Is Time Running Out for the Beautiful People?

Here’s the beginning of our ignominious end - NBC News anchor Brian Williams teased viewers this week with the headline of an ominous lead story coming up on the nightly news:  certain hip replacements are failing and will have to come out. 

Easy for him to say.  Seems thousands of bionic men and women now face the daunting prospect of enduring a double surgical procedure to remove and replace their…replacements. 

So what’s next for Jane Fonda and all the rest of us boomers who’ve succumbed to deteriorating joints and metal-on-metal replacements for our ailing bones?  Jane’s a perfect representative of the post-boom phenomenon.  She’s had knee and hip replacement along with back surgery.  She’s 72, healthy, and looking great.  But that may be more aptly attributed to her cosmetic surgery.  She’s owned up to having the bags under her eyes deflated.  

What if all manner of high-tech enhancements developed and implanted over decades of the boomers’ era turn out to have a shelf life, as it were?  What if it’s not just Jane Fonda’s hip and knee replacements that will need recycling?  What about her baggy eyes? 

More than a few folks have had similar elective procedures.  Sure they’re non-essential and totally vain.  But are they susceptible to the ticking clock, too?  Are we approaching the Y2K of the self-conscious aging elite? 

If we don’t get this under control, we could wake up to the luddites’ nightmare:  All our technology turns on us, rebelling in the most unfortunate and unattractive ways. 

Remember Eddie Murphy in the remake of “The Nutty Professor”?  He had what we all want – a magic elixir – one sip and voila!  Thin!  Sexy!  Funny!  But of course, no Fountain of Fitness can exist in the real world. 

Murphy’s Professor Clump, as his newly svelte alter ego Buddy Love, seized the opportunity to pursue the girl of his dreams, the one his flabby, unfortunate self could not hope to impress.  But alas, in a crucial, public moment, just like Jane’s time-sensitive hip, Buddy’s potion breaks down.  Before our eyes, the professor bulges back to his prodigious former self, body part by gelatinous body part. 

Given the impending expiration of our man-made yet mortal appendages and restitutions, we could find ourselves in the same discomfiting circumstance. 

What if nose jobs expired, for example?  Right in the middle of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” Kim’s pretty proboscis might just revert to its original, lumpy form.  A whole new kind of reality could present itself if the Plastic Surgeons of America sent a recall notice for the scaffolding underpinning Bruce Jenner's face work.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Imagine all the serene conversations in Hollywood bistros and suburban country clubs when, out of nowhere, a timer goes off and dozens of lifted foreheads advance to their rightful, age-appropriate positions, coming to rest somewhere in the neighborhood of one’s delicately plucked eyebrows.  In Washington, Nancy Pelosi would blink, giving Republicans in Congress false hope of victory. 

Why, those eyebrows themselves would travel into real estate appropriated by tacked-wide-open eyes, creating uninvited squints even in the shade of Carrera sunglasses. 

What if Botox … oh, never mind.  It does expire.  We know already that.  The wax melts and you’ve gotta keep getting shot up if you want to maintain that expressionless guise of indifference. 

Otherwise, Joan Rivers might disappear altogether. 

Hair transplants!  That would be hilarious!  What if those perfect plugs just unplugged, on cue, like so many spontaneous champagne corks, no matter where the “plug-ee” might find himself?  Like an electrified porcupine coming undone on the fairway, or the boardroom!   

In an apocalyptic scenario, voluptuous lips would shrink back to their original, severe Frau Bluchers.  Silicon breasts would collapse leaving folds of skin and yards of unfilled fabric limp in their wake.  All those pinned-back ears would once again flap free. 

Reminiscent of the cages being flung open at the zoo, all God’s creatures would run in gleeful abandon, returning to their natural states. OK, maybe not gleeful. 

I decline to reveal where I might wind up in such a scenario.  Parts of me could be susceptible to the fall of the empire, shall we say?  But which parts and where they’ll land remains a confidential, eyes only, need-to-know Top Secret.   

