Happy MLK Day to those who celebrate–if you don’t, you’re probably not someone who’d be inclined to be one of my readers anyway. And no, it’s not about whether you might have racist tendencies or not–most of my loyal readers are anything but averse to a paid day off, or at bare minimum less traffic flow if you are working.
Since I’m not scheduled to work Mondays anyway, what this day does afford me is a chance to take a step back and remember why we have a national holiday less than three weeks after our last. We’re honoring the legacy of a man who devoted his life to peaceful protest and the preachings of God before a deranged Southerner took him out on the balcony of a cheap Memphis motel before his 40th birthday. For me, it essentially set the tone for the year 1968, perhaps the first I have many strong memories of, good and bad. You know, just like 2016 appears to be for just about everyone who’s showing up in our timelines of late.
We’ve apparently now reached Ice Bucket Challenge levels of virality and ubiquit with this heartfelt cry to halycon days, as PEOPLE’s Tabitha Parent took note last week:
While the start of a new year usually marks an occasion to set sights on the future and prepare for the year ahead, this year, netizens were primed to do the exact opposite. Almost as soon as the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, 2026, users on social media started posting content, touting 2026 as the “new 2016” and sharing throwback snaps of themselves from the year or videos of themselves using Instagram’s iconic Rio de Janeiro filter (which was a staple facet of Instagram posting at the time).
It’s become a viral trend — despite how antithetical it might feel to call something nearly 10 years old a trend — with users posting compilation videos of images representative of the year (think lots of oversaturated photos of palm trees, people throwing up peace signs, pics using the Snapchat dog filter and more) as well as their own photos of themselves from 2016. In fact, the hashtag #2016 now has 1.7 million posts under it on TikTok.
NDTV’s Krati Purwa chimed in with her own amateur psychoanalytic take yesterday:
It is as if people are resetting the clock. Why not? A lot has happened in the last decade. We have witnessed countries fighting wars, the world battling the pandemic, and the global economic downturn that followed the COVID-19 lockdown…This trend is a reminder for some about how far they have come in life, for others, it’s a throwback to simpler times when they had fewer responsibilities, and they were living carefree lives.
That was certainly the case for me in 1968; heck, I was in grade school. And yep, the King shooting kicked off a pretty horrific series of events including RFK’s assassination, the riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago and the eventual election of Richard Nixon. We began to watch a lot more news than we had used to in my place that year; many of my personal favorite kids shows had recently been cancelled which created the opportunity for channel changing. That fall I was classified an “upperclassman” by my school, which gave us the opportunity to subscribe to the New York Times on weekdays for seventy-five cents a week. We were anything but a Times household but my family couldn’t resist such a bargain. It was my first exposure to a true broadsheet; I’d eagerly spread it out on our kitchen table and devour the details; including marveling at the much larger versions of department store ads that were shrunk for the tabloids we regularly received. And all these years later, although those display ads are long gone, the Times and I still have a regular date at whatever serves as a kitchen table for me every morning.
I
especially fell in love with the Times’ sports section; the nuanced detail of their box scores and statistical leaders was superior to what we the tabloids had been serving up. In those days the columns were narrower and much more was crammed into each page. It allowed me an escape from the nasty news cycle and inflamed a true love for sports that eventually made me the addict that I still am. It was an opportunistic time to discover New York sports teams on the verge of a run of success not seen before or since. That year the Jets and Joe Namath came of age on their way to their lone Super Bowl appearance (and win) and the Knicks made a defining trade for Dave DeBusschere that made them true contenders (something I quickly learned had not been the case for at least the duration of my young life). 
A 25-year-old geek named Denny McLain came out of nowhere to win 31 games for an upstart Detroit Tigers team that eventually toppled the powerful St. Louis Cardinals to win the World Series. The Mets were still lousy, but practically every game was televised, and it at least allowed me to commandeer the TV often enough to avoid many of those otherwise disturbing newscasts. And there were no less than 18 new professional teams–ten in the brand-new ABA and six that doubled the size of the NHL. 
The first time I was allowed to stay up really late was to watch the Rangers visit the Los Angeles Kings at the spanking-new Forum.
I still use sports as a distraction from disturbing news, and these days since there’s so many more ways to receive it and seemingly so much more of it out there I can kind of identify with that thirst for those simpler times that millennials and Gen Z are clamoring for. I was far too out of touch at that point to indulge in the kind of music and obsession with filters that was prevalent then, but I did have a few positives of my own to look back upon. I got to go the Emmys and could afford to travel to New York and see the Mets in person. 
I still had a house and a playful cat. And Sony hired me to what to date was my last full-time executive position of consequence. So yeah, I’ve got a fair amount of nostalgia of my own for 2016.
On the other hand, I’m reminded daily of what it was like on the evening of November 8th, when I was teaching a class that apparently included several undocumented students the night devolved as they stared at the alerts coming through on their phones with increasing alarm; several breaking down into tears when the news of how the plurality of electoral college votes had shockingly landed. As I believe I’ve shared before, that lesson plan for that night devolved quickly and we eventually started a prayer circle for those frantically texting their families that, at least for that night, they weren’t going to have to leave the country. I’m morbidly curious as to how many of them are doing that now with even more reason to be frightened.
In which case, may I remind the algorithmically programmed who seem to think 2016 was utopian that it had its own share of bad things happening as well. Just like 1968. Better to look forward than back.
Until next time…