Why I Do Not Go To Green Day Concerts

So as not to resemble: Joe Lieberman, trying to appear to connect with the Youth of Today:

Joe Lieberman, to sullen youth wearing headphones in the lobby of the New London (Conn.) Senior Center: "So, what are you hearing?"

Sullen youth: [pause] "Rap."

Joe: "Ah. [chuckle] That's what I do a lot. I rap."

Sullen youth: [silence]

Joe: [turns toward reporters, gives thumbs-up, heads for the door to find older people

When I was in high school, "rap" meant "talk", usually about Matters of Great Importance, such as the Vietnam War, Nixon, and the like. Yes, it was yet another thing white suburban kids lifted from black urban kids. "Rap" fell out of favor as youth slang when silly but well-intentioned parents, schools and churches, frightened to death of the sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll of the young baby boomers, decided to form organized "rap groups", in which parents and other people's kids could try to connect, thereby demystifying youth culture to their puzzled elders. The minute our parents started using the word "rap", that's when we stopped.

There is nothing sadder than a middle-aged person who thinks he or she can somehow "relate" to youth. For all that people my age came of age in what in many ways was a similar time to today, there are still vast differences. And part of the job description of being a teenager is that feeling of being special; that no one else has experienced the things you experience, and no one else has ever felt as deeply as you do, or as your generation does.

You would think we would get this, being as self-obsessed as we were -- and yet we don't.

Joe Lieberman, born in 1942, is a pre-boomer, and was already in his mid-20's by the time the 1960's "youth culture" flowered. But I'm sure he remembers what "rap" meant, and I cringe to think that's what he was thinking when using that word in a vain attempt to "relate" to someone on the other side of the age abyss.

I think this because the alternative, that Holy Joe Lieberman is trying to appropriate the language of the urban street, is just too monstrous even to contemplate.

The bottom line is this: No matter how cool you think you are; no matter how up-to-date on what music young people are listening to you think you are, no matter how vividly you remember what it was like to be seventeen, in the eyes of today's seventeen-year-olds, you are just another saggy, middle-aged fart who was never young and can't possibly understand.

That's just the way of the universe.