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The famed documentary shot by Pennebaker and Leacock, it’s the first of the sort to show just about everything. It’s not an illustrated lecture, it’s got nothing to prove that it won’t from the evidence directly. The camera lingers on Jackie, nervously tugging at her white gloves behind her sharp little suit, behind the cute little podium, behind the sea of people watching her husband’s lips as he spoke toward an image—an image this film flips to reveal the underside. Humphrey and Kennedy are head to head in the Wisconsin democratic primary, when my father was six years old, and it’s suddenly strange to me that these women in the street are actually wearing these dresses, are actually enjoying these hats and scarves, and petting Kennedy on the sleeves, and these men in the coffee shops are actually sitting there sipping as Humphrey scrambles toward them, are actually wearing overalls and talking about extra hands. It speaks toward some sort of realism attained, then, when what I’ve been constantly taught is true seems absurd and surprising. Perhaps, in forty years then, my children will watch Real World Boston, from when I, too, was six years old, and guffaw when they see Heather wearing overalls. I mean, gosh mom, did they really wear overalls back then? It’s the same thing. That’s what I wanted to say. It makes you feel like everything you learned was stupid.