Trial and error for self-promotion? (Part 2)

Inexpensive for those who have forever. Elderly non-entities, however, better cut corners and master a few dos and don’ts. Even modest goals—say, finding a new partner or just surviving in a smart social circle—require deliberate change. (Excellent pensions and decent health have limited shelf value.)

Here are suggestions to get you started, safely:

1: Develop new skills and an attention-worthy project, ideally—well before you notice you’re old and invisible.

If you know you’re passé at the office, retire immediately if you can. Then get excited about a new endeavor before they start putting just one more candle on your birthday cake.

2: Test what you’ve dreamed up on a heartless friend of a friend. If you want to do something truly out of character, pay for a consultant.

They’ll teach you how to dress, breathe on television, and use the tools of the social media. This kind of shopping is easy and affordable if you live in Toronto. If they’re not interested, your idea—in this world—isn’t interesting either.

(Note: Even the nicest people turn away from lost causes. It was tolerably sickening watching Donald Trump “fire” breathless college graduates. Humiliating a 70-year-old, however, would have killed his show.)

3: Mine your past as little as bearable.

Care for your brain cells and respect the limited patience of others; kill those knowing asides. People won’t abandon an exciting idea, apocalyptic concern, or redemptive solution merely because you’ve “been there, done that.”

4: Never relax.

You’re not living in a causal culture. It’s intensely judgmental. A ponytail doesn’t make a dude.  You’d only look tired and poor or vain and passé.

5: Don’t get emotional.

You’re finally in touch with your feelings of remorse, disappointment, injustice, and loneliness. Congratulations. If you can’t stop picking at them, write an encrypted diary. Being anxious about finally leaving home, your first divorce, and getting old can be sexy; that’s established public art. Being a nervous wreck about failing socially or professionally at 75 is usually creepy.

Then again, when is pride ever free?

Romney’s seniors: will the 60s' generation ever grow up?

Partisans for both candidates—and reasonably charitable outside observers—can swallow most of the tribal divides in this US presidential election. Blacks, Hispanics, gays, Asians, feminists, evangelical Christians, entrepreneurs, civil servants, and the shrinking white majority tend to favor their own, certainly the candidate who risks the wrath of “others” to advance their concerns.

These divisions are manageable and not terribly offensive. America’s giant democracy has already, and next month will again, elect a black or white president who will then enjoy broad national support to do the job. However, the massive preference for the Republican nominee amongst seniors isn’t possible to understate or easy to accept. Their power is awesome, their motives suspect.  

“In Sunday’s Wall Street Journal/ NBC News poll, Mr. Romney led the President among white voters by 59 per cent to 36 per cent and among seniors by 60 per cent to 35 per cent. Both groups vote in big numbers and do not need to be prodded to the polls by vast armies of campaign volunteers.”

Apparently, they love the Romney message; government is killing America’s fighting spirit; Greece is just around the corner; it’s time for tough-minded leadership; okay, peace abroad, but certainly a firmer hand at home!

The elderly Republicans shouldn’t be asked to stop being Republicans when they go on Social Security and Medicare—vital public benefits that few seniors today actually fully paid for. They should be free to vote in greater numbers than the young, if the young choose to defer. Also, they should be free to oppose bailing out workers who still have to earn a living and occasionally support foreign wars even though they’re too old to fight.

However, it’s almost nauseating to imagine that they’re mobilizing to throw out a president for not understanding “the real world” and elect a president who’d repeal “Obamacare” and shrink every form of state aid to the less well off, under the age of 55.

Of course, behind this prospect is a crude but not stupid conservative instinct. “I’ve got my government-sponsored health and income support; and I know it’s very expensive. And that’s why I’ve got to vote for the guy who’ll make sure the others don’t gab too much and put my entitlements at risk.”

There was no doubt in the White House that introducing universal healthcare in a climate or retrenchment and stagnant incomes would not be immediately and widely popular. And that Obama, not deep blue–state legislators, would be most at risk in this election.

American seniors, like lucky seniors everywhere in the developed world, should worry about the financial and economic foundations of their good fortune. However, in a war against government deficits, to draft everyone but themselves is offensive.

In the 60s, draft dodgers were a controversial minority, amongst their own generation. Amazingly, dodging their domestic responsibilities may now be that generation's last political gesture. 

Obama’s cool political prospects

Eminent British journalists can be counted on to bring to the surface the adolescent yearnings and fevered dreams that drive America. Mary Ann Sieghart exercised this skill eloquently in “The Independent” on Monday. Savour this:

“When President Obama redecorated the Oval Office, it was in various shades of beige.  "I like taupe," he explained to The New York Times. Taupe is an abomination. It's a nothing colour. It doesn't shout "drab"; it murmurs it. What a tragic mutation from the vibrant red and blue of those Obama posters emblazoned with the word "HOPE". It is as if Obama's taste in decoration is a symbol of the energy that has leeched out of his presidency, culminating in those awful midterm election results last week. The virtues he had then have become his faults now.

‘They want their President to understand what they are going through, to empathize with their worry, their anger and their insecurity. They are either terrified of losing their jobs and their homes, or furious that it has already happened.

“Prime ministers can be cool and detached as long as they are competent, but heads of state have to touch citizens' hearts as well as their heads. A head of state has to "stand tall", as Ronald Reagan famously put it.

“For Tea Party supporters, by contrast, Obama's narrow range of emotions, from Zen-like to mildly irritated, is immensely frustrating. The more angry they feel about him, the less he reacts. Anyone who has had a fight with a partner or a parent will know how annoying this is. You want them to shout back, not to smile delphically and look utterly unmoved.”

Click on: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mary-ann-sieghart/mary-ann-sieghart-obamas-strength-is-now-his-weakness-2128054.html

The barbarians are approaching your lovely gates! Please, Mr. President, emote!

The other argument to restyle Obama’s appeal feels more scientific—locating people’s desires in their demographics. There was a huge drop-off in voter turn-out. Consequently, the electorate was whiter, more Republican, and significantly older. In fact, barely 11 % of those who voted were under thirty. To put it in adversarial terms, standing in front of every young voter were two seniors waiting patiently to exercise their franchise.

The big facts are settled: seniors are highly politicized and, today, favour the Republicans and most young people are not interested in politics.

The right response by Obama, however, is not obvious. Before waiting for him to be more excitable or to feel sad if he can’t, Obama’s loyalists should consider the facts from another perspective.

First, Obama is an incumbent President governing in fragile as well as painful circumstances. The vibrant colours of the “Hope” campaign would look garish in a working office. Most important, next time, he won’t have the emotional license of an aspirant. As the incumbent, he’ll have to reason with the people, as is his wont.

Second, the perils of our time may increasingly favour his boringly deliberate style. Like prairie fires, raging rhetoric burns out. As Tina Fey already knows and Republicans will discover, caricatures end up, like Rosie-the-riveter, on rec-room walls.

Third, in normal general elections (as 2012’s will likely be) young people are missed but seniors are more important. Respecting this fact, however, doesn’t necessarily mean bad news for Obama or idealists. Positive feelings and thoughtfulness, in politics, are not cleanly distributed by age.

We cannot know for sure, as pollsters may suppose, exactly what it was about Obama that got young voters out in 2008. However, it is not evident that his looks were more decisive amongst young voters than his carefully crafted appeal to the future. Further, there is no objective reason to believe that a credible appeal to the future would not appeal to older voters who have lived through error and political mischief for a life time.