There's no time like the past: Geezers will always tell you about the Golden Age that was Robert Fulford National Post 19 Feb 2002

Just about everyone believes in the idea of the Golden Age, but no one has ever announced that we are right now living through one. The air around us is filled, as always, with loving accounts ofvarious Golden Ages, but all in the past. People used to read more,...think better, live more honest lives. They spoke better, developed better political ideas and gave better parties. People were smarterbefore TV -- but early TV was smarter than recent TV. In the old days there were public intellectuals, brilliant thinkers who kept us alert and informed; alas, as several American commentators havelately shown, they all died out.

This is nonsense, of course, though probably harmless. It pleases those who write it or speak it and those who read and listen. It substitutes for thinking. It is geezer talk, the dreamy fantasies of the old and nearly old who want desperately to convince themselves that they once did everything better than young folks do it now.