Thursday, May 07, 2009

A plea to Oprah

My friend Ronni Bennett at Times Goes By has thrown down with a campaign to ask Oprah to take a more realistic look at aging. The queen of syndicated TV is 55 herself (and so is her audience, if not upwards). Yet like most of our society, too many of the products and attitudes she promotes amount to a frantic, doomed search for the fountain of youth. Ain't gonna work any more for that remarkable cultural icon than for the rest of us.

Dr. Bill Thomas is a geriatrician who blogs at Changing Aging. He's the engaging guy in the short video. [2:45] Take a look.



A little schmaltzy, but culturally right on target I think. Recently the Rev. Ed Bacon, the awesome rector of All Saints Pasadena, told a listener to Oprah that "being gay is a gift from God." The conversation prompted by that one echoed for weeks, such is the ability of the program to reach an unlikely audience.

We need a good, realistic, conversation about aging. Let's help Dr. Thomas get through to Oprah.

2 comments:

Jane R said...

Yes! Glad I got to read this on my (57th) birthday.

Jane R said...

P.S. I suspect that Oprah will want to have this conversation when all of this aging stuff catches up with her personally. Then aging will become cool. Meanwhile, I agree with you that we should push for the conversation. Ms. Winfrey does listen. This one is tricky, though, since it involves advertisers.