Of all the cultural hallmarks that have become engrained in the American holiday of Thanksgiving – a gleaming, succulent turkey, the familiar comfort of familial togetherness, sniffing Elmer’s glue in your cousin’s basement – one is especially endearing to the members of the Greatest Generation, the seemingly ordinary octogenarians who over sixty years ago rallied together under the banner of liberty, freedom, and democracy, to save the world from an unimaginable evil. What is this tenet of Turkey Day that our grandparents look forward to every year? Why, racism, of course!

While less known among college-aged folk, one of the benefits of reaching the blissful age of seventy years, along with getting to wear Velcro shoes again, is that it is socially permissible for one to be unabashedly racist. As the membership by-laws for the American Association of Retired Peoples states, “On the day that thou member’s hourglass has rotundilated nigh unto three score and one decade, thou aforementioned member shall have in thine repertoire the justification and encouragement to orate derogatory and stereotypical commentations pertaining to a specific creed, color, gender, sexual orientation, or a combination thereof, et cetera, et cetera. Oh yeah, and when you turn seventy you can’t get a boner. Ever. You know that ‘wa-wa-waaaa’ disappointment sound? That is the sound your penis will make at times of desired arousal. Shit’s like Lake Flaccid down there.”

Thanksgiving, a day when an entire extended family will gather to eat, drink, and point out one another’s insecurities, is often seen by grandparents as the perfect opportunity to showcase this entitlement of elderliness. Says Willie “Pops” Wertaugh GP ’07, “why, I’m so consarned excited to go on being all racist and such, that I done nearly pooed myself! Well, that, and I don’t really have any control over my bowels at this point. But I definitely am rather excited. I’d say my near run-in with self-defecation is, like, 70% crazy excitement, 30% inability to control my bowels.”

As Paula Tenning ’06 put so eloquently, “after we were all stuffed to the gills with turkey, my whole family would gather round the fire, and listen as our Pop-Pop enthralled us with beautiful stories of how the Jews killed Christ, and how all of Hollywood is controlled by two guys named ‘Schwartzbaum’ and ‘Goldsilverbronze.’” Now all he does is sit like a bump on a log on that recliner of his, practically catatonic, telling anyone who’ll listen about how Asians can breathe underwater. That’s not even racist, that’s just silly.“