GBO NEWS: Wise Up to Aging, Jon Stewart – On Presidents, Partisanship, the Press and Prejudice; Deadlines for Roslynn Carter Mental Health and USC Annenberg National Reporting Fellowships; Florida’s Anti-Vax Debate; Hearing Loss and Falls; Language Barriers to Elder Health; Aging Black to 104 (with Black History Sources)
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations.
February 19, 2024 — Volume 31, Number 2
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. If you have difficulty getting to the full issue of GBONews with the links provided below, simply go to www.gbonews.org to read the latest or past editions. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. [pfkleyman@gmail.com]. 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. NOTE ALSO: Some news links below hit paywalls and are inaccessible without subscriptions, although a number of those do allow free access to the first few stories.
In This Issue: Ahh, Pitchers and Catchers Reporting (Bats Only – No ARs, Cowboys).
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE: *** April 12 Deadline, Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism; *** April 10 Deadline, USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2024 National Fellowship
2. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Aging Matters: Vaccine debate continues among seniors,” by Ronnie Lovler, Main Street Daily News;
*** “What to Do if Your Hospital Drops Your Medicare Advantage Plan,” by Kate Ashford, Nerdwallet;
*** “Sense of Place: Studies show that hearing loss increases a person’s risk of falling. Why might that be — and what can you do about it? “ by Katie Scarlett Brandt, Chicago Health Magazine/Caregiving Magazine;
*** “Where Are My Mother’s Teeth? Language Barriers Limit Seniors’ Access To Healthcare,” by Meera Kymal, India Currents;
3. WORDS FROM THE WISE: Aging Black to 104 (with Black History Sources)
*** “What can Willard Harris’s life tell us about how to age well?” produced by Chris Nooney, “State of the Bay,” KALW Public Radio, San Francisco
4. WISE UP TO AGING, JON STEWART. (Consider the Alternative.):
*** Jon Stewart is feeling his age. Jon, I’m your long-time fan, Paul. Would you meet me at Camera 2 for a private word about presidents, partisanship, the press and prejudice?
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** The Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism is accepting applications until April 12. Applicants can be US citizens and residents. “The yearlong, nonresidential fellowships aim to equip journalists with resources to produce compelling and balanced reporting on mental health and substance use issues and to develop a diverse cohort of journalists who can effectively report on the topics across evolving and emerging platforms.” Nine US fellows will each receive a $10,000 stipend, intensive training on behavioral health reporting at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Applications must be completed and submitted online. The 2024-25 fellowship year begins in September.
Founded in 1996 by former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, the fellowships are a wonderful memorial legacy that aims to “give journalists the resources they need to report on mental health — one of the world’s most underreported health issues — to help dismantle through storytelling the stigma that millions of people face every day, according to their website.”
The selection committee includes current and former journalists, mental health experts, and the Fellowship Advisory Board, “with an emphasis on diversity across ethnicity, geography, mediums, and the communities their fellowship projects will cover,” says their site. Find details on how to apply here . For additional inquiries, email carterfellows@cartercenter.org, 404-420-5129.
*** USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2024 National Fellowship will provide $2,000 to $10,000 in reporting grants, five months of mentoring from a veteran journalist, and a week of intensive training at USC Annenberg in Los Angeles in mid-July. Click here for more information and the application form, due April 10, 2024.
Says their website, “The National Fellowship provides journalists a chance . . . to take a deep look together at pervasive social and economic inequities in the United States, and the lasting health effects of systemic racism and exclusion on families and communities. Our program places strong emphasis on the ways in which environmental and community conditions can influence how long and how well we live.” Applicants do not need to be a health journalist to be considered. Past fellows, such as GBO’s editor, explored the issues through a health or social-welfare equity lens.
2. THE STORYBOARD
Following are stories by some of the reporters selected for this year’s Journalists in Aging Fellows Program, the collaboration between GBONews.org publisher, the Journalists Network on Generations, and the Gerontological Society of America. For this 14th year, the program is being supported by grants from the Silver Century Foundation, John A. Hartford Foundation, Archstone Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund and the NIHCM Foundation, plus a generous contribution from John Migliaccio.
