I received a number of reactions to my last blog, the Grammy-Geezer blog, both on-and off-line. They prompted me to reflect more on the subject of being a geezer and the bigotry behind it.
This touches on matters related to us all, to something sociologist Charles Horton Cooley called "the looking glass self, i.e., we see ourselves through the eyes of others, even to the extent of incorporating their views of us into our own self-concept.
The process of how we arrive at this socially originating self-concept was further described by sociologist Peter Berger as "becoming that as which we are addressed. In other words, we come to see ourselves as people treat us and how they treat us reveals how they see or value us.
That's the theory that Professor Henry Higgins tried to prove by transforming Eliza Doolittle from a flower girl into a lady in the musical My Fair Lady. Psychologists sometimes call it the Pygmalion Effect.
Remember how, during the presidential election campaign the Republican Party tried to turn "community organizer" into a dirty word by treating it with sarcastic derision, in order to convert an Obama virtue into a vice? Reverse alchemy. Gold into lead.
The term geezer and the psychology of geezerhood are cases in point.
Geezer is a social percept whose meaning and accuracy is generally determined as much as or more in the eye of the beholder or labeler than in the eye of the beheld or labeled. It is also an ageist term, meant to denigrate, to devalue the worth of someone who is old or older or an elder (this "age" thing is clearly a very mercurial construct).
The idea behind the term geezer is that, compared with 19th century views of the positive social utility of maturation and growing older, in the 21st century social utility reverses itself and erodes with age.
Utility for what? you might ask. It is a utility based on some real or imagined metric of worth as, e.g., sexuality, hipness, beauty, alertness, wisdom or, say, "disposable income"(dollars want to be freeeeee) and the ease with which that income can be liberated from the wallet (a correlate which is often negatively related to unimpaired age.).
Youth spend less discriminately, more rashly, and more freely on more popular culture -related items like music and clothes than "non-youth." The young have been found to be more brand conscious as well. The youth market is thus perceived as a cash cow, or a golden revenue stream (I could say "golden shower," but I shall restrain myself.)
Music is seen as soothing or exciting the savage breast of the hormonally endowed practically on a 24/7 schedule, from a variety of sources, appliances, platforms and artists. Since young people fill the trough that feeds the music industry beast, they are the audience of choice, even if their music often makes up in hormonal rage what it lacks in artistic temperament, restraint, and polish.
Thus, in this music context, the term geezer essentially alludes to "out of touch," "out of date," but "resistant to out of pocket promiscuity." In other words, in my previous blog the argument was that at the music industry showcase, the youth-skewed 2010 Grammy Awards show was saying to industry geezers (the hormonally challenged),"hasta la vista, baby. If we need you, we'll call."
Not nice. Unpleasant. BLOODY ANNOYING! I'm working on feeling my Network-Howard Beale moment, 
and I'm walking toward the open window as we speak...
But wait! The term geezer can be defanged. It can be neutered if it's used in a self-mocking, appropriating or co-opting way, as minorities have done in the past with painful epithets like Nigger, bitch, ho, Jew Boy, kike, rag head Dago, wop, etc. That's precisely how and why the term is employed here.
At the Grammy Awards show, older artists were mute or invisible unless they performed with younger artist (to almost no one's benefit). This decision was obviously designed to keep young people from turning the dial or being thought of as fraternizing with the artistically old and cool-less geezer class. It was also sending the message that old talent is not very valuable anymore 
and warranted little more than perfunctory exposure out of anemic respect.
Actually, this not-young insult and bigotry could have been upended, even weaponized, if older artists had refused the invitation or accepted it and then made public, mocking jest of the "pairing," or editorializing about it later to reporters.
None did, though. Perhaps because they feared the consequences of being disinvited, an option they may have felt they could not afford at this point in their career. How many performers, out of dignity or outrage, actually refused the invitation but stayed silent about it? We'll probably never know. I'm sure there were some who bit the bullet rather than drank the Kool-Aid. At least I'd like to think so.
Personally I prefer activism rather than passive acceptance of mature (aka geezer) talent being sequestered or insultingly youth-paired. I prefer it to their swerving docilely into an industry-imposed "good night"; or forced to pitch a hospice in Branson, MO and grow increasingly invisible to the not-old.
The music industry (or culture in general) might want to consider the elders geezers but that doesn't mean elders have to buy it, act it or see it in the mirror.
Personally, I would like to see more outrage in the un-young over our culture's youth idolatry. I would like to see more public outrage in the entertainment talent agents and guilds. I would like to see politicians take up the issue of devaluing maturity. Hell, I would like to see Obama use his bully pulpit to make a few of witty, pithy comments on the subject of this form of ageism in the entertainment industries and its impoverishing effects on our culture in general.
After all, a mind full of talent and experience is a terrible thing to waste.
