Hank Kalet

I just stopped at Wawa to get a coffee and some papers, in particular a New York Times . I got the coffee, but the papers — well, I bought a Star-Ledger. The Times was sold out. USA Today was gone. Likewise, the New York tabloids and the Bergen Record.

The guy who rang me up said they went quickly, that people were buying two, three, four at a time.

People understand what this electoral moment is and they wanted something tangible to signify it. News is the first draft of history and newspapers are still embody it better than any other media.

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WHYY just called Dick Zimmer Jim and Chris Myers Craig. I guess even highly regarded news organizations can have gaffs.

The newscasters last night made a point of saying that the Vietnam War failed to produce a president, unlike most wars in our history. The tangled history of our relationship to that war — its unpopularity and the revisionism surrounding its history, etc., driving what is a permanent ambivalence toward the era.

But I think it is important to note that the Vietnam era did produce two presidents who did not serve in the war — Bill Clinton and George Bush. The question then is what this says about our relationship to that time, five Vietnam-era candidates, two who were opponents of the war (Clinton and John Kerry), twosupporters (John McCain and Bush). Again, ambivalence.

So now, we move beyond the war (hopefully) and can close that political chapter in our nation's history. If we're lucky, we can put the '60s culture wars to bed.

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