I Heard The News That Night

I can't believe I'm old enough to say I can't believe it was thirty-two years ago today that John Lennon was killed. In fact, I was mere months from becoming a legal adult that Monday night in 1980. Just think, Lennon's been dead twice as long as most Americans (at least those over 55 or so) knew him alive. Like most Americans, it seems, I first heard of Lennon's murder from Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football, which has me thinking about a couple of things today.

I wonder if we're quickly moving past, or already are past, the time when we "hear" news. I probably listen to radio now more than I ever had, but I'm sure I'm way in the minority on that score. And, not being much of a TV watcher myself, it seems that more and more people aren't watching live TV but watching streams and DVD collections of shows. Everybody pretty much wears a phone around the clock these days, but it seems like people spend a lot more time reading, touching, and typing on their phones than actually using them to talk to somebody. Just the other day I saw a headline for a story about some poor parents learning about the death of their child on facebook. It seems like we're much more apt to read the news these days than to hear it. Read it via text, or facebook, or Twitter or whatever--certainly not via the so yesterday medium of the (apparently dying) newspaper (oh, the are-you-a-fossilized-relic looks and comments I get from my young co-workers as I tote in my daily newspaper every day and spend my lunch break reading it). I remember, months after Lennon's death, turning on the afternoon TV to catch up on the latest doings of Luke and Laura on General Hospital and getting instead Frank Reynolds telling me about Reagan getting shot. I remember hearing the late great Peter Jennings--on the radio--gasping as he watched the first World Trade Center tower fall. Call me needy or what you will, but I kind of take contextual comfort in hearing jarring news from familiar voices (ah, the good old days when Howard Cosell's sui generis voice was as familiar as anything). I was texted/tweeted the news today? Oh boy.

I could have the specifics screwed up here a little bit, but I distinctly remember Cosell eloquently reciting the "May your hands always be busy/May your feet always be swift" lines from Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" during the telecast of a Muhammad Ali fight (I'm thinking it was his triumphant second fight with Leon Spinks, in New Orleans?). I can't remember how having Cosell quote Dylan affected my adolescent self-defined-cool-factor (I'm hip to Bob but none of my friends are), but I thought then, and still do, that it was not only apt, but pretty cool. All of which makes me wonder who'll deliver the sad but inevitable news to me that Bob has passed. If it's going to be a sportscaster (and I'm not foolish--things have changed--I sadly doubt Bob's death would merit breaking news mention during a nationally televised sporting event), but please, if it's going to be a sportscaster, please God, make it the great and utterly respectful Al Michaels and not that sanctimonious Bob Costas. Mike Tirico and not Jim Nantz. Dan Patrick and not Chris Berman. Verne Lundquist and not Brent Musburger.