I mean, hell! I'm about to turn 70. My son is about to turn 40. My son is in her I-mean-hell zone. He barely counts anymore. Too old! Oldies step aside. The young ones are taking over, and they know what's what. Period. Period. Period.
People say, “Oh my gosh, why is everyone in our government so old?” I don’t want to be ageist or anything like that, but we want a government that’s diverse....
So get out and vote for 77-year-old Joe Biden. Old white man Joe. It's your only choice. For diversity!
... I understand why people say, “I don’t vote. What’s the point?” I really empathize with it. I’m not here to dismiss you. I’m not here to poo-poo you. I’m not here to say you’re wrong or that you’re a bad person. What I’m here to say is that this year, this election, voting for Joe Biden is not about whether you agree with him. It’s a vote to let our democracy live another day. That’s what this is about....
"I work out six times a week, and abstain from cigarettes. I thought my role in the current health crisis would be as an ally to the elderly and compromised. Then, I was hospitalized for Covid-19.... As a generation with a supposed commitment to social justice, we should be stepping up in our role as allies to more vulnerable populations. Yet, somehow the message of staying home still isn’t permeating our ageism and ableism. Millennials, if you can’t be good allies, at least stay home to protect yourselves... Millennials are reported to care deeply about wellness and social justice...."
Supposed to be committed to social justice.... reported to care deeply about social justice....
Could it be that this commitment and caring was just a luxury of good times? If so, here's the selfish interest alternative you may have thought you were too good for.
Whatever. Just do the right thing, kids. Protecting yourself protects everybody. It's okay if your heart isn't pretty.
"[Lydia Dugdale, professor of medicine and director of the center for clinical medical ethics at Columbia University] points out that the New York department of health’s ventilator allocation guidelines, published in November 2015 to address the issue amid a flu epidemic, states that first-come first-serve, lottery, physician clinical judgment, and prioritizing certain patients such as health care workers were explored but found to be either too subjective or failed to save the most lives. Age was rejected as a criterion as it discriminates against the elderly, and there are plenty of cases in which an older person has better odds of survival than someone younger. So the decision was to 'utilize clinical factors only to evaluate a patient’s likelihood of survival and to determine the patient’s access to ventilator therapy.' In tie-breaking circumstances, though, they did approve treating children 17 and younger over an adult where both have an equal odds of surviving.... 'I would say that leaving some to die without treatment is NOT ethical, but it may be necessary as there are no good options,' David Chan, philosophy professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, writes. 'Saying that it is ethical ignores the tragic element, and it is better that physicians feel bad about making the best of a bad situation rather than being convinced that they have done the right thing.'"
Do you think it's right to take age into account only to benefit the super-young — those under 18? Would you choose between a 20 year old and a 70 year old solely on the basis of who is more likely to survive? I suspect the age factor is bundled into the assessment of who's more likely to survive, which would simply hide the disapproved-of discrimination against the elderly. By contrast:
Italy has prioritized treatment for those with “the best chance of success” but adds as a second criterion those “who have more potential years of life.”
Another thing I wonder about is the issue of surviving without the ventilator. What if, for example, X has an 80% chance of surviving without a ventilator and a 90% chance of surviving with it and Y has a 10% chance of surviving without a ventilator and a 60% chance of surviving with it? Does X, the more vigorous person, get the task of struggling to survive without the ventilator? And do you take into account how long a person will need the ventilator? Maybe you could save 2 of my Xs in the time it would take Y to get well or perish.