*** “Aging Matters: Vaccine debate continues among seniors,” by Ronnie Lovler, Main Street Daily News(Gainesville, Fla., January 27, 2024):
The Lede: “The debate over the value of immunizations and whether to vaccinate is still going strong, especially in Florida.”
Quotes: At last fall’s Gerontological Society of America (GSA) conference in Tampa, experts at a session on immunizations for the elderly called for “increased reverence for vaccines. . . Chad Worz, CEO of the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, said, ‘It’s not just COVID-19; it’s influenza, RSV, any infection in someone older who is medically complex or just older. The disease has an opportunity to hospitalize them and potentially kill them. We need to do what we can to lessen the chance of that happening.’”
Anti-Vaxer: Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, a professor of medicine at the University of Florida, had issued a January statement calling for ‘a halt to the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines’ like those developed by Pfizer and Moderna. Ladapo said DNA fragments found in mRNA vaccines are a potential cause of increased cancer risk, reproductive issues, and many other health problems.
FDA and Local Response: “After Ladapo expressed his concerns in a December letter, the FDA said the 2007 guidance was not applicable and that it is ‘quite implausible’ that minute amounts of DNA fragments could find their way into a person’s chromosomal DNA. . . . Gainesville’s Star Bradbury, CEO of Senior Living Strategies and author of the book Successfully Navigating Your Parents Senior Years, urged the elderly to stay up to date on all their vaccinations in a recently circulated e-mail. ‘You may be sick and tired of hearing about various vaccinations, but the truth is they save lives,’ Bradbury wrote.”
*** “What to Do if Your Hospital Drops Your Medicare Advantage Plan,” by Kate Ashford, Nerdwallet (Feb. 2, 2024): The Dek: “Why this might happen — and how to handle this change to your coverage if it happens to you.”
The Lede: “Slightly more than half of Medicare-eligible people are enrolled in Medicare Advantage — but hospitals around the country have been dropping Medicare Advantage plans due to issues with prior authorizations and denials. Hospitals and health systems in at least 11 states announced in 2023 that they would be out-of-network for some or all Medicare Advantage plans in 2024, according to reporting from Becker’s Hospital Review, a medical industry trade magazine.”
A Quote: Says Katy Votava, . . . president and founder of Goodcare, a consulting firm focused on the economics of health care, “This has always been a problem, but it’s getting worse. It’s not only the reimbursement rates, but the approvals have become so onerous for providers to deal with.”
Why: “Among other things, Medicare Advantage plans require patients to get prior authorization for more services than Original Medicare. Prior authorizations require time on the part of a medical provider, and the requests aren’t always successful. . . .UnitedHealthcare, for instance, announced last year that it would eliminate almost 20% of its prior authorizations. ‘Prior authorizations help ensure member safety and lower the total cost of care, but we understand they can be a pain point for providers and members,” said Dr. Anne Docimo, chief medical officer of UnitedHealthcare, in a press release. Hospitals are also frustrated by administrative delays and denials for care.”
*** “Sense of Place series: Studies show that hearing loss increases a person’s risk of falling. Why might that be — and what can you do about it? “ by Katie Scarlett Brandt, Chicago Health Magazine/Caregiving Magazine (Jan. 30, 2024):
The Lede: “No matter where Louis is — working downtown, riding his bike, traveling — his thoughts drift to his 95-year-old mother. More than anything, he worries about her falling. . . ‘Hearing loss takes away that sense of her surroundings. It clearly contributes to the frequency of falls,’ Louis says. He feels like there’s more at stake with each fall, too. ‘Now that she’s 95, her body has aged. Her mobility is more compromised, she’s weaker, and that also affects her balance.’”
Stats: “A fall can have drastic consequences, changing an older adult’s life in an instant. And some 14 million Americans over age 65 fall annually, says Jeannette Mahoney, PhD, associate professor in the neurology department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. ‘In fact, over 3 million older Americans require an emergency room visit every year because of fall-related injuries. Falls are the leading cause of injury and injury-related death in older adults, with over $50 billion spent annually on non-fatal and fatal falls,” Mahoney says, citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.’”
