I was searching for comfort on my streaming services the other day.

You all know what kind of a week it has been.

• The former director of the FBI being indicted by the Justice Department because he posted a picture of seashells on the beach that “whomjamacallit” didn’t like.
• Frat Boy Pete raspberried Congress, which attempted to get him to answer serious questions about our national security, the war in Iran, and his use of the Bible as a prop.
• The Supreme Court ruled that it was okay for states to gerrymander districts to disenfranchise people of color because prejudice doesn’t exist anymore.
• One of whosits’ nominees for the federal bench couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t answer whether a president could run for a third term. Whether he is a dolt or just a toady is unclear, but either should disqualify him, though it probably won’t.
• The King of England gave a master class on what American democracy is all about. The King of England. The guy we fought against to create our country, lecturing us on why we fought two wars against his five-times-great-grandfather. Let that sink in.

You get the point. And while we are at the point-making part of this ditty, you may have noticed that I have decided not to mention the guy who can’t speak in full sentences and whose tie is too long by name, because he puts his name on everything. Why should I contribute to his terminal narcissism? For that matter, the mention of his name has become a triggered response that leads to anxiety, nausea, along with a whiff of despair. Who needs to do that to himself?

———

Where was I? Yeah. I was looking for solace from my streaming services because, after I took the anti-doomscrolling pledge three weeks ago:

I hereby pledge:

To stop scrolling like breaking news personally depends on me.

To recognize that “just one more headline” is the internet’s second-oldest lie.

To treat outrage as junk food—fine in small doses, nauseating in bulk.

To remember I am not on the editorial board of the apocalypse.

To remember a stranger’s bad opinion is not my emergency.

And to occasionally look up and verify that the world is, in fact, in 3D.

One of the only places that I can find peace from the emotional sciatica caused by this administration and the deplorables who continue to act like everything is copacetic is in movies and television.

Here is the problem. There is just too much of it. I subscribe to Netflix, Paramount, Peacock, Apple TV, HBO Max, and Disney. That is between 25,000–30,000 different shows and movies for me to choose from. Instead of being distracted from the rampant toxic masculinity and incompetence (redundant?) of the Red Tie League, I was doomscrolling movie and television titles. It almost caused me to relapse. At least doomscrolling had some satisfaction, but a quick call to my sponsor, Ron Swanson, put me straight again. He suggested that I imagine social media didn’t exist and choose a movie that I had enjoyed in the past and watch that. It would be like getting reacquainted with an old friend.

It made me recall what it was like to grow up in NYC when there were only six channels, and they had to fill major portions of their programming with classic movies from the thirties and forties. It made me nostalgic for programming—someone with a better sense of cinema than me picking what I was going to watch. (Okay, the Three Stooges are not strictly “cinema,” but the physical humor was top drawer.) No stress. Just enjoyment. Just what I wanted right now.

I made a mistake. I typed “Classic Movies” into the search bar of Netflix. It seems my definition of “classic” is somewhat different than theirs. My idea of a classic movie is a black-and-white film from the ’30s or ’40s with actors like Gable, Stanwyck, Stewart, Bogart, or Bacall. The Netflix bot thought I meant movies from the eighties and nineties like Smokey and the Bandit and Kindergarten Cop. I thought, “How can these be classic movies?” Then I realized that the movies I watched on New York television in the sixties and seventies were thirty to forty years old. And so were the movies Netflix was suggesting I watch.

It made me feel ancient. Thanks, Netflix. See if I renew my subscription.

———

Enter Frank Capra

I decided I needed a more directed approach. Directed. Director. Who was my favorite director from that era? That was simple: Frank Capra. His movies all shared a common theme—an ordinary, decent man, slightly naïve and stubbornly principled, gets chewed up by a corrupt system that mistakes his decency for weakness until the moment it doesn’t. His movies were about goodness and how it was more durable than cynicism.

After sixty-six consecutive weeks of watching the most indecent man ever to occupy the White House, I need a Capra infusion. But which one should I choose? It’s a Wonderful Life is a Christmas movie. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is great, but I’d want to watch it back-to-back with Adam Sandler’s remake, and I didn’t have the time. It Happened One Night—Colbert and Gable—it doesn’t get better than that.

But then it hit me. Meet John Doe would be the perfect movie to lift me out of my sixty-six-week funk and perhaps give me hope for the next one hundred forty-two.

———

The Plot (Stay With Me)

A fired reporter, Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck), fabricates a letter from a fictional “John Doe”—an everyman who threatens to jump off City Hall on Christmas Eve to protest society’s indifference to the common man. To keep the story alive, she and her editor hire a down-and-out drifter, Long John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), to play the role.

The hoax unexpectedly ignites a genuine grassroots movement—ordinary Americans form “John Doe Clubs” across the country, rallying around the message of neighborly decency and democratic ideals. But the movement gets hijacked by D.B. Norton, a wealthy, fascist-leaning media mogul who funded the whole operation and plans to ride the John Doe wave to political power.

When Willoughby realizes he’s been a puppet for a proto-fascist machine, he tries to expose Norton—and is destroyed for it. The film ends on an ambiguous note of fragile hope: the “real” John Does, ordinary people, pull him back from the ledge.

———

Sound Familiar?

“Dumbasadoor” in the White House is D.B. Norton—the wealthy publisher who bankrolls a populist movement, genuinely believes he’s the people’s champion, and is completely blind to the fact that he’s the thing the movement was supposed to be fighting. Norton doesn’t think he’s the villain. That’s what makes him dangerous. And that is what makes “whozit” dangerous too. Well, that and the fact that he has dementia, is blatantly corrupt, and has the IQ of a garden snail.

The only thing that bothered me about the movie was the ending. The corrupt publisher walks away clean. The system that produced him is untouched. A man almost died, and nothing changed except that one man chose to live.

We can’t let our movie have that ending.

Our John Doe Clubs need to fight for real change in Washington that “shitforbrains” has revealed. We need to fight for tax reform where the rich and uber-wealthy pay a minimum tax on their income. We need a constitutional campaign amendment that reforms campaign finance laws so that our representatives consider people, not corporations, first. We need to hold social media responsible for what they publish like any other form of media.

We need to ensure that our government returns to being by and for the people…

And Hollywood, would you please get busy and make a remake of this movie—but this time, give it a more satisfying ending.