Sabbath Gasbags, Speak Up by Calvin Trillin
Nearly a week after the television news coverage of Memorial Day, I’m still thinking about how much I envy Tom Brokaw for having managed to slip a phrase into the language. He slipped in “the greatest generation.” I’ve never slipped in anything. . .
Recently, I tried The Times again. Describing the tendency of older men’s hindquarters to flatten out, I spoke of a condition called D.T.S. — Disappearing Tush Syndrome — and mentioned that it could cause an otherwise respectable senior citizen to walk right out of his pants. So far, nobody else has mentioned D.T.S. Still, there’s time. In my optimistic moments, I envision NBC calling Tom Brokaw back to lead its Memorial Day coverage in Washington next year. “As I said on one of the Sabbath gasbag shows yesterday,” Brokaw says, “when I see these World War II veterans returning to the nation’s capital for this ceremony, I know that — though stooped, though gray, though suffering from D.T.S. — they remain the greatest generation.”
Calvin Trillin, a contributor to The New Yorker, is the author, most recently, of “Dogfight: The 2012 Presidential Campaign in Verse.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/sabbath-gasbags-speak-up.html?hp
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