The Endangered White Male

“In the popular culture of the ’40s and ’50s, white men were role models. They were the detectives and cops who ran down gangsters and the heroes who won World War II on the battlefields of Europe and in the islands of the Pacific. They were doctors, journalists, lawyers, architects and clergy. White males were our skilled workers and craftsmen — carpenters, painters, plumbers, bricklayers, machinists, mechanics. They were the Founding Fathers, Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Hamilton, and the statesmen, Webster, Clay and Calhoun. Lincoln and every president had been a white male. Middle-class white males were the great inventors: Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and the Wright Brothers. They were the great capitalists: Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford and J. P. Morgan. All the great captains of America’s wars were white males: Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, U.S. Grant and John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur and George Patton.” – Patrick Buchanan “The Great White Hope”

I have to admit I have sensed it at times but I also have to admit that maybe it is time, the demise of the middle-aged white male. I could have used my picture for this post but why pass up a chance to share such a flattering image of the Republican presidential candidate, practically since his primary base of support is from this vanishing demographic.

What happened to us? Well according to Pat our “fitness levels are falling as they suffer rising levels of physical pain, emotional stress and mental depression, which helps explain the alcohol and drug addiction.” Damn guys, why have we let ourselves go like this? Why have we sat in our Barcaloungers, sucking down Budweiser’s, and spending hours watching anything that ESPN feeds us? Why?

Entitlement, that’s why. For years middle-aged white male has railed against government entitlements while protecting his own. He thinks he is entitled to sit on his big wide ass and drink beer. He is entitled to get fat, smoke, suffer from high blood pressure, high cholesterol and die of a heart attack at 46. He is entitled, as President Obama describes to get bitter, cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like we are. Again, why? Because that’s the way we do it. That’s the way our Dad’s did it, our Grandfather’s did it, all the generations before us did it. In our minds we work hard, then we sit on our ass, keep our minds shut tight, our opinions one-sided, and die young.

And now we have an old white guy, wearing a dead squirrel on his head with a bad orange spray tan speaking for us, fighting to keep our place on Barcalounger safe because that is what we are entitled too. That’s the way we want it. That’s the way it has always been. But honestly all of his bluster and bullshit is just delaying the inevitable. Maybe not next year, or in five years but soon, very soon middle-aged white male, the common Joe will be just another face in the crowd, no more important or powerful than a Susan, or a Juan, or a Youssef, or a Seong, or Abdu and guess what, it’s about time.