Beyond Opinion

Today I heard something positively ridiculous. According to an AP report, " Mick Jagger and his band mates may be nearing senior citizenship, but Super Bowl planners only want people who are under 46 to take the field during the Rolling Stones' halftime show at Ford Field on Feb. 5." Huhhh?? If you read on in the article, you find out that they only want people with the stamina to cheer and dance around for several hours.

First of all, this is outright age discrimination. These Super Bowl people are asking for a big lawsuit. Whether someone is selected or hired for a job should depend on ability, not on age. With most of the huge Boomer generation above this age, there is no way they can impose something like this. I hope such a suit is filed.

Secondly, there are many people over 45, including those much older than that, who dance and do other things for long periods of time. I dance for two hours every night every year at SUUSI, for instance, and I am now 59 years old. How about Bing Crosby and some of these other people who dance in their 70s? How about some of these marathon runners in their 60s?

And thirdly, take a look at the Rolling Stones themselves. I looked them up on Wikipedia. Mick Jagger is 62 years old and will be 63 later this year. The other three Stones are 59, 62, and 65 years old. That's standard retirement age, and this guy is still playing and dancing around, as well as the other Stones. Don't you think that performing for several hours they way they do before a group is strenuous? What they are saying is that it is okay for Stones to do it, but not for other 60-plus people to do it.

If they are going to impose this age limit, they should apply it all the way. They should run the Rolling Stones off the halftime show. First we had that "wardrobe malfunction", which was nothing more than the actor's version of the hypermedia. Now we have this case of age discrimination. Further, people make big whuptedoos about the Super Bowl, and they bomb out the news and other programs on TV with it. Maybe they should do more than keep 60-years-olds and Rolling Stones away from the Super Bowl. I say do away with the Super Bowl altogether.