Elderly 'Fear Ageism More Than Crime' | CARDI : Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland

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Older people are more worried about ageism and discrimination than they are of being the victim of crime, a new study shows.

Research among a group of people aged between 60 and 90 showed they felt the older generation were patronised or seen as a “burden” on society.

They also expressed a strong desire to remain active by working or volunteering, the report from thinktank Demos and Brunel University said.

One pensioner said: “I am sick of the portrayal of my age group by government reports and news.”

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About Retirement - Time Goes By

by Ronni Bennett

Yesterday in The New York Times, there was a terrific story by Al Baker about a police detective, a veteran of 40 years on the force, that has it all: human interest, crime statistics, department history, snitches, murder, mayhem and headline cases. Real-life Law & Order in black-and-white.

It is also a story about getting old.

"Some of his colleagues lovingly call him 'grandpa.' Some have taken to calling him 'Fish,' after the old detective played by Abe Vigoda on Barney Miller. In fact, Detective [John C.] Roe, 61, joined the city’s police force nearly a decade before that television series was shown...

"He is currently 10th on the Police Department’s longevity list; by the time he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 63 on Halloween 2012, he will be first."

I was reminded of my own retirement in 2004 – unanticipated but mandatory in a different way.

With a bunch of other employees, I had been caught in a layoff in 2004, from the website of a business research firm. As my younger colleagues found work in six or eight or 10 weeks or so, I couldn't get an interview.

There were repeated indications that my age, then 63, was a hindrance, but it is the hardest kind of ageism to prove - “failure to hire” - and anyway, I wasn't interested in lawsuits. I just wanted a job.

As a contract employee with zero benefits, I had been ineligible for unemployment insurance and my individual health care coverage cost hundreds of dollars a month. With that and the other normal expenses, I depleted all my savings and then sank deeper into debt each month as I took cash advances on one credit card to pay another and on a third or pay a fourth, etc.

The amount of money I owed was terrifying and rapidly growing. I had nightmares of becoming homeless.

It took a year of living in daily fear for my future until I realized that the only solution (salvation?) was to sell my apartment in Manhattan and leave the city. I went further into debt to get my home in shape to sell which didn't happen for another ten months.

And that is how I was forced into my personal “mandatory” retirement. Not what I had planned. Well, it would not have been my plan if I had bothered to plan - which I had not.

My great aunt Edith had worked until she was 70. My mother had worked until a couple of years before she died at age 75. Back in 2004, when I was laid off, I figured I would probably work for another decade.

If you don't count that last job, which I hated for a variety of good reasons (the four-hour commute was the least, which tells you something about it), I spent nearly 50 years at jobs I loved.

They were almost always interesting. They were my never-ending college education, my world travel, my access to brilliant, fascinating people along with some not-so-brilliant but still fascinating people too. And they actually paid me for this.

If I'd had my druthers, I would have retired from a job like one of those so that I could have felt, at the end of my working life, like Detective Roe who says he

"...dreads the approach of Halloween 2012, when he will have to hand in his badge, No. 1679.

"Sitting in the cinder-block interview room of the station house in Harlem, across from St. Mary’s Church, he adds: 'I’d be here until I’m 70, if I could. I’d be here forever.'”

Under Kidney Transplant Proposal, Younger Patients Would Get the Best Organs

Image by Getty Images via @daylife
By Rob Stein
The nation's organ-transplant network is considering giving younger, healthier people preference over older, sicker patients for the best kidneys.

Instead of giving priority primarily to patients who have been on the waiting list longest, the new rules would match recipients and organs to a greater extent based on factors such as age and health to try to maximize the number of years provided by each kidney - the most sought-after organ for transplants.

"We're trying to best utilize the gift of the donated organ," said Kenneth Andreoni, an associate professor of surgery at Ohio State University who chairs the committee that is reviewing the system for the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a Richmond-based private nonprofit group contracted by the federal government to coordinate organ allocation. "It's an effort to get the most out of a scarce resource."

