Dave Pell - Please Scream Inside Your Heart: Breaking News and Nervous Breakdowns in the Year that Wouldnt End

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We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaksthats show business.

Edward R. Murrow

Can we record it?

My mom asked the question as she squinted through the screen of my childhood bedroom window. It was May of 2020, and I was standing outside in the bushes holding my laptop open with rubber gloves so my parents could watch Fareed Zakaria deliver a personal birthday message for my dads ninety-sixth. I had called in a favor from a virtual friend at CNN, and Fareed had generously recorded some very kind words. My dad teared up and said, I really appreciate it, David. This is something! My mom reminded me that she was actually Fareed Zakarias biggest fan. When I shared that message with Fareed, he recorded a personal message for her too.

To the average family, this birthday moment would have seemed a bit odd. This wasnt a message from Springsteen, or Obama, or even Vanna White. This was Fareed Zakaria, the anchor of a weekly cable news show. But in my family, a sane newsman, cogently delivering international news is the equivalent of Springsteen, Obama, and Vanna White rolled into a single super mensch. Zakarias Sunday morning CNN show, GPS , had been appointment viewing in my parents house for years. So even though my parents and I couldnt be in the same room, this was a moment to celebrate. My dad was happy. My mom was impressed. And, just when everyone least expected it, I had self-actualized as a son.

Looking back, its clear this is where wed have to begin: with my parents looking through one screen at another screen with their favorite journalist delivering a personalized message in the midst of the biggest news story of a lifetime (mine, definitely not theirs).

Once they had seen the video, I backed up to where my face-masked wife and kids stood in the driveway. For months, that was as close as wed get to my parents. Even though they regularly compared their coronavirus-mandated home confinement to being in jail, we managed the physical separation easily. We were never a particularly touchy family. When I confessed to my mom that I was actually hopeful that handshaking, especially among strangers, would never make a comeback as a traditional greeting, she responded, And all the hugging. Who needs it?

We didnt hug much. But we talked a lot. Mostly about the three big subjects: news, anti-Semitism, and news. And in the year 2020, there was more to talk about than usual.

Can we record it? became a funny line among my siblings. As I explained to my mom in the moment, This is a recording. But, as usual, my mom had tapped into a broader question: Can we record the experience of 2020, the madness of an era when a middle-aged son is separated from his aging parents by facial coverings and window screens, a period that was already crazy before a global pandemic, a ferocious recession, millions of masked protesters taking to the streets, and the hysterical buildup to one of the most important elections in American history? We were all waist-deep in a news deluge, then it turned into a tsunami.

Can we record it? Probably not all of it. Hindsight is supposed to be 20/20, but 2020 was a blur. It was the year George Floyd called out, I cant breathe. When the coronavirus asphyxiated its victims. When Donald Trump continued to blow off norm-defying steam on Twitter. And when we were all smothered by nonstop news coverage that alternated between steady distracting jabs and breathtaking body blows.

Like everyone else, I had to get up off the canvas for my share of standing eight-counts. But Ive been news-obsessed since my parents raised me to be a media Jedi, and Ive spent a large portion of my adult life digesting and regurgitating the news for an audience that refers to me as the Internets Managing Editor. So, in a weird way, Id been training for 2020 all my life.

Click. The box is on. Thats what my dad called the TV when I was growing up. Its 1978. Hes on his chair, dozing in and out behind a wrinkled newspaper. Im on the couch watching a network television broadcast of a miniseries called Holocaust . This was during the period when my dad didnt say much (the 60s, 70s, and 80s), so it was surprising whenever I heard his voice.

Couch. Screens. News. Holocaust. Daddy issues. Were only a few paragraphs in, and you know me already.

On the TV, its World War II. Several Jewish partisans are on their stomachs, hiding behind bushes, guns drawn, when they spot a group of pro-Nazi Ukrainian militiamen approaching on a dirt path. The partisans fire. Most of the militia members are killed or injured, but one gets away. A young partisan is told to chase after him. He races behind the boyish, blue-eyed, blond-curled adversary, streaking across an open field of tall grass before finally tackling him from behind. He grabs the soldiers dropped machine gun, pins him to the ground, and aims the gun at the face of his target.