Value

  With nothing to do on Labor Day afternoon, I started to surf the television dial looking for something to pass the time.
And, not to my great surprise, I found it. A “Keeping up with the Kardashians” marathon.

Now everybody has an opinion on the “K” Family. I don’t. Well, I do but it’s not important and I don’t want to appear as being “cynical” or “judgmental”.

But I am certain that one day, a major museum/gallery will have an impressive retrospective on the “K” family which will reveal that their reality show marked the beginning of the decline of Western Civilization, as we know it.

However, I soon became riveted by the opulent lifestyle, the gorgeous hair, the sultry, smoky eyes but mostly the irritating nasal tone of their endlessly irritating voices.

Ultimately though, I became suitably impressed with the knack the Kardashian clan or (Klan) have of turning anything or anybody on this planet into an accessory.

They were truly born to accessorize.

“Subliminal Seduction” hardly.  Mom Kardashian carrying the coveted, quilted “Chanel” bag as if to say to us, I am the empress of this family. I am important enough that the House of Chanel wants to use my body parts to advertise their products.

Not a bad deal. I get it. Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. But I was also appalled and began having one of my many imaginary conversations that find me engaging vociferously with shallow celebrities.

Conversations about being role models, conversations asking celebrities to stand for something other than, or in their obscenely expensive “Manolo Blanhik ” heels.

So I made a decision, a huge one. I changed the channel.

I yearned for something more, television with gravitas.

And I found what I was looking for, in a small, stunning documentary entitled, “One Thousand Pictures/RFK”. The film depicted Robert Kennedy Junior’s funeral train as it made its way across America in 1968.

It was heartfelt, compelling and exquisitely put together.

And not to my surprise, I saw them, the housewives and not the desperate kind. The staunch kind. The proud mothers of the all American family.

There they stood shoulder to shoulder with the equivalent of today’s handbag or designer purse on their arms.Back then, they called it the pocketbook, a status symbol, hardly.

A vestibule for a lipstick and a compact, maybe.

No maxed out credit cards. No condoms. Mothers didn’t have sex back then, extramarital or otherwise.

I was misty. I was overpowered with heartland values. I was ready to toss out my celebrity endorsed perfume and my i phone to stand beside these women.

How truly beautiful they were as they stood along the railways of America showing the same respect for the family’s purse strings as they paid their final respects to a great American hero.

Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. was assassinated for what he stood for.

Back then, on a few, hot, sunny, sad days in another time, long ago, in another America.