https://www.facebook.com/john.kanelis/posts/819649338085680?notif_t=like

Robins Williams’s death has taken a splendid talent from those of us who laughed at his comic genius.

This item showed up on my Facebook news feed the other day. I’ve shared it once already, but I’m doing so again right here, with just a few words about what it means to me.

Williams’s salute to the United States in this short video shows how one can be patriotic and irreverent at the same time. It’s becoming a bit of a lost art these days.

The political debate has gotten so sour that it seems that any kind of fun-poking is seen as some sort of statement against the things for which the nation stands. I wish that weren’t so.

There’s a segment in this video that suggests it was made in the early 1980s, about the time Williams was portraying the space alien “Mork” on the TV series “Mork and Mindy.” Thus, the symbolism of an actor who portrays an extraterrestrial is so meaningful to me in this video.

Robin Williams gets what it means to love this country. We need more of this kind of loving irreverence in the halls of power.