George F. Will Digs Too Deep For A Metaphor

OffHisMeds read a hysterical opinion piece titled "Hostess brought down by sweet labor deals", that featured - to my great amusement - George F. Will going completely off his rocker. While his piece is ostensibly a commentary on berserk unions destroying yet another corporation - and along with it thousands of union jobs - his disgust resides not with Hostess or the unions, but with the Baby Boomer generation that he alleges reveres Twinkies.

Will departs from his main topic early, in the second paragraph accusing Baby Boomers of "acute narcissism".  He concludes that we (Boomers) must see troubling portents in Hostess's demise, putting the following words in a little thought balloon over our heads: "if an 82-year-old brand can die, so can we. Is that even legal?". But wait, he's not done. In paragraph three Will portrays Boomers as people "wooed by advertising", who "plight their troths to brands in marriages that often are more durable than boomers’ actual marriages".  

From that point, though, it gets weird.  

In paragraph six, he suggests that the Boomer obsession with Twinkies almost made Hostess a candidate for a GM-style bailout because the demise of Hostess was "big in what matters most — in boomers’ minds". He then immediately contradicts himself by describing Boomers as "a generation of food scolds.....who considered Twinkies and other sugary things sinful".
 

I'm on the ropes now, equally distracted not only by my narcissism but a heretofore unrealized fidelity to snack cakes that is simultaneously bigger than marriage yet still leaves me pathologically conflicted and ashamed. I'm also awash in tears of laughter. I gamely struggle to the end of Wills' piece, but none of it makes an impression. I read and re-read the first half of his article, and I laugh and then I laugh again. 

 

After I calm myself, I reflect on Wills' particular pathology when it comes to the regularity with which he disses his fellow Americans, and most typically implicitly conservative groups such as Boomers.  I conclude that he feels forced to do it mostly to lend an apparent credibility to his words that would appease the editors and peers with whom he associates, almost all of whom are Liberal.  Beyond that, the only conceivable reason is some internal clock of his that mandates that - out of fairness - 20% of his energies must be devoted to trashing Republicans and Conservatives.  This time it was the Boomers turn, no doubt because he had too recently trashed The Tea Party, Suburbanites or Libertarians. 

 

Either that, or he is in fact the Snuff-pinching elitist we've always suspected him of being, and life would have no meaning without the opportunity to visit upon the shoulders of the Great Unwashed the ignominy they so richly deserve.

 

As a Boomer, I appreciate the opportunity to laugh at other people, no doubt one of my many Boomer faults.  I am thankful to George F. Will for writing this piece and giving me the opportunity to do so, guilt-free.