No one is to blame for COVID-19. Maybe the bat in Wuhan that, supposedly, started it all but not, as some have claimed, George Soros or Asian operatives who are hell-bent on destroying America.

Yet many in this country are to blame for the spread of the disease, both in Washington D.C., on the air, and in communities nationwide. Even Forrest Gump understood that "stupid is as stupid does," but too many Americans, faced with the inconvenience created by a global pandemic, see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear.

America hasn't faced a common enemy since the '40s. Eighty years ago, we sacrificed, rationed, lent a hand to our neighbors, and got through it. Now, after decades of nearly uninterrupted prosperity, an unflattering self-preservational selfishness rapidly revealed itself once people started thinking they were vulnerable.

People flocked to markets in droves (ignorning social distancing entirely) to stock up on food -- not enough to see them through two weeks of self-quarantine but to hold them for months. The implication is that no one will forgo the oversized portions that have made the majority of the country obese. And God forbid that anyone should miss a meal.

The good and very bad news is that, in some towns, the lines outside of grocery stores were shorter than the lines in front of gun shops. Gotta keep marauders away from all those rolls of toilet paper.

It makes one wonder. Why would anybody need that much TP? Perhaps Americans really are full of....

I tried to buy a few things at the market today. Few is the relevant word.

That’s because the shelves in the stores that I managed to enter — two of the four had cars queued in the parking lot waiting for space, so I couldn’t go in — were almost totally bare. It was a scene out of Life magazine at the height of the Cold War, showing rows of empty shelves in stores in Moscow.

The pandemic panic has its grips on the country. Despite the official advice to have two weeks of essentials — to tide you over if you have to self-quarantine — this looked as if everyone expected the zombie apocalypse and needed to stock up for months, if not longer.

If there’s a message in this, it isn’t subtle. It’s “as long as I get mine, who gives a damn if you get yours.” It might be self-preservational, but it’s selfish, plain and simple.

Things in people’s baskets overflowed. It wasn’t just food and supplies to tide them over. It was food and supplies to ensure they wouldn’t give up a thing — not the size of their portions or a meal or the volume of hand sanitizer that they planned to slather on.

Sacrifice to aid the common good seems as alien as Washington’s embrace of reality. If Americans had been this way in 1941, it’s possible that our common language now would be German.

With so many Americans likely to suffer as jobs disappear and supplies of essential goods drop with them, the attitude of the shoppers I encountered today is contemptible. It was, also, a little dimwitted: anyone afraid of infection should not be mingling in crowds. You don’t know where they’ve been.

Humans trace their lineage to a site in Tanzania where, millions of years ago, the first hominids appeared in the Olduvai Gorge.

My own history is an infinitessimal portion of that timeline, but the business world seems to think that I am just as old as any of the Leakeys’ fossils.

According to my physician, the tests from my annual physical this year suggest that I’m about 23… and an elite athlete. Those tests aren’t wrong. They’re just not right. Not in absolute, calendar terms.

The gap years
Yet, as far as hiring managers are concerned, I’m C.U. — Chronologically Undesirable. Of course, before they see me, they adore me. In written correspondence, proposals sent online, and phone conversations, I’m exactly what they’re looking for. I understand their business inside out, some have claimed, and they need to take advantage of my insights right away.

As soon as I walk in the office, however, or they look me up online and see a photograph, they’ve suddenly “decided to go in another direction” (I’ve heard southwest is nice) or “put the position on hold” (until they find somebody younger) or “feel that the chemistry wouldn’t be right” (which might make sense if the business made drugs). No one dares to say what they mean: “You’re old.”

That fact can’t be denied. But that doesn’t mean I’m dead or out of touch with current trends or technologies. As J. M. Barrie wrote, “I’m not young enough to know everything,” but my younger peers (or non-peers, in their estimation) feel that they do. But they don’t.

The knowledge gap
For instance…. In advertising, the lust for youth seems never ending. Older creatives either open their own shops or get forced out. They’re seen as incapable of appealing to families, kids, and making products that they use appear essential. However, those same young writers and designers and account execs are given assignments for Depends and geriatric pharmaceuticals and retirement plans and other products used by people over 50.

Those accounts involve products and services that younger people haven’t ever used and probably won’t for decades. The over-50 folk, though, have raised families, put kids through college, paid for weddings, taken everybody on vacations in the same kinds of cars, eaten in the same types of restaurants, bought the same food, and now may have grandchildren who keep them in touch with the latest in fashion, fears, jargon, sports, and what they like and hate the most in school.

