The icons of economic recession… tattoos?

I know there are still, and probably always will be, fuddy-duddies out there.  But I couldn’t help wondering whether the Washington Post was joking when they recently posted the op-ed Ink-Stained Wretchedness by Colonel Sanders-impersonator¹ Richard Cohen.  This is just a quick ‘WTF?’ entry… thanks to Aaron for pointing it out.

…the tattoos of today are not minor affairs or miniatures placed on the body where only an intimate or an internist would see them. Today’s are gargantuan, inevitably tacky, gauche and ugly. They bear little relationship to the skin that they’re on. They don’t represent an indelible experience or membership in some sort of group but an assertion that today’s whim will be tomorrow’s joy. After all, a tattoo cannot be easily removed. It takes a laser — and some cash.

Are we supposed to believe that Colonel—ahem—Mister Cohen gets to know the people wearing the art well enough to determine what their relationship to it truly is?  Is he an adept translator of Hebrew, Chinese, or Sanskrit (what Cohen calls “Hindi”) characters?  I suspect not.  And I sorely doubt that he gets to see the “minor affair” tattoos on the bodies of many “intimates” in person these days—so how does he know whether they are still popular? And let’s get this out of the way: watching porn does not provide our intrepid cultural anthropologist with a representative cross-section of today’s youth.

Is the Washington Post required to keep publishing this guy’s column?  Do newspapers have some kind of secret tenure system I’m not privy to?  For disclosure’s sake, I do have three tattoos, all of which are visual (at least in warm climate) to the general public.  And this fuddy-duddy did just call me a loser:

The tattoo is the battle flag of today in its war with tomorrow. It is carried by sure losers.

But, in his very next sentence, he continues:

About 40 percent of younger Americans (26 to 40) have tattoos.

What a grim vision of the future Mr. Cohen has.  I hope he can take some comfort in the likelihood that he probably won’t be around to witness much more of it.

¹ I think Brooks Wackerman does a better job.