"[Neuroscientist Gregory Samanez-Larki] and his colleagues... recently found evidence that older adults are better at keeping their emotions and impulses in check.... Moreover, Samanez-Larkin says, the set of skills known as 'decision making' does not decline in any predictable way during normal aging. The interns might be whizzes at a chalkboard, but faced with complex decisions—whether to buy a new TV, say, rather than how to use it adroitly once they have it—the fogies match and sometimes outperform them. The question then becomes: Is being president more like having to do a lot of math problems, or more like having to contain one’s emotions and make difficult decisions? It might be both: Presidents need to have a spry brain, capable of assimilating new information and rapidly adding it to their cognitive repertoire. But the job is, most crucially, about making decisions—extremely difficult decisions that are, unlike arithmetic, matters of judgment and value. The rightness of a decision is often unknowable ex ante. In these treacherous exercises, the elderly do not do badly, and impetuous youngsters sometimes come very close to getting us all killed.... The more presidents slow down, the more decisions get made by other people.... And perhaps we’d all be better served if other people—and not Biden, Sanders, or Trump—were making decisions. I see ample reason to question the soundness of the judgment of all three men.... Samanez-Larkin says he welcomes the prospect of a really old president. Stigma against the elderly is worth fighting, he says, and cognitive decline could be balanced out by the wisdom of age...."
[T]he old-guy bashing of Mr. Dole in political cartoons and late-night comedy routines has reached an intensity that makes the jokes about Ronald Reagan in the 1980's seem like gentle kidding. Dole age jokes ("Dole is 96") are now as much a part of popular culture as gibes at Madonna's impending motherhood, and sometimes as mean-spirited.
"Bob Dole is calling himself an optimist," David Letterman said in a recent monologue. "I understand this because a lot of people would look at a glass as half empty. Bob Dole looks at the glass and says, 'What a great place to put my teeth.' "
Everyone remembers Ronald Reagan's great line — when he was asked if at 73 he was too old — "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."
In the likely event that Trump faces Sanders, Bloomberg, or Biden, he could redo that line a bit and go with it: "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my youth."
But let me make that a little more Trumpy:
The late, great President Reagan said don't exploit age for political purposes. Don't exploit age. I was thinking of going with that. Don't exploit age. Because I'm young. I'm the young one. Imagine that! The Democrats came up with an opponent for me and he's what? 77? 78? How can you be President when you're almost 80? I'm 74. I'm 74, but my doctor tells me I'm the healthiest 74 he's ever seen. I'm the young one here! But should I say, no, I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my youth? My youth! If I say, I am young, they'll say I'm ageist. Ageist! They talk like that: sexist, racist. They'll say ageist! Ageist! These people. They'll say anything. But they like to say they're the party of youth! Youth!? They put up a guy that's practically 80! They're so incompetent. Let's take a vote. How many of you think I should exploit my youth for political purposes? How many of you think I should exploit my youth and how many of you think I should just shut up about how old we all are? Let's take a vote...
What the hell is wrong with sticking with your regular family doctor? You have a relationship with this person. He or she is a real doctor. It's not like you're going to a veterinarian. You like what you have. Why is The Washington Post age-shaming the young?
Well, age-shaming the young is an old game. Grow up, they say and have been saying for eons. If it's not that you're acting too babyish and unserious, it's that you're old before your time. I say a young person can be young in the way that feels right to them. I say you are the master of your own time. You are how you feel, and you don't have to match up your chronological age with a stereotype of how people that age are supposed to be. I mean, take care of yourself, don't hurt others, and work on making your life what you want it to be. And use your actual chronological age when interfacing with a system that uses chronological age — getting a driver's license, running for President, etc. But other than that, you're your own person. Don't let people push you around with act-your-age shaming.
Anyway... from the article (which I'm finally skimming):
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) attempted to address the issue of transition from pediatric care into adult care in a policy statement in 2017 and concluded “the age of transition” should be based not on a number but on the patient’s individual needs. The decision “should be made solely by the patient (and family, when appropriate) and the physician and must take into account the physical and psychosocial needs of the patient and the abilities of the pediatric provider to meet those needs,” the policy statement said. In addition, it said that ‘the establishment of arbitrary age limits on pediatric care by health care providers should be discouraged. Health care insurers and other payers should not place limits that affect the patient’s choice of care provider based solely on age.”...
