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Treasured Tropes About the Ancient Old Among Us
Or, stupid assumptions about folks with a little age, beginning with the Democratic contenders
On Saturday I was listening to a geriatrics doctor on NPR who had coined the term Elderhood, and who was responding to questions about both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. Biden, who is in his 70s and Sanders, who would be 80 at his inauguration should he win, have both caused some (not-so-old pundits or else they wouldn’t say these things) that these candidates are “out of touch.”
This, in one instance, because Biden used the term “record player.”
OhforChrissakes. Grow up, would you?
Besides, as if we music lovers hadn’t noticed, vinyl and their players are enjoying a major resurgence because the music is just better.
Because, as geriatrician Dr. Louise Aronson points out, out of touch for one generation is in touch for another, and another. And well beyond that point, no single president of a country as diverse as ours could possibly have an in-depth understanding not only of generational concerns across the board, but of the unique concerns of the Hopi Indians to lobster fishermen in Maine to corn farmers in Iowa to coal miners in West Virginia to environmentalists in Alaska.