Senior Sex Makes News

Cohabiting among older people increased 50 percent from 2000 to 2006, the McClatchy Newspapers report today:

"The total--1.8 million--counts only couples who live together full time and were willing to admit it to census interviewers. Part-time cohabiting--traveling together, sharing a summer house, spending weekends together--is up at least as sharply, according to seniors and people who work with them."

This news about the growth of "love expectancy" may come as a shock to younger generations, whose sophistication does not extend to the notion that parents and grandparents, despite all the evidence of Viagra commercials, may not be immune to a culture of supersex on TV and in the movies.

On a family weekend celebrating his 75th birthday, a friend of mine and his wife went to bed early. Their youngest son, staying in the spare room, came back from an evening out and heard what he later described as “this Godawful scream."

Afraid that his father was having a heart attack, he called through the closed door. “Dad, are you all right?” After a moment of silence, he heard laughter, muffled at first, then louder. “It’s OK,” his mother giggled, “we’re making love.”

Few septuagenarians shock their grown children this way, but any evidence of love-making can come as a surprise. A young married woman, seeing a bottle of baby oil on her parents’ nightstand, opened her eyes wide, startled, and then smiled knowingly at them.

For the solitary, the new report discloses, finding partners is much easier than it used to be. According to the Internet-dating industry, the number of seniors joining online dating services has risen at double-digit rates annually since 2003, the most of any age group.

If they do further research, anthropologists may discover that senior sex does not bear much resemblance to those Cinemax closeups of satiny skin in pneumatic moves that make Extreme Fighting look tame. But then again, younger people have always underrated the pleasures of closeness and companionship.

McCain's Hoof-in-Mouth Casualties

The attrition rate of potential VPs is running high, with Phil Gramm yesterday joining Carly Fiorina among the stricken as McCain had to repudiate his contention that America is "a nation of whiners" in a “mental recession.”

Earlier in the week, the candidate found himself flummoxed by Fiorina's frankness about health care. At a Washington political breakfast, the former Hewlitt-Packard chief said, "I've been hearing a lot from women. There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won't cover birth-control medication. Those women would like a choice."

A sensible enough statement but not the most winning argument for the Conservatives McCain is still wooing. "I certainly do not want to discuss that issue," the candidate huffed when a reporter asked him about it on the "Straight Talk Express."

When it comes to creating embarrassment, McCain doesn't need much help from a running mate. Asked about the increase in US exports of cigarettes to Iran the other day, he answered, "Maybe that's a way of killing them."

Somebody should check out the fumes from the campaign bus.

Ending an Era of American Impotence

Those ubiquitous commercials for Cialis, Levitra, etc. may be telling us more about our national psyche than just the state of the male libido.

Put together with surveys showing sagging confidence in the institutions of power, they present a picture of American impotence--to either win or get out of a hopeless war, to rebuild after a natural disaster or deal with hard times. (Is Congress' stimulus bill any more than a weak dose of economic Viagra?)

Years of a smirking, swaggering George W. Bush who has failed to perform where it counts have taken a toll on American life. To compensate, he has surrounded himself with Cheney's Neo-Cons, whose judgement has been clouded by seven-year erections for which they have failed to find satisfaction or seek medical attention.

Now the political party that gave us all this is offering an aging macho figure who promises to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell but can't seem to find his way around the factions in Iraq.

In offering a non-belligerent younger man and/or a woman, Democrats may be onto something--empowering Americans with the sense that real strength comes, not from blustering and bullying, but using empathy and understanding to form real connections in the world.

We don't need pills for that.

Burritos and Botox Beat Sex

Hard to tell what cultural studies scholars will make of all this, but American web users are less interested in sex than their counterparts in Egypt, India and Turkey.

But our Internet searchers lead the world in curiosity about burritos and Iraq, and are second only to Australians in asking about botox and car bombs, according to Google data since 2004.

The Irish want to know about hangovers and Kate Moss, Italians are inquisitive about Viagra while people in Pakistan are understandably concerned about terrorism and the Taliban.

So in the long run, the average American is a lover of Mexican food who wants to erase frown lines caused by worries over the violence in the Middle East. Short term, if you check quickly, the preoccupation is with fires destroying castles in Malibu.