A post about Melissa Reeves and my friend Marcel

One thing you should probably know about me is that I used to watch soap operas. A lot. I watched routinely 3 hours a day during the summers growing up, and from 1982 on (the year we got our first VCR), I sometimes watched more than that, continuing probably till I was in my mid 40s.

There is a very beloved soap actress named Melissa Reeves, who has played the character of Jennifer Horton Deveraux on Days of our Lives off and on since the early 80s. When I say beloved, I mean it. She was DAYS royalty, playing the granddaughter of Tom and Alice Horton, and she was cute and perky and bubbly and the soap world could not get enough of her.

I promise, there will be a point to this.

So, one day Melissa Reeves didn’t show up for work. And then, she didn’t show up for work for five years. And no one ever talks about it. There were rumors that she had an affair with one of her costars, and that her very Christian husband demanded that she quit the show to save their marriage, but, again, no one has ever commented on her absence.

Now, this is the point that I am getting to. This was during the heyday of soaps in the US. There were probably twelve or thirteen on the air at that time, and a thriving soap opera press with probably five or six tabloid and tabloid-lite publications that were supporting the industry. And at lease once a month for the entirety of those five years, one of those publications would run this headline:

It was insidious. John and I used to joke about it all the time. I’d ask if he’d seen something on the news and he’d say “Why—Is Melissa Reeves coming back to work?”

Putting a pin in that for just a minute, I want to tell you about a disagreement I had with my friend Marcel. And concede, that on the face of it, he was right, and I was wrong.

Marcel, if you want to print that, I’ll sign it for you.

We were talking about the fact that Democrats and Republicans live in two different political worlds with two different sets of rules for each and that the Republicans seem to parlayed their…unique rule set into, you know, global domination.

You’ve all heard it. The democrats keep bringing red pencils to knife fights.

And I had had a crappy day, and I was scared and angry and I said that we needed to start fighting dirty. We needed to get some knives and mix it up.

And Marcel, God love him, said that it wasn’t worth our souls.

And he’s right. It’s not. We can’t just play by their rules. That makes us no better than they are. But at the same time, we also can’t keep bringing a red pencil to a knife fight. So. What are we left with?

We have to change the fight.

What if we used some of the same tactics that they use, but instead of using them to spread misinformation, we use them to spread information? What if we figure out ways to get the actual truth just buried into the consciousness of people before they even knew it happened?

What if we turned around so that the Republicans are bringing a TRS-80 Calculator (which they will proudly announce says BOOBIES) to a Supercomputer Fight?

Which brings me back to propoganda and Melissa Reeves. I haven’t watched Days of our Lives in probably thirty years. Many of the actors are lost to the mists of time. But not Missy Reeves. The “Will Missy Return to Days” campaign was so successful at putting the idea in our brains, that it just took up residence there.

So, let’s think about “Is Matt Gaetz a Pedophile? Are Ted Cruz’s parent’s immigrants? Did Donald Trump commit Treason? Does Pete Hegseth condone rape of unconscious women? Will Kash Patel release Epstein’s list? Does Elon Musk want to eliminate medical care for Veterans?”

Short bursts. No big words. Or concepts. Nothing that goes over anyone’s head. Not trying to make you feel dumb. Not saying I’m smarter than you. Not holding up my fancy education like it means something.

I’m just asking questions here.