Why This Election Year America Is Nurse Jackie
Last month in “Why This Election Year America Is Carmela Soprano” I lamented that in The Sopranos, one of the most celebrated TV shows of the era, the main characters remained as broken at the end as the beginning. Tony Soprano spent six seasons going to therapy to, supposedly, treat his psychological problems. It’s all for naught since Tony never grapples with the evil acts he commits and the suffering they cause for others. His wife Carmela also remains trapped in his criminal world, unable to grasp that while she lounges comfortably in a luxurious New Jersey suburb, others lie dead, their bodies hidden and forgotten as a result of her husband’s Mafia-style perversion of the American Dream.
I feared that voters would take a similar approach this election, ignoring the evil men who we now know shaped Barack Obama’s ideas and the bloody reality of their implementation. For all of the summer and into September I operated with the mindset of the 99%. With the legacy media cleaning up his messes, and the economy still not bad enough for most to really feel the pain, there was about a 99% chance of Obama winning the election. And polls aside, the mysterious variable of voter fraud weighed heavily on my mind with every new J. Christian Adams story.
In conversations with friends, I referenced more how we should prepare for Obama’s second term impeachment, rather than putting our hopes in the GOP establishment to avoid a repeat of 2008. And while my respect for Mitt Romney had grown considerably, I still doubted his campaign’s competence. (The yielding of Obamacare!) But a few unknown unknowns remained on the horizon as October began:
Obama bombing that first debate. Benghazi. Two weeks of trying to disguise a terrorist attack as a “spontaneous” response to a YouTube video.
A lot can happen in a month.
Last Sunday, on the eve of the last presidential debate, my wife April and I finished our successor show to The Sopranos, the third season of Showtime’s Nurse Jackie. By then my assessment of the president’s reelection chances had dropped to 66% — where it still remains today. The Romney campaign leaped to life as a shot of reality hit the American people in the heart. But is it enough to fully awaken America from the haze of a four-year hopenchange high?
Edie Falco, who played Carmela on The Sopranos, stars as Jackie Peyton, a 20-year veteran of the Emergency Room at All Saints’ Hospital in New York City. She’s a fighter, eager to battle hospital bureaucracy and push others to do what’s right for patients. In an age where we’ve all experienced the packed doctor offices often filled with indifferent staffers, a Super-Nurse Warrior like Jackie makes for an appropriate hero. Jackie’s greenhorn coworker, a Millennial named Zoey Barkow (Merritt Wever), sees her as such, declaring her a saint and her role model.
But Jackie knows her sins well. She might be the superhero in the ER but behind the scenes she’s addicted to prescription pills, sometimes steals to support her habit, and carries on an affair with Eddie the pharmacist. She also neglects her husband and their two daughters, both of whom have started acting out in response to her workaholism.
And in every episode new saints and sinners stumble into the ER and Jackie struggles to balance the scales, pushing ethical boundaries and soothing her guilty conscience with the thrill of saving everyone else’s life except her own.
And the statues of the saints watch on as Jackie retreats to the hospital’s chapel — her Temple — struggling to find a way out of the new problem brought courtesy of her expensive drug addiction.
Noah was a drunk. David was an adulterer. Jackie is both.
Not yet mentioned in the series, though somewhat implicit, is that Jackie probably has some variety of psychological disorder. The same biochemical combination in her head pushing her to risk everything to save a life also drives her to risk her marriage with an affair. Sometimes the gambles pay off, other times they explode in her face. One moment she’s flying high, the next she’s crashing and burning.
Where have we seen this recently?
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Grace, serenity, realism, courage, insight, wisdom. Oh! and God.
Romney landslide in November.
Amen!
Willard M. Romney’s Mormon faith, with its historic roots in Freemasonry, does trouble me. I find that its followers avoid making a careful scrutiny into their faith’s foundings, preferring to accept the narrative their church gives to them. In this way, I find Mormonism somewhat like Islam. But Mormons I tolerate because rarely have they been prone to violence. What human has no flaws? So W. Mitt Romney holds a belief that holds no historic water. I find some of the beliefs of the Founding Fathers of this nation troubling too. So I’ve voted already, but not for a community agitator.