Living at home and remaining on parents’ insurance policies aren’t the only reasons 20-somethings stay with pediatricians. Medical advancements over the past decade are extending the life expectancy of those with chronic childhood illnesses, such as congenital heart issues, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia and diabetes, and the pediatricians who cared for children with these conditions sometimes remain with them as they get old....
And I want to criticize the Washington Post's illustration for its "26 years old but still sees a pediatrician" article (skillfully, charmingly rendered by Ery Burns):
The idea is, clearly, that the millennial is a snowflake. Now, what I think is interesting is that of course the generic snowflake millennial is a white male. Secondly, his snowflakitude is signaled by the playthings (presumably the stuff one encounters in a pediatrician's waiting room) but also by the colors he wears, notably pink pants. I've got a problem with the use of pink to say weak and childish. Pink is associated with females. It's a purplish pink and the jacket is purple. I think the message is: effeminacy. I reject the use of femininity to mean weakness and childishness.
Screen shot from an inner page at the NYT — "Things I’ll Do Differently When I’m Old" — with the comments open and showing the highest-rated comment at the top (click to enlarge):
Mike Huckabee has a fine time defending his daughter Sarah Huckabee Sanders from the depredations of Chelsea Handler, who had 2 abortions and must be jealous of Sarah, who has a husband who loves her and 3 delightful children...
For the record, Mike Huckabee is 62, and Chelsea Handler is 42. And Sarah Sanders is 35. So that's some crazy man-on-woman age-taunting.
"That harlot that they’re dressing up and trolloping out every day? I mean, one day she has no makeup on at all, the next she got, like, six-foot-long eyelashes, and she’s got cleavage and summer whore lipstick all over her face. Can you believe what they turned her into? A proper trollop."
Handler uses the word "trollop" twice, once as a noun referring to Sanders and once as a verb referring to what is being done to her by others. My dictionary, the OED, does not recognize "trollop" as a verb, but it does, in its etymology for the noun "trollop," speculate that "trollop" came from the verb "troll." It observes that the "-op" ending is also in "gallop" and "wallop." But both "gallop" and "wallop" are nouns and verbs, so how does adding "-op" work to change a verb to a noun?
In any case, the connection between "trollop" and "troll" is one of those things that make me wonder why I didn't notice it before. It's so not unseeable once it's seen. "Troll" comes from older words that have to do with going on a quest for game without real purpose — running about, looking around indiscriminately. The verb "troll" came to refer especially to gay men walking about looking for a sexual encounter. There are other meanings for "troll" that pick up on the similarity to "roll," so that it can mean to sing "in a full, rolling voice" — as in "troll the ancient Yuletide carol" in the Christmas song "Deck the Halls" (the song that amuses us by recommending "gay apparel")...
But back to "trollop," the noun. It means "An untidy or slovenly woman; a slattern, slut; also, sometimes a morally loose woman." So Handler got the wrong word there too, because her complaint about Sanders is that she's ridiculously overdone. Too much makeup. A trollop seems to be more of a walk-of-shame, rolled-out-of-bed type of woman. But I get it that Handler was just trotting out her prostitute words and "trollop" seemed like it wanted to go out streetwalking with "whore."
To be fair to prostitutes, I don't think anyone wears as much makeup as a TV news commentator. That's actually what Sanders looks like. I don't know when we came to see extremely heavy makeup as a look for a newsperson (or press secretary). It doesn't say credibility. But when they're lying, at least it's not a barefaced lie.
By the way, Chelsea Handler lives in the path of one of the California wildfires. Before you decide how sympathetic you want to be toward her, you should know that she tweeted, "Just evacuated my house. It's like Donald Trump is setting the world on fire. Literally and figuratively. Stay safe everyone. Dark times."
