Generation gap

My daughter, who is 28 and proud to be a “millennial,” read my column last week and sent a text saying. “Gee, dad, do you think you could be just a little more condescending towards my generation?” I went back and re-read and had to admit the little whippersnapper had a point, that there was indeed a strong undercurrent of get-off-my-lawn! running through my jive about millennials and their poor voting turnout in 2012, a kind of “You better get out there and vote, dadgummit … and don’t park on my lawn while you do, you crazy, molly-gobbling, skull pierced, tat-addled young person, you!”

So I’d like to amend that bit a bit to say instead, “Hey, you under-30 folks, us old kooks would like to invite you to vote in droves this November, as long as you’re going to vote for the right stuff. We think you’ll really find it to be a simple and somehow satisfying thing to do that will enrich your experience as a citizen of America. Power to the correct people!”

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So the Hassle at Hofstra has now taken place, and one thing I have a quibble with is the candidates shaking hands after the event. Doesn’t that feel like the most disingenuous, hypocritical handshake ever? As in just flat wrong?

“He’s lower than low!”

“She’s ho-er than ho!”

“Hi Don, how’s it goin’ out there?”

“Hill, how the hell are you, give my best to Bill.”

“He’s unfit to brush his own teeth!”

“I think she’ll look great in an orange prison jumpsuit!”

Do away with the handshake. This is politics, not golf, dammit.

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So all these commentators are knocking themselves out right now, paying tribute to the Florida Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez, who died in a boating accident last weekend. He sounds like he was a very nice young man. I know he was a helluva pitcher. It’s a shame that he expired at age 24.

But the deal is, he expired because he was in a boating accident at 3 a.m. I repeat: Three o’clock in the morning. And reporters appear to be, at least so far, strangely uncurious as to what three young men were doing, blazing around the waters of Miami at 3 o’clock in the freaking morning, when they most unfortunately slammed at high speed into a jetty and died on the spot. Yes, Jose’s death was a tragedy, but let’s face facts. Fatal joyrides in boats at 3 a.m. usually involve mountains of drugs and buckets of alcohol—how could they not?—and I can’t help but be curious as to why Mr. Fernandez is getting a free pass on the scandalous side of all this.