The ethically fraught potential changes, which would be part of the most comprehensive overhaul of the system in 25 years, are being welcomed by some bioethicists, transplant surgeons and patient representatives as a step toward improving kidney distribution. But some worry that the changes could inadvertently skew the pool of available organs by altering the pattern of people making living donations. Some also complain that the new system would unfairly penalize middle-aged and elderly patients at a time when the overall population is getting older.
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TIME GOES BY | Ageism 2011

by Ronni Bennett in Time Goes By blog

A few months ago, a local TV news program reported the “plight” of a 21-year-old, disabled woman living in a nursing home here in Portland, Oregon. She “found herself,” the news anchor read from the TelePrompTer, “with an elderly roommate with no way out.”

Imagine the uproar there would have been if the anchor had said, “found herself with a black roommate with no way out.” But aside from my own email which was not acknowledged, apparently no objection was raised to this blatant ageism.

On page 4 of his important manifesto on elders titled, What Are Old People For?, geriatrician Bill Thomas notes that “[O]ld people are exposed to a bigoted ageism that is openly expressed and widely accepted.”

No kidding. I have pages and pages full of them on my computer.

Another eminent geriatrician, Robert N. Butler, who died last year at age 83, coined the term “ageism” in the 1960s. He defined it thusly in his 2008 book, The Longevity Revolution:

“Ageism takes shape in stereotypes and myths, outright disdain and dislike, sarcasm and scorn, subtle avoidance, and discriminatory practices in housing, employment, pension arrangements, health care, and other services...”

“It is identical to any other prejudice in its consequences...Anthropologist Barbara Meyerhoff speaks about 'death by invisibility' when she describes an older woman who, 'unseen,' was 'accidentally' killed by a bicyclist.”

Ageism kills more slowly too. In a live interview at the Washington Post, long-time Yale researcher Becca Levy discussed her study on whether aging stereotypes affect the health of elders.

“[W]e have found that when we activate negative age stereotypes, older individuals tend to show a decline in memory performance, self-confidence, will to live and handwriting,” said Levy.

“In contrast, we have found that when we activate positive age stereotypes we tend to find beneficial changes in these same areas.”

Negative age stereotypes are everywhere in media. With no effort at all, just my daily reading, I run across them constantly. When I remembered to do so, I saved them during 2010. Here is a sampling – about five percent of what I found. The emphases are mine.

Gabe Starosta at congress.org, in complaining about poorly designed government websites, had this comparison to make about the Social Security site:

“This site's primary audience is the elderly or those approaching social security age, and designers say the site looks like it was designed by those very same people.”

Oblivious to the fact that people 46 and older make up 44 percent of all internet users, Christopher Beam repeats this theme in a recent technology story at Slate:

“As of 2010, the most-common Caps Lock users are enraged Internet commenters and the computer-illiterate elderly.”

Old people, you see, are not only incapable of doing anything associated with computers, they are equated with rage-aholics.

The second most commonly repeated stereotype in the media is how elders dress, what they eat and when they do it – always with disdain. This is Eleanor Clift (who is old enough to know better) writing at PoliticsDaily:

"By 2050, the United States will look like Florida, with more old people taking advantage of senior-citizen discounts and enjoying early-bird suppers.”

How is this different from writing, for example, “...black people enjoying watermelon and fried chicken” which she would never write and wouldn't get past her editor if she did?
Two days ago, Dan Brown at The New York Times repeated the slam:

”On New Year’s Day, the oldest members of the Baby Boom Generation will turn 65, the age once linked to retirement, early bird specials and gray Velcro shoes that go with everything.

Don't for a minute believe Mr. Brown's use of the historical “once linked” will have any effect on the ubiquitous use of this derisive theme.

Ageism regularly creeps into stories at that supposed bastion of progressive thinking, Alternet, but this one particularly wrankled.

Because most Americans are born into a family faith, it takes of a lot of self-reflection, soul-searching, discussion and reading on religion, philosophy and atheism itself to give up belief in god. So much so, it is unlikely the young have any useful commentary yet. But Jenny McCreight seems to believe atheism's leading literary figures can be dismissed (along with gender and race) for their age:

“The individuals most commonly associated with contemporary atheism—Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Victor Stenger—are all male, white and, well, kinda old (69, 61, 68 and 75).”

Then there is young mommyblogger, Julie Ryan Evans, whose five short paragraphs about the arrest of a 73-year-old who had overindulged in the caffeine/alcohol beverage Four Loko, overflow with repeated sarcasm of casual ageism that taken together reveal her contempt for old people:

”Apparently the drink has crept its way off of college campuses and into the hands of the geriatric crowd...

