PENSIONER PORN, HOW TO BREED FRUIT FLIES, & WYNTKA: THE NEW MARY POPPINS PRESS

Hurrah! Huzzah! Break out the bubbly, sound the trumpets, beat the drums for some incredible breaking news.: OLD FOLKS HAVE SEX!

Even more mind-blowing: THEY, AND YOU, MUST HAVE MORE SEX! MORE! AND BETTER!!

These bell-ringing proclamations come to us courtesy of the planet's most reliable news source, the New York Times.

What? You're of the age, but you didn't get your invite to the orgasmic oldsters' party?

Well, get out there, grampsters and gramsters. The NYT is here to see that you gird your loins, stock up on sex toys, and get with the orgy.

In a word: Buy what they're selling.

This is the new Mary Poppins press: Our charismatic but ironwilled newspaper nanny, coating the prescribed meds in spoonfuls of addictive prose.

The byword is: What You Need To Know About. WYNTKA.

It's the new phrase, across all modern media. Media unfettered by any ancient semblance of impartiality or neutrality. Unabashed instructors they are, now: influencers, rule-makers, discipliners, finger-waggers, hawkers. The must-be-obeyed Mary Poppins media.

Telling you What You Need To Know About ... WYNTKA ...everything.

And think about. They'll do the thinking. You do the buying.

Of course, the press was never impartial, although it pretended to be. Headlines, story choices, story lines parading as neutral reportage, were always selected to guide and shape thinking.

But today's media, even - no, especially - our icons of journalism, have finally, fully come out of the closet to embrace -- nay, celebrate -- their true roles. Not to report news, not even feign objectivity or neutrality, but openly to guide us, shape us, groom us: to follow. To swallow: What to think, what to require, where to focus, what to uncritically buy.

Quite apart from the phrase itself, with its self-congratulatory message of superiority, which now features in most newspapers, What-You-Need-to-Know-About underlies most of what you read,

The NYT launched the phrase. And of all the so-called centrist papers that parrot it, NYT may be the one making it work most seamlessly and effectively.

There's the openly profit-making WYNTKA section like Wirecutter, which gets a kickback for your purchase of recommended products -- the new-journalism heist from non-profit Consumer Reports.

But the real selling begins with the editorial product: the press-prescribed point of view, based on the power sector represented -- laying out each day's designated thought-shapers: Today's Issues, Concerns, Menaces, and Solutions.

All, so much more readable, than were the strict old formats. Today, "news" stories rarely hew to the old lede format once taught in every style book: Set forth dispassionately the who/what/where/when.

Now, they all read like features, or short stories. Anecdotal lead paragraphs, the personal kicking off the whole; a mood, a message tone, established for you from the start, before you even have a chance to think it through for yourself.

Ostensibly for fun, the NYT throws in its seemingly egregious weekly "Tip" feature -- How to Race Pigeons, or How to Breed Fruit Flies.

But even these have WYNTKA lessons. As the editors point out, "How to Breed Fruit Flies instructs a reader how to do just that, but its underlying message is about appreciating the creatures we see as pests. How to Swan Dive tackles aerodynamics as well as how to face fear and visualize success."

All that, in a maximum 400 words.

But the recent Sunday magazine's megafeature on senior sex hit new heights in WYNTKA-ing.

Here are heaping ladles of pensioner porn, to help swallow a bulging shopping bag of pulsating products.

"Hands. Neck. Armpits. These are the places where skin reveals its age. And this week’s New York Times Magazine shows a lot of skin," promise the editors.

And so we do: close-ups of sweaty patches of ever so slightly flabby fool-arounders.

And lots of sweaty detail.

You have David and Anne who go at it mornings, after coffee and fruit and a Viagra, using her old Prelude vibrator which David has rewired over the years, or one of the others in their collection. Or evenings, but before big dinners. "I'm putting the rice in the slow cooker" is their signal to get naked.

You have the guy who gave his wife a new air-driven vibrator for Christmas. "A model husband," sighs one commenter.

You have Roslyn, 95, who can't hear or see very well, but can still find the switch to her vibrator, and was still attending her daughter's -- yes, her daughter's -- "sexuality retreat" at 92.

You have a nursing home where staff are trained to "tiptoe out and quietly pull the door closed" if they happen upon residents getting it on. But they must also be available to recharge vibrators and pick up residents' Viagra prescriptions.

You have Patrick, who got his anti-anal-sex partner's permission to seek other more posterior-oriented playboys, without breaking up their happy home.

And the septuagenarian who allowed her partner to find another gal to do what she didn't like to, while he continued to do her the way she did like.

There's Lee, whose wife was institutionalized with end-stage Alzheimer’s, and Ann, who "initially felt uneasy that he was married," but "thought to herself: Who, after all, were they really hurting?"

According to the NYT's lights, age is giving these players a free ticket to cheat, in ways that would bring the house down if they were younger. Kind of, affirmative action for oldsters.

It might make you feel like tiptoeing out and quietly closing the door. But no flamey detail is omitted. Nor, more to the point, any product.

Vibrators specially for oldsters. Hot Octopuss, a sex-toy company has a new “Senior Sex Hub” with videos and products for people with “older vulvas” and “older penises,” including a hose-like penis vibrator "that can be used without an erection." Sex gadgets galore: don't ask. Meds: Viagra for him, and others for her. Genital lubes. Vaginal rings. Senior pornography. Erotic massage.

There's a burgeoning world of senior-sex therapists, many named in the article, who "help people broaden their definition of sexuality and take the focus off goal-oriented sex" ...now, there's a phrase to conjure with. One senior therapizer, finding older clients itching for something "more edgy," found business booming after she began suggesting restraints and blindfolds.

Books, books, more books: “Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty.” ...“Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex.” “Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving,” which has been translated into 25 languages.

There's a flowering branch of academic research, like Ottawa University's Optimal Sexual Experiences Research Team -- Ottawa, who'da thunk? -- headed by Prof. Peggy Kleinplatz (her name just happens to mean "Littleplace"). Her book, “Magnificent Sex: Lessons From Extraordinary Lovers,” is only one of the many fruits of 15 years of dedicated fully-funded research with "extraordinary aged lovers".

Another researcher's labours have produced a seminal (pardon the expression) primer about aging LGBTQ sex, plus vastly increased bookings for her training lectures.

A 78-year-old California sexucator , who wears a silver ring in the shape of a clitoris, has become a maker of instructional films like “jessica drake’s Guide to Wicked Senior Sex."

What about consent ? There's an organization for that, too. End of Life Washington (you couldn't make that up) has a 23-page dementia advance directive, where "people who have very early dementia or believe they might develop it one day [delineate] their preferences for intimate relationships." -- A kind of Living Yes-I-Still Will (Want-You-To-Do-Me-Even-If-I'm-Gaga).

And for those who prefer to be their own best friends:

“The most consistent sex will be the love affair you have with yourself,” says the feminist sex educator who wrote the bestsller “Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving.” and taught masturbation workshops until she was 90. “Masturbation will get you through childhood, puberty, romance, marriage and divorce, and it will see you through old age.”

Love, you ask?

What's love got to do with it? You're looking for sex. As prototypical sex-seller Dr. Ruth used to urge, in her irresistible Dr. Strangelove-accented English: "Goot sex...grrreat sex!"

Now it's the Mary Poppins press, pushing you to obey. Now you know WYNTKA- today's thought-f**k -- a particularly diverting one, isn't it? --you'd damned well better get busy following up. Absorb, embrace, and open that pocketbook.

Pack up all your cares and woes, book that shrink, get lube and hose...buy, buy, blackbirds!