Suffice it to say that I keep the joints greased with glucosamine and the clocks wound tight.  Vigilant.  Ever vigilant.                                                                                                  

The Devil's in the Details

I heard this morning that the forward for Dick Cheney’s new book, In My Time, was written by Satan.

Just kidding of course.  Satan doesn’t write forwards, though he might have stood at Cheney’s shoulder during the writing of the memoir, offering reminders about how things went down during their time together in the Bush administration. 

Again, a joke.  Too easy I know.  I should be ashamed. 

It’s just hard to look at Mr. Cheney while he confirms that he advocated the torture, excuse me, “enhanced interrogation” of prisoners of war in US custody on his watch.  It was the right thing to do, he says.  It was “safe, legal, and effective.”  Safe for whom is unclear.  Legal unless you’re bound by United Nations’ regulations.  (Cheney would be arrested if he were to stray into Europe.)  Even its effectiveness is in question.

Nevertheless, he says he’d do it again.  Without hesitation. 

OK then.  How about this:  Other foot.  Gander and goose.  Is it OK for our enemies to torture US citizens they have in custody if they are suspected to be spies?  No, says Cheney.  “We would object.”  He implies he expects US citizens to be treated according to the aforementioned rules of the UN.   

But…but….isn’t that a contradiction?  What about turnabout?  We didn’t “interrogate” American citizens, says the Dark One.  We only water-boarded 2 or 3 prisoners who were not US citizens. 

Oh.  Well then.  What’s all the fuss about?  Haven’t yet heard John McCain’s take on Cheney’s do si do. 

Word has it that Cheney drove Bush into the war with Iraq.  He doesn’t deny it.  Bush was on the fence about Sadam for too long in his opinion when, according to NBC News, Cheney turned to him and said, paraphrasing, “Are you going to take this guy out, or what?” 

Asked about the 4,000 American lives lost in Iraq (not to mention the uncounted, devastating, life-changing injuries), the 100,000+ Iraqi casualties, and the $1trillion cost of the war, Cheney says without equivocation – worth it.  To him, I guess. 

Of course, what else can he say?  It wouldn’t do for him to express remorse now even if he felt it.  That would be tantamount to serial killers caught and convicted who then apologize for their crimes.  Just doesn’t cut it.  Of course we’re also outraged if they show no shame or repentance.  What’s a poor serial killer to do? 

While memoirs are by nature introspective, Cheney’s cannot offer up insights gained from self-reflection since he does not engage in it.  In hindsight he instead looks outward, assuming credit for saving Americans from further “mass casualty” attacks, the demise of Qaddafi, and by extension it would seem, the entire Arab spring. 

During a pre-release interview Cheney responded to questions about how his book would be received in Washington.  He said with a chuckle, “Heads will explode all over town.” 

The New York Times allows that most Washington memoirs follow a pattern:  The author explains the events that transpired during his or her time in office according to the “I was right and if they agreed with me, they were right too” doctrine.  It naturally follows that “If they didn’t agree with me, they were idiots.”  The difference with Cheney is the bluntness of his declarations. 

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared on Face the Nation saying Cheney’s marketing hyperbole and “cheap shots” are more expected of a gossip columnist or a grocery store tabloid than a former vice president of the United States of America.  Guess Powell didn’t agree with Cheney back in the day. 

Cheney admits to revealing the content of private conversations with then-President Bush, Condoleeza Rice, and others, shrugging his shoulders saying he can’t see how they would feel betrayed.  Indeed. 

It’s certain that Cheney relishes in his characterization as the most powerful vice president in US history.  He even called up the moniker “Darth Vader” when his interviewer failed to mention it.  

Dick Cheney’s role in our history is secured.  Historians will pour over his words, those of Secretaries Powell and Rice, and certainly those of former President George W. Bush, piecing together a dispassionate chronology and even an objective assessment of the impacts of all these players on the world stage.  Cost-benefits analysis.  Means and ends.  Hindsight with wave-length laser surgery. 

Who writes the afterword remains to be seen.