Culture Vultures: Rock of Ages
Steyn, Mark
"Culture Vultures: Rock of Ages" by Mark Steyn Rock of Ages With a primary race this dramatic, a pundit's analysis can be moldy as old cheese by the time it hits the newsstand. But two things one can say with...
...It didn't help that, with his usual exquisite timing, his terrible campaign ads were followed by commercials for Grumpier Old Men or Dead Man Walking...
...His line about "one more mission for my generation" gives his campaign the forlorn air of closing time in the last-chance saloon: it implicitly rules out a second term...
...short of promising to drop dead in office and bequeath the job to Colin Powell or Rachel from "Friends" or whoever the week's pin-up is, it would be hard to be more defeatist...
...Why should the old be the only people ineligible for this kid-glove treatment...
...Of course that'll never happen...
...But two things one can say with certainty—as of this writing, Bob Dole is old, and, by the time you read this, he will be older...
...Clearly, after four years of monitoring the Clinton administration, Hitchens believes a four-alarm fire in the presidential boxer shorts is now a minimum qualification for the job...
...those from the 1960's now look older than anything you've ever seen—like Keith Richards...
...Perhaps this is some sort of visceral reaction to the strange acceleration of time wrought by the baby boomers' pursuit of happiness...
...MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator of London...
...Oh, and by the way, you're looking at a two-term guy...
...The medical term for this psychosis is "hip replacement," and its latest victim is Angela Lansbury on CBS...
...CULTURE VULTURES by Mark Steyn Rock of Ages With a primary race this dramatic, a pundit's analysis can be moldy as old cheese by the time it hits the newsstand...
...The Ameche break-dancing principle has now been absorbed into public life...
...Under our more ambitious affirmative action schemes, fitness (of any kind) for the job is the very last consideration...
...It's like The Joke Book of Dorian Grey: the real-life Dole remains the same, but the Dole of the stand-up routines is in fast-forward...
...This is what they call demographics—or more accurately, cultural apartheid...
...In the non-judgmental America of the caring nineties, physical unfitness is no disqualification if, say, you're awoman who wants to go to a top male military academy...
...From a president who wouldn't swallow to a president who wouldn't inhale is but a short step...
...Here's what I'd say: "My fellow Americans, it's not that I'm too old to be President, it's that they're too young...
...When he went to Japan, he was much mocked for taking a week and a half to get there — flying to Los Angeles, getting a few days rest, then on to r Hawaii, couple more days, etc...
...Or do you want a head of state who's never heard of the Blues Brothers, Ricki Lake, or Fleetwood Mac...
...For my money, that beats Clinton's choice, Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," which perfectly encapsulates both the vapidity and the ruthless single-mindedness of his administration...
...So Dole is obliged to climb into shorts and T-shirt, get on his exercycle, and be filmed by the TV networks so that 400-pound lardbutts vegging on the couch can briefly look up from their triple-decker pizza and go, "Nah, he's still too old...
...the genuine article, might as well go for the latter...
...Since his age is the only issue of his empty, issue-less campaign, though, he might as well make it work for him...
...The one subject on which he sounds real is when he's talking about his favorite song, Rodgers and Hammerstein's "'You'll Never Walk Alone...
...stay home and watch Lawrence Welk reruns and ads for incontinence pads...
...Bush wanted to look fit and virile, so he flew to Tokyo direct and wound up vomiting in the prime minister's lap...
...America is too old: you fellows at the top end should push off...
...and those from the 197os are dead from AIDS —like Robert Mapplethorpe...
...But in post–baby boom society, attempts to defend the old inevitably backfire...
...In this film, the voting age is lowered to 14, rock star Max Frost (played by Christopher Jones) is elected president and, acting on the principle that you can't trust anyone over 30, has everyone over that age dragged off and stuffed with LSD...
...Reagan never did that...
...On the radio, Christopher Hitchens was similarly preoccupied, making allegations about Dole's lack of sexual potency with such startlingly technical precision that he could only have acquired the details by going to bed with the senator—and, as a rule, Chris doesn't work that hard on a story...
...Today, the generation gap is maintained ever more vehemently, for, as long as there's someone older to point at, it's confirmation that we're not yet old ourselves...
...You can't trust anyone over 40, 50, 54, 57...
...This guy is, like, 72, 73, and he's running for president," said David Letterman, prefacing some ol' Dole gags in the run-up to Iowa...
...Or, as Dole would snarl, "Stop lying about my record...
...The electorate bought Reagan's age because he wasn't constantly and visibly struggling against it: in this, as in so much else, he was at ease with himself...
