Granny - what big teeth you have!

Because marketing in America is more and more about working the very young into a frenzy of irrational purchases, the increasing marginalization of anyone rational and over 25 is inevitable.  To me, that would be fine if it meant that I wasn’t under constant assault by people trying to sell me toy trucks and video games, but the real result has more to do with a decreasing number of goods and services that I would be interested in, and worse, the outright mockery of anything that is isn’t about unrestrained adolescent consumerism or anyone who isn’t very young.

We have become very sensitive about using derogatory terms to describe groups, to the point where even terms that are not derogatory are shunned. Witness Asiatic vs. Asian, for instance, but if you’re over 50, you can depend on references to your senility, incontinence and pathetic lack of style made by people with facial piercings who don’t know what World War II was about.

As with many things, it’s far worse if you’re female.  If you’re a woman over 50, you’re Granny.  That’s not used as a title of affection or respect, but of mockery.  It’s rare that CNN does not have some story of Killer grannies, or bank robber grannies or sky diving grannies accentuating the hilarity of gray hair on anyone not knitting in a rocking chair.

Today’s CNN page features both “Hit-Run Grannies” and a video on a “Gritty Granny.”  What a funny thing to be so old that you don’t spend half your allowance downloading ring tones!  You may find it hard to poke fun at Arabs, Koreans, Jews, and people of color without repercussions, but Granny is always fair game.  If a man of 60, 70 or 80 years navigates solo around the world, if he races motorcycles, flies stunt planes or robs a bank, he’s just an old man, but a woman is always the sailing granny, biker granny, barnstorming granny or gattling gun granny.

One of the things on my list of things I want to live long enough to see – right after the Bush impeachment and the Cheney Treason trial is NOW attorney granny suing the bastards or better, Business tycoon Granny buying CNN and making some heads roll.