The age-old discrimination over old age

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This article was published 03/06/2023 (1037 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“President Biden tripped and fell after delivering a speech and handing out diplomas to graduates of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs on Thursday. Mr. Biden, who is 80 years old, was helped up and appeared to recover quickly.” — Michael Shear, New York Times, June 1.

“I was there. Biden stood through most of the three-hour ceremony, gave a 20-minute speech, then saluted and shook hands with every one of the 921 graduates. I’d be a little dizzy if I did what he did and I’m over a decade younger. Least important detail of a very positive day.” — Larry Woods, Colorado Springs, Colo., via Twitter.

U.S. President Joe Biden is 80. So, if he does go through with his stated objective of running for re-election and wins, he’ll be close to 82 in January of 2025 when he is sworn in for a second four-year term in the highest office in what most of us grew up calling the Free World.

I’d like to believe that the world where our children and grandchildren are growing up isn’t a world where people’s age and experience are held against them. But if I did believe such things, I might be told by the people who operate this newspaper of record that it might be time for me to write memoirs instead of columns.

The world’s most important economic story this week was the United States and the world dodging what would have been a job-destroying bullet. If the representatives of U.S. democracy had not voted to increase that country’s debt ceiling and the United States defaulted on its debt, it would have caused the kind of calamity we witnessed in 2008, when Wall Street sneezed, markets seized up, and the biggest banks needed to be bailed out to avoid the cratering of our currencies and a worldwide depression.

A vigorous president named Joe Biden spared us massive job losses, along with home and business losses, by applying the experience he gained over eight decades of life and engineering a critical Capitol Hill compromise. The champagne should have been uncorked to celebrate the political grandmaster’s superior chess game. But only hours before that crucial vote in the U.S. Senate, he tripped the ageism wire.

Ageism is one of the few forms of bigotry that one can publicly engage in and not be threatened with stigmatization and — for those of us who depend on the good will of the public — cancellation. It’s not like sexism, racism, or homophobia. Ageism isn’t only socially acceptable, in many conversations, I’m sad to report, it’s desirable.

This weekend in the United States and Canada and every other country where U.S. politics is discussed, the age-old subject of Joe Biden’s octogenarianism will run wild. The most ageist of the complainers will point to the fall he took two days ago, on June 1, at the U.S. Air Force base in Colorado Springs, Colo. The Commander in Chief was fit enough to endure a three-hour long ceremony. He shook a lot of hands, spoke for 20 minutes and then as he was walking off he tripped on a sandbag that should have been picked up, but wasn’t. It could have happened to anyone — an eight-year-old, an 18-year-old or a 38-year-old.

People trip. It should not be newsworthy. It should not trigger conversations about putting a president out to pasture. But when an 80-year-old powerful politician trips in 2023, the social media earth moves.

I’m choosing not to repeat any of the many messages that demean U.S. President Biden. Social media is where decency goes to die. My grandmother Elizabeth taught me to respect my elders — not because they were older, but because their years of experience would help me to navigate life with knowledge, not just instinct.

When we allow ourselves to trip on the bias of ageism, we are the ones who break.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com