Among Precautions: “Ronna Fisher, . . . founder of Hearing Health Center in Chicago, . . . recommends everyone over age 50 get a baseline hearing checkup. And regardless of your age, anyone experiencing hearing loss or balancing issues should talk with their primary care doctor, who will work to find the root cause of the issue.”
*** “Where Are My Mother’s Teeth? Language Barriers Limit Seniors’ Access To Healthcare,” by Meera Kymal, India Currents (Jan. 27, 2024): The Dek – “My mother does speak English, but she found the surgeon’s manner intimidating and felt it challenging to articulate her point of view.”
The Lede: “In 2017, my fiercely independent 89-year-old mother went to our local hospital to have a vascular surgeon examine a foreboding ulcer developing on her ankle. . . As a product of colonial India, she speaks English well enough, though sometimes American accents and phrasing confuse her.” After a poor experience, “My once-independent mother refuses to see any physician unless I’m with her to advocate for her healthcare.”
The Upshot: “Older immigrant parents like my mother often encounter challenges speaking up for their healthcare needs. According to U.S. census data, language barriers have been associated with limited access to health care and poor health outcomes. Though my mother does speak English, she found the surgeon’s manner intimidating and felt it challenging to articulate her point of view. . . Dr. Latha Palaniappan of Stanford University’s Center for Asian Research and Education (CARE) found that non-English-speaking patients reported receiving less health education, worse care, and lower patient satisfaction.”
The Stats: “As America grows more racially and ethnically diverse, U.S. census data reports that from 1980 to 2019, the number of people in the U.S. who spoke a language other than English at home nearly tripled to well over 67 million. More than 14 million people in the United States do not speak English and more than 25 million people say they speak less than well. These groups are often referred to as speakers with Limited English Proficiency (LEP). Dr. Palaniappan’s research focuses on Asian, Hispanic, and African American populations in the United States.”
Cost-Service Cuts: “In the survey, both patients and providers reported less than satisfactory access to adequate interpretation services that in many healthcare systems, is caused by cost-cutting measures. Telephone translation is not as ideal, said Dr. Palaniappan because it eliminates nonverbal cues. Sometimes there’s a two-hour wait to get a telephone translator on the line, while remote services with video are hamstrung by limited access to internet services and bandwidth.”
A Quote: Dr. Elaina B. Rios, President and CEO of the National Hispanic Medical Association pointed out that with so few physicians of Hispanic, black, or Native American ethnicity, ‘you don’t get the racial concordance between doctors and patients. And so sometimes that’s the problem.”
3. WORDS FROM THE WISE
Aging Black to 104 (with Black History Sources)
*** “What can Willard Harris’s life tell us about how to age well?” produced by Chris Nooney, “State of the Bay,”KALW Public Radio, San Francisco (Jan. 22, 2024, 14 min. audio; transcript posted here.), introduced by guest host and author Sarah Ladipo Manyika.
The Lede-in: “What’s your secret? That’s a question that Willard Harris has been asked countless times, and it’s no surprise. Willard recently celebrated her 104th birthday, and she’s still going strong. In this world of advanced medicine and artificial intelligence, so many of us are searching for the secret to a long and healthy life.”
A Stat: “According to projections from the U. S. Census Bureau, the number of Americans living to 100 and older is expected to quadruple over the next three decades.
The Interview: “Last week, I sat down with my good friend Willard Harris. . . [She said,] ‘I was born in Chicago, Illinois, but I was raised in Jackson, Tenn. I left home when I was 18 years of age and went to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, where I received my RN Diploma. I left there and went to the University of Tennessee and received a Bachelor’s Degree. And on to New York City where I received a Master’s Degree in Nursing Administration at NYU. . . I moved here [to San Francisco] in 1958 from New York.’
A Fact: Willard’s education might help explain her longevity. In general, Black Americans have a lower life expectancy than white Americans. But a study led by the Yale School of Medicine and University of Alabama Birmingham found that the level of education and not race is the best predictor of who will live the longest. Not that longevity was on Willard’s mind when she decided to go into nursing. She was living her life, and that life led her to San Francisco in 1958.’”
