Over 75% of Bill O’Reilly’s viewing audience is age 55 and up.
On Saturday, the first baby boomers become eligible for Medicare.
If you look at the demographics of the budget battle, of the health care reform debate, of the teabaggers generally, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that our immediate political future is the war of the Boomers against everyone else, behind their banner reading “I Got Mine – Fuck You.”
But the other thing that springs to my mind – especially looking at Christine O’Donnell’s newfound trouble with her election cash – is that sometime in the last twenty years, talk-show hosts and their anointed candidates became the new televangelists. Whereas in years past, the stereotypical person of a certain age would send the whole Social Security check to Oral Roberts, now the money all goes to Cash4Gold and SarahPAC. And for much the same reason – if you can trade cash for salvation, temporal or heavenly, you have to make that deal, right?