Are Bernie and Biden Too Old to Run for President?

A NEW GERONTOCRACY?

ARE Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden too old to run for President?

Bernie was born September 8, 1941, which makes him 78 years old as of this writing. He'll be 79 when he takes office, if he wins.

Joe Biden was born November 20, 1942. He's 77, will be 78 when/if he takes office. Either would be the oldest President ever-- and it wouldn't be close.

(Both men pre-date Baby Boomers.)

By point of comparison, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are five years younger now than Sanders, many years after they left office.

Bill Clinton first won election for President in 1992. Bush, in 2000. (A more recent former President, Barack Obama, who also served two terms, is a full twenty years younger than Bernie Sanders.)

The oldest President ever was Ronald Reagan, who was closing in on 78 years of age the day he left office, after a full two terms as President. Which was younger than Bernie Sanders is today.

If Bernie wins, he'll be 83 after one term; 87 after two. Unexplored territory for the most stressful job on the planet.

ANOTHER GERONTOCRACY

The most notorious recent gerontocracy was that during the latter days of the Soviet Union. Decrepit men running a decrepit empire.

How old were they?

Brezhnev died in office at age 75. Andropov died in office at age 69. Chernenko died in office at age 73. All younger than both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are now.

THE COUNTER ARGUMENT

Then again, maybe Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are the Tom Brady and Drew Brees of the political world. Have to give them credit for ignoring mere numbers and chronology.

Moses, after all, lived to 120.

ANALOGIES

Joe Biden, in this person's opinion, was pushed out there as an alternative to Bernie Sanders, whose Marxist beliefs scare many people. The support for Sanders, especially from young people-- particularly college-type young people; the lumpen intelligentsia-- seems genuine.

Which strikes me as one of history's hopeless causes, propelled by emotion, not facts or logic. (Which is ironic about self-designated hard-eyed materialists.)

One could call it "The Collective Dream." Movements that are beyond quixotic.

Examples from history include the later Crusades, or the several Polish rebellions in the 18th and 19th centuries, or the Sioux Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee in 1890. All fights against overwhelming odds. All doomed to failure.

Another example comes from sports, in the doomed comeback of former Heavyweight Boxing Champion James J. Jeffries out of soft retirement, as the "Great White Hope" pushed in the ring against Jack Johnson.

Even though Jeffries hadn't had a fight in five years, and had ballooned to over 300 pounds before beginning training for the match, and had not one tune-up fight, his optimistic backers (including Jack London) assured themselves he was unbeatable, and would surely win. They saw what they wanted to see in the former champ-- a campaign based on hope-- not what was actually there. (Jeffries was knocked out.)

I see the same phenomenon in the current campaign of Bernie Sanders. But I could be wrong.

The New Yorker Examined

(Originally published as an Opinion piece on 2/2/2018 at New Pop Lit.)

THE LEADING forum for fiction and poetry, still, is The New Yorker magazine. Stodgy and tottering, waiting to be knocked off its pedestal. Eventually it will collapse by itself, from exhaustion and irrelevance. Until then we don’t mind giving it a push. So, bravely, we decided to review the January 29 issue– which meant having to read it! (Aaarrgh!)

A REVIEW

Usual cover. Turn the page. Everything is boring. Everything is bland. We’ve heard of The New Yorker‘s house style. Their house style might’ve worked in 1938. It doesn’t work now. The publication is as predictable as oatmeal.

POETRY

(Professor Muldoon.)

Should poetry be dull? When’s the last time The New Yorker published a striking, noteworthy poem? The poem by Paul Muldoon isn’t bad, it’s blah. Mildly stimulating. Muldoon, who teaches at Princeton, speaks of “dumbstruck oaks,” Japanese maples and papal bulls. Pretentiously intellectual. Presumably his students like it.

FICTION

(Jhumpa Lahiri.)

The issue’s short story, “The Boundary” by Jhumpa Lahiri, is all narrative– a simple listing of details which are supposed to have meaning, but don’t.

“I show her where the mouse poison is hidden. Kill the flies before going to bed, I suggest, otherwise they start buzzing at dawn and become a nuisance. I explain how to get to the supermarket, how to use the washing machine behind the house, and where to hang the laundry, just on the other side of my father’s garden.”

It’s insipid, but this is the kind of fiction the magazine’s editors like. There’s one moment of drama two-thirds of the way in. Don’t know if many readers will stick with it that long.

The chief feature of the story for the magazine’s editors is that it’s written by an Indian-American and translated from Italian, which gives it the veneer of the cosmopolitan, though the story itself is boring. Hit the diversity buttons!

Jhumpa Lahiri is one of those well-connected establishment writers who’s won multiple awards and has multiple degrees, teaches at Princeton, won a Pulitzer, member of numerous committees, VP at PEN America, etc. etc. etc. With her resume you can write mediocre stories and still be published in The New Yorker.

LITERARY CRITICISM

This issue has a critical essay by house literary critic James Wood, a Brit who teaches at Harvard. Gotta be good, right? Uh, no.

The James Wood essay gives the New Yorker‘s game away.  Most journals have a word-count limit. A maximum length for essays and stories. The New Yorker has a minimum word count. Writing is required to be lengthy and verbose, whether the topic justifies it or not.

Think I’m joking?