Community: “She was the first Black director of nursing at a major San Francisco hospital. . . and the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic. “And I was on the board of directors at that clinic. And our goal was to try to help all of these youngsters that came our way. Particularly those that was on drugs and those that was having mental breakdowns.”
Longevity: “I asked Willard if she thought that staying active was part of why she is 104 and still going strong. ‘ I truly believe that that is so. I don’t want to be a mental loafer. I try to read books that’s going to be of interest. I walk. I do water aerobics. I try to remember that the glass is half full instead of half empty: 90 years old, I started taking piano lessons. So I’ve done that in order to keep active. However, I am again going back to my faith. I truly, truly believe that the good Lord is using me as a conduit in order to give me love and joy and happiness, to be able to pass it on. Maybe a cup of strength. to some other needy people.’”
And: “There’s another important factor, and that’s friendships: ‘I listen without judging. If I promise something, I will do it or let you know why I cannot. And I think my friends feel that I am a person that they can come to with any kind of issues and problems. I often say, I have a certificate in listening, and I think that is one of the reasons that my friends gravitate to me.
She added, “I say treat others the way you want to be treated. Avoid stress. One of my sayings is “I’m too blessed to be stressed.” Laugh a lot. . . Don’t worry about what’s going to be tomorrow, because really there is no tomorrow. When you stop and look at it, tomorrow is today. One of the things I do on a daily basis, I take about 30 minutes out of my day to be by myself. That is my 30 minutes, because your day gets so full. Those are just a few of the things I throw out.’”
*** KALW’s Chris Nooney also posted these reading recommendations from Willard Harris for Black History Month – with other sources your good health. Nooney posted, “What’s the secret to aging well? Willard Harris, who’s going strong at age 104, shares her thoughts on how friendships, healthy living, faith and laughter play a role. Willard is an avid reader.” See the full list here. Following are a few of them:
* Between Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora
* The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church
PLUS:
* Pew Research Center: U.S. centenarian population is projected to quadruple over the next 30 years
* KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation): Key Data on Health and Healthcare by Race and Ethnicity
4. WISE UP TO AGING, JON STEWART. (Consider the Alternative.)
*** Jon Stewart is feeling his age. On his return to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show last Monday – an occasion so widely heralded that I wondered whether Taylor Swift might be there to give him a Travis-sized smooch – he devoted the program to the public consternation of the year, those old presidents with presumed memory problems.
Concluding his 20-minute internal Oxford-style debate between the facts and the fraught, he turned his gray stubble and deeply drawn dimples to lament his own signs of aging at only 61. In contrast to his dark-haired photo of only 20 years past, he questioned how the presumptive candidates, not 20 years old, might survive another four years in “the toughest job in the world.”
Stewart rightly skewered Democratic leaders and commentators for “ignoring” concerns about the President Joe Biden’s 81 years. And he criticized the president’s advisers for restricting Biden to the fewest press conferences in recent decades only to magnify the significance of those verbal gaffes when they do occur. Most notable, of course, was Biden’s painfully confusing the names of Egypt’s and Mexico’s leaders, after first strongly defending his memory in response to the Republican Special Prosecutor Robert Hur’s unwarranted statement that the president appeared in his deposition as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” whom a jury would not convict were he charged.
Comedy’s foremost commentator also justifiably dug at Biden’s defenders for declaring how competent and “focused” he is. Although this almost unanimously positive assessment of Biden’s mental acuity has been previously documented in over 100 NYT interviews with people who have worked with the president, Stewart’s point is valid that secondary testimony still doesn’t show the public what his competency and decisiveness looks like. I thought of his long surprise journey to meet with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelinskyy one year ago, but there have been too few instances since then to visibly counter the public narrative of his shuffling demeanor.
The effect of such overprotectiveness by Biden’s handlers has been to sharpen the focus on his errors. But neither Stewart, not Hur, in his official Justice Department investigative report, included views on aging by actual gerontologists. The satirist did wrestle, sometimes brilliantly exposing differences between the president’s verbal stumbles and his predecessor’s boisterous, vitriolic and truly unhinged pronouncements.
