The ageists are at it again. On CBS “Sunday Morning,” a reporter noted that Earth, Wind and Fire is still out there touring – and then, in a breathless, incredulous tone, she added “in their sixties.” STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!! Musicians who are over 30 can still perform!!!!!! According to what I understand, these blokes are in that category, and so is this cat, and this one.
But I digress. (Can I digress from something I haven’t mentioned yet? Don’t ask me, I fell asleep in freshman English.) What’s really got me going is reading this in the Hot/Not column of Sports Illustrated, a magazine I actually pay good money for: “Rivalries. Florida-Miami and Michigan-Notre Dame grudge matches go the way of the CD – i.e., only old men and diehards will miss them.”
Personal foul. I could use a lot of words to break down the tone and impact of that statement: cheap shot, snarky, gratuitous, mean-spirited, ugly, baseless, classless, snide, abrasive, caustic, and sarcastic (a thesaurus is a great thing, folks). But that wouldn’t be productive.
Instead, why don’t I point out that the recent Michigan-Notre Dame game, the second-to-last one these teams are scheduled to ever play and that no one of any importance will miss, just happened to SET THE ALL-TIME ATTENDANCE RECORD FOR A COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAME. That’s 115,109 butts in the seats, and I’m pretty sure not all of them were attached to the bodies of “old men” or “diehards.”
(Sports Illustrated reporter in the stands: “Excuse me, are you a diehard? You don’t look like an old man.” 19-year-old woman fan: “And they say there are no real journalists left.”)
Time out. As my longtime readers know – those old enough to remember when “twerk” wasn’t a word yet and Mitt Romney still had a binder full of women – I once took a poke at football traditions myself. Fair enough. But I never said all traditions should come with an expiration date or that all changes are good.
(By the way, I compounded my irrelevance and decrepitude by buying a few CDs the other day. At a yard sale. For a dollar apiece. For the price of four songs online in this wonderful new world, I got about 60 of ’em, including two fine collections by the legendary R&B saxman King Curtis. So please excuse me while I throw some back copies of Sports Illustrated on the fire and heat up some “Memphis Soul Stew.”)
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- Old man or diehard? Not sure, but I’ll miss these historic games. (2minuteto.wordpress.com)