“Now one could wonder if he just didn't know what he was drinking and the power of the stuff. The older you get, the harder it is to read the fine print and all...

“It's not surprising that the older set is jumping on the Four Loko bandwagon. Aren't they always chasing the train trend of the young?...

“But like all fad fascinations, their coolness typically comes to an end ... usually just when the older generations discover them.”

With the possible exception of Ms. Evans, there is rarely intentional malice in these writers' negative references to elders. They come about through laziness - repeating words and phrases they read every day - and convention; unless you grew up in China or Japan, you've heard old people maligned all your life without ever being told it is as hateful as racist and sexist words.

Language matters. And repetition, as every advertiser knows, establishes credibility and familiarity. With each repetition, the product, service or idea becomes more deeply lodged in one's mind until even elders themselves sometimes do not recognize, in the case of ageism, that the idea is repellent.

Such memes as computer-illiterate old people interested only in the early-bird special at Denny's are repeated hundreds or thousands of times year after year until they are no longer perceived as demeaning and become how old people are acceptably defined – along with the consequences mentioned above.

After a long list of the many different ways elders are regularly discounted in newspapers, magazines, television, movies, the internet, even greeting cards, Dr. Butler, in his book The Longevity Revolution, wrote:

“It is time to change the language and imagery of old age in the media and sensitize journalists and writers about the language of ageism.”

Journalists and writers will not do it on their own so in this new year, it is time to take up Dr. Butler's challenge. Instead of just collecting instances of ageist language for a blog post like this one, emails need to be sent to the perpetrators clearly stating the reasons for objecting to their language. Each and every time it happens.

Today, I am asking you to help. Send me the references when you see them – the quote and the URL to the article. Most often, they are in stories unrelated to aging. There was no reason for Gabe Starosta to use an ageist reference to make the point that the Social Security website is poorly designed. Christopher Beam could easily write a technology story without dissing elders' computer skills.

You won't have any trouble finding these – they are painfully common. Once you are sensitized to them, you'll see them everywhere.

Send a letter to the writer and the editor of the publication. In due course, I will publish a template you can copy and easily adapt to individual circumstances. During the coming weeks and months, I'll devise a petition or two for us to use along with whatever other methods occur to me; your suggestions are welcome and sought.

Back in the 1960s, the civil rights movement made the N-word unacceptable. The women's movement made the word "girl" so toxic that I once saw a reference in The New York Times to a “15-year-old woman.”

When language changes, behavior changes. So this year, let's follow Saul Friedman's dictum as related by his wife Elke in last Saturday's post:

"The thread running through [Saul's] work was always the same: make the world a better place as best I can. In newspaperese: “The journalist’s job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

This year, let's help make the world a better place and do some afflicting.


TIME GOES BY | Ageism 2011

Fellowship Allows Diverse Reporters To Cultivate Public Awareness Of Aging Issues

Source: Todd Kluss - The Gerontological Society of America

The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) and New America Media (NAM) have selected 15 journalists for the new MetLife Foundation Journalists in Aging Fellows Program. They represent a wide range of traditional, new, and ethnic media, such as USA Today, Sing Tao Daily, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and TheAtlantic.com.

The fellows will convene during GSA's Annual Scientific Meeting - scheduled for November 19 to 23 in New Orleans - and tap into the conference's 500 presentations and 3,500 expert attendees to develop a major aging-focused story or series. Their proposed projects, to be published early in 2011, will focus on issues such as the struggles of grandparents raising grandchildren, innovations in elder-friendly housing for seniors, challenges for elderly immigrants in the U.S., retirement planning in the recession, seniors' use of new technology, and elders coping with the aftermath of multiple disasters on the Gulf Coast.

These journalists also will report on new research from the meeting and participate in a day-long pre-conference session, where GSA will showcase the latest developments in the field of aging and host discussions with veteran reporters on how to position stories in the current media environment.
"At a time when so much of America seems divided along generational, ethnic, and ideological lines, the stories of aging can bring us together with a new lifelong perspective," said Sandy Close, founder and executive editor of NAM. "Journalists need to tell stories that reveal how today's families depend on each other from their youngest to older members."

