Years ago, a friend of mine and I were thinking of starting a company called Time2Go. Here's the idea: Let's say you're a celebrity…most likely, a performer. This is primarily intended for the older celebrity but since we came up with this concept, I've noticed a number of younger ones who could have benefited from it.
You sign up with us, pay us a reasonable fee and then we monitor your public appearances and interviews and talk show guestings. If at some point, we feel that you're getting embarrassing and starting to undo your reputation, we come to you, tap you on the shoulder and tell you in a gentle but firm way, "It's time to go." In other words, get off the stage, retire, bow off gracefully. And you can set different levels of embarrassment. You can say to us, "Tap me when it gets as bad as Groucho near the end." Or "Tap me when I hit Milton Berle level." You could even specify how many shreds of dignity you wish to maintain, all the way from 10 (George Burns) down to 1 (George Jessel).
I think we can all name a lot of folks who could have used this service. Some of them are still alive and doing their best to obliterate all remnants of past greatness. It's like they're determined to leave the lasting image of that old, not-completely-coherent spotlight hog who can't do what he or she used to be able to do that made them famous in the first place.
Such a service would also serve politicians well. There are a lot of different opinions as to when Ted Kennedy should have retired but I don't think there's anyone who thinks he didn't stay around at least a term or three too long. And all this is leading up to me discussing Helen Thomas, the veteran reporter who was recently forced into retirement when she said something stupid about Israel. Even people who agree with her about Israel were uncomfy with how she said it…and I'm afraid that may be the enduring memory of what was once a darn good reporter.
I'm reminded of something once said about her by Dan Rather…another individual who could have used this service, by the way. He said — this is approximate — "Helen always drives the White House mad because she's so totally unpredictable. Before a press conference, Richard Nixon could and probably did have his aides draw up a list of one hundred possible questions he'd be asked and he'd be prepped to speak on any of them. Helen's question would not be on that list…ever. If anyone at the press conference asked something that totally stumped the man at the podium and left him looking uninformed, it would be Helen."
I love the concept of someone playing that role. After I heard Rather say that, I started following her and he was absolutely right. If you got a job as a White House Correspondent, wouldn't you be proud to have that reputation?
And she did it to every president. She was obviously Liberal but no one asked Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton rougher questions than Helen Thomas, who never lobbed a softball in her life. There were those who complained she was "biased" in her reporting but the complainers were always the kind of person whose idea of "fair" is to hammer the other guy and make their side look good. She gave it to everyone.
I'm not sure when she should have been tapped…obviously, well before her Israel comments. Maybe some time in the last decade or so when she wrote a highly-charged, read-by-almost-no-one political column. I agreed with much of what she wrote but found myself wishing we had a more effective, persuasive columnist out there saying those things. Actually, if she'd retired sooner and moved into Elder Stateswoman mode instead of trying to mix it up with the current rabble of pundits, someone might have listened to her now and then.
I am not suggesting that everyone should retire when they reach any certain age. I have nothing but admiration for folks who can go on doing what they do — acting, writing, lecturing, breakdancing, whatever — into their eighties and nineties and I intend to do my darnedest to be one of them. But a guy who pole-vaults for a living reaches a point where he has to accept that he can't do it anymore and he wisely, you can only hope, will reconfigure his life minus that activity. With something like writing or appearing before the masses, it's a little harder to tell when that time comes, which is why my friend and I dreamed up that service we never launched. Some people simply need to be told before they do what Helen Thomas did and end their careers, not with a triumphant march into retirement but with a shamed slink to the sidelines.