A gaping discrepancy
So who really has the background and resources to handle current businessplace needs? Who’s really in favor diversity when different genders and races are acceptable but people in different age groups are not? Who’s got problems managing people when those people are older? Who’s afraid of hiring people who might (just perhaps) be smarter than they are when the whole skill of management is finding people who do what they do better than you do what they do… and then letting them do it?

Yeah, there’s a chasm. An older guy gorge. And when today’s young people, in a world of robotics and AI, find they’re in it, I’ll be glad that I won’t be around to hear them complain.

Early voting is a wonderful bad idea. The convenience is unmistakable, but the surprises can be very alarming.

For the first time, early voting was an option in The Golden State. Calfornians had just over a week, including weekends, to find a “station” and cast their ballots, and I was among them. I left feeling positive — about the process and my votes — and went home full of 21st Century, modernist pride. Then I heard.

My candidate dropped out of the race. What? On the eve of Super Tuesday? Before the big numbers came in? I was horrified. My vote had been wasted (for that office, at least). And voting doesn’t let you have do-overs.

The best laid plans
In a sense, I felt betrayed. My choice wasn’t someone who’d been hanging by a funding thread for weeks. Not someone who ignored the inevitable. My candidate had strengthened every week of the campaign, had earned the respect of every pundit, and was poised to make a difference. I thought.

Politics has always been an endless stream of negotiated/compromised agreements. Or it was until Newt Gingrich was the Speaker of the House. His take-no-prisoners approach was both intransigent and frequently insulting to opponents. He was the perfect precursor for the current Name Caller in Chief, and he served to foreshadow the Tea Party mantra of no compromise.

His successor in both substance and style is Kentucky’s senior senator, a man with no neck; his flesh goes directly from his chin to his chest in uninterrupted wattle. He has raised legislative obstruction to the status of immovable object, all in service to the Incredible Bulk who sits behind the Resolute Desk. The two of them, aided and abetted by others in their party, made Republican early voting an extinction event — by eliminating primaries in states that might run a Republican challenger to The Don, they made certain that their Chosen One would face no opposition. At least, not from inside. God only knows what they’re planning to do from outside.

A cautionary tale
But for Democrats, at least this time around, I have a humble suggestion: don’t cast your vote until you know who’s in the running: unlike at the racetrack, you do not get your bet back when your candidate is scratched.

The only people who go to see museum exteriors are architects hired by other museums - museums that want to have something as distinctive (or galling) to brag about. In the commonest vernacular, it's a dick thing.

Yet regular people who go to museums want to see what's inside. That's the whole point. And the less there is, the more one can quote Gertrude Stein and say, "There is no 'there' there." Which is what's likely to happen at LACMA if the current plans are followed. Put simply, that's a very bad idea.

The Marquis Façade
For years now, every city has wanted to have its own Gehry. How unfortunate. His buildings don't exist to be functional, just unmistakably his. It's the ego of an architect who thinks that he's a sculptor (which proves that delusion can sometimes find patrons among the wealthy who have much, much more money than judgment or taste). The LACMA blob is director Michael Govan's attempt to declare he's independent: he doesn't want another awkward, jaggy Gehry monsterpiece; he wants his own amoeba that will cover Wilshire Boulevard (if that's still in the plans) like an oozing infection.

It's what's inside that counts
Angelenos shouldn't stand for it. And the Board of Supervisors should be forced to take Art History or Art Appreciation or simply Economics 101 to realize how much is being squandered: the money to construct the formless fortress of squalitude and the loss of so much space to show the treasures in the LACMA collection (which is already a mere fraction of its overall holdings).

The Getty might be somewhat monolithic, but it's private. The richest museum on earth can do whatever it wants with its assets. But it keeps things moving constantly to make the most of gallery wall space. That won't be the case with the Zumthor thing.

Exhibits would have to change daily, and visitors would have to bring cots to sleep inside the museum for a month to see a fraction of what LACMA possesses. (And somebody can claim that all those people are an art installation.)

So leave the damn museum alone, and spend all those millions on doing what museums always claim that they can't afford to do: buy more art.

Politics has no empty closets. There's a skeleton inside every one.

Anyone who opens the door to an opponent's has to know that any contents of their own will be revealed in due course. The differences exist in whether what's discovered is acknowledged and atoned for and then sent to its grave; or defended, though the ethics of society evolved.

The former can press on. The latter will turn quickly to dust.

Yet every campaign in every nation seems to think that one will not beget the other — that dragging out secrets will not have a correlative effect. Such thinking shows what’s either feeblemindedness or the rampant self-delusionment of ego-driven idiocy. Neither is good.

