Woody Allen, It's Time To Go

Woody Allen

By now a whole generation of young people wonders what middle-aged people are talking about when they praise Woody Allen. For them Allen, 75, is not the man behind Annie Hall or Manhattan, but instead the numbingly prolific, neurotic old Jewish man who casts himself in his own dreadful movies in which women like Julia Roberts get paid to kiss him. Watch their lips meet and tell me it's not more effective than Ipecac. In 2009's Whatever Works, Larry David is a surrogate for Allen as the unappealing, aging misanthrope who is the object of desire of a lovely, young women. Slate's Dana Stevens said it was a "desiccated and barely recognizable skeleton" of Annie Hall. This movie made her "reassess his entire oeuvre. … Did Allen always treat his leading ladies with such barely disguised scorn? Were the nostalgia-infused happy endings of better Allen films (Radio Days, Hannah and Her Sisters) in fact as mawkish and pandering as the last scene of this one?"
CREDIT: Photo by Mark Von Holden/WireImage
Queen Elizabeth
OK, she believes, like the Pope, that the length of her tenure is a matter of divine intervention. Elizabeth is 84, and her mother lived to be 101, so yet another generation could pass before she passes on the crown. Prince Charles might be too wizened (or too dead) to ever ascend to the throne. Prince William could be far into middle age before he gets his shot. Surely one perk of being queen is that it gives you the power to decide that after an almost 60-year reign, with its endless tight little hand waves, it's time to chuck it and spend more time on the royal yacht docked off the beach in Bermuda.
Photo by Paul Grover-WPA Pool/Getty Images
Richard Lugar
The six-term Republican senator from Indiana has announced he will run for a seventh term in 2012 when he is 80. Lugar is widely hailed as a decent, responsible man who has worked hard on his concern of reducing the world's biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. So why tell him that enough is enough? Because no 80-year-old should seek a job with a six-year term! Let's say Lugar remains clear-headed through 2018—around 40 percent of all 85-year-olds are diagnosed with Alzheimer's and other dementias.* It's still arrogant to feel only you can occupy a senate seat for four decades. Lugar's life's work is about making the world safer for the next generation, so he should let another generation of Indiana politicians have a chance to serve.
Correction, Jan. 25, 2011: This slide originally said that 40 percent of all 85-year-olds have Alzheimer's and failed to note that other forms of dementia are included in that statistic.
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Nancy Pelosi
Someone needs to tell Pelosi, 70, that defeat is not victory, and that when you lose a leadership position because of a tidal wave of voter dissatisfaction, it's actually not a mandate that people want more of you.
Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Time Inc.
Sumner Redstone
Redstone isn't just refusing to retire; he's making the ultimate refusal: "The people who fear dying are people who are going to die. I'm not going to die. I'm going to live forever." The orange-haired, 87-year-old media mogul (he and his family are majority owners of CBS and Paramount Pictures, among other holdings) appears not to be joking. He's gotten rid of a series of heirs apparent, seemingly thinking if there isn't one, than there will never be a need for one. He has said he has no interest in his legacy, because "Legacies are for dead people."
Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
James Levine

It's terrible to have your mind and talents intact while having a body that no longer can handle the demands of your career. Levine, 67, music director of both the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has had a medical textbook's worth of health problems for years: sciatica, tremors, a herniated disc, a kidney malignancy. This has resulted in the cancelation of blocks of performances. Last year, the New York Timesclassical music critic, Anthony Tommasini, wrote, "Part of the job of being a music director at an orchestra or an opera house involves simply being there: that is, being fit and focused enough to provide stability, foster growth and, most essential, bring artistic plans to fruition." There is plenty for Levine to still do, but first he has to put away the lead baton.

CREDIT: Photo by MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP/Getty Images
Andy Rooney
When he started on 60 Minutes I had just graduated from college, and he was already an old curmudgeon. Now I get weekly solicitations from AARP, and Rooney, 92, is still complaining. Generations of Saturday Night Live comedians have parodied him and moved on: He's been at it so long that he's inadvertently sending up their send-ups. Ominously for people at CBS, Rooney suggests he'll stop when they find him in rigor mortis. I was going to suggest that elderly people who refuse to leave the limelight should have the courtesy to clip their eyebrows, but Dana Carvey beat me to it.
Photo by Scott Wintrow/Getty Images
Evander Holyfield
The heavyweight boxing champion, 48, had a bout this weekend that was declared a no-contest because of a cut over Holyfield's eye. Another is scheduled for March. Evander, please, go visit Muhammad Ali to see what getting your brains bashed in for a living does. Then withdraw.
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Diane Rehm
Rehm, 74, is the host of a nationally broadcast, eponymous NPR show. It's an admirable production: For two hours each morning she has a serious conversation about serious issues. Rehm's career is a testament to doggedness; she lacks a sense of humor or a supple mind. For more than a decade she has dealt with a debilitating voice condition, spasmodic dysphonia, which would have derailed most radio careers. In 2009, she marked the 30^th anniversary of her show, and it's unfortunate she didn't take that opportunity to allow one of her livelier substitute hosts a permanent place at the microphone. But Rehm, like Andy Rooney, is one of those people who has said that she'll only go out feet first.
Dick Clark
Perhaps Regis Philbin tuned into Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve and vowed he wouldn't let this happen to him. Clark, 81, became famous as the host of American Bandstand in the 1950s. Then for decades he was the preternaturally youthful host and producer of mediocre television shows. In 2004, Clark had a stroke that seriously affected his speech. There is no shame in illness and disability, and resuming one's life after a stroke is valiant. However, there are implicit agreements between entertainers and their audience, and one is that the entertainer will leave the stage before he makes his audience turn away in sorrow. Instead Clark thinks he is the face of New Year's Eve, so each year millions hold their breath hoping he makes it through the countdown.

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for ATI
Hugh Hefner
The founder of the Playboy empire is 84 and recently engaged. Please, Hef, go away, so we don't have any more images in our heads of you having sex.
Photo by Jim Ross/Getty Images
Silvio Berlusconi
The Italian prime minister, 74, is being investigated by authorities for allegations of having sex with a minor. See Hefner, Hugh.
Photo by JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images
Verlyn Klinkenborg
If you turn to the editorial page of the New York Times for its position on the overthrow of the president of Tunisia and you learn instead that the sun rose in the east, you're reading Klinkenborg, 58. Slate's Jody Rosen* summed him up: "Klinkenborg's columns are literary minstrel routines, starring the writer as an idiot savant—a bumpkin-seer who perceives the marvelous in the pedestrian and pivots to 'epiphanies' that elude those of us who haven't spent years watching sunlight dapple the snouts of woodchucks." The sun should set in the west on his column.
*Correction, Jan. 26, 2011: This caption originally misattributed the commentary on Klinkenborg to Nathan Heller.
Hemera/Thinkstock.
Justin Bieber
Every beautiful young person, especially one who inspires hordes of shrieking fans, eventually has to face the mirror and realize age strikes us all. The 16-year-old singer should say farewell before the cruelty of puberty turns him into a man.
Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images