Stewart, though, rebuked Democratic operatives, saying, “What’s crazy is thinking that we are the ones as voters, who must silence concerns and criticisms. It is the candidate’s job to assuage concerns, not the voters’ job not to mention them.”
He then stretched the limits of his own understanding by stating, “We’re not suggesting neither men are not vibrant, productive or even capable. But they are both stretching the limits of being able to handle the toughest job in the world.”
Really? Stewart devastatingly summarizes Donald Trump’s conduct and addled mentality, dangerously rendering judgments in ways demonstrating his ignorance about the subject at hand. (Covid? Got bleach?) Yet, the former president’s history of derangements hardly equates to geriatric deterioration. The taint by numbers age narrative that Stewart merely echoes, fails to contrast one man’s strange default to desperation – most recently the ex-leader’s wild and misinformed statements about failing to back up America’s NATO commitment – with the current president’s decades devoted to navigating the complexities of federal government.
Not Partisan, But Prejudiced
As I’ve emphasized before, my argument is not partisan. Biden’s establishment centrism, his never a favorite of this Boomer of the Sixties. But except for his too-slow burn over Gaza and issues at the border, he’s demonstrated greater skill, such as on labor, the economy, corporate antitrust, and management of the pandemic, more adept and thoughtful – dare I say, presidential – command than a lot of us thought four years ago. Yeah, he’s shuffling more and the gaffes are good for laughs, but you know, he’s shown genuine signs of moral integrity and competence.
The trouble with ageism, though, is that the fear in the mirror distracts so many – like Jon Stewart – from even their own best assessments of the past and present president’s policy positions and the political machinations surrounding them.
It’s not that the New York Times likens Biden to an unruly barfly needing to be 86’d from the White House, but they and other media outlets have falsely projected 86 – Biden’s age at the end of a second term in 2028 – to a high probability of decrepitude and dementia.
During the NYT’s Daily podcast of Feb. 14, “The Biden Problem Democrats Can No Longer Ignore,” the paper’s Washington correspondent, Peter Baker, recounted how astutely the president managed the near crisis last September when he was awakened in the wee hours of the morning after a Ukrainian missile apparently misfired into Poland.
But then Baker and host Michael Barbaro fretted at length about how Biden might fare in the years before the next election, when he’ll be 86. They glumly commiserate over the Democratic Party’s evident failure to replace him earlier with a younger candidate. Never mind the political benefits of incumbency that would be lost to Democrats – but not to the GOP’s candidate – and forget about their own assessment that Biden’s been successful in managing most issues. No, they brood, the country is stuck with him.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell (Feb. 13, 2024) recounted how President Franklin D. Roosevelt napped into a morning to overcome the flu, then awoke refreshed enough to return to his strategy for winning World War II. Even as he appeared increasingly frail, and Republicans attacked FDR and his entire cabinet as a group of “tired old men,” voters stood by him. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, then age 65, suffered a heart attack, and his party proceed to nominate the general who won the war successfully for reelection in 1956.
O’Donnell, presumably one of the “fawning MSNBC anchors,” who the NYT’s Maureen Dowd complained about in her Feb. 11 column, went on to show that her paper, along with the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, had published a total of 84 stories about Joe Biden’s age in the three days following release of Robert Hur’s report, in contrast to those newspaper’s 15 stories over the 13 days following Donald Trump’s having confused Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi.
While I can’t disagree with Dowd that the president and his White House advisors need to aggressively address his signs of aging – as her column’s headline declares, “Ditch the Stealth About Health,” the “elephant in the room” she referred to looks less like Joe Biden than it does – Maureen Dowd and the national media’s stampeding, aging-obsessed herd.
I’ll refresh the observation I previously quoted by biologist and author Steven Austad, PhD, when he was interviewed by NPR’s On the Media (10 minutes) about the ageist coverage of older politicians. Of Biden, he commented that the president may have had “lapses in speech, but not lapses in reasoning.” Ill repeat, the issue of age – and ageism – is not partisan – but a matter of prejudice.
