GBO NEWS: Ageism Hits Millennials; Press@GSA Meeting, Austin, Nov. 13-17–with Lunch and the Science of Dog Aging; KHN’s Must-Read Feed on Debates, Open Enrollment Flaws; Nursing Home Profiteering & Death-Sniffing Rats; Tom Cole’s “Old Man Country “ Book Out in Dec.; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Celebrating 26 Years.
October 16, 2019 — Volume 26, Number 12
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. To subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge, simply sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. For each issue, you’ll receive the table of contents in an e-mail, so just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: News for Following, Not for Wallowing.
1. AGEISM DOESN’T BEGIN AT 65, OR 50—OR HOW ABOUT 22?
*** “Contrived Generational Wars Disguise the Failure of the American Dream,” by Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Boston Globe;
*** CASE IN POINT — “Why All Those Criticisms About Millennials Aren’t Necessarily Fair,” by Cardiff Garcia with Sally Herships, NPR All Things Considered;
*** “Older People Are Ignored and Distorted in Ageist Marketing, Report Finds,” by Tiffany Hsu, New York Times;
*** “Persistent Age Discrimination Could Stymie Economic Growth in Minnesota,” by Jackie Crosby, Minneapolis Star Tribune.
2. THE CALENDAR: Press Events @ GSA Annual Scientific Meeting, Austin, Nov. 13-17.
3. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Kaiser Morning Briefing” a Must-Read Feed, Especially “As Medicare Enrollment Nears, Popular Price Comparison Tool Is Missing,” by Susan Jaffe, Kaiser Health News;
*** “Beyond Medicine: Treating Chronic Disease In Rural U.S. Takes Education, Coping Skills,” by Lisa Gillespie, NPR’s “Hear & Now”/WFPL Radio;
*** “Nursing Care Expected To Worsen As California Ages,” [https://tinyurl.com/yyna6jjn] by Laura Wenus, KALW Public Radio;
*** “The Rats Sensed She Was Going to Pass Away,” by Jennifer Gollan, Reveal (Center for Investigative Reporting
4. GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** Public Radio’s Karen Michel Launches Omega Institute’s Holistic “Dropping In” Podcast; *** Thomas R. Cole’s Book Old Man Country: My Search for Meaning Among the Elders Out in December.
1. AGEISM DOESN’T BEGIN AT 65, OR 50—OR HOW ABOUT 22?
*** “Contrived Generational Wars Disguise the Failure of the American Dream,” by Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Boston Globe, (Oct. 11, 2019):
In this op-ed, Gullette, author of Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People, begins, “In a nation grappling with growing inequality, stagnating social mobility, crushing personal debt, and crumbling job security, efforts to set America’s generations against one another persist. Don’t blame the system, blame the ‘greedy’ boomers. Or the ‘slacker’ Gen Xers. Or ‘entitled’ Millennials. But who gains from such discourses? Efforts to foment that warfare, intentionally or not, serve specific agendas . . . Pitting generations against one another, aside from their war metaphors, writers reach for doomsday predictions, lachrymose empathy for ‘our kids,’ and questionable data. All this relies on the invention of mendacious attributes, conferring on millions of diverse people implausible character flaws or virtues.”
Gullette cites the Government Accountability Office finding that 29% of boomers have zero saved for retirement, “and many of the rest have little. Ageism in the workforce is one reason they lose a job and then can’t find an equally good one — or find any work at all. Boomers are often treated as ‘deadwood.’ … Succeeding cohorts (all containing the same disparities — of class, race, gender, and education) have also been treated as if they were a single human with a character flaw. During the 1990s recessions, when the so-called Xers couldn’t find work, they too were branded with a slur — ‘slackers’ — while boomers were represented as the horde bullies who held onto all the good jobs.”
One example she tags is The Atlantic piece by pundits Niall Ferguson, from the Hoover Institution, and Eyck Freymann, in which they “defend Millennials because their ‘early working lives were blighted by the financial crisis’ — but ignore how home foreclosures, sluggish growth, and job losses also blighted people around Ferguson’s own age (55) . . . Younger people should support the expansion of Social Security for another reason, writes one Millennial who doesn’t take the bait. Nick Guthman argues in The Hill that because of student debt, ‘Millennials and Generation Z will need Social Security even more than our parents and grandparents do.’”
