Surviving Samantha Reed Smith?

[(no subject)]

Going by what little we have of "Lime Street", Smith's TV career would have been interesting, and she had the looks to be a serious romantic/sexual figure for many boys born in the early 1970s. As sadly indicated by the fact that Robert John Bardo stalked her in real life.

Someone who died at barely thirteen is such an empty canvas for alt-hist though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith

[SingingAnalyst]

So many possibilities. I remember hearing about her death while a student at MIT and feeling very sad.

1. According to what I've read, Lime Street would have given Golden Girls, which premiered around the same time, a run for its popularity.

2. Rather grimly, Bardo might have found a way to get to Smith (as, for example, Theresa Saldana was seriously injured by a stalker in 1982). Anti-stalking laws might have been stiffened much earlier than they were IRL, and Rebecca Schaeffer might still be alive today.

3. The role of girls and young women as "movers and shakers" (no pun intended) on the world stage would likely be different. Today, with perhaps the sole exception of Greta Thunberg, prominent young women are admired largely for their attractiveness and appeal.

4. Her role as a 16-year-old ambassador would have undoubtedly influenced the 1988 Presidential election in some way, and voters may have not been so easily distracted by ads of Michael Dukakis riding around tooting smoke out of a tank in Macomb County, or a more-than-life-sized face of one William Horton, in what was IRL the most vapid and idea-starved campaign in my lifetime, perhaps the only original idea being Dukakis' Belgian endive idea.

[(no subject)]

As i said, she had the looks and beauty to be a real romantic and sexual figure for young teenage boys in the mid and late eighties.