with the range-of-moment superficiality of video games and the Pimp My Ride materialism of hiphop. We, who prefer to keep our disabled and elderly citizens conveniently out of sight, desperately need to be reminded that people—even formerly dewy, dreamy hosts of American Bandstand—can eventually turn 76 and have strokes and, if they’re lucky, recover and continue to live fulfilling lives.
In an excruciatingly vulnerable condition, Dick Clark opened himself up Saturday night not only to the possibility of embarrassing himself (live TV is difficult enough when you’re in full possession of your faculties) but also to the inevitable cruel party impressions and flurry of blog flames. On JumpTheShark.com, one poster suggested that “Maybe Dick just drank a lot before the show, and that’s why he sounded so slurred.” On TelevisionWithoutPity.com someone opined, “I think he should have sat this year out—it’s not like he needed the paycheck,” while another put it more bluntly: “Holy cow, Dick looked and sounded like he was about to drop dead any minute.”
It takes little effort to post snarky comments to the Internet, much effort to recover from a stroke, and self-esteem of steel to put yourself on the line when you’re not in top form. Clark rose to the occasion, showing millions of viewers the simple value of keepin’ on keepin’ on. For decades, with his boyish good looks, “America’s Oldest Teenager” represented our national obsession with eternal youth. Now he embodies a more elemental American trait: the courage to face adversity—and the tenacity to surmount it.
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