Abstract
The compulsive jokiness with which so many modern Americans deflect the subject of aging can get pretty tiresome. But it is perhaps not the worst way to handle the matter. It at least avoids the undignified excesses of self-pity and despair by making light of an admittedly unwelcome condition, even while implicitly confessing one’s susceptibility to an all-too-human vanity. That was the approach taken by the great comedian Jack Benny, whose trademark shtick included the comic pretense that he was perpetually thirty-nine. There was irony built into the joke, a self-mockery that was at least honest enough to acknowledge itself.