Today, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the disconcerting case of Norris Babb, a longtime Department of Veterans Affairs clinical pharmacist who faced age discrimination after more than a decade of excellent performance reviews. The hearing gave chief justice John Roberts the opportunity to up his cultural credit with strategic use of the phrase “OK, boomer” in a hypothetical question.
The popular 2019 phrase’s premier in the high court in the first month of 2020 and first week of hearings shows just how attuned the justices are to the zeitgeist, though they may seem aloof and their work removed. And it’s no wonder—on a bench whose youngest member is silver-haired Gen-X justice Neil Gorsuch, 52—that the chief, 64, would trot out the insult aimed at his generation to prove he’s cool in a case about hating on the aging.
