But I feared that my entry into the Twenty-Year Club would call attention to the fact that I've been writing the same jokes for several administrations now, and even though my references to Franklin Delano Roosevelt are pithy and insightful, the audience for them is, well, rotting. He was very reassuring. In a way, this was worse than turning 50 and getting an AARP card in the mail. Eventually, everybody turns 50. But there is free choice in working at the same place for 20 years.
Nobody has to become part of the furniture.
I remember when I first came here. I was young. I was ambitious. I was going to turn this newspaper on its ear. I couldn't be here 20 years already.