The fires aren't in Washington. Metaphorically, it seems more like the fire is an outward manifestation of the sexual corruption in Hollywood. But when terrible things are happening to people, I think it's best to look at those things for what they are in concrete reality and not appropriate them into the relatively painless realm of abstraction.
"And unfortunately it has backfired on us — and this is where we are today. We must sometimes take blame, women. I really do think that. Although it’s awful to say we can’t make ourselves look as attractive as possible without being knocked down and raped."
Said Angela Lansbury, quoted by Gabriella Paiella in New York Magazine, who identifies her as "a veteran actress, a proud socialist, and an all-around international treasure" and informs us that she's getting trashed in social media. Paiella delivers Lansbury's age like a punchline: "In related news, Angela Lansbury is 92 years old."
There's just about exactly as much ageism in that last sentence as there is sexism in Lansbury's remark. But Paiella probably thinks the ageism is okay, because she's patting Lansbury on the head and defending her from the mean people on social media, but it's patronizing, and it's very similar to the traditional style of patronizing that women have long experienced, when were were marginalized and told — if we attempted to weigh in on a serious issue of the day — don't you worry your pretty little head.
That's Leslie Jones as Viola Davis, Cecily Strong as Marion Cotillard, and Kate McKinnon as the fictional character Debette Goldry.
It's too late and I'd also say: too little.
They lined up some chairs, plunked female cast members and had them say there's a lot of sexual harassment in Hollywood and Harvey Weinstein is ugly.
Harvey Weinstein's ugliness was joked about in terms of how he looks, not what he has done and is accused of doing, which really is ugly.
The cheap joke, which could be used against any man, was that he was hanging upside down naked and he looked pretty much the same as if he were not upside down. A man's face is as ugly as genitalia. Notice all the problems:
1. Judging people by the way they look.
2. The baseline assumption that male genitalia is ugly (which undercuts the complaint about sexual harassment by trading on the notion that the male body is inherently repulsive and nothing a woman would want).
3. The lack of anything specific about Harvey Weinstein. (He is said to have done many things, but I don't think hanging upside down naked is one of them).
4. If the idea is that Harvey Weinstein is ugly, so no one would want to have sex with him, that actually sounds like a form of humiliation that has often been directed at women. It's like the terrible old rape jokes that responds to a rape accusation by talking about how unattractive the woman is, so who would rape her? (And some of that "Debette Goldry" material was supposed to be funny because she's physically unattractive — she's old (get it??) — and yet even she had experienced sexual harassment.)
Michael Che, the other co-anchor of “Weekend Update,” noted that the Weinstein scandal put comedians in a “tough spot” because it was hard to make jokes about sexual assault. Then, with a photo of Mr. Weinstein on the screen, Mr. Che added:
“But it’s so easy to make jokes about a guy that looks like this. I mean, he looks like chewed bubble gum rolled in cat hair.”
It's hard to make jokes that are actually on the subject of what Weinstein did wrong, so let's make jokes that could be made against him if he were a great guy. I wish Che had entered into the realm of self-deprecation and said something more like:
We know we have to make some jokes about Harvey Weinstein. We know because we got scorched in social media last week for weaseling out of it. Lorne Michaels said "It's a New York thing." What's a New York thing? Running away from humor that too hard to do? So we are scampering this week. The weasels are scampering, trying to come up with something we can say to make you laugh about sexual harassment, and I've got to admit, 99.9% of the ideas we came up with boiled down to the fact that Harvey Weinstein is ugly. We were coming up with material like "he looks like chewed bubble gum rolled in cat hair." It's like we were liberated to do jokes about physical ugliness because a guy who did horrible things is, fortunately, ugly. It was funny because half the people pitching the jokes to Lorne were also physically ugly. Maybe they knew so many jokes because they've been hearing them all their lives. Probably a lot you out there, staying home watching TV on Saturday night, are ugly too. And just saying that, I feel ugly... on the inside.
