Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

I was too young. Just six years old. So I’m not going to make this about a personal memory. But when Marilyn Monroe died under mysterious circumstances on August 5, 1962, fifty-three years ago, The Sixties officially began. Give me the counterculture, baby, because the mainstream culture, the one that takes the life of an innocent like Norma Jeane Mortenson isn’t worth pondering.

Also in this vein, that time marked the very first televised presidential debate. The broadcast occurred on Sept. 26, 1960 and featured John F. Kennedy (“Happy Birthday, Mr. President” was sung by MM on May 19, 1962, seventy-eight days before her suspicious death) and Richard Nixon. How far we’ve come from Nixon’s five o’clock shadow to Donald Trump’s orange hair.

The Sixties, of course, are long gone. Today’s atavistic nihilism fosters a voracious appetite for the premiere of the sixth season of “The Walking Dead.” Tune in on Oct. 11.

If Marilyn were alive today, she’d be 89 years old. If only she were with us.

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