Meet the First Gen X-tleman

Emhoff described a childhood of Slurpees and wood-paneled station wagons, emblems of Gen X youth. He took the stage to the New Radicals’ 1998 hit “You Get What You Give”; his fantasy football team is called “Nirvana”—“yes, after the band!” he said.—Washington Post

I don’t know about you, but it was when Doug Emhoff recounted watching Evel Knievel’s failed Snake River Canyon jump while wearing a Mark Spitz youth Speedo and eating Freakies cereal as the Bay City Rollers’ “Saturday Night” played on the radio that he brought a tear to this Gen X-er’s eye.

I don’t know about you, but it was when Doug Emhoff took a swig from some Wyler’s lemonade made from powdered mix and said, “Now wait just a Bicentennial Minute!” that he brought a tear to this Gen X-er’s eye.

I don’t know about you, but it was when Doug Emhoff hitched his trousers high, wielded a wand microphone in fond imitation of Gene Rayburn on “Match Game,” and said, “Dumb Donald is so dumb”—prompting a crowd response of “HOW DUMB IS HE?!”—that he brought a tear to this Gen X-er’s eye.

I don’t know about you, but it was when Doug Emhoff said that it would be his “honor and privilege to be Wayland Flowers to Madame President” that he brought a tear to this Gen X-er’s eye.

I don’t know about you, but it was when Doug Emhoff praised Tim Walz for “his audacious capacity for uplift, akin to the Amazing Mister Lifto in the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow,” that he brought a tear to this Gen X-er’s eye.

I don’t know about you, but it was when Doug Emhoff said, “To paraphrase another Doug, MAGA is a world of illoooo-sion!” that he brought a tear to this Gen X-er’s eye.

I don’t know about you, but it was when Doug Emhoff took to the floor at the D.N.C. wielding a leaf blower and exhorting the crowd to “get crazy with the Cheez Whiz” that he brought a tear to this Gen X-er’s eye.

I don’t know about you, but it was when Doug Emhoff talked about styling the swoosh in his 1983 hair “somewhere in the happy place between Tony Hadley and Nick Rhodes” that he brought a tear to this Gen X-er’s eye.

I don’t know about you, but it was when Doug Emhoff confided that, after Kamala accepted his proposal, he felt “like Deborah Foreman in the ‘Melt with You’ sequence in ‘Valley Girl’ ” that he brought a tear to this Gen X-er’s eye.

I don’t know about you, but it was when Doug Emhoff defended his wife’s laugh as “dry and room-filling, like the superior Albini mix of ‘Heart-Shaped Box,’ ” that he brought a tear to this Gen X-er’s eye. ♦