Wednesday, May 21, 2025

All News Is Gossip

QED.

I know that should be the conclusion to a line of reasoning; but I have my reasons. 

When Clooney noted that Biden is old (Biden is. No shame or blame in it. I’m not as old as Biden and I know I’ve lost a step. Some of that comes from being retired (you’ll see), and it’s not a bad thing, because Lorry Nose I was tired of doing the jobs I was doing.), it was news because…no one "sympathetic" to Biden had actually said so. And to be fair, now, I don’t think what Clooney said made a real difference. It became part of the conversation after Biden’s debate performance. But I really don’t think even the debate cost Biden the election. ("Do I contradict myself?/Very well, then, I contradict myself./I am vast, I contain multitudes.")  Debates never do, I’m convinced, especially after the lame ass campaign Trump ran (playing music at a rally for an hour? Rambling nonsensically and proving he didn't understand the first thing about the problems facing the country?) and his fraud and criminal convictions meant nothing to anybody (remember when that was going to stop him?), people just pretty much voted on “What the hell? Can’t be any worse…” And turned out the incumbent.

But the Clooney remark let the gossip flow. After all, criticism of Trump U.S. old news. It’s TDS, it’s baked into the pie, it honestly has no effect anymore. Jake Tapper isn’t readying his book on Trump’s “hidden” dementia. There’s no there, there. Old news. Dog bites man. Gossip needs something new to chew on. Somebody actually saying: “You know, Joe Biden’s not as young as he used to be,” is something new to chew on.

Part of the problem here is age. It’s a problem I saw with the churches, and now the churches are dying because the old people wouldn’t let the young people in. The two churches I pastored wouldn’t let me in. Most of the members were old enough to be my parents, and I was in my 40’s. My father was the same age when I was a child, and so were most of the people in our church, including the pastors. Even then the younger ones didn’t fare as well as the older ones did. When I returned, this time as a pastor offering to help them adapt and change, they didn’t want to much more than they did in my childhood. They wanted things to be like they were 40 years ago.

Not unlike, I have to say, Trump does today. 

And so their churches died, because the old people refused to let go or get out of the way. And, of course, they were that old and “in the way” simply because they were living longer. 

My parents left the town they grew up in and moved to a different one. The church they went to was mostly people their age. The few elderly were happy to let those young people do things “their way.” But they were a distinct minority. Most people didn’t make it to 70. My grandfathers were “old.” I am not perceived, by society or myself, as being nearly as old as they were then. By the time they were my age now, they were dead. My father outlived his parents and siblings by decades. He died shortly after his 90th birthday. He died of brain cancer, which was only diagnosed shortly before he died, though in retrospect it was clear the tumor had been there for years. Funny how often that happens.

But we dare not insult Trump by questioning his age or attributing any infirmity to it.  Or we just all know Trump is demented and delusional suffering serious physical and mental decline, and that's not "news" because the voters elected him anyway.  The same way they elected a convicted rapist and felon and fraud and the guy who bragged about grabbing women "by the pussy!".  You know, after all that, what difference does it make?

And then it's just a matter who who's winning the latest media-proclaimed horse race.  Well, that, and Jake Tapper's new book.

We need to have a conversation about the elderly.  Not so we can put them on ice floes (I think that's an urban legend, anyway), but so we can deal with the fact we have an aging population who needs to be cared for, but who also doesn't need to be in charge when there are clear signs of insufficiency.  Of course, that assumes we agree on what those "clear signs" are, but we have to start talking about it.  We are already dividing on political/regional lines (I really think that's just the consensus forged by Pearl Harbor and full mobilization for a war in two theaters is over and we're settling back to status quo ante), but we are also dividing along age lines.  Old people, who used to be a numerical minority anyway, were seldom as vital as they are now.  The change is good, but we aren't facing it squarely and deciding how to manage it.  I don't want to be shunted aside or mothballed because I'm entering my seventh decade; but neither do I think a "cognitive test" which only shows you can remember a few words is a satisfactory test of leadership.  Age does bring infirmities that can't be overcome with exercise and diet and regular checkups.

But neither is age alone (as once it was) grounds for dismissal.  We just need to learn how, as a society, as a country who elects its government officials, we are going to make better decisions and better assessments about the effects of age.

Because this is not a problem that's going away.
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