The times they are a-changin'

As a Medicare-receiving, senior discount-taking member of the Baby Boomers, I have one piece of advice to give to my fellow sexagenarians and quinquagenarians about to join us:

Ladies and gentlemen, the world has changed.

I shake my head to think of how many times I shook my head while reading an essay by Tom Wolfe called "Hooking Up," in which he reported that casual amorous encounters among younger people are so commonplace that people in their teens and twenties were astounded to hear about the uproar caused by Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky fooling around, when all along, "the two of them had merely been on second base, hooking up."

No matter how unequal the power dynamic between Bill and Monica was, no one ever questioned her willingness to participate. And here is a significant difference in the world of today versus the Disco 70s and the Mad Men 60s and the other decades in which it was all right for men to go to work, pawing all over the women in the workplace, subjecting them to inappropriate language, comprised situations, subtle "sleep with me or else" harassment, and all that went with the Golden Age of Stupid Patriarchy: Women don't want to put up with that anymore, don't have to, and are quite willing to stand up for themselves in case the men attempting to marginalize them into bad encounters don't realize that yet.

The latest to fall, joining a list of men too numerous and vomit-inducing to recount here, is the executive producer of "60 Minutes," Jeff Fager, who chose to reply to questions from CBS reporter Jericka Duncan about the ongoing investigations about sexual misconduct at that network with a threatening text.

Two days after reporting on the firing of Leslie Moonves, the powerful chairman and chief executive officer of CBS, fired after accusations of sexual improprieties involving several women, Duncan contacted Fager with questions, since his name had surfaced in reports from Ronan Farrow about what's going on at CBS.

In reply, Fager sent a text that warned the reporter to "be careful" about reporting a story including details about accusations against him that he has denied.

"There are people who lost their jobs trying to harm me, and if you pass on these damaging claims without your own reporting to back them up that will become a serious problem," wrote Fager.

Duncan and Glor

This starts to sound like an old Edward G. Robinson movie, with a gangster snarling, "You better wise up, kid, see? Shut yer trap before someone shuts it for you, and that someone might be me, see?"

(I realize that the mere mention of Edward G. Robinson ages me to the point where many younger readers are now Googling the star of a hundred or so tough-guy films.)

I don't know if they are true, but the stories about Fager cite unwanted touching, inappropriate workplace language and behavior, all that stuff that took Charlie Rose off the air last November and Moonves out of the executive suite over the weekend. Fager was fired Wednesday for sending the threatening text to Duncan.

Jeff Glor, anchor of the CBS Evening News and a member of the newer generation (he's 43 but looks about 28) offered support to Duncan on air, calling Fager's text "unacceptable."

Edward G. Robinson, just so
you'll know what he looked like.

“You and I have talked about the incredible difficulty covering this story,” Glor told Duncan. adding that she has done “great work” and has his support and the support of everyone at “Evening News.”

You can hardly pick up a paper anymore or watch the news without hearing about some older man getting the can tied to him for thinking that women are there for his personal pleasures. It's about time that these men in positions of power figure out that the world has moved on, and they should either move on with it, or move to a retirement home.