Tonette Tarantino’s year of sorrow came when she was only 30. First she lost the grandmother who helped raise her, like a second mother. Weeks later her brother, her only sibling, died of bone cancer. Then her husband died of kidney failure....
“My mom was tough. She didn’t give you a break,” Tonette Walker said in an interview at the Camp Bar, a neighborhood hangout here [in Wauwatosa]. “Days after my first husband died, my mom said, ‘Get up, get moving, you are not going to wallow in this. You’re going to be great, you are going to be fine. Life is going to go on.’ ”
A completely sympathetic beginning primes the reader for the really surprising thing about Tonette (if you don't know it already):
Tonette, who at 59 is a dozen years older than her husband....
If Clinton were to win the presidency and serve two terms, the next opportunity for a new generation of Democrats to compete nationally would not come until 2024. The Democrats could go 16 years between competitive presidential nomination contests, wiping out opportunities for today’s younger generation to define or redefine the party apart from either the Obama or Clinton eras.
But at this point, if Clinton doesn't run, things are even worse, since the ranks are so thin. Not Martin O'Malley, after what just happened in Maryland. Balz assumes Jerry Brown at 76 is too old. (On his most recent HBO show, Bill Maher did a long, unfunny routine about the ageism of saying Jerry Brown is too old. Aren't we just terrible to display skepticism about an 80+-year-old President?)
Here's my observation. If Clinton were to see that she's either going to lose in 2016 or destroy the future development of national-level stars in her party, she could decide against running, release the dammed-up streams of cash to the next wave of Democrats, and allow them to develop their reputations in the 2016 race. Assume the GOP is due for its time in the presidency, and let this next round of campaigning center on rebuilding the front ranks of the party. From that invigorating process, a star could emerge. A star emerged in '08 even with Hillary blocking the way. To hope to win in '16 using the same tired bullyism on the theory that there's no one up and coming seems lame compared to bold moves to repopulate the party.
Let's review the facts thus far. He got his academic credentials in British and medieval history, and he is a tenured professor at Pasadena City College, who taught classes in Women's Studies. It emerged that he, a 46-year-old married man, had "sexted with a 27-year-old sex worker activist." Then, he tweeted a lot about what a fraud he was. Who cares?! Well, I guess it was dramatic for a professor to let loose with a spate of tweets ostensibly attacking himself.
Pope Benedict is three years younger than Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who's puttering around condemning the very idea of Cory Booker running against him....
[C]overage of Lautenberg... high-fives him for his vigor. A recent Philadelphia Inquirer story pointed out that the senator had returned from "a cold that became the flu" and was "wielding a cane -- which he insisted he didn't really need," but otherwise focused on his "feistiness."
Weigel mixes 2 topics: the individual's decision to continue despite age and infirmity and the way the media (and the rest of us) "play along." Nothing about what the Pope is doing changes the playing along part of it. We've come to believe that age discrimination is wrong, and we've allowed that to mean too much.
Age discrimination isn't like race discrimination! Age takes a toll on people and it matters and affects their performance. A specific individual may be doing relatively well for his age, and we ought to see him as an individual, but age matters. Statutory law prohibiting age discrimination tells us not to take age into account in some situations, but that doesn't include electoral politics. Feel free to boldly assail Lautenberg for clinging to his Senate seat. (And feel free to criticize judges who seem to be hanging on too long, especially Supreme Court Justices.)
Is the Pope any help here? He waited until he was 85 to step down. And he began the onerous work when he was nearly 80. The previous Pope — immensely admired — made a point of sticking with the job through a long, painful decline. I think both of these Popes encourage people to keep going and not to cede the work to the less old.
Violinist Martin Stoner knows "it sounds kind of like hypocrisy," but Judge Robert Patterson is, he says, "slow-witted and unable to function." The federal judge is 88. Stoner, who is 60, is suing the Young Concert Artist for excluding him from a their competition which is for... young concert artists (apparently capped at age 20).
