If you’ve got good health and a decent pen­sion, being a retiree has a fair share of perks, not least of which is free­dom from the down­sides of going to work. As a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of those, I’ve been amus­ing myself by con­jur­ing up sym­pa­thy for peo­ple with jobs that make me won­der why any­one would want them in the first place.

The ever-impec­ca­ble and seem­ing­ly unflap­pable U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antho­ny Blinken tops the list. Offi­cial­ly the president’s senior for­eign pol­i­cy advis­er, he’s often referred to as “the U.S.’s top diplo­mat”. As such, he spends his work­ing days dogged­ly pur­su­ing a job that has been described as “the art of telling some­one to go to Hell in such a way that they look for­ward to the trip.”
In the case of his num­ber one pri­or­i­ty, Gaza, while he’s try­ing to get a deal that will be good for all con­cerned, it’s a fair bet that Hamas is the side Blinken wish­es would take the trip on offer, but can’t say so out loud. How­ev­er, at this stage it’s not unfair to won­der if he wouldn’t be hap­py to see the Israelis do the same.
When the nego­ti­at­ing is done for the day, unlike we retirees, Blinken can’t kick back with a dou­ble mar­ti­ni or a tum­bler of sin­gle malt and turn on Net­flix. He’s got to face a pha­lanx of cam­eras, dodge the details while sound­ing if not opti­mistic, at least not apoc­a­lyp­tic, and then have Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Bibi Netanyahu dis­miss what­ev­er he got on the table as “delu­sion­al”.
As a descrip­tion of Hamas’ ide­ol­o­gy and stat­ed aims, or a sec­tion of Netanyahu’s cab­i­net, the derog­a­tive is fair enough. Apply­ing it to what Blinken has to put up with and the agen­das he has to jug­gle and bal­ance and still make some actu­al progress for the ben­e­fit of every­one, how­ev­er, is well out of order.
I bet the Sec­re­tary would appre­ci­ate a tee shirt a friend once gave me. The front of it read: “STRESS – the con­fu­sion that occurs when the mind over­comes the body’s urge to choke the liv­ing s*** out of some a**h*** who des­per­ate­ly deserves it.”

                      SPARE A THOUGHT

If your job title is Pope, you’re the­o­ret­i­cal­ly not even sup­posed to hold that thought. Instead, you have to bless every­body and any­body who shows up out­side your place on Sun­day. Skip­ping it is out of the ques­tion, unless you want to spark fer­vent  spec­u­la­tion on your immi­nent demise or otherwise.
When I was cov­er­ing the Vat­i­can as part of my CBS beat, John Paul IIs’ vis­i­bly declin­ing health was a con­stant preoccupation.
Asked for what must have felt like the nth time how the Pope was doing, his Press sec­re­tary said he’d asked the Holy Father the same thing that very morn­ing, and JPII replied: “I don’t know, I haven’t read the news­pa­pers yet.”
As for retire­ment, Bene­dict XVI did set a prece­dent, but it meant liv­ing in a dis­used con­vent behind a cathe­dral sur­round­ed by walls.

His suc­ces­sor, Pope Fran­cis, once said what he missed most as Pope was being able to go out for a piz­za with friends. Con­sid­er­ing how many decent piz­za places are with­in walk­ing dis­tance of the Vat­i­can, that is def­i­nite­ly a downside.
Also, Popes only get to wear white robes. No fad­ed tee shirts, inap­pro­pri­ate bag­gy jeans and sneak­ers. Since more than occa­sion­al food stains on shirt fronts are arche­typ­al sym­bols of “old guys” like me…no thanks.
But in many ways it’s still an eas­i­er job than being pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.
True, there are perks any retiree would envy; no need to wor­ry about whether you for­got your wal­let or where your keys are, a chauf­feur dri­ven car that’s not an Uber, a heli­copter and First Class trav­el on your own plane, for example.
That said, the fact that in Joe Biden’s case there’s relent­less fret­ting about his age while ignor­ing his expe­ri­ence is some­thing to which a good num­ber we of “pen­sion­able age” can relate.
Even if that wasn’t an issue, if your work­place is called the “Oval Office”. what­ev­er you do, no mat­ter how well you do it or how use­ful it may be, at least half the peo­ple you work for are going to complain.
Hell, there’s even a cable news net­work whose sole pur­pose seems to be to find fault, to the point where even if you went on their prime time show and said they were the great­est news out­let in the world, they’d give you the low­est pos­si­ble work grade score.
Which reminds me why, try as I might in the inter­est of mak­ing my news view­ing “fair and bal­anced”, I have to change the chan­nel after two min­utes of watch­ing it.
Turn­ing off the world at will is well up on the retire­ment perk list.

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