Is Talking About Age "Ageist"?

There are many differences between the two presidential candidates, but age is one of the most obvious. Beacon Broadside invited Lillian Rubin, author of 60 On Up: The Truth about Aging in America, to offer her perspective on whether discussing John McCain's age amounts to "ageism."

What is it with us anyway?  Why is it that every time we coin words like racism, sexism, ageism – words that describe something real about prejudice and discrimination against a social group – we wind up applying them so frivolously that they lose all meaning?  If commenting on Hillary Clinton's pants suits is sexist, what do we call the guy who waves a sign that shouts "Iron My Shirts"?  If it's racist to say that it took President Lyndon Johnson to make Martin Luther King's dream of equality before the law come true, how do we characterize the 3 in 10 Americans who say they would have trouble voting for a black man for president? 

Certainly, there are sexist and racist undertones in American life, and the discourse in this election campaign has highlighted them.  But when every slight, sling, and barb, from the benign to the malignant, is indiscriminately tarred with the same epithet, it substantially weakens the case for the real thing.  Which brings me to the question of age. 

The McCain campaign and its supporters cry foul when anyone even whispers that, if elected, he will be 72 years old when he puts his hand on the bible to take the oath of office.  But if it's ageist to ask whether a 72-year-old has the mental, emotional, and physical stamina to take on what is undoubtedly the biggest and toughest job in the world, what label do we give to the common corporate practice of not hiring people over 50?  Ageism-Plus?   And what to the real prejudice that reduces the old to caricatures from whom we want to turn away lest they somehow contaminate us with their "oldness?"  Ageism-Squared? 

A Fall in The Night

Jonathan Silin wrote My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents to chronicle his experiences learning to care for his elderly parents when their independence began to slip away. Although his years of intimate daily contact with his parents ended with their deaths, his relationship with and understanding of them continues to grow and change.

by Jonathan Silin

I fell this summer. Not a public spill, like the one an old friend took when the heel of her shoe broke off as she stepped up to the podium to say a few heartfelt words at my partner’s memorial service. No, this was more like the fall, instantaneous and without warning, that my 89 year-old father experienced while standing at the sink and brushing his teeth, and which was either the cause of the broken hip diagnosed the following day or the result of an already existing fracture.