Gullette concludes, “Don’t blame your parents. Every article manipulating cohort stereotypes lets the government and corporations off the hook for outsourcing abroad, the crash of rust-belt industries, de-unionization, and the decades of cascading downward mobility we now endure. You can’t even want to get justice until you know the true sources of injustice.”
*** CASE IN POINT — “Why All Those Criticisms About Millennials Aren’t Necessarily Fair,” by Cardiff Garcia with Sally Herships, NPR All Things Considered (Oct. 3, 2019): The piece, originated by “The Indicator” podcast from NPR’s Planet Money, begins promisingly enough by calling out the “myths” promulgated over the years about the age cohort born from 1981 through 1999 (today, ages 22-38). The lead: “Earlier generations have sometimes labeled Millennials as lazy, coddled, afraid of traditional adult milestones like marriage and kids and buying a house. But that is a bum rap, and one economist has made it a personal mission to explain why.”
The story (3:49 audio and transcript) quotes economist Gray Kimbrough of American University, who states that in the 10 years after each Millennial reached age 18, the U.S. economy grew by an average of about 18%.’ He added, “For both Gen X and the Boomers, it grew by about twice that much when members of those generations turned 18.”
But later Garcia says, oddly, “Because they endured the financial crisis 10 years ago at a young, impressionable age, it’s also possible that Millennials are going to be less likely to inflate a big housing market bubble or some other financial bubble from buying things they can’t afford.”
Garcia doesn’t say exactly which generations he to presumes had outspent their capacity and on what items? Fast cars, bad mortgages and reverse mortgages they were conned into. How about the societal costs of explosive and often unaccounted for military spending by bipartisan politicians? Never mind the roots of the real profligacy, the very economic squeeze on younger people, says the story, may well have a silver lining. Since Millennials can’t squander the nation’s wealth, says Garcia, “This also would make economic growth more sustainable in the long run.” Instead of blaming today’s youth “for being lazy or putting off adulthood, maybe the rest of us will end up thanking them instead.” Huh?
Anyone remember that home buyers did not “inflate” housing costs but – thank you for The Big Short, Michael Lewis – were massively defrauded by Wall Street, the big banks and mortgage industry with not one criminal conviction of the executives, many of whom continued getting richer? Oh, you might say, that was a decade ago.
And the new book by the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Aaron Glantz, Homewreckers, (HarperCollins), tells how billionaires, such as the current Trump administration Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, helped undercut U.S. homeownership by investing in the mass of foreclosures in the wake of the Great Recession – 3 million properties and 12 million units sopped up by Wall Street firms. They have driven up rents while driving people out of their homes, many of them seniors.
While GBO’s editor doesn’t expect NPR News to reiterate these entangled complexities, I also don’t expect them to broadcast such shallow and prejudicial framing. Also strangely, NPR’s Herships paraphrases Gray, “The most likely reason that young adults have been living at home longer and putting off buying houses is the economy.” She notes that while young adults are getting married later, “a much higher share of Millennials go to college and graduate than people from earlier generations. And so the amount of college debt has climbed a lot since the middle of the last decade, which also makes it harder for young adults to afford houses.”
So-o-o, college debt has skyrocketed because Millennials have been going to school more? Somewhere amidst today’s tougher choices between education, marriage and home ownership, shouldn’t readers be reminded that college debt only in recent year became a profit-making proposition draining much of their future. Average college debt today is $30,000. And, unlike a generation ago, the federal government is raking in profits on student loans, a surplus Congress has been unwilling to forego despite the damage that debt is doing to young people.
The next time there’s a scandal, you can bet your laptop that any handy generation will get the blame by some lazy writers for major media. Even when a story’s thread seems sympathetic to one or the other demographic group, it’s a shame that reporters and their editors need to be reminded to be suspicious of any analysis that pits one population group against another.
Herships and Garcia’s defense of the Millennial generation, via their interview with Gray, contains some useful information, yet the strictly generational focus slants the societal context in simplistic ways that merely reinforce a generational bias. Maybe NPR News should pair Planet Money with the social-research program Hidden Brain.