The fellowship program - funded by a $75,000 grant from the MetLife Foundation - comes just as the first of the 78 million baby boomers prepare to turn age 65 on January 1, 2011. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the nation's older population will almost double to 70 million by 2030. Also, the proportion of ethnic elders will double to 40 percent of America's population aged 65 and over by 2050.
Full Article including Selected Journalists List

Editorial - Fairness for Older Workers - NYTimes.com

Image via WikipediaFifteen months ago, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority mowed past statutory language, Congressional intent and decades of precedent to make it much harder for older workers to prove age discrimination.
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Stan Chambers Retiring From KTLA After 63 Years

TIME GOES BY | Mistaken Cultural Expectations of Elders

by Ronni Bennett

Lilalia, a gifted artist who blogs at Yum Yum Cafe, sent me a link to a short, Guardian UK video interview with crime writer, P.D. James, a decades-long favorite of mine.

The occasion of the interview was Ms. James's 90th birthday earlier this week on 3 August. It is a smart discussion about some of her books and her primary protagonist, Adam Dalgliesh. When asked if there would be another Dalgliesh story forthcoming, Ms. James replied that their might be but, she added, acknowledging her age, “I hate the idea of dying in the middle of a book.”

The Guardian UK website does not allow embedding of their videos so you'll need to visit the site to see the interview [8:39 minutes]. Here is a screen grab from it.


Unlike childhood when stages of growth can be predicted to the week – sitting up unaided, walking, talking, etc. - old age develops in individuals at dramatically different rates. Some people, depending on genes, lifestyle, health and dumb luck, become decrepit at a relatively young age. Others, like Ms. James, defy cultural stereotypes of 90-year-olds.

Take a good look at Ms. James and watch her on that video. She could easily be taken for what people commonly think of as a 65- or 70-year-old, both physically and cognitively. What is important here is that she is not exceptional, exempt from debilities of extreme age for being an accomplished writer or any other special circumstance. Old age is a great leveler.

Many elders live to the age of Ms. James and beyond as well as she has and there will be more as the elder population increases due to the advances, during that past hundred years, in health care and understanding of it. Nevertheless, Ms. James is not the cultural expectation, which is in need an adjustment.

From time to time on this blog, we discuss and laugh about our decreasing stamina, aches and pains that have no apparent cause, and lament the minor vagaries of getting old such as wrinkles, loose skin, hair loss, weight gain, etc. while being grateful too for the invention of cataract repair and replacement joints. No one reaches their upper decades without some kind of affliction.

Old age, as most of life, is a crapshoot. No matter how well we have cared for our health through the years, on any day we can be struck with debility. But what P.D. James, being more publicly visible than most 90-year-olds, represents is that the majority of people who reach great age remain – within the context of waning strength - capable, productive contributors.

The reason we don't see more of them is that it is generally believed this is not so.

TIME GOES BY | Mistaken Cultural Expectations of Elders

TIME GOES BY | Big Brother is Out to Control All Elders' Money

by Ronni Bennett

Recently, Cowtown Pattie of Texas Trifles blog sent me an eight-page brief [pdf] from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College titled What is the Age of Reason? In Pattie's words, it is a “chilling read” and she is not wrong.

The four authors of this brief are identified as a senior financial economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve System, a professor of finance at New York University and another professor at Harvard.

Among them, they acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) which is a federal agency and the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a division of the National Institutes of Health that describes itself as “leading the federal effort on aging research.” Bear with me – it's important that you know the genesis of this document.

The authors note that the views expressed in the brief

“do not represent the policies or positions of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, or the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.”

Whether the views of the NSF or NIA are represented is not stated.

Four of those eight pages of the brief are a title page, references and endnotes, so there's not much text.
The majority of the brief, including four graphs, gives a short overview of studies the authors analyzed which, they say, show “The prevalence of both dementia and cognitive impairment without dementia rises rapidly with age” and that older adults make more financial mistakes than mid-age adults.

All right - so far, so good in that this is true for SOME old people, although the information is nothing new. This is what academics do – slice and dice each other's work, sometimes to good effect and sometimes not, and issue thousands of briefs every year most of which sink into oblivion. But then the authors get to their conclusions ominously titled, “Possible Policy Responses”:

“In response to this problem, several policy approaches are possible and government intervention is probably desirable, although the ideal form of intervention remains unclear.” [emphasis added]

The authors immediately dismiss their first and only benign policy suggestion for government intervention - to strengthen financial disclosure requirements to the public – by stating that “we are skeptical that improved disclosure will be effective in improving financial choices.”

