August 15, 2005, 8:18 a.m.
Gore TV
Al Gore . . . is on to something? Yep.

By Rob Long

EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece appears in the August 29, 2005, issue of National Review.

One month ago, when I was still in my thirties, a kind friend said to me in a voice both convincing and cheerful, “Hey! So you’re turning forty! That’s cool! ’Cause you know, forty is the new thirty!”

Which really worked, actually. I mean, I bought it. Until last weekend, when I was walking along the beach and passed a young, fit guy in his twenties wearing a T-shirt stenciled with a slogan in thick black lettering. “Forty,” it read, “Is NOT the New Thirty.”

Highly specific cruelty is always the most effective kind of cruelty, of course, and in a way, the people who make and market that particular T-shirt are doing us all a great service by nipping this forty-is-the-new-thirty thing in the bud. Apparently there are enough people who think that forty is the new thirty to have inspired a nasty backlash — complete with t-shirts — from people who, from the looks of them, are probably not quite thirty themselves, and maybe want to enjoy being thirty without being crowded and jostled by a bunch of forty-year-olds who are refusing to leave the stage.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that if you’re a little sensitive about the creeping ravages of time — and hey, the Reaper comes for all of us — you may just want to prepare yourself before you tune into Al Gore’s new cable channel, Current.

I spent a weekend dipping in and out of it — it’s not widely available, but it’s carried by DirecTV — and was reminded more than a few times that as a forty-year-old man, I am over.

“Some of you may be too young to remember,” chirped attractive Amaya Brecher as she introduced a recent segment, “I mean, I remember it only from retrospectives on TV, but an assassination attempt was made on President Ronald Reagan’s life in 1981.” 1981! I was 15 then; we got out of classes and stuff to watch it. Whaddya mean you don’t remember it? Six weeks ago I wouldn’t have noticed the passive-aggressive malevolence of an introduction like that, but after a few moments of watching Current, it’s clear that it’s less a cable news channel and more a Lord of the Flies situation. In which I am very much Piggy . . .

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