Mitch Albom: Jabs at Joe Biden mask our growing ageism issue

[highplainsdem]

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/columnists/mitch-albom/2019/09/15/mitch-albom-joe-biden-age/2325626001/

When Castro, whose resume mainly consists of three years as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and five years as the mayor of San Antonio, seemed to mock the mental capacity of Biden, a longtime senator and two-term vice president, it no doubt resonated with older viewers.

Young people assuming their older counterparts can’t keep up. Young candidates presuming they are better suited, despite less experience. Young workers being promoted as older workers are dismissed. This type of thing happens every day in American society, where, by next year, it is projected that 17% of our population will be over 65.

Seventeen percent. That’s a good deal larger than our African-American or Asian populations, and nearly the same size as the entire Hispanic population.

Yet the issue of age discrimination is only whispered about, as if part of that stupid assumption that older people can’t hear. It’s wrong. It’s insulting. If you deride, don’t hire, or dismiss people based on their age, it’s a prejudice. Yet it doesn’t seem to invoke the anger that other biases do.

Why? Well, let’s face it. We live in a society that worships youth. Our entertainment chases teenage viewers (just count the comic-book movies). Advertisers have little interest in people over 50. Products to remove wrinkles or grey hair fly off the shelves. “The youngest to ever” is a coveted title in work, politics, and law, while “the oldest to ever” is usually reserved for human-interest stories, like an 80-year-old marathoner, or the 74-year-old Indian woman who recently gave birth to twins.

Meanwhile, there's the increasing trend to lay off workers in their 50s — which is not exactly old in a world where life expectancies have increased to well beyond 80 — and not absorb those fired workers back into the workplace.

This should be a big issue for any presidential candidate. But do you ever hear it brought up? Virtually every form of discrimination is hashed and rehashed on the campaign trail. Yet with more than a third of our population over 50 — a third! — nobody seems to make this a topic.

-snip-

America used to be a country where the longer you worked the more respected you were. We are becoming the opposite.

-snip-

... For the life of me, I don’t know why this isn’t a bigger issue — among candidates and society in general — considering the enormous attention we give to other forms of discrimination.

After all, we will never be a single race or gender.

But all of us, if we’re lucky, will one day be old.

Even Julian Castro.

[Thekaspervote]

1. Thank you.. great thoughtful post!

[Hekate]

2. Wow, Mitch Albom: Many thanks and much applause for this

To Albom.

[brer cat]

3. +++

K&R

[sakabatou]

4. If this is the Mitch I know

Then I'm related to him.

[Cha]

5. Wow! Mitch Album was Not having

what Castro was pushing!

But he would do it all over again.

Mahalo, highplainsdem!

[progressoid]

6. So then why are Warren & Sanders leading in support from the the 18-34 demographic.

If ageism were an issue for these voters, they should be flocking to Yang and Gabbard and Buttigieg.

[Backseat Driver]

8. IDK, maybe they've seen what happened to their parents

who threw all they had in the advanced hi-tech basket(Yang), the war rackets (Gabbard); and can't remember how to spell/pronounce the last one's name in all the texts, or, though approving, of his orientation and style, just don't want to have to explain yet another POTUS's behavior to their small kids who btw manage to hear EVERYTHING just yet?

[progressoid]

9. Huh?

[Backseat Driver]

7. I couldn't K & R this OP enough - it would look like spam!