By Mary Sanchez, Mcclatchy Newspapers
Oh, what Betty White can teach us all.
Listen up. The self-effacing funny woman who wowed a record 12 million viewers on Saturday Night Live is less a throwback to the past than a portent of the future.
As the saying goes, if you're not aging, you're no longer living. And if current demographic trends hold, it won't be long before older Americans outnumber youngsters. From that perspective, the fascination with White isn't as puzzling as it is telling.
Yet she'd barely finished her monologue when all sorts of folks began weighing in, trying to decipher her 88-year-old aura. Was her popularity simply due to people "giving the old lady a pass"? Did she rack up the highest ratings in years for SNL because of her bawdy sexual quips?