Then the brief begins to get scary – remember, this all targets elders. The second suggestion involves “financial driving licenses,” the requirement to pass a test before being allowed to make non-trivial financial decisions. They ask a whole bunch of feasibility questions including the all-important, Who would be required to take the test?

Well, not me; I will resist clear to the barricades. Reading this brief, I'm beginning to have some sympathy for the teabaggers who object to too much government.

In their final suggestion, the authors step all the way across the line into totalitarianism with “mandatory advance directives” in which adults would be required by a certain age to sign a document placing management of their assets with a third party if they become incapacitated.

That's already too much to stomach, but it gets worse.

“...a fiduciary could be appointed to approve all 'significant financial transactions' involving the principal’s funds after the principal reaches a designated age.” [emphasis added]

In regard to that diabological idea, the authors admit that “it might be perceived by some older adults as an unfair restriction targeted against them.”

DUH!

Not content to pull Social Security out from under elders (as too many in Congress are currently attempting to do), now they are thinking up ways to take everything else old people have.

As I noted above, thousands of such studies are written each year and most sink out of sight before the ink is dry. Some of them sometimes work their way through the bureaucracy to become policy or law. I have no confidence that this one, that would give the government or its appointees access to trillions of dollars in elder assets, will disappear.

Remember that two of these researchers work for federal agencies involved with monetary policy of commercial and investment banking, two others with major universities that are paid to supply the federal government with policy research, and the funding for this project comes from two other federal agencies.

Read the brief for yourself here [pdf].


TIME GOES BY | Big Brother is Out to Control All Elders' Money

The Outlier - The New Old Age Blog - NYTimes.com

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by Paula Span

I was about to post a hail-and-farewell to the veteran journalist Daniel Schorr, who died last week, not only because of his long and distinguished broadcast career, but also because I’d heard him capably analyzing the news on NPR’s “Weekend Edition” just a couple of weeks ago. He was about to turn 94.

I reconsidered, though, when I realized that this constitutes a sin I’ve accused others of committing: glorifying the exceptions, the folks who remain active and productive until days before death. I once heard a gerontologist call them “supergeezers,” an improvement over the stereotype of useless seniors in rocking chairs — but a stereotype, nonetheless.
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A Last Conversation With Dr. Robert Butler - The New Old Age Blog - NYTimes.com

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by Josh Tapper - Published July 7th in the New York Times

“I think a lot of older people are sitting on their asses, playing golf, and not making a contribution to society.”

Bounding about his Upper East Side office less than two weeks ago, Dr. Robert Butler seemed determined not to make that mistake. At 83, one of the world’s leading authorities on aging had just published his latest book, “The Longevity Prescription,” piles of which were scattered everywhere.

Dr. Butler died on Sunday at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, where in 1982 he had founded the first gerontology department at a United States medical school. My interview with him that day was one of his last.

Dr. Butler dedicated his life to ensuring that ours were longer and healthier. The author of innumerable scientific papers on longevity and aging, he founded and served as the first director of the National Institute on Aging. His first book, “Why Survive? Being Old in America,” won a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1976.

Thoughts from Dr. Robert Butler

Until just days before his death, he was still putting in 60-hour work weeks as the founder and C.E.O. of the International Longevity Center in New York.

He couldn’t sit still for the course of our interview, jumping up to grab me a soda (he was sipping from a can of Coke) or a New York Times clipping on elder abuse.

Josh Tapper is a fellow of News21, a national initiative to promote innovation in journalism, at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Columbia will launch a Web site, called “Brave Old World: Aging in America,” later this summer.


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Turn 70. Act Your Grandchild’s Age. - NYTimes.com

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By KATE ZERNIKE

Ringo Starr celebrated his 70th birthday last week by playing at Radio City Music Hall and saying his new hero is B. B. King, still jamming in his 80s.