Patterson refused to comment, but his defenders claim he's sharp as a tack. When another judge fell ill two years ago, Patterson stepped in midtrial, ripped through a 2,282-page legal transcript in a single weekend and handled the case with aplomb, Manhattan Federal Court Chief Judge Loretta Preska told the New York Law Journal.
Stoner — are you surprised to hear? — is representing himself in this lawsuit.
"This is a law that is routinely evaded," said John McCardell, the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont who founded the Amethyst Initiative. "It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory."...
McCardell said that binge drinking occurs primarily because students must hide their behavior.
In its statement (currently signed by 114 college heads), Amethyst says, "Twenty-one is not working" and "A culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge-drinking' - often conducted off-campus - has developed.
"Alcohol education that mandates abstinence as the only legal option has not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students. …
"By choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law."
The initiative wisely invites debate about whether the drinking age should be lowered instead of calling outright for legislative change. Let's be scientific about this. It's one thing to say alcohol abuse and drunk driving are terrible, but it's another thing to figure out the causal connection to the legal drinking age. There's nothing wrong with responsible, moderate drinking. What's the best way to encourage young people who are inclined to drink to do it the right way? I doubt that prohibition is best, and I'm enough of a libertarian to want to resolve doubts in favor of freedom. But sure, let's debate. I'd like to see the evidence analyzed.
It seems to me a legitimate and not too rude a subject to bring up in the campaign.S here's an opening challege: craft an ad that legitimately and fairly raises the issue of whether he is too old to lead; and one less high-minded one that strings clips of gaffes, stumbles, mental blocks in public, and mistakes to make the guy seem like Abraham Simpson on a bad day. put "YouTube ad contest" in the contents line.
Hey, is it legitimate and fair to point to the typos as evidence of Sullivan's competence?
You know, I'm concerned about McCain's age, but I'm also concerned about ageism, and it's a terrible and offensive idea to promote prejudice against the old by connecting the candidate to stereotypes about the old.
Imagine if a blogger who supported McCain as much as Sullivan supports Obama invited readers to edit together video clips that would make Obama look like a racist stereotype of a black person.
And remember: Old people are a huge demographic group, known for — among other things — voting.
There is a very appropriate way to judge whether an individual old person or black person or female person or gay person or disabled person is competent to serve as President: Look at the individual.
ADDED: I thought we'd committed to the belief that age discrimination is wrong. How could we backtrack on that?
Young people want to believe they will live to be very old, so even they would balk at telling old people they can't have the heart surgery they need.
Imagine the human interest stories there would be about beloved great grandparents who only need a simple pacemaker but whom the government has slated to die.
Saletan's idea is emotionally and politically obtuse.
On Friday night, TRex put up a post at the high-traffic blog Firedoglake exhorting his readers: "Please feel free to post your comments on this post under the name 'Ann Althouse'. I've done it before. It's totally fun." Some time thereafter, he took the post down, but I have the text of it because I've set up a Google alert to keep track of the use and abuse of my name, so I received the text in my email.
I've known for a long time that unscrupulous webwriters appropriate my name, and I have a longstanding dispute with the blog Sadly, No for refusing to take down comments that appropriate my name. I have emailed them politely and seriously making the request, but they have refused repeatedly.
Now, I have TRex's confession that he is one of my impersonators. I don't know that he is an impersonator on Sadly, No, but the post he took down mentioned Sadly, No.
How shameful and embarrassing! At least he had the wits to think better of it and try to hide it. Or maybe he's just afraid of getting into trouble for impersonating me.
What an unscrupulous, pusillanimous little twerp!
IN THE COMMENT: Someone from Sadly, No shows up and makes some incredibly lame excuses for that blog's descent into outright sexist hate speech. I do what I can to shame them. How do men who imagine themselves to be liberal get the idea that they can treat a woman like this and not shoot their reputation to hell?
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