When I hit age 40 in 1982, two men, separately, sat me down and gave me advice.

One was my doctor brother, the other was my friend, the Republican Chief Counsel for Republicans on a House Committee my boss sat on.

How many men turning 40 do you know who older men would sit down with and give advice to on their fortieth birthday?

They did it because they knew I would LISTEN.

The House Counsel said to me, “Bob, you are a fighter, and I admire that. But remember, everybody understands and sympathizes with an Angry Young Man, but nobody has any respect for an Angry Middle Aged Man.”

I modified my behavior accordingly.

Andrew Young was one of the up-and-coming Angry Young Black Men of the 1960s. But he never got beyond a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. His hair is white, his face is lined, and he is STILL The Angry Young Black Man.

Charlie Rangel is just as radical as Young, but he laughs all the time. Young’s face would crack if he smiled. He is always Outraged. And he is going nowhere.

Rangel is moving from black spokesman to national leadership in the Democratic Party. Democrats want him to stay back. Liberals love black folks, but they want them to stay in their place.

Al Sharpton is as radical as you can get. But he laughs and jokes between his bursts of anger and calls to revolution.

Whites are exactly the same way. Nobody has any use for the white haired old men who still think they’re Hippies and Yippies from the 1960s.

If you’re going to get ahead, you damned well learn to laugh as well as show your righteous resentment.

A black reader wrote me bitching about special subsidies and tax breaks for big corporations.

This was my reply:

Here is the entire story of hard, cold politics, from one who has been on the “giving” end of government money:

1) Big corporations have full-time lobbies and work politics and give money in the right places.
2) The average person just gets bored when we try to get them to defend their interests.

And until that changes, the guys who are in there after the money will get it, and the public will get screwed.

Politics ain’t charity, it’s a life and death battle.

It’s exactly like blacks. As long as they depend on Massah Kennedy and Massah Bill Clinton to take care of them, they will be ignored.

Politics is as real as you get. If you take bullshit and frantic denunciations of the Confederate flag, the real world will give you that instead of real money and real power every time.

The same rules holds when it comes to the public versus big business or big liberal lobbies.

As long as the biggest thing on your mind is whether a politician remembers your name or has a nice image, that is all you will get.

“Democracy is a system of government where people get what they deserve.”