David McElroy

When I was a kid, Rodney Dangerfield was a big name in comedy, but I could never figure out why. He simply wasn’t funny to me, but most people laughed with him anyway.

The world is full of people with talent who never achieve much success, but Dangerfield was just the opposite. He was the man with no real talent — but who managed to become wealthy and famous simply because he refused to quit trying.

I’d never thought much about Dangerfield’s success, but I read an article this morning that has me thinking about how artistic and commercial success happens. It’s a recent piece from the New York Times Magazine about how a “nobody” named Jacob Cohen turned himself into the world-famous comic named Rodney Dangerfield — the man who could “get no respect.”

When he started in comedy, Cohen used the name Jack Roy. (He even legally changed his name to Jack Roy and that remained his legal name for life.) He was a singing waiter at one point, but he was fired. When he did get on stage as a comic, almost nobody thought he was funny. He couldn’t get booked. He was a failure.

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I keep hearing that certain Democratic members of Congress are boycotting Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech tonight, but they’re way behind me. I’ve been boycotting all presidential speeches for a couple of decades now — no matter who’s president.

I strongly recommend you turn your television off tonight and do something that matters. Find something productive to do. Call someone you love and connect with him or her. Go right on with your life as though the spectacle of hatred in Washington, D.C., doesn’t exist.

Nothing that’s said there will matter. None of the praise or vitriol in the social media commentary will help you. There is absolutely nothing you can do about the insane partisan fighting there.

So I urge you to get on with your life and remind yourself what it’s like to live outside of that bubble of political hatred.

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By the time I finished showing houses late Sunday afternoon, I was exhausted and starving. It had been a busy weekend and I suddenly realized I hadn’t eaten all day. But what did I want?

I felt a gnawing craving inside. It was a familiar craving, but what was it for? Was it for steak? Pizza? Chicken? I genuinely felt confused.

I’ve gone through this odd process a thousand times before. I’m hungry but everything I think of feels wrong. I stopped at a couple of restaurants, thinking they might be what I needed, but each time I stopped, I felt a cold emptiness — because I realized what I needed wasn’t inside.

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