Joining Mr. Starr in his 70s next year will be the still-performing Bob Dylan (“May you stay forever young”) and Paul Simon (“How terribly strange to be 70”). Following soon after will be Roger Daltrey (“Hope I die before I get old”) and Mick Jagger, who is reported to have said, several grandchildren ago, “I’d rather be dead than singing ‘Satisfaction’ at 45.”

A rock ’n’ roll septuagenarian was someone the gerontologist Robert Butler could have only dreamed of in 1968, when he coined the term “ageism” to describe the way society discriminates against the old.

Dr. Butler, a psychiatrist, died, at age 83, a few days before Ringo’s big bash. No one, his colleagues said, had done more to improve the image of aging in America. His work established that the old did not inevitably become senile, and that they could be productive, intellectually engaged, and active — sexually and otherwise. His life provided a good example: He worked until three days before his death from acute leukemia.

But as much as Dr. Butler would have cheered an aging Beatle onstage, his colleagues said he would have also cautioned against embracing the opposite stereotype — the idea that “aging successfully,” in his phrase, means that you have to be banging on drums in front of thousands — or still be acting like you did at 22 or 42.
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Brown to Whitman: Respect your elders - Andy Barr - POLITICO.com

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

By ANDY BARR

California Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jerry Brown on Wednesday criticized Republican rival Meg Whitman for running an ad highlighting his age.

Whitman began running a ‘60s-themed television ad last week tracking Brown’s five-decade career in politics. It starts with pictures of a younger Brown during his first campaign for governor in the 1960s and ends with an aging Brown in his current spot as state attorney general.

Brown, 72, was asked about the spot during an interview Wednesday morning with “Good Day L.A.” "'60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, I’ve been around a long time,” he said. “I know stuff. Knowing is better than not knowing.

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TIME GOES BY | Fear of Getting Old

by Ronnie Bennett

Unpacking and settling into a new home is an excellent time for contemplation. The work is relatively mindless and the physical activity keeps blood flowing to the brain.

One of the topics taking up space in there has been fear of aging. It is bred into us from cradle and is responsible for ageism and and age discrimination in all their forms, for people lying about their age, for 30-year-olds believing they are over the hill and for the billions of dollars wasted on Botox and cosmetic surgery.

It doesn't matter how many ways you try to deny your age or how much money you spend on nips and tucks and potions and creams, you will get old and if you live long enough, you will look your age.
All that denial is not really about getting old; it's about being reminded that we will die. A healthy fear of death is good; it keeps us from doing stupid things that might kill us before our time. But we – western culture – have gone way too far in pretending that death doesn't exist, depriving ourselves of the conscious experience of getting old.

Because of keeping this blog, I probably spend more time than many people thinking about what getting old is really like. We have often discussed here how we are happy to leave behind the concern for our appearance that took up so much time and effort in our youth. We like the patience and tolerance we have gained, the diminished need to always be right and I especially appreciate my new-found ability to let it go, when I've been thwarted in a goal, without the drama I created about it when I was young and even middle-aged.
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‘Sunset Daze’ Gives Older Folks Their Reality Show - NYTimes.com

Image by cactusdude666 via Flickr

By BROOKS BARNES

“Pedal to the metal, baby!” shouted Joanne Hauncher, 63, as she swerved wildly through traffic on a busy street in this Phoenix suburb. A truck driver slammed on his brakes and stared — she was driving a golf cart, after all — as Ms. Hauncher completed an illegal U-turn.

“Rules are made to be broken,” she muttered, arching a painted-on eyebrow. “I’m too old to be spanked. Wait. Scratch that!”

Ms. Hauncher, along with eight other retirees who live here, star in a new reality show on the WE tv network called “Sunset Daze.” How did the producers find her? “I was out with the Ho’s” — her term for her female posse — “and I guess we looked like fun,” she said. Her only stipulation for signing on? “I didn’t want to come off as a lunatic senior.”

Too late. “Sunset Daze,” which makes its debut on Wednesday night, pushes just that button as it tries to hold its own in the boozy, oversexed reality TV genre. The first episode has commentary on vibrators and going “commando,” slang for not wearing underpants. WE positions the series as “The Golden Girls” meets “Jersey Shore,” the ribald MTV series that spawned Snooki.

