Birthdays Quote by Art Buchwald

Buchwald’s genius was making a punchline do the work of an op-ed. The setup - an “80th birthday” celebrated by Homeland Security - already smells like a post-9/11 America where bureaucracy doesn’t just manage risk, it performs it. The kicker, “I wanted to be 65 again, but they wouldn’t let me,” turns aging into an interrogation: the state doesn’t merely check your ID, it adjudicates your reality. You can’t joke your way back to youth because the system’s whole function is to refuse improvisation.

The line lands because it reverses the expected power dynamic. A birthday is supposed to be intimate, voluntary, maybe slightly embarrassing. Homeland Security is impersonal, mandatory, and humorless by design. By forcing them into the same sentence, Buchwald highlights how security culture colonizes ordinary life. Your milestone becomes their “procedure.” Celebration becomes compliance.

There’s also a sly nod to the indignities older people face in an era obsessed with verification: your body testifies against you, your documents become your only alibi. Buchwald’s fake request to be 65 is funny precisely because it echoes a real American fantasy - reinvention - then shows how the modern surveillance state flattens that fantasy into a database field.

Coming from a journalist who built a career on political satire, the intent isn’t nostalgia; it’s diagnosis. He’s not just mocking government overreach. He’s pointing out how quickly citizens adapt to it, even laughing along, because laughter is sometimes the last remaining form of permission.