Yet voters seem immune to revelations that besmirch their chosen candidate. At least, they do these days. A change of heart or mind is seen as weakness. That is totally and rationally wrong.

The ability to face up to facts and apply them to prior conclusions is a sign of intelligent thought. And the willingness to acknowledge that the new information is persuasive (and verifiable) enough to reach a different opinion takes strength.

It’s not the courage of one’s convictions that matters. It’s the ability to face up to the past. And then change.

Over the past two years, the CEO Confidence Index has had more ups and downs than a speeding roller coaster at a theme park. When it’s been up, it’s been in areas like healthcare and technology. Yet it’s been down just as far in manufacturing and retail.

The discomfort has a lot to do with Washington, in good ways and bad. The industries that think the future’s rosy all have lobbyists with bottomless pockets of cash. The less optimistic point to tariffs that they (not the Chinese) have to pay and the lack of consistent direction from the capital. If you side with the United States Chamber of Commerce, you probably want even more D.C. decisions that will make the rich richer. If you lean to the middle and a bit to the left, you probably believe the fix is in against the average American citizen.

Yet to lean toward what’s good for executives who earn the kind of salaries that Midas would envy is to ignore a basic fact: the prosperity of employees is what makes the economy hum. Pay them less, and they have less to spend. Cut back on healthcare, and the savings will vanish through sick days and lost productivity. Eliminate training, and the workforce will lose out to Asia. Again.

The great giveaway
After all, China didn’t steal U.S. jobs. American companies gave them away. Repeatedly. Along with intellectual property and a lack of access to domestic Chinese markets. If we hadn’t accepted those terms then, we might be in a different situation now — a situation that has more trading power and leverage.

Yet U.S. business leaders are myopic in the most convenient ways. They see as far as the next quarterly report, the impact on the price of shares, and the margin of profit. If they see further forward, it’s only toward their bonus at the end of the year and how they compare with the rest of the plutocrats controlling the levers of Wall Street prosperity. And it is Wall Street prosperity, not the nation’s.

The means affect the averages
According to a Gallup Poll, only 55% of Americans own stock, and that includes passive investments through 401(k) plans and IRAs and mutual funds. But the richest 1% holds one half of all stock.

When the stock market rises and falls, the wealthiest will feel the dollar value effects most of all, of course, but not in ways the middle class — the buying class — does. When billionaires experience declines like the one that occurred in 2008, they go from a billion to merely 700 million. When that happens to a person in the middle class, it can mean that they won’t have the assets to qualify to get a loan to buy a car or mortgage a house.

When companies claim that a rise in the minimum wage will adversely affect their viability (while maintaining a CEO’s salary, stock options, and bonuses), the implication is that they don’t want employees as customers. That contradicts the basics of supply and demand. When demand declines (because people can’t afford to buy products), supply has to shrink to sustain profit margins.

But reductions in production lead to layoffs, and layoffs completely eliminate the wages that workers rely on to buy things. Like cars. And all of the businesses down the line in the supply chain lay off people, as well. So there’s even less cash in the marketplace.

How giving and getting work best
Henry Ford understood that, by paying his workers enough to buy the Fords they produced, it was a win for both the firm and its workforce. CEOs nowadays seem to overlook that concept. So does half the Senate.

So go ahead and raise the banner high for lower taxes that provide the greatest benefits for companies and wealthy individuals. Don’t make it clear that all those tariffs are, ultimately, paid by Americans when they show up in the higher cost of goods. And do more than declare that a company’s stakeholders’ needs are important while the majority in Washington works hard to undermine those stakeholders’ best interests.

In 2020, inaction, like silence, is sure to lead to unintended consequences.

Halfway between the Super Bowl and the Oscars, I figured out why I watch neither.

I used to be merely asportual — completely uninterested in watching sports on TV. They strike me as excuses to not play the game (any game) and, God forbid, remain or get in shape. After all, people are not referred to as couch forwards or sofa fielders. They’re potatoes. I’m not grounded enough to be one of them. Not for ball games and definitely not for awards shows.

The Oscars and Emmys and Grammys and Golden Globes and SAG Awards and CMAs and People’s Choice and several other wastes of time have nothing to do with entertainment. Maybe the Tonys do, since Broadway actually knows how to put on a show. The rest of them? Uh-uh.

For a limited time only
What they are at their core are hours-long ads. They’re ads for the winners, and the winners spawn banner and print ads the next day touting just what was won and that you must come and see it (at a theater or online) or hear it (when you add it to your playlist or purchase and download a song).