*** “Older People Are Ignored and Distorted in Ageist Marketing, Report Finds,” by Tiffany Hsu, New York Times (Sept. 23, 2019): “Older consumers, who hold trillions of dollars in spending power and make up a growing portion of the global population, would seem to be a prime target for advertisers. Instead, the demographic is shunned and caricatured in marketing images, perpetuating unrealistic stereotypes and contributing to age discrimination, according to a new report.”
Hsu reports, “More than a third of the United States population is older than 50, but the group turns up in only 15 percent of media images, according to research from AARP. . . . More than 53 million people older than 50 are employed, making up a third of the American labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But only 13 percent of the images reviewed by AARP showed older people working.”
Also, “Less than 5 percent of the images showed older generations handling technology, even though the Pew Research Center has found that 69 percent of people between 55 and 73 own a smartphone.”
Hsu continues, “At advertising, public relations and related companies in the United States, more than 81 percent of employees are younger than 55, according to government data . . . . In trade publications like AdAge, employees have described the industry as a “Peter Pan,” and say few employees last long enough to have a retirement party. Duncan Milner, who helped develop some of Apple’s best-known advertising campaigns, accused his longtime agency TBWA of age discrimination in a lawsuit last month.”
She goes on, “There have been some shifts for the industry. In June, customer searches on Getty for images of ‘seniors’ had increased 151 percent from a year earlier. The most popular image in the category now shows a group of women in T-shirts practicing yoga. A decade earlier, the best-selling photo featured a couple in sweaters embracing on a beach.”
*** “Persistent Age Discrimination Could Stymie Economic Growth in Minnesota,” by Jackie Crosby, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Sept. 23, 2019): Crosby wrote, “Within five years, a quarter of the U.S. workforce will be 55 or older, and many people hope and expect to keep working into their late 60s and beyond. But age discrimination is a growing concern among workers and job seekers. Between 1990 and 2017, the number of age-related discrimination charges filed by those 65 and older has doubled, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”
She added, “Aside from being a legal risk for companies, age discrimination and negative workplace perceptions about the value of older workers could curb the state’s economic growth . . . . Today, about a quarter of 65- to 74-year-olds are still in the workforce. Projections show that in 2024, Minnesota will have 3.1 million jobs, but only about 2.7 million working-age adults will be employed. If current employment levels continue, older adults could help fill about half of the shortfall, according to the Wilder Foundation . . . . A growing number of older workers feel the subtle and difficult-to-prove hand of ageism.”
Crosby added that panelists at a local forum on older employees “argued that experienced workers may be the most underappreciated assets of the U.S. economy. It’s time for businesses to recognize age as another form of workplace diversity, they said, and begin rooting out ageism and outdated perceptions about older workers. ‘I cannot tell you how many people I have met with who are over 50 in their organizations who say, “I feel invisible for the very first time in my career,” said Philomena Satre, the director of diversity and inclusion and strategic partnerships at [the giant agricorporation] Land O’Lakes.”
2. THE CALENDAR
*** Press Events @ GSA Annual Scientific Meeting, Austin, Nov. 13-17: Reporters coming to the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) conference can apply for complimentary press registrations at www.geron.org/press. This one is the principal research meeting on aging, attracting 4,000 professionals from about 30 countries. They will present nearly 500 scientific sessions with new research and analyses on just about every topic under the aging sun ranging from new technologies to Social Security to Medicare4All (and its controversies) to creative aging.
A Press Lunch Briefing is set for Thurs., Nov. 14. It will honor National Family Caregiving Month with the release of a new report by AARP’s Public Policy Institute (PPI), titled “Valuing the Invaluable: 2019 Update Charting a Path Forward.” Expect the PPI crew to deliver an incisive overview of family caregiving in the U.S. and with plenty of personal stories. On hand will be some of the report’s authors, Susan Reinhard, Ari Houser, Lynn Friss Feinberg, and Rita Choula, among the best experts in the field on this issue. In addition, AARP and UsAgainstAlzheimer’s will also announce the Be Brain Powerful campaign and kick off a new nationwide call to action that empowers women to take charge of their brain health.
