My aunt Betty

OK, can someone please explain this sudden burst of cultural currency afforded to Betty White?  Don’t get me wrong – I’ve got no beef with said popularity resurgence, quite to the contrary.  B-dubbs and I go back – way back – to the days of Sue Ann Nivens on MTM (not to be confused with MTT) and her work on the Golden Girls informed my childhood, youth, and young adulthood (to which I still desperately cling).  I mean, come on, “Miami, you’re cuter than… an inter-uteran…” ??  That’s pure gold.

So, this is not meant as any kind of a criticism, just a statement of curiosity.  For someone who has been intimately (well, not intimately) familiar with Betty’s work for so long, it comes as a sort of gratifying but confusing turn of events that she would gain so much in popularity after having gained so very much in age (she’s 88).

Am I wrong, or did it all start with the whole Facebook groundswell to get her to host Saturday Night Live?  And what was that all about?  Now she’s on the Emmy’s, has a whole bevy of guest appearances on other TV shows, and is even starring in her own sitcom on TVland?

Again, don’t get me wrong, I love the woman dearly, but it all just comes as a bit of a surprise?  Anyone?  Maybe Betty and the rest of the Girls made some kind of pact that the last one alive would harness the combined powers of the other three and ride the wave to a new brand of stardom… or was it that they would all have their heads frozen?

One Comment

C. N.

She is so beautiful and talented. Aside from the whole being gay thing, I wish I were going to college in the late 40s/early 50s.

Their banter is weird.

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