My new hero is a very old man – the host of an annual abomination that I cannot stand. Today, my hat is off to him.

 

New Years Eve at the Calabrese house is not a very raucous occasion. Our five-year-old’s first time staying up to see the ball drop served as this year’s major excitement – once the Giants had finished dispensing with the Raiders and sparing us the need to turn on Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin’ Eve until the clock had swung safely past 11:45 p.m.

 

I hate Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin’ Eve. I hate the celebrities and music stars who appear in segments taped weeks ago while feigning excitement about an event they present to us as, er, plausibly live. I hate all the drunk people crowding into Times Square. I hate Auld Lang Syne. A few years ago, when a promo for the movie Godzilla showed the monster’s tail swatting the big ball away just as it started to drop, I was disappointed that it didn’t happen for real.

 

I am not a New Years Eve kind of guy. But I loved Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin’ Eve this year. I loved it because Dick Clark showed guts and character by putting on a performance quite antithetical to the whole idea of the show – and beautiful for that very reason.

 

Clark, recovering from a recent stroke that caused him to miss last year’s show, returned to the set this time around. It wasn’t like his performances of a generation ago, when he stood out in the cold or the rain, giving the only true live reports of the night before sending things back to a glitzy dance hall filled with pre-recorded revelers dancing to K.C. and the Sunshine Band.

 

This time around, Clark sat at a set, and it wasn’t entirely clear that the street scene behind him wasn’t green-screen generated. It didn’t matter. Slurring his words, sitting in place ever so carefully and holding his hands gingerly, Clark described the New Years Eve atmosphere in exactly the same way he would have 40 years earlier. The same words – just enunciated more slowly and less clearly.

 

And that’s what made it beautiful. Just about everything that comes out of the media and entertainment world today is sanitized and beautified before we are allowed to see it. The image of every media and entertainment personality is so carefully crafted – and carefully protected – that we have long since ceased to be impressed by how impeccable they all are.

 

In today’s major media/entertainment nexus, you do not take the stage or pose for the camera if you have the slightest imperfection. It is simply not allowed. Idyllic beauty only – all others stand aside and try not to be seen.

 

But for one glorious night, with all the effects of his stroke in full force, Clark broke the rule. He read his words. We strained to hear him. We looked at each other and asked, “What did he just say?” and we strained some more.

 

And he struggled to sit up and look straight into the camera and do his job. And he didn’t do a perfect job – far from it. And it was one of the best things I ever saw on television.

 

Dick Clark has probably done this show more years than I’ve been alive. He didn’t have to do any more, and he certainly didn’t need to get on there and look less than his best. But hey, it’s his show. It’s Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, not yours, and certainly not some pretty boy named Ryan Seacrest’s.

 

He knew he would invite the usual second-guessing. Why would he taint his image like that? Why would he invite our pity? Do you think he needs the money?

 

And yep, the second-guessing came, and it only served as further evidence that the idyllic standards to which we have become accustomed have affected us. An icon of American music, television and entertainment looking less than his usual stellar self? How could he? Would Katie and Matt do that?

 

Well, who cares what they would do? For one laudable broadcast, a really dumb show turned into a triumph for one iconic American, who reminded us that, darn it, you show up and you do your job. Even if you don’t look or feel your best, people are counting on you and so you do what you can do.

 

Props to Dick Clark for one of the best performances of 2005 – one that raised his stature tenfold in the eyes of this American, who has little use for celebrities, but unending admiration for people who aren’t afraid to be who they are.