My Uncle Nunzi has always told me when you grow old, you feel as if you have a license to tell people what you truly think. No matter what people say, they really never want to know what you truly think about anything that really matters.
According to Uncle, old age doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom, but you really don’t care. That’s the really important element of growing old — you don’t really care what people think about you. By the time you grow old, you have either established your reputation or you haven’t. What you say at 70 isn’t going to change how people feel about you.
My beloved late mother-in-law Rosie gave her opinions freely and without rancor. If you wore a silly hat and you asked Rose whether she liked it, chances are she’d tell you how silly you looked in that hat.
My own sainted mother was a quiet lady for a good part of my life. For most of my marriage, she kept her opinions to herself. She never interfered.
And then, when old age came, she changed.
If you gained a few pounds, Mom reminded you of it. She told me on more than a few occasions I was pretty damn dumb. One night, when my wife, then a travel agent, was out of the country on business, Mom asked me if we had an "open" marriage. My answer didn’t count for much. She had already made up her mind that when a husband "allows" his wife to travel overseas without him, that must mean they have one of those new-fangled open marriages. To put it mildly, Mom was frank (she called herself Eleanor Frank). If you didn’t like it, you’d get over it.
For too many years of our lives, we hide our true feelings from other people — from our boss because we don’t want to mess up our chance for a promotion to our friends for fear they will disagree and think less of us. No matter how close our relationship, we go through life shadowboxing. As you get older, life’s deceits no longer hold the promise of a promotion or holding on to a friend because, by that time, you’ve whittled down your true friends to a very few.
I am reminded of my conversation with Uncle Nunzi as I stumble and bumble toward my golden years. Don’t take this personally, dear reader, but I find myself caring less and less whether you agree with me. To be honest, many of you don’t. And that’s fine because if we all agreed, it would be like spending eternity at a Republican Convention. What bothers me is many of you say you don’t understand why I hate President Bush. I get the same comment in letters or when I’m walking the dog.
I have tried to figure out why I get this recurrent question. After former President Bill Clinton lied to a grand jury, I wrote I thought he had disgraced the presidency and ought to have the decency to resign. No one has ever called me a "Clinton-hater." Since I have written this column, I have vehemently criticized every president from LBJ on and, until these past six years, no one has ever accused me of hating any of them. I criticized the icon of South Philadelphia, Frank Rizzo, and his campaign advised me they thought the column was fair enough they forwarded it to Joseph Alsop, the national columnist, for background on the coming election with Thacher Longstreth. Rizzo knew my father; they were cops together. He was annoyed with some of the things I wrote and told my Dad so. For that matter, my Dad also was annoyed. But nobody accused me of hating Rizzo. So why is it when some of us disagree with the gross incompetence of this administration it is because we "hate" Bush?
To be sure there are folks who hate W. just as there are folks who really hate the Clintons. But surely it is not that difficult to differentiate between those who hate the president so much they wish we would lose Iraq and those who merely think his policies stink. Let me give you a guideline, using Clinton as an example. You could disagree with Clinton’s failure to stop the atrocities in Bosnia sooner without hating him. But when you produce a video (which I have seen) that accuses the Clintons of murder and drug dealing, you’ve crossed the line into unreasonable hatred. By the way, the Rev. Jerry Falwell thought highly of the hate video, so you know what that makes him.
I don’t hate Bush. I think he’s been a disaster as president. So was Warren Harding and I don’t hate him, either. But then I’m getting to the point where if that’s what you choose to believe, as my Mom often said, get over it.
