Never Trust Anybody Over 49

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT op-ed: Never Trust Anybody Over 49
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: September 29, 2007

Earlier this year at a campaign rally, Bill Clinton said that when he was at Yale, he told Hillary: “I have met all the most gifted people in our generation and you’re the best.”

Now, it’s always nice to hear a husband say he thinks his wife is tops. But I can’t get past the idea that while Bill Clinton was still in law school he believed he already knew every baby boomer worth knowing. “I didn’t even know everybody in my dorm,” said a friend when I told him this story.

Obviously, Clinton wasn’t including Barack Obama, who was only about 12 at the time. Now, Obama’s campaign is the revenge of Gen XYZ — an inconvenient reminder to the 50- and 60-somethings that they’ve become part of the system they used to decry. His big rally this week in Greenwich Village was an event that Hillary could never have pulled off — politics as a dating scene. Thousands and thousands and thousands of mostly young people swarmed into Washington Square Park where they were warmed up by a 25-year-old Asian-American rapper named Jin, who announced that Obama was going to be getting “my first vote ever.”

To this crowd, Clinton is what you hope you won’t have to settle for at the end. Better than Bush, of course, but not a real agent for change. “There are competent people who will manage the system the way it is,” said Obama about you-know-who, and, of course, the crowd cheered that no, they wanted someone braver and better and maybe even ... younger....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/opinion/29collins.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[graywarrior]

1. Let's hope they get out and vote.

[HockeyMom]

2. Like mother, like daughters?

I have decided to vote for Obama. My daughters are 23 and 28. They are also both voting for Obama. They haven't missed an election since they were eligible to vote.

[sueh]

3. Whew! Good thing I am only 48.

[amandabeech]

4. I'm over 50 and I don't intend on voting for Hilary in the primary.

I didn't vote for Bill in the primary in 1992, either.

I'm not voting for Obama in the primary, either.

I really don't like being told who I'm going to vote for because of my age.

[rufus dog]

5. It isn't about age as it is about attitude

I really don't think they can see themselves for what they are. (the over 50 crowd of leaders) James Carville likely doesn't understand that his attitude comes across as an arrogant jerk and HRC doesn't see her dismissive laughter as that of a dismissive High School teacher laughing off a students comment.

[amandabeech]

9. James Carville comes across as an arrogant jerk to lots of people over 50, believe me.

Lots of us over 50 remember dismissive high school teachers, too. I won't name names for fear that their grandchildren might be reading.

I know that you won't believe this, but when you're over 50, the younger folks will say the same thing about you, too.

Enjoy your youth while you can. Someone wise once said that being young was wasted on youth.

When I was in what was then called jr. high, I tried to convince my parents to vote for a total old fogey named Hubert H. Humphrey instead of Nixon. Use your google to find out what a better choice in fogeys he would have been.

My parents voted for Nixon 3 times. Both of them ended up regretting it, and I don't know that they voted for a Republican president after that. My mom couldn't be a truer blue Dem now, so there's always hope.

[Forrest Greene]

6. What A, Shall We Say

..."immature" way to frame the issue. I'm fifty-four, & if Ms Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, I believe I may sit this one out for the first time since I became eligible to vote. For what it's worth:

Hitler became Chancellor of Germany when he was forty-five.

Stalin became General Secretary of the Soviet Union at forty-four.

Cesare Borgia became a Cardinal at eighteen.

Pol Pot became General Secretary of the Khmer Rouge at thirty-eight.

Jim Jones founded the People's Temple at thirty-three, the same age at which Charles Manson founded his Family.

I could go on, but I doubt those intellectually slothful enough to use age as a primary determinate of Presidential suitability would recognize any of the names, anyway.

[Bitwit1234]

7. Thank the good Lord we don't have to settle for Obama.

[CRH]

8. From an old fart, could someone please enlighten me, ...

what the XYZ generations philosophies and accomplishments are, besides an addiction to electronic toys, cell phones, MTV, and cultures that seem to have had little impact on anything other than their own unconstrained consumption and 'me first' attitudes.

See how unfair generalizations can be???

[Tellurian]

10. The author of the article is an idiot!

nuff said! :crazy:

[jillan]

11. Is the person who wrote this out of high school yet?

This kid does not know what they are talking about - trying to divide Dems because of their age?

gimme a break.

[Vickers]

12. Why didn't "Jin" vote in 2000 and 2004?

:shrug:

[jmp]

13. "... and you’re the best.”

The best what? Gifted at what? ;)