...Murder, She Wrote" had fantastic audience figures, but, according to advertisers, it was the wrong kind of audience: too old, they said...
...Unfortunately, the real world follows the dull plod of Father Time...
...i.1‘ The American Spectator • April 19 9 6 45...
...We read his lips and figured, if it's a choice between an old guy pretending to be young or 44 The medical term for this psychosis is 'hip replacement,' and its latest victim is Angela Lansbury on CBS...
...Indeed, for a glimpse of what a Clinton White House could have been like, I recommend a swingin' sixties fable called Wild in the Streets (1968...
...It's time to tell the truth: his favorite record is better than Clinton's, whatever the biased baby boomers in the media say...
...old people don't buy the right products...
...Those who made their names in the 1950's now have the bloom of healthy middle-age—like Debbie Reynolds...
...Thus you can't make jokes about blacks because they're black or gays because they're gay, but you can still make jokes about the old just because they're old...
...44 April 19 9 6 • The American Spectator 1, 0 Times and the NEA weren't objecting just to the average age at those five Broadway shows, but to the average age of America...
...Pat Buchanan has appropriated Berlin's "God Bless America," which he sings appallingly: on victory night in New Hampshire, he mangled the lyric into "From the fountains to the fairies" (unless that's a portent of a new "inclusive" approach towards gays...
...That's Dole's real weakness...
...Either way, Dole's more persuasive in this area...
...On the non-political shows, Dole's age is the only thing anyone knows about him...
...Or as some old dead guy once said, "Ask not for whom the Bob Doles, he Doles for thee...
...In other words, the Never trust anyone over 130...
...In the United Kingdom, a pressure group formed to combat ageism recently sacked its president—the respected octogenarian retired newsreader Robert Dougall (a sort of British Cronkite)— in favor of (you guessed it) someone younger...
...or (so the president believes) if you're an HIV-positive serviceman who wants to go to Bosnia...
...Do you want a head of state who discusses his underpants on TV, plays the sax like he's auditioning for open-mike night at Billy-Bob's Honky-Tonk, appears with his vice president dressed as the Blues Brothers, talks like a dysfunctional guest on Ricki Lake, and picks a campaign song by Fleetwood Mac...
...But there are signs in this campaign of a nascent wannabe-oldie movement...
...In February the New York Times pored over the NEA's survey into the "graying" of American arts audiences and was shocked by what it found: the average age at five Broadway musicals, it reported with dismay, was 40.2 years...
...It's no use asking the snotty punk if he's capable of even a simple foxtrot: old folks always have to fight on youngsters' terms...
...Critics of Strom Thurmond, seeking re-election to the Senate at the age of 93, say he's "mentally unfit" for his grueling committee work...
...the sixties became the seventies, the baby boomers reached the untrustworthy age of 3o and, ever since, have kept moving the goal-posts...
...You can never be too young, but you'll soon be too old...
...The Dole years represent the best in America's national culture...
...I'd say that was about smack dab right where it should be, given that American life expectancy is in the mid-seventies and that any four-year-old kid who wants to spend his evenings at a Sondheim musical ought to be in therapy...
...01' Bob Dole, unlike 01' King Cole, is not a merry old soul...
...Personally, I'd have preferred a baby boom presidency in its heyday...
...I'm not sure I know what "mental unfitness" means in the context of our federal legislature, but, in any case, so what...
...Perhaps the solution would be to find a more contemporary label—"person of antiquity," maybe, or "longevitally advantaged...
...The jokes tend to be the usual ones the elderly have to put up with: on the "Top Ten Things Bob Dole Did to Celebrate Winning in Iowa," Number Five was "He gave Elizabeth Dole the best ten seconds of her life...
...In our present-tense culture, the old must continually be thrown over for someone newer, cooler, trendier...
...Any celebrity who predates Debbie Reynolds, therefore, is supposed to behave like a i6-year old—as in the scene in Cocoon where Don Ameche and Gwen Verdon go to a hip nightclub and breakdance the kids into the ground...
...He aged five years in the week between Iowa and New Hampshire: "This guy is, like, 76, 77, and he's running for president," said Letterman, prefacing some more ol' Dole gags...
...It's not entirely Clinton's fault, but his election was the final victory in a 3o-year war...
...President Frost, unlike President Clinton, does inhale...
...Lamar Alexander's theme song is Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band," which he plays appallingly...
...In short, a president who leaves that kind of stuff to you and concentrates on being presidential...
...but don't get in the way of us trendy media observers as we run around taking the pulse of this week's Zeitgeist...
Vol. 29 • April 1996 • No. 4