If you’re a studio or TV or music executive, the only thing you care about is “did my movie/series/album win” because that translates into revenue. If you’re an actor or singer or arranger or mixer or costume designer or makeup artist or set decorator…, the only thing that matters is how you can parlay a win into work. You don’t need to listen to bad jokes for more than three hours.

But, as the saying goes, there’s more. Awards shows themselves are window dressing for ads — for cars, insurance, cruises, drugs, shampoos, fast food, and everything else that you don’t really need. And, yes, I’m not the target demographic for most consumer packaged goods or processed foods or cruises (where I’m trapped for weeks with people I would never spend time with on land) or pharmaceuticals that viewers neither need nor understand. That means that my viewpoint is skewed. I admit that.

Ya gotta spend money to make money
However, network executives like shows that will let them sell airtime to run all those ads, so they’re in it for the money, as well. That’s normal. All of it is in America. But the practice is way past its use-by date.

Technology exists to let me see ads just for products I care about, but no one will invest in it. The ROI’s too far in the future. And if that targeting isn’t available, the shows must be long enough to get in all the ads from all the companies that want to reach the viewers of those shows. (Whew!) And all those shows employ lots of people. And the money those people earn can buy lots of tickets to movies or online subscriptions for streaming or good seats for concerts or just a nice dinner or two. And all of those products and services employ and pay others who go out and buy the same stuff.

That’s how the economy keeps going. I get that. But until there’s any real entertainment in these show biz backpatteries, I’ll wait until the show’s off the air and get the names of the winners in three seconds online. And if there was really something that was truly worth seeing, that will be online, too, in the highlights reel.

I may be past my own prime, but the time hasn’t come when I have all those hours to waste.

No one likes insurance companies. It’s easy to understand why.

The foremost reason (probably) is that their primary objective is so obvious: don’t pay. They’d actually prefer it if you never filed a claim. Or even thought about filing a claim. That would take their minds off making money on your money — the premiums you pay — which is actually the business they’re in: investing other people’s money to make money for themselves.

That’s why, when you don’t pay your premium on time, they either charge you a late fee (a penalty) or, if you’re in a risky area, just cancel your policy outright (after they’ve had time to realize that, someday, you might actually file a claim and expect to be paid). That’s an even bigger penalty, and it’s usually for doing nothing wrong… or anything at all.

But it’s the rules that seem to percolate down to the phone folks that thoroughly counteract rational thought. Here’s an example.

Sense and insensibility
My auto insurance “carrier” (a term that makes no sense at all) was actually very responsive when my own car was murdered by a kamikaze Kia. They “negotiated” with me over the “fair market value” and actually accepted my evidence that, locally at least, my car was worth lots more than they first wanted to pay. Then things got difficult.

Someone down the line said I couldn’t put the title of the car in a trust. They insisted that, in order to insure the vehicle, it had to be registered to an individual; two if my spouse would be driving it, as well.

I pointed out that they’d just sent a check — made payable to the trust — for the car that was totaled. I emphasized that they’d insured all of our cars that have been registered in the trust since the trust was established back in 1993. They claimed they hadn’t noticed. Or that rules have changed. Or that state law didn’t matter.

Law and logic don’t work
My wife has worked in estate law for decades, and she knew they were wrong. She knew that the legal protections that trusts can provide were established for very reasons. They refused to acknowledge those facts. So I said that, before any deadlines for terminating coverage arrived (which they said they’d do if the registration wasn’t changed), I wanted the point man for this perverse perspective to get an official opinion from the company’s corporate counsel. I heard nothing.

So, after checking with my own counsel, I took the permanent registration document to the DMV and changed the registration from the trust alone to my wife and myself and the trust. It didn’t offer quite the same legal advantages, but it was better than nothing. That was on a Monday.

Going in reverse
Two days later, on Wednesday, I got a call from the insurance firm’s point man. After fumbling for just the right words, he said, “I finally heard began back from our Legal Department, and they said that… you’re right. You can put the car in your trust.” There was a very long pause. “Mr. Altschuler?” the point man said. “Yes,” I replied, “I’m still here… and wondering how I can hurt someone over the phone.”

I explained that I’d already taken the vehicle out of the trust. He apologized. I told him that it took more than two hours. He said he was sorry. I pointed out I’d had to pay a fee to make the change, and he asked me to hold while he checked something.

When he came back, he said the company would gladly reimburse me. “And for the change back into the trust?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, without checking this time.

Time + Money = Inconvenience
Of course, now I need to make another trip to the DMV, but the process should go faster this time… mostly. When I asked about replacing the state-issued license plates with the personalized plates I’ve had for decades, I learned about another insurance snafu.

