Much truth is said in jest and so we've become accustomed to hiding certain repulsive opinions and not publicly joking abut them lest we face retribution. Let's face it, if you launch into a comedy routine stereotyping and making fun of black people, you're career is over. I wouldn't try to substitute Jews as a target either. Koreans and Chinese are safer, Mexicans safer still and Muslims are in open season for a bigot to go after, but old people are still a riot to many people who would never consider themselves to be the smug assholes they really are.
Take Bill Maher, for instance. He's long annoyed me with his ignorant tirades about health, immunology, nutrition and disease, but going on and on and on about John McCain's age has lost me as a fan. McCain is and isn't many things but senile isn't one of his attributes. Bob Dole elicited the same smug giggles - how long ago was that? And he's still around. I know people 15 years and more his senior that regularly sail from New England to Florida alone and all over the Caribbean and one who can lecture you all day about quantum physics. They may be creaky at the knees or not, but they don't wear diapers when they race cars or dive on wrecks or build satellite communications systems as a hobby. They often speak better English, they're often better educated and have learned to be cynical about things the young swallow without question.
I know some of the people who built the first communication satellites from the rocket motors to the transponders to the ground systems. They're old, but in America, it's more hip to have the latest ring tone on that Japanese pocket phone than to have any idea how it works and we laugh at the genius that produced them. We prefer hip consumerism (and hipness is the supreme form of consumerism) to substance any time and the things we say in jest confirm it.
Enough of this. This is the Captain speaking, listen up. You kids are going to wish you'd stayed home snapping your whippers when the people who invented your computers and cellphones and video games decide to build a microwave projector that heats your nipple studs white hot - then we'll see who's laughing!
Old Power!
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2 comments:
I pretty much had the same talk with my wife yesterday. My Dad was wont to say, "Been many a fine tune played on an old fiddle." I 'spect we'll get some satisfaction when we look down, or up as the case may be, when the whipper snappers are sitting on a rocking chair with their Depends full of poop.
That's the thing about old age - only the lucky get there.
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