Gerontophobia unites Borisites concerned for Davis’s wellbeing and Brexit-minded haters of “senile dinosaur” Michael Heseltine, with progressive young humorists and their below-the-line supporters, for whom ("fat" and "ugly" being trickier to deploy these days) the insult that cannot be improved by the prefix "old" has yet to be invented.
says Catherine Bennett in a rambling defence of the idea that Vince Cable should stand for the Liberal Democrat leadership.
Or as I wrote in Liberal Democrat News after the resignation of Ming Campbell from that post:
It must also be admitted that Ming could sometimes appear a rather elderly 66 - quite understandably, in view of his illness a few years ago. But the way he was ridiculed for his age tells us something unpleasant about modern British society. It suggests we no longer have any respect for age, wisdom or dignity.
I think in particular of the Mock the Week show that went out in September just after our Conference. This is the BBC2 programme where five leading comedians and Russell Howard improvise comedy based on the week‘s headlines.
For 10 or 15 minutes they unleashed a tirade against Ming, all of it based on the assumption there is something inherently funny about being old. If they had attacked a woman or someone who was gay or black in the same way they would never have worked for the BBC again.All of which is a way of saying that I am very happy that Vince is standing for the party leadership.
1 comment:
The old are the new untermensch.
The rule is to bleed them dry till they dies.
They have memory of the way things were and this is dangerous.
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