The media business often overlooks the importance of older folks — here including the first of the baby boomers — with all of the talk about attracting young viewers and racking up huge ratings in the 18-34 demographic. Yes, “Gossip Girl” is fine. But in some ways, “Golden Girls” is even better. And the country seems to be in the midst of a senior revival, with Betty White riding a wave of Internet lobbying to become guest host on “Saturday Night Live,” Cloris Leachman becoming a “Dancing With the Stars” darling at 82, and the late Bea Arthur showing up in advertisements for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
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• 'Sunset Daze' Preview: 'We're Retired, Not Dead' (tvsquad.com)

When Does 'youth' End And 'old Age' Begin? Results From The European Social Survey

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(Medical News Today) With a steadily growing proportion of older people in the UK and Europe, the 2008 European Social Study included a module that examined how people perceive and feel about their own and other age groups.

Professor Abrams explained: 'The survey showed that age prejudice being treated as 'too young' or 'too old' is perceived to be a serious or very serious issue by 63 per cent of respondents, so it is obviously important to know what these age labels mean to people'. To find out, the survey asked when does 'youth' end and 'old age' begin? For the UK, the average response to this question was that youth ends at the age of 35 and old age begins at 58.

However, the survey also revealed that people's judgments depend strongly on the 'age of the beholder'. On average, the youngest respondents (15 to 24-year old) judged that youth ends at 28 and old age starts at 54, whereas the oldest age group (80 and older) judged that youth ends at 42 and old age starts at 67.

In the UK, there is a gap of almost 40 years between young people's judgment of the end of youth and older people's judgment of the beginning of old age. However, more startlingly, there is a gap of only 12 years between older people's judgment of the end of youth and younger people's judgment of the start of old age.

In general, men regarded the end of youth and start of old age to begin two years earlier than women did.

There were also large differences between European countries. Youth was perceived to end earliest among respondents in Portugal (at the age of 29) and latest by those in Cyprus (at the age of 45). Portugal scored lowest for the belief when old age starts (at the age of 51), whereas Belgium ranked highest (at the age 64).

The findings illustrate that when people discover another person's age, their judgment of whether that person is young or old is highly subjective and this may have important implications in influencing people's assumptions about the person's responsibilities, rights and capabilities.

Professor Abrams said: 'This evidence shows that what counts as young and old is very largely down to the age of the beholder.'

Amongst other findings, the survey also showed that 28 per cent of UK respondents reported that they had been treated with prejudice because of their age in the past year and that the youngest age group were more likely to report experiences of prejudice than any other. Across the European countries in the survey, age prejudice was most widely reported in Finland (47 per cent) and least so in Cyprus and Portugal (19 per cent). The UK ranked 16 out of 21 countries in regard to this question.

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Elderly seen as 'burden on society' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Deakin University researchers questioned 113 people about their views on the over-65s for a report commissioned by the Victorian aged care organisation Benetas.

The university's Associate Professor David Mellor says young people and baby boomers perceived older people as unproductive.

"While older people are seen as friendly and pleasant, ultimately, they're seen to be unproductive," he said.

"Now, that ties in with baby boomers talking about older people as having no ambition, or as being fragile and being a burden on society."
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Media Takes: On Aging Style Guide

About the Report

With the longevity revolution, humankind enters a new and unprecedented stage of development, the impact of which is even greater because of its rapidity. This report/style guide is an important step in overcoming ageist language and beliefs by providing journalists and others who work in the media with an appropriate body of knowledge, including a lexicon that helps redefine and navigate this new world.

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Cases - Old Age, From Youth’s Narrow Prism - NYTimes.com

By MARC E. AGRONIN, M.D.

The old woman had drawn down the shade in her room — hoping, I imagined, to stop the midday Miami sun from penetrating her grief. But the sun still hit the window full force and illuminated the shade like a Chinese lantern.

She sat silently in a wheelchair, her 93-year-old silhouette stooped in the bathing light. I entered, held her hand for a moment and introduced myself. “Sit down, doctor,” she said politely.

I asked her why she had come to the nursing home, and she described the recent passing of her husband after 73 years of marriage.
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Seniors Stymied In Wait For Kidney Transplants

from Medical News Today

One-third of people over the age of 65 wait longer than necessary for lifesaving, new kidneys because their doctors fail to put them in a queue for organs unsuitable to transplant in younger patients but well-suited to seniors, research from Johns Hopkins suggests.
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