The Hippest Time in History to be 48

I'm the same age as Barack Obama, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert, and expect to remain so for the immediate future. Never before has it been this hip to be 48 years old. When I was a kid, people like Jonathan Winters and Ed McMahon were crustily 48, and no one under 40 trusted anyone over 40*.

It makes it easier to be 48 when you're living at the hippest time ever to be that age. Of course, when Obama, Stewart, and Colbert start seeming crusty, I'll know the bump is over. Meanwhile, it feels like Indian summer, awaiting the first frost...

* - Only someone over 40 would phrase it that way. Before, I'd have written "none of us trusted anyone over 40". My sense of "us" has shifted. Gulp.

Hmm. Come to think of it....Winters and McMahon were overweight (in fact, every time I visualize a 48 year old from that era, there's a pot belly) while Obama, Stewart, and Colbert are not. Has dieting technology improved? Is it that thin 48 is cool but fat 48 is not? I don't know. Slender Carol Burnett, pretty much the poster child for 48 back in the day, was funny, but definitely not hip. The Amazing Kreskin, rail thin and pretty much born 48, was profoundly unhip.