Helen Mirren may have just helped out John McCain. At least in the ageism debate.
Many people automatically assume that a 63-year-old woman is too old for a bikini. And many argue that a 72-year-old man is too old to become president.

Both concerns come from the popular “ism” that a person’s chronological age is their most defining characteristic and therefore determines who they are and what they can do.

Helen Mirren has demonstrated that she does swimmingly in a red bikini, as evidenced in photos of her Italian vacation which won hurrahs for her flat stomach, smooth thighs and chutzpah. But, even though her physical charms appear limitless, and they are enviable, it’s still her superior acting that counts most.

Now, how about John McCain? We’ve got his various political positions to bat around. But is his age a fair target? I hope the Obama campaign can take the high road on this issue. First, because their guy, at 47, could be vulnerable to ageism from the other end. And because he doesn’t want to offend people over age 50 who are expected to make up half the voters in November. There are a lot of Boomers, especially ones hitting retirement age, who are sensitive to being labeled by the year they were born.

Men age, women rot.

I discussed the age issue with a couple of powerful Democratic women who you might expect to seize on any negative they could find on McCain. But they think his vintage should be left out of the contest. California Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey and former Colorado congresswoman Pat Schroeder know their “isms.” Both were Hillary Clinton supporters and smarted over the sexism that came out during her campaign.

Schroeder, who was in Congress for more than 20 years and made a bid for the presidential nomination in 1987, was a regular on talk shows earlier this year, blasting the media for its misogyny, likening the treatment of Hillary Clinton to the Salem Witch Trials. Schroeder saw some ageism, too, in the Hillary attacks, recalling Rush Limbaugh’s comment about Americans not wanting to watch a woman president grow old before their eyes. And even though Schroeder still thinks sexism was the greater culprit, she said, “There’s no question that sexism and ageism are very related. It’s the old thing about ‘men age, women rot.’

Were a woman contemporary of McCain to put herself out there, the response would be harsher, said Schroeder. For example, she thinks Dianne Feinstein would make a great candidate. But Feinstein is 75. And if she ran, said Schroeder, “they’d nail her on her age.”

The last time Lynn Woolsey ran for re-election, a columnist, who supported her younger male opponent, said it was time to get someone younger with more energy. Woolsey defended herself, saying, “I can’t help my age but I don’t believe anyone has more energy than I do.”

Woolsey, who is two years younger than McCain, said she doesn’t think 72 is that old. “Age isn’t the issue. But health and vitality are.”

Schroeder said that’s what people should be looking at – “to make sure the person has good mental faculties and is in fairly good shape.”

And then you can go after that person on the really important things – like the war, health care, immigration, women’s rights, messing with the ocean digging for oil.

The rest is no more relevant than how you stuff a wild bikini.

My husband spotted the New Yorker cover online and called me over to his computer. I peered over his shoulder and started laughing. I thought the figure on the left, because it had an Afro, was supposed to be Barack Obama. And the figure on the right was John McCain, in some kind of military cap.

But I didn’t have my glasses on, and it was a blur. I thought it might be two stereotypical images of each candidate. The black guy and the warrior.

On closer inspection I groaned, “Oh, dear.” My husband said, “This isn’t good.”
We’re Obama fans. We’re also New Yorker loyalists. We usually get the jokes in the magazine, which you hope will always be the case because once you stop getting New Yorker humor you might as well declare yourself hopelessly un-hip.

Still, I winced. Sure, it was about all the dumb things uninformed, prejudiced narrow-minded people say about the Obamas. Absolutely ridiculous, all those charges.

If it was a joke, why was it taking so long to get?

But what if people looked at that cover and thought it more real than ridiculous? It was too late to keep that New Yorker safe on liberal coffee tables. What would happen when the cover was all over the newsstands and magazine racks and someone looking for the worst in Obama saw it and said, “Yep. Always thought that.”

My daughter argued it is not the New Yorker’s responsibility to make sure everyone gets their message. And I liked that she was defending the media but still I worried about a fence-sitter subliminally being altered by this silly image. And then, come November, getting in the voting booth and suddenly flashing to Michele Obama with an ammo belt.

If it was a joke, why was it taking so long to get?

On TV one superior expert on pop culture chastised the clueless for not understanding the notion of satire. And I started to feel defensive, because I happen to adore satire. But is it satire if you have to explain it? Another pundit offered that exposing such ludicrous prejudices might compel the media to focus on all the bad Obama misinformation out there. And I thought okay, then perhaps this could work in Obama’s favor.

But then the Obama campaign people got huffy and called it offensive and I thought something really is off about this. Then McCain’s people chimed in to agree it was inappropriate. And I started to think that the Obama side would have been better to just roll their eyes and keep their sputtering to themselves. Because maybe the McCain people were thinking, “Oh, this is sweet.” Because, if nothing else, the flap got that left wing latte slick in trouble.

I like flying with the New Yorker. I’m always behind a few issues and three of them slide easily into a carry-on and provide several hours of good reading. And out loud laughs. One of my all-time favorite New Yorker cartoons shows two shapely nymphets in bikinis with high perky breasts. One says, “I never thought 80 would be this much fun.”

You see. This is ridiculing the youth obsession of our culture and the fantastic promises of the anti-aging industry. But I don’t really have to explain that, do I?

You get it. It’s satire. The joke’s on us.

The Obama cover could have been satire but as a joke, who was it on?

Photo courtesy of the Associated Press and The New Yorker Magazine

I don’t try anymore to create sweet tea. My attempts always ended up with a sugary sludge at the bottom. I don’t have the right geography for it. There is no replicating the sweet iced tea I ordered happily by mistake one soggy morning in Savannah, Ga. And then glugged for sustenance all weekend during my daughter’s wedding in Memphis.

The fast food places in my town whose billboards promise sweet tea can’t provide an actual sweet tea experience. For that you have to be in the south where people wear white clothes as thin as a summer curtain and sit as still as a plate of okra. Where you station yourself on a porch or in a restaurant with ceiling fans that nudge the lazy air and everyone is glistening and rosy. To be saved by a woman who saunters over to your table to pour you the most quenching, tallest, coolest drink, better than any alcohol ever, which lets you know that you are truly in a foreign land but will now survive the endless, sticky day.

No zucchini before its time.

In California I don’t really need sweet tea. I don’t need to quench. A chilled sauvignon blanc from a local winery pairs perfectly with our summers. When I crave sweet tea I probably need to leave home.

Back East I get to eat Ipswich clams, dug by my nephew that morning, steamed in a dented pot by my sister, to be piled in a communal bowl and convivially slurped by family members plus babies and dogs as the sun shimmers across the salt marsh. Nowhere else can I get clams or a moment like that.

Now I’m thinking that one healthy result from the current gas crunch is that our palates, numbed by cross country road trips and freeway food, may come alive again. There will be renewed opportunity to eat and drink where we are planted.

Dive into the chicken-fried steak when you’re in Missouri. Hold off on barbequed oysters until you’re in California. No zucchini before its time. And keep it simple.

I dream of the cheese and tomato sandwiches on soft bread they used to sell at a snack booth on Crane Beach, north of Boston. The cheese was orange. The bread was non-artisan. But the tomato tasted like it came from the farm stand on the beach road.

It was unadorned and perfect, like the sandwich your mother would have waiting when you ran shivering from the water.
Plain food. Lasting memory.