aging gracefully
Do you know what today is? Yeah, well for some reason I Googled "March 21" instead of "May 21" and then wrote a post about how it was Kevin Federline's birthday and the 28th anniversary of the "Who Shot J.R." episode of
Dallas. See, the "Who Shot J.R." episode of
Dallas was watched, simultaneously, by 83 million Americans, more Americans than had voted in any of the prior six presidential elections, but maybe it was a sign of civic involvement to come, because more than 86 million people voted in the 1980 election, and we'd like to think we are living in similarly "transformative" times. "Who Shot J.R.?" represented a peak in the mass-ness of American mass culture that will never again be reached. No American fictional character, not even Carrie Bradshaw, will ever again seize the depleted imaginations of so many Americans; we have too many options now, too many variations on the ephemera and too many…well,
too many fucking blogs. Anyway I say this because I was pretty sure, when Jezebel was born a year ago today, that it was going to fail. First of all, what's up with that
name? I'm still not quite used to saying, "I work for, uh, this site called…Jezebel?" So anyway, I was wrong. About the date, and so much else. You're all here! And you know how success breeds superstition? Anna decided to get Jezebel's
astrological chart read. Without further ado:
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