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Forever Cool
By David Dudley
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Game-show host Bob Barker's entry into the ranks of Eldercool follows a slightly different track. He and other older faces became familiar to Generations X, Y, and Z thanks to their constant presence on daytime TV. Earnestly (and endlessly) replaying their roles on cable channels, stars such as Star Trek's William Shatner and Brady Bunch mom Florence Henderson have forged second stardoms in more ironic incarnations.
It helps not to take yourself too seriously. Barker's coolness zoomed, for example, when he was portrayed as a hot-headed lunatic who beats up dopey Adam Sandler in the 1996 comedy Happy Gilmore. "Young men love that picture," Barker observes. "They love to see an old gray-haired man rolling around in the grass with Adam Sandler."
The payoff for Barker is that a good portion of the studio audience for The Price is Right are college-age kids who greet every new showcase of kitchen appliances with rock concert whoops. "Many of them have actually told me that they schedule their classes so they can watch The Price Is Right," says Barker. "I think some of them are majoring in it."
Similarly, Shatner, now 71, specializes in amiable self-parody of his own hambone acting. His youth appeal, like Barker's, is at least one part simple kitsch. But few can deny that a gift for irreverence will endear one to the young.
In other cases, quasi-cool can arrive due to shifting cultural forces, and yesterday's fuddy-duddy may wake up to discover that he is considered a pillar of reassuring stolidity. Last year's terrorist attacks brought about one of these sea changes, the most striking evidence being the improbable ascendance of Donald Rumsfeld, the no-guff 70-year-old Secretary of Defense, to "America's new rock star," as The Washington Post declared in December 2001. Thanks in part to Rummy's lively Pentagon press briefings, the heretofore obscure Ford Administration veteran now boasts a multigenerational following, complete with Internet fan clubs. In a national crisis, hopeless squares like Rumsfeld and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani morph into squinty icons of American resolve.
This transformation no doubt heartened those who yearn for a general reasserting of traditional authority figures, but it's likely to be a temporary phenomenon. In the end, The Man isn't very cool, and neither are most establishment political figures—unless they are former astronauts (John Glenn) or are otherwise viewed as perpetual outsiders (John McCain). Secretary of State Colin Powell has long topped many young Americans' lists of most admired individuals, in part because his appeal transcends the strictly political. Indeed, his attraction for younger voters is so great that he was wooed by both major parties to be their presidential candidate. (Cooler still, he refused them both.)
Few of us mere mortals are likely to receive such dramatic validation of our own youth appeal. We won't get Grammy awards or cabinet appointments or film cameos.
But—if we don't try to be anything but our true, best selves—we might just look out across the generational battlefield one day at young eyes that see us with a new appreciation.
Let's hope so, because along with making life more fun, Eldercool seems to prolong it. "It keeps me young to work with younger people," says Johnny Cash. He thinks back on an all-star tribute concert held for him in New York City in 1999 in which such artists as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and U2 paid him homage. And for a moment his familiar baritone rumble—now raspy with age—takes on a note of wonder, an acknowledgement that life still has the capacity to marvel even a man who's seen it all.
"That was a kick, boy," he says. "That was something."
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