Old people are reactionary. Get over it

Why do young people act shocked when some grumpy old conservative spouts intolerance?
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John Lennon: the cultural revolution of the 60s was anathema to the previous generation.
John Lennon: the cultural revolution of the 60s was anathema to the previous generation. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives

It is not enough to be young and right about everything. There must be old people and they must be wrong about everything. You have to triangulate away from the wrongness, otherwise how do you know you're living in a progressive society and going in the right direction?

The whole point of being part of a new generation is to draw a curtain round the generation that went before and leave them to their jigsaws and their fishpaste sandwiches and their moaning about how modern music's just shouting. Move on. Put as much distance between you and the fossilised squares as you can.

You've got to hand it to us baby boomers, our sociology was as catchy as our pop music. Nobody can see into the future, but we can learn from the past, yeah, so pull on your loon pants, let's all cram into the Cortina, obscure the windscreen and then drive at speed towards our destiny using only the rearview mirrors. (Aside: I was at some architecture conference 30 years ago when the late, great modernist contrarian Martin Pawley actually tried this in a car park. He didn't get very far. Plus, worth remembering: no airbags in those days, so respect.)

Now baby boomers themselves are the baffled and irrelevant old chuffers. The broken hipsters. Why should anyone under 60 pay any attention to us? Quite right. We had our go in the sun, ushering in the egalitarian wonderland we inhabit today. And how we shone back then. How haughtily, how decisively we marginalised our parents, and other relatives who hadn't expired early from respiratory diseases or industrial accidents. Whatever they'd gone through in the past, they were idiots for not understanding the modern world.

Or rather for not understanding our bit of the modern world. The generation up from mine were dead keen on the new age of plastic and plywood, frozen food and colour telly. And enthusiastically against soot and polio. But they didn't like a lot of the social and cultural revolution and that was the point. That was perfect. Because the social and cultural revolution was ours, not theirs, and it made us better than them.

Grandad may have survived on the streets of east London as a boy thanks to the kindness of the Salvation Army but he was frankly clueless about Merseybeat. Uncle Arthur may have been injured in the second world war but he was a right misery, wasn't he? Limping about, deliberately not getting Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and those big Roy Lichtenstein paintings. Auntie Mabel may have been a child evacuee and a teenage widow but – comically – she disapproved of bad language and simply didn't understand how pornography was going to liberate women, at some point.

Old people and young people have always regarded one another with suspicion and incomprehension. It is the natural order of things. "Hope I die before I get old, become a property-owning pensioner, run a trout fishery and have a go at the Labour party for ruining the job market with its immigration policy", as a young Roger Daltrey didn't quite manage to stutter at the time.

Seriously though, hands up who's surprised that old people have reactionary views. No hands going up on the right, I see, but … oh yes, there we go, quite a few raised on the left. And blimey, don't they look cross, these disappointed young berks. Oh no, a posh 78-year-old celebrity baker has said she doesn't approve of feminism and thinks it's just "shouting at men". Imagine that. Just for a moment, imagine that it's possible to be a posh 78-year-old celebrity baker and a reactionary. See? Of course you can, you disingenuous bloody squeaking tadpoles.

Oh, what now? A Ukip town councillor in his 70s who believes in the literal truth of the Old Testament. Turns out he's opposed to equal marriage. Can you conceive of such a thing? Some old git miseryguts frightened by the speed with which the old certainties – such as God only liking straight people – are crumbling around him? I know. Let's all buy It's Raining Men, that'll show him.

These people are old-school old, about as disconnected from the selfie left as it's possible to be. Why then, every time a grumpy old conservative says something predictable, do you do a mock-appalled face? You know who you look like? You look like Andy Hayman, the senior copper asked during that select committee phone hacking inquiry if he had ever received any money from a media organisation. "Good God!" he spluttered. "Absolutely not. I can't believe you suggested that!" We were all very impressed with his outrage.

Of course we must challenge and oppose homophobia and racism and misogyny. Of course we must take the piss out of people who subscribe to hateful beliefs. But spare me the synthetic wide-eyed puzzlement at old people being all lovely and doddery one minute and horrible the next, like the wobbling bastard queueing up for his pension at our local post office. "It might sound a bit harsh, like …" he said of delinquent youth, "but they want gassing."

Seriously, young and horrified young people. Swing your gaze from the aged and infirm to your fit and healthy peers here and abroad embracing fascism and poor-bashing. Spare me your Pretend Shock of the Old. Give me a break. Pick on someone your own age.

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