Guest Opinion: In these days of our lives, the Jan. 6 hearings are a daytime soap

What would my Aunt Zena have said?

An accomplished artist and incredible concert pianist, who had once performed at the Academy of Music, she was as intellectual and talented as they came, able to disassemble the significance of classic literature as easily as she could laugh at the loony exploits of Little Lulu, traits I treasure to this day.

But every afternoon, from 12:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., she would drop everything, scoop out a dish of ice cream and settle in for an afternoon of soap operas.

"Guiding Light" led her into Soap Land those afternoons, as she tsked-tsked every moral transgression impossibly beautiful actors would portray, and let out an "Oy!" every time someone was revealed to be a secret serial killer.

"My stories," she used to call them.

But what would be the story today as the world turns to its most sordid in decades with congressional/confessional hearings run by a committee rightfully tsk-tsking on its own, tasked with uncovering the exploits of a vain villain who outshades even James Stenbeck and who would throw Carlo Hesser under a bus — a Mercedes it might be — to convert Llanview, PA to his viperish view of the world?

As Carey McDonald — fantasy father figure to U.S. Rep Bennie Thompson — might have said, "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives."

Don't know about the sands through an hourglass, but the hearings have turned into good beach viewing. I am proudly my aunt's nephew, tracking the travails of those targeted by Donald Trump, squirming on hearing how he has Americanized and put so many Putin-style "social improvements" into play; and cheering the Cheneys and rah-rahing the Raskins as they try to disengage our democracy from a martinet's tangled and twisted ball of twine.

I know the hearings are a limited series, but I have faith — as I did when I devoured the Watergate hearings — that the public ineluctably elects puppet masters stringing them along with mendacities for marionettes.

Meanwhile, I think about what my late aunt's reaction might be to this post-modern "Passions" playing out in the Capitol and can somehow hear her say, "Put it on hold," not wanting to miss a morsel. "It's a two-scooper today," and she would dash to the kitchen for an afternoon refill.

Michael Elkin is a playwright, theater critic and novelist. He lives in Abington.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Op-Ed: These days of our lives, the Jan. 6 hearings are daytime soaps