Why Didn't I Know Dick Clark Was Dead?

The insanity of 2016 and chaos it left in its wake have shattered my sense of comfort and security. This is why I believe that it is perfectly reasonable to rely on “Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve” for all aspects of my identity.

It’s not that I can’t handle change, or that the world is too difficult for me to handle. Since the 2006–07 edition of “Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve,” Fergie of The Black Eyed Peas has presented the prerecorded concert segments from Los Angeles. Her gradual replacement of Dick Clark may have been a sign of the coming end of the American way of life, but I was willing to go along with it because I am an adult, thank you very much.

But when I recently discovered that Richard Augustus Wagstaff "Dick" Clark Jr. tragically passed away on April 18, 2012, I was furious. Everything about my life is a lie. Why didn’t I notice that Ryan Seacrest has been the sole host of “Dick Clark's Primetime New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest?” Why didn’t I notice that the smiling visage of AMERICA’S OLDEST LIVING TEENAGER was no more? Was I blinded by love? By fear?

It’s a cold, cold world. It’s a world where Mariah Carey’s management has the nerve to attack Dick Clark Productions due to the failure of her in-ear monitors during the 2016-17 edition of “Dick Clark's Primetime New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest." Don’t they understand that Dick Clark Productions is all we have left? That Ryan Seacrest is all there is? That all that awaits America is death and economic decline?

When I look up at the 45 monitors around me, each precisely synchronized and repeating every single episode of “Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve,” I cannot help but think of myself as a hero. I do not look away for a single moment. As long as I’m alive, Dick Clark will live on. America, you will survive.