Wood’s essay, on Scottish author Ali Smith, could be edited down to four words. “Ali Smith uses puns.” The challenge for Mr. Wood was to see how many variations of this thought he could come up with. Well-padded paragraphs devoid of insight but filled with flatulence.

“Is Smith drawn to creating wordy, precocious characters because she is so fond of puns, or do her intelligent characters naturally lead their author toward such word play?”

(“_________!”)

“Puns are delightful because they are at once deep and shallow. Still, some are more significant than others. A superabundant art naturally produces superfluity– lexical runoff, weak in nutrients.”

(“____________!!”)

The essay is impossibly tedious. An obscure Scottish author presented in the most monotonous way possible. Continuing to read it is like banging your head against a wall, again and again. Over and over. The editors told James Wood his assignment was to put airline passengers, or others who purchase the magazine, quickly and efficiently to sleep. Or to make Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story in the same issue appear by contrast swift and exciting.

ART CRITICISM

The big art essay, by Calvin Tomkins, designed to show New York City as the capital of the art world (it’s long been the capital of the scam art world) is about found object artist Danh Vo. Another expat– more p.c. points scored. Vo is one of those characters who collects such things as “kitchen appliances, furniture, tombstones,” and by daring to put them together creates for the incurably clueless faux significance. Vo’s works sell for as much as a million dollars. In the article he seems as perplexed by his success as we are.

ARTICLE

Further proof that The New Yorker is about hitting p.c. touchstones is found with the essay by Kathryn Schulz on forgotten black author William Melvin Kelley.

Like many such articles it’s as much about Kathryn Schulz as about the ostensible subject. A kind of exhibitionism: “Look at me! I found a book with an inscription to William Kelley in it and I’m introducing him to the world and I have a partner I’m liberal and progressive and me me me me–” The message Schulz is actually selling is a Sally Fields kind of message: “Please like me!”

Which, really, is the thrust of the magazine and the appeal for its affluent readers. They catch the markers of political correctness, and because they subscribe they can pat themselves on the back for being enlightened and superficially intelligent– they buy this renowned intellectual periodical, after all– and they keep the latest issue on their coffee tables so guests can see, “Yes, we are among the good people!” who voted the proper way, went to the right schools; Brown, Princeton, Harvard or Yale; have the correct breeding to never say or think the improper unapproved thing, and they never get too excited about anything– they like to express mild outrage on occasion; some will even write a letter to the editor to say they scanned that article on bees in Peru, they really did! and the one about poor Mr. Melvin Kelley it was really too bad though they likely won’t buy his books because they might be upsetting– and in their bubble world everything is fine I’m okay you’re okay though outside the carefully closed doors of their condos and their minds things are crazy.

(A Danh Vo artwork.)
****

The Multidimensional Short Story

What have I been up to the past months?

For one thing, helping to develop the "3-D" multidimensional short story. One has been released here:

"Vodka Friday Night"

Behind the Wall

RECENTLY I made a post at the New Pop Lit NEWS blog about multi-dimensional thinking. (Read it here.) We at NPL intend to soon apply these ideas to art.

IN SO DOING, we've been scouring through a host of obscure stories, novels, and movies searching for elusive examples of the point we're trying to make.

Among the more obscure works we've found is the 1966 remake of Beau Geste, written and directed by pulp novelist Douglas Heyes.

https://rarefilmm.com/2017/07/beau-geste-1966/

Yes, the film is cheap, melodramatically acted, and scantly true to its original source. BUT, its structure consists of some fairly imaginative thinking.

The setting: an isolated fort of the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. A patrol approaches the fort. All they see: a wall, with smoke coming from behind it. A member of the patrol fires a rifle in the air. In return: shots, from the fort. Then they hear more shots.

A survivor is found inside the fort. He takes the story back to the beginning-- and the narrative progresses to the present. The scenes from the opening of the movie are replayed, but, simultaneous to the approach of the patrol, we see what happens inside the fort. Behind the wall.

Why is this important? Because the movie asks the question we ask of a person, and of events, in fiction and in life: What's behind the wall? WHAT is the full story? Then the movie answers the question. Simple, but basic. A template upon which to build similar ideas.

A mark, by the way, of the movie's obscurity is that only eleven reviews of it are posted at the popular IMDB website.

Karl Wenclas Reads from "Hamlet"

YES, I thought, why not tackle the best? In this recording I start out with one of the lesser-known soliloquies-- after Hamlet has just seen the ghost of his father. Needless to say, the young man is shaken and angry. Anyway, this is my interpretation--

https://soundcloud.com/user-231741316/a-hamlet-soliloquy

(Painting by Benjamin West.)

"Star Spangled Poet": A Recording

This was written circa 2006, during a time when I was more judgmental than now.

https://soundcloud.com/user-231741316/sets/spoken-word

"Bad Poetry"

A SPOKEN WORD POEM FOR WORLD POETRY DAY

I've just started getting back into spoken word (we have a new Open Mic feature at the New Pop Lit site). I did quite a few open mics when I lived in Philadelphia; read against some dynamite underground poets, Frank D. Walsh and Michael Grover among them. I wasn't always consistent-- but tried to make it difficult for someone to follow me in the lineup.

Here's something I recorded today for World Poetry Day-- partial reworking of something I wrote several years ago. A bit over-the-top! I'll be doing better. . . .

"Bad Poetry"