I agree up until you said the Founding Fathers were troubling….they are not, they were/are awesome.
Mormons are a cult, not a religion and the the bedrock of their “faith” the Pearl and the Great Price confirms their “non-Christian” status. That being said, they do do good things and are generally upstanding citizens, they are just not Christian.
Next to Obama, Romney is George Washington as far as I’m concerned.
Mormons accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. That makes them Christians. Heretical Christians, at least according to the Episcopal Church (yeah, I know, I’m not sure how Christian they are these days! That’s why I’m not a member anymore. But still…), but still Christians.
“I find that its followers avoid making a careful scrutiny into their faith’s foundings, preferring to accept the narrative their church gives to them.”
This is whole-cloth nonsense.
I agree: if my Mormon neighbors have their Scout troop clean up one more trashy lot in our neighborhood or, if they bring one more plate of cookies or loaf of freshly baked bread to my home I shall SCREAM. In a world where one throws out apples and oranges received as Halloween graft, who brings food to neighbors like that ?
And what’s with encouraging all those young men and women to serve for 2 years, or whatever–at their own expense–and during the most selfish period of a young person’s life ? That’s just plain weird; they must do it at the point of a gun. At least my kid would not volunteer. And what is with ALL those kids ? They must support the minivan industry alone. Are they trying to give Catholics competition for maintaining US demographics ?
I hear our minister talk about “by their fruits you shall know them” and then totally bash the Mormons…somehow it doesn’t quite square: they’re so evil yet they do much ground level and unheralded good.
Weren’t many of the founders also Freemasons? Too much of the anti-freemason stuff is bound in with the International Jewish Conspiricy garbage. I do know a little bit about freemasonry and I’ve seen some of their “secret” stuff; it’s just a harmless bit of nonsense.
WHA?
Freemasons? Seriously, are you kidding me?
Whether Romney is a Mormon or belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is irrelevant. This country is on the edge of a precipice we will not avoid if Obama is re-elected.My husband’s partner at work is Mormon. He truly doesn’t have three heads, a small spaceship parked in his garage or a secret Jesse Ventura code ring. He’s a decent, honest man who gives to his community (and I mean the ENTIRE community) on a daily basis. My husband is a Jew. I am not religious. DOesn’t matter a hill of beans. We’re ALL voting for Mitt Romney.If you give anything resembling a damn about the future of this country you will, too.
Nobody who touts the Flying Spaghetti Monster actually believes in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. That’s why I wouldn’t for any any FSM fanboy. And I don’t vote for people who claim to be Catholic without believing in Catholic Christianity nor people who claim to be Protestant Christians who put race before God – too bad, Plugs and Bambi.
Well, I don’t watch Nurse Jackie but I watch Vegas. And this week the conspicuously Mormon banker, Mr. Farwood (who has been portrayed in a good light), said the “..the things Mormons care about are relationships- with our family, our church, our community.” I could have fallen out of my chair. Maybe it’s just a tiny chink in the armor of Hollywood, but it was nice to see it in a top-rated show.
It almost makes me forgive CBS for Abby Sciuto saying she wanted to be stuck in an elevator with Michelle Obama.
A vote for magic underwear is a vote for America! Go Romney!
You may as well ask “Is America ready for some Muslim sobriety”? Romney isn’t a Christian. And who cares? It is time for sobriety, that only a non-Christian can bring. Just don’t expect a Christian perspective.
What Brutus said. Seems to me that lately most of the mainstream Christians have been a bit, well, reluctant, to defend their religion against a MAJOR competitor (or two, if you count communism as a religion). Maybe we should try something else. Either way, as Insty says, I prefer a syphilitic camel. Although Romney might not like the comparison, I hope he’ll still accept my vote…
Noah was not a drunk. Having just gone through a tragedy that makes the Holocaust pale in comparision (and that’s saying a lot) he accidentally got drunk ONCE, in private.
(I would argue about David also, but there’s not enough cultural similarity for me to convince you.)
As Little Carmine said (Sopranos), “We’re on the precipice of a crossroads.”
Very interesting piece, David. Methinks you may have a bit of hypomania yourself – how else do you find the time to write AND edit AND read so many damn books? Gimmee some of that!
Regards,
John.