When I submitted the accident report to the insurance firm, there was a check box to indicate the plates had been retained by the owner. I checked that (and I have a copy of the form to prove I did). But they said the plates were destroyed. That means that the DMV has to reactivate the plates and, the staffer wasn’t sure, there may be a fee for that, too.

Birthdays are unpleasant. Ask any woman in labor. Or any child in Jungian therapy who claims to remember being born. It’s not for the claustrophobic.

Birthdates are slightly different. When people are young, their date of birth is celebrated because, well… the children are still alive and haven’t been taken by childhood or otherwise dreadful diseases. 

Later, birthdays have a singular purpose — the acquisition of “stuff.” Most of it contributes to brain rot or, these days, a decline in face-to-face social skills. The percentage of children between 8 and 18 who asks for anything practical and instructive is in the single digits… and that’s aiming high.

All those digitoys then contribute to traffic congestion. Nothing has slowed down the flow of traffic (especially in getting away from stop lights) or endangered other drivers (while driving) than the smartphone. Whatever happened to “keep your mind on your driving, keep your hand on the wheel, keep your snoopy eyes on the road ahead”? At least it’s cut down on back seat sex — no one can pay attention long enough because they have to check their phones every 32 seconds.

The turning point that isn't
By the time people arrive at 16 and should yearn for the call of the open road, calling, “Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?” today’s teens would rather get an iPhone 11… and an Uber. That’s both dependentus eternus and lacking in the courage to face their fellow texters on the road. They’ll be lucky if they leave home by 40 at that rate.

After 21, birthdays really make no sense; except for those who think that it’s the perfect excuse to get drunk and believe that inebriety makes them more attractive. In other words, they're among the delusionals. 

By 30, the you’re-getting-old-cards begin, and that’s depressing. It’s not the start of you’re-starting-to-show-signs-of-getting-wisdom cards. No. It’s the over-the-hill, out-of-touch, why-aren’t-you-married-yet (from mom), and at-least-you’re-not-40 cards. In other words, the givers are probably far less mature than the birthday boy or girl.

Skip ahead to 40. Now you really don’t need to have a reason to celebrate if celebrating (still) involves cake or something similar. At 40, you don’t have to eat that food. You simply have to smear it on your hips, since that’s where it’s ending up anyway.

Joining a club you don't want to
Reaching 50 is traumatic. It’s the one where you get that little card in the mail to warn you of the AARPvark (which makes you a part of the cohort of people with chronic diseases, unwarranted obesity, and a willingness to go on Caribbean cruises). So, instead of going out, most people should consider staying in so they won’t be embarrassed when a mariachi band surrounds their table singing “Happy Birthday” in a language they don’t understand.

At 60, retirement used to be in sight. Now, if you’re still working, you definitely don’t want to let anyone at work know your age. That’s the fastest route to getting an early retirement package. Or a layoff only three days before you get vested (if you still have a vest that can fit you). And if you’re in a youth-skewing industry like film, TV, advertising, software, or porn films, you’ve already spent 20 years out of work. But you don’t pay a mortgage when you live in a tent. On a sidewalk in downtown LA.

Those of us who make it to 70 need others to remind us of our age. We can’t remember on our own, and it doesn’t help when doctors say, “It’s normal for your age” when you don’t know what age they're referring to. Children and grandchildren might call with good wishes (or reluctant ones), but those who invite you to go out for dinner that’s high in cholesterol and dessert that puts you into diabetic shock are hoping that tomorrow they’ll be going to the reading of the will. Not everybody knows that.

Over and out
After that, why bother with birthdays? No one wants to hire you (and hasn’t since the day you turned 40) because you’re no longer young enough to know everything. And knowing that you know more than the people who know everything means that they know that you know, and that’s why they don’t want you around. Y’know?

So I gave up on birthdays a long time ago. Unfortunately, my family has not. So once a year, I act as if I’m happy that I’m more than ten years older than my father when he died. And get reminded that I’m young at heart (despite being wholly decrepit at back) and ambulatory (which makes me want a siren for my car) and, according to my lab tests, 23. But I’m not. And I don’t want to be.

I’ve reached my ambition, which is to be an old curmudgeon. When I announced that to a friend when I was still in my twenties, though, she asked, “What will be different then from now?” I’ll be older, I told her. And so I am… every day. And nobody celebrates that. But anyone who says, “Happy Monday,” should be either put in therapy or shot.

My mother’s pronouncement is beginning to make sense: “Do not call me on my birthday and wish me happy birthday. Call me on your birthday and thank me for having you.”