Senior citizens, MTV, and Mitt Romney

My oldest pal Gil Kaufman, a reporter for MTV News, is on the campaign trail with Mitt Romney. Gil left me a voicemail yesterday sharing a funny/telling experience he had just before Romney spoke at the Villages, a senior community in Lady Lake, Florida. I'm glad he put the anecdote in his latest dispatch. From MTV.com:

At one point before Romney took the stage, a crowd member interrupted a shoot with MTV's Andrew Jenks by yelling at him to speak up. I went over to speak to the gentleman, and he asked who we were with, since he'd never heard of MTV and was sure we were mocking him and his neighbors.
When I explained that we were traveling with the Romney campaign for the day and covering the election from a youth perspective, he shouted, "He's with Obama! They're Obama!"
I wasn't really sure how to react to that, so I shook his hand and wished him well. But I totally should have introduced him to that woman with the "don't believe the liberal media" sign.

"Florida Seniors Pledge Allegiance To Mitt Romney"

portrait by our own Rob Beschizza

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Mujokan

That used to be a nice country you guys had going once.
- scatterfingers
  
  …when was that?
  - http://twitter.com/Lookforthewoman Emma Smith
    
    1779?
  - wysinwyg
    
    Madison’s presidency.
- Guest
  
  …and then the europeans showed up.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

There was a time when some of us would have just shaken our heads, chuckled, and said, “There’s one in every crowd.”

Now they are the crowd.
- Guest
  
  Yes, at a retirement community, crotchety old people with bad hearing and inflexible opinions are, in fact, the crowd.
gws

Yikes. I swear we aren’t a nation composed entirely of spoiled, xenophobic children. Not that you’d know it by the tone of national politics.
- Guest
  
  You see data, I see anecdote.
http://twitter.com/mnsmirnoff Manuel Smirnoff

This says it all:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/intelligence-study-links-prejudice_n_1237796.html?ref=mostpopular
- http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood
  
  “A provocative new study from Brock University in Ontario suggests the answer to both questions may be a qualified yes.”
  
  A study? Suggests? Qualified yes?
  
  I’m convinced!
  - wysinwyg
    
    IQ measures abstract reasoning skills (not the same thing as intelligence). People with poor abstract reasoning skills adopt simplifying strategies to deal with a complex world. That’s a pretty straight-forward observation about human beings even without a study backing it up.
    
    As usual, Huffpo makes a hash of reporting what the study actually says. The study’s author (or one of them) said that lower IQ folks might sign on to liberal ideologies just as readily as conservative ones.
jaytkay

Nice photo of Desi Arnaz. Did he live in Florida or something?
spacemunky

In tonight’s performance Sheriff Bart will be played by Barack Obama and the town of Rock Ridge will be played by Lady Lake, Florida.
IronEdithKidd

Congrats, Rob. You’ve successfully ‘shooped an image that’s simultaneously squicky and compelling.

Now OT…I’m having a difficult time parsing older citizens who don’t know what MTV is. Some of the first musicians to be featured on the channel are now old enough to collect SS.
bcsizemo

I shouldn’t be laughing so hard…this will be my parents soon enough.
BookGuy

I’d kind of dig it if Obama himself adopted this man’s curious grammatical choices and started making Borg-ian pronouncements that all begin with, “We are Obama.”
davidasposted

I for one hope that if Romney wins and begins to gut Social Security, that older gentleman’s checks are the first to be withheld.
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones
  
  Pffft. Romney won’t gut Social Security. The elderly will get vouchers that they can invest in the stock market, and the Invisible Hand will trickle down on them. Or something.
  - davidasposted
    
    Gosh I wish Occam’s Razor would cut off that Invisible Hand.
    - Lurking_Grue
      
      All I see these days is the market getting invisible hand jobs.
- Guest
  
  You assume too much intent. I assume he’s hard of hearing and short on opportunities to get peoples goat.
  
  That was “get off my lawn” by any other name.
Paul232

Well, I’m certainly convinced the reporter wasn’t pro-Obama based on his sharing this story with his media friends…
- Navin_Johnson
  
  The sarcasm or sincerity isn’t translating to the comments medium.
- Guest
  
  Publishing is sharing with everyone. If this were an internal email you’d have a point. This was a (admittedly MTV) news story, not a back channel communications between liberal media elites.
  
  Nice spin though, like a drain.
CharredBarn

What on earth would make an old geezer think that an MTV “news” crew would have any political sympathies with the “liberal” political party? Senility?
- http://twitter.com/AbelUndercity Abel Undercity
  
  Especially considering he’d apparently never heard of MTV (good grief, it’s been there for 30+ years now, hasn’t it?).
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    I’m turning 55 this year and I’m pretty sure that I am (shudder) part of the MTV generation.
- Guest
  
  Habe you been to a florida retirement community?
  
  They were on his lawn. end of story.
johnnyaction

I used to live near there and “The Villages” is a rich geezer / golfing retirement community that is very structured and big. Roughly 81,000 people total.

This article exposes the dark seemy underside of the community and is worth a read if you don’t mind needing mental floss afterwords. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/retire_to_the_bedroom_Cc7ZfG20iWexuTKNixQhvO
CLamb

…and his vote counts the same as mine. Oh, the paradox of democracy.
- foobar
  
  If you live in California, his vote actually counts for a bit more than yours. Gotta love that electoral college.
  - Guest
    
    If you -choose- to live in California, you mean. You can move if that’s your priority.
    
    Gotta love that sense of entitlement and dodging of personal responsibility.
    - lafave
      
      You can move if that’s your priority.
      Because everyone can just pick up stakes and move.
http://www.facebook.com/mrossana Matthew Rossana

I couldn’t resist…
allenmcbride

Don’t make this about seniors; it’s prejudicial and unfair. Seniors have been the backbone of every Democratic campaign I’ve been involved with.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Seniors usually run the polling stations, too.
  - surreality
    
    yeah, my polling station is always staffed by very friendly seniors.
caipirina

I still think this image looks like it has a lot of Schwarzenegger’s genes in it …
Guest

If you are traveling with, or covering, an American politician, you, and your subject ARE mocking us.