The Opening Keynote Address, Nov. 14, will be by social scientist Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. According to GSA’s release, “Using experiments involving many thousands of people in online networks, in developing world villages, and in for-profit firms, his group has demonstrated how social connections shape our health, wealth, productivity, and security. His startling findings present intriguing new evidence that our real-life social networks shape virtually every aspect of our lives.”
“Living in Dog Years: The Science of How Dogs Age and the Implications for Human Aging” is a special presentation being held that Thursday evening about the Dog Aging Project. The presentation “will provide insights into the first large-scale longitudinal study of canine aging in more than 10,000 dogs along with double-blind, placebo controlled clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of rapamycin to slow aging in dogs.” (Rocco says, “You’re putting what in my kibble?”)
Journalists Reception and Meet-Up, Fri., Nov. 15: Reporters will gather in the Press Room on Level 1 of the Austin Convention Center at 5 p.m. Starting with vino or softer sips and initial light nibbles, we’ll circle up the chairs and go around to find out who else is there and what people are covering. We’ll be toasting the 10th year of the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program, which GSA cosponsors with GBONews.org’s parent org, the Journalists Network on Generations. This year’s group of 20 reporting fellows will attend, plus others covering the conference. After everyone snacks for a while on story ideas and trends, GSA will wheel in the carts with more substantial SxSW fare as the conversations continue.
Got questions about the conference? Contact GSA Communications Director Todd Kluss, tkluss@geron.org; phone 202-587-2839.
3. THE STORYBOARD
*** Kaiser Morning Briefing a Must-Read Feed: MediCare4All, the elections, health IT – holding your head like Munch’s “The Scream” because you can’t keep up with the freakin’ Tweets of it all? One daily headline stack GBONews relies on just to scan the top lines and dip in where needed is the Kaiser Health Briefing from Kaiser Health News. Not only does the feed, available gratis in your e-mail, feature their own excellent reporting, but the site also links to many non-KHN stories.
Just two KHN-originated headers posted this week included the pre-debate piece, “Think ‘Medicare For All’ Is The Only Democratic Health Plan? Think Again,” by Emmarie Huetteman, and “Age-Old Health Care Debate Shifts From Insuring More People To Cutting Costs,” by KHN Chief Washington Correspondent Julie Rovner.
*** Especially From KHN: “As Medicare Enrollment Nears, Popular Price Comparison Tool Is Missing,” by Susan Jaffe, Kaiser Health News (Oct. 8, 2019): As millions of seniors are signing up for private Medicare Part D drug and supplemental MediGap plans for 2020, Jaffee writes, “Many risk wasting money and even jeopardizing their health care due to changes in Medicare’s plan finder, its most popular website. For more than a decade, beneficiaries used the plan finder to compare dozens of Medicare policies offered by competing insurance companies and get a list of their options. Yet after a website redesign six weeks ago, the search results are missing crucial details: How much will you pay out-of-pocket? And which plan offers the best value?”
She reports that although Medicare officials say the calculator will be fixed in time for the Oct. 15 start of the annual enrollment season, which runs through Dec. 7, “they have yet to address multiple other issues raised by the Medicare Rights Center and industry groups.”
New for 2020 is that Medicare Advantage plans (Part C managed care insurance, unlike traditional Medicare) may offer additional benefits for people with chronic diseases, such as dementia, diabetes or heart disease. That’s on top of the non-medical benefits they were allowed to add this year, such as home-delivered meals after a hospitalization or minor home improvements, such as grab bars in the bathroom.
However, Jaffe writes, only 10% (about 500) Medicare Advantage plans affected by the new rules, offered new supplemental benefits in 2020 for people with serious chronic illnesses, such as in-home services, palliative care, respite support for people’s caregivers or adult day care. Also, she reporters, the new extra benefits will not be accessible in every county, requiring seniors to do some detective work.
Currently, she writes, “Using the plan finder, it’s possible to narrow down the Medicare Advantage choices only to those plans that offer hearing, vision, dental, fitness and transportation coverage.”
*** “Beyond Medicine: Treating Chronic Disease In Rural U.S. Takes Education, Coping Skills,” by Lisa Gillespie, NPR’s “Hear & Now”/WFPL Radio (Oct. 7, 2019): “Americans who live in rural parts of the United States have much higher rates of death than the rest of the country. The causes are not only diseases like cancer and diabetes but their side effects — depression, anxiety and suicide.” The story is part six of an ongoing series Gillespie has done for WFPL Louisville Public Radio with support from the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program.
