This Valentine’s Day, Meet #DeForestKelley, a Real Sweetheart

One of the appellations applied most often to DeForest Kelley was “sweet”. It fits.  So does sassy, sensitive, compassionate, funny, composed, elegant, and gentlemanly.  What fans resonated to when meeting him was his genuine niceness.

 

Even when he was joking or being completely honest, he was never mean-spirited, caustic, or unkind. When De “corrected” you, you felt blessed, not plundered.

 

 

I shudder to think what he would think of today’s political and pundit climate, where people are called “stupid”, “losers”, and other crass terms simply for disagreeing with a particular policy or statement. I think he would be as appalled as the rest of us who have lived long enough to realize that polarization by punitive pressure and polemics is the wrong way to go if we want to survive–let alone thrive–as a nation.

 

It’s no wonder why we lose “goodwill to all” between Christmas and Valentine’s Day when the airwaves are filled with rants and random acts of tearing other people who disagree a new anal orifice.  It’s depressing, you know? What has happened to “civilization”?  The word doesn’t seem to fit anymore.  What’s happening right now sounds more like savagery (and that’s being unnecessarily unkind to the people we used to call savages; they weren’t, you know.)

 

Maybe if enough people read DeForest Kelley Up Close and Personal they’ll decide to be a more like De and Carolyn and a  less like Rush, O’Reilly and Trump.  One can only hope.