The 80s Sitcom That Got Me Through The Summer of 2024

 By Tom Kurtz

When I signed up for my summer internship with a government affairs and campaign

strategy firm in Washington DC, I had no idea that I was signing up for a front-row seat to the

most contentious three-month period in modern American Presidential politics. What was

usually relegated to the subject of my daily newsfeed, was now my nine to five. Only this time, it

was a guilty verdict for a former President, a hotly controverted SCOTUS docket, an

assassination attempt, and a debate so disastrous that it unleashed bedlam on a doomed

presidential campaign.

With the DC summer heat constraining most of my evenings to my Foggy Bottom dorm, I

had limited modes of escape from this noise. One I found, and quickly cherished however, was

the story of the regulars at a cozy pub in Boston; the 80s sitcom, Cheers. The hit series, iconic

and memorable as it may have been in a household 40 years ago, was a welcome discovery for

me. The consistent setting was pleasant and the cheap 80s punchlines and references made

the show feel vintage and parallelly detached from reality. The warm feeling of a professional

athlete, his coach, an academic, a single-mother, an accountant, a mailman, and a collective of

bar patrons sharing a familial bond reminded me of the collegiate experience to which I would

shortly return. That the interactions of these ordinary Bostonians could address issues like

feminism, addiction, and themes of companionship, and hopeless romanticism in 22 minute

intervals, was a relief from the city of partisanship and gridlock.

For years to come, I will tell the stories of my summer of 2024. I’ll talk about the

speeches I edited, the political heavyweights I met, and the invaluable advice I received. All the

while, however, I’ll remember how, when it felt like the republic was teetering on an edge and I

was working in the hurricane’s eye, I was thinking about a place where everybody knows my

name.

Tom Kurtz is a McConnell Scholar in the class of 2027. He is studying political science on the applied politics track.