I wended my way to the AARP site and for the first time read a few of their many posted articles on ageism. It gave me no pleasure at all. Here's a characteristic line:
Older women may be driving much of today’s growth in social media and online shopping, but I dare you to find a single model who resembles us on any major retail site. (Lois Joy Johnson, “Oh, Grow Up! Four Ways to Fight Ageism,” 20140701, accessed 20140724)
Blah, I don’t want to read this — it’s more pleasurable gnashing my teeth over JavaScript. I remember AARP articles on ageism from the 1980s, when my grandparents were the only members of the organization in my family. The tone of the articles hasn’t changed much since then. I doubt the issue is going to evolve much, since unlike issues surrounding ethnicity, gender, and class, the constituency of the old is a stage of life that everyone passes through unless they die first, and the old have been complaining about everyone else for almost as long as we have the evidence of written records.
I’ve been an old coot, my friends tell me, since I was a teenager. I’m glad if I can get a useful coupon or insurance discount from this organization, but I’m not interested in hearing about ageism, whether from disgruntled old coots or from engruntled younger people wishing to make me feel better. I’d rather not think about the issue. I do appreciate the good intentions of younger people when they say, “Ageism is terrible,” etc. etc. But it means more to me when they help me improve my coding or get my work known.
It’s been said from time to time that the AARP is a front for insurance-lobby interests. Perhaps so. How come JavaScript and Chinese philology don’t have lobbies?
The best comment I’ve heard on getting old is the one my mother has been making for years and years: “Just you wait.”
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