*** “Nursing Care Expected To Worsen As California Ages,” by Laura Wenus, KALW Public Radio, is the first of three excellent stories, each about 15 minutes, on the trouble with long-term care that ran Sept. 16-18. Produced with support from a USC Center for Health Journalism California Fellowship, the series exposed cracks in the U.S. system also mirroring problems outside of California. They include the lack of affordable continuing care facilities, often forcing elders to find placements miles from their home and family; letting low-income seniors fall between Medicare and the Medicaid poverty program, even in respected nonprofit homes; and how corporate-owned rehab and other long-term care services evade accountability for inadequate, sometimes dangerous, services.
Links to Parts 2 & 3 are: “In Nursing Care, Advocates Say Services For Long-Term Patients Falls ‘Short” and “Nursing Care Crunch Puts The Onus On Patients To Expose Problems.”
In addition, KALW News Director Ben Trefney conducted a bonus Interview with Patricia McGinnis, executive director of the nationally-respected California Advocated for Nursing Home Reform. In the piece, “Charting Nursing Care Facility Problems … And Solutions,” she discusses the problems in the nursing care industry, declaring that it’s time “to end for-profit nursing homes.”
*** “The Rats Sensed She Was Going to Pass Away,” by Jennifer Gollan, Reveal,Center for Investigative Reporting (Sept. 18, 2019): Gollan’s article, part of a series, “found that some operators of senior board-and-care homes that violate labor laws and steal workers’ wages –previously exposed by Reveal – often also endanger or neglect their residents, sometimes with dire consequences. Reveal analyzed thousands of licensing records and hundreds of U.S. Department of Labor cases in California and conducted two dozen interviews with workers, residents and their family members … In May, Reveal reported widespread exploitation of caregivers in senior residential care homes, many of whom earn as little as $2 an hour to work around the clock with no days off, while some industry operators make millions. Caregivers routinely are harassed and fired if they complain. … Reveal also found that companies caught stealing from workers continue to operate illegally despite outstanding wage theft judgments, leaving scores of workers unpaid. California regulators had said they could not strip these companies of their licenses unless residents’ health and safety were threatened.”
4. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** Public Radio’s Karen Michel Joins Pod People: The longtime radio freelancer, still often heard on such programs as NPR’s “Morning Edition” and “Hear & Now,” is newly refreshed as a podcaster. Her Dropping In program comes via the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, which brought her in to interview “great thinkers, creative talent, and social visionaries who teach there.” Omega has been one of the prime venues for consciousness raising in the country, and the pods are including conversations with artists, climate change provocateurs, spiritual teachers, health experts, and authorities on other topics, some involving facets of conscious aging. Michel’s initial podcasts were with Joan Borysenko on “Aging With Sass and Class” (29 Mins.) and Tim Olmsted, a leading Buddhist teacher and president of the Pema Chödrön Foundation. In the interview, “Olmsted explores Siddhartha, our monkey mind, the four immeasurables of Buddhist thought, and how meditation can change our world.”
*** Old Man Country: My Search for Meaning Among the Elders, by Thomas R. Cole, PhD, Oxford University Press, is set for release in December, with review copies available now for request. Cole spent years doing multiple intense interviews with accomplished men in their late 70s to 90s about their experience of aging. They range from broadcaster Hugh Downs, now age 98, to former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, 92, and Ram Dass, 88. Others are less famous but no less accomplished. Many of the keenest insights about their experience of late life also comes through Cole’s conversations with their wives. (Full disclosure, this editor likes the book so much, I was proud to be asked to provide Oxford with a auditory blurb.)
Cole, is the chair of Medical Humanities and director of the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. His 1992 book The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America was a Pulitzer Prize nominee. Also, he will be speaking to the Journalists in Aging Fellows at the GSA Annual Scientific Meeting in Austin in November.
Reporters can request a review copy from Oxford’s publicist, Cayla DiFabio, Cayla.DiFabio@oup.com, phone: 212-726-6489.
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online News (GBONews.org). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. Copyright 2019 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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