Not the Right Conversation
So, Jon Stewart, age is a legitimate concern – but that’s true in both directions. Presidential scholar and bestselling author Alexis Coe commented on NPR Morning Edition (Feb. 13, 2024), “I think that age should matter less than the physical, mental and emotional health of a president. History tells us that no one comes out of the White House in better shape than they entered, no matter what age they are. So we have in the past, in modern history, JFK. He was plagued by poor health his entire life. Yet that’s spoken of like a wonder because it didn’t, in fact, derail his presidency.”
She continued, “On the flip side, what becomes obvious is, in the age of television, in a town that’s bad at keeping secrets, true dementia would be very obvious: I984, Ronald Reagan, presidential debate. He makes a joke of it. You know, he’s 73. He says, ‘I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I’m not going to exploit for political purposes, my opponents youth and inexperience. . . . But right in front of viewers after that, Reagan did mangle facts during the debate. And yet he went on to achieve something Trump is yet to do in two presidential elections – he won by a landslide.” Alternatively, she observed that John F. Kennedy, although he was in constant pain (from Addison’s disease), was never politically docked for it and performed well in office.
Coe told program host Leila Fadel, “I think we’re not having the right conversation.” In fact, the US Constitution does include an age limit – one must be at least 35 to run for the presidency. (A candidate must be not younger that 25 to run for the House and 30 to be elected to the Senate.) She concluded, “I think if we’re going to have age limits, we should have them at both ends, or we should have no age limits. But it is something we should be discussing in a more balanced way.” I’ll add that in the balance is a presidential candidate’s level of maturity in judgment and integrity, leavened by life experience and knowledge enough to do the job at hand.
Media Off Balance
Off-balance, though have been numerous mainstream news discussants. Among the more egregiously ageist statements appeared in a column by Michelle Cottle headlined, “Nikki Haley Takes On the Grumpy Geezers” (Feb. 4, 2024). Cottle, the national political writer on the Times’ Editorial Board, first recounts that the Haley campaign has been “smacking both Donald Trump and Joe Biden as doddering, past-their-prime ‘Grumpy Old Men.’”
After chiding Haley’s campaign as “cheeky,” Cottle writes, “This may strike some folks as ageist or gratuitously snarky — a Hail Mary from a floundering campaign desperate for traction. I see it more as a public service, with Haley channeling a concern shared by many, many Americans.”
A “public service”? Wouldn’t widespread “concern” about aging have been better addressed in national media by serious discussion of the complex worries and advantages of advanced years in political leaders? Cottle committed a disservice to the public and to journalism here.
In marked contrast, though — and just across the printed broadsheet from Cottle’s blog in the NYT’s Feb. 4 “Sunday Opinion” section — Jessica Bennett, a contributing editor to the section, reflected on “The Audacity of E. Jean Carroll.” Bennett wrote, “’Ageism’ is not a word that’s been used much in either of Ms. Carroll’s cases. But age — how it shaped her behavior in the aftermath of the assault, how it eventually propelled her to come forward and how it has been used to discredit her — has been an undercurrent of her story from the beginning.”
The article goes on, “Of course, you appreciate that a fight over the financial value of a reputation at age 80 is really less about your earnings and more about your dignity. If age has in some ways been a hurdle for Ms. Carroll to overcome in this case, I’d like to think that it was also age that let her see it through to this conclusion. That it was age and wisdom and the confidence that comes along with it that allowed her to make the genuinely audacious claim that an 80-year-old woman still has good, creative, vivacious, maybe even profitable years ahead of her.”
Meet Me Down Screen, Jon
Where Jon Stewart (at 61, too young for early retirement) and so many other major-media thought leaders falter in the public debate, merely begins in dismay while they stare into their morning mirrors — or a camera — at the gray stubble and sagging countenance, which the comedic sage saw in himself during his show.
On his Feb 12 show he stated, “One thing we know for certain is this: We have two candidates who are chronologically outside the norm of anyone who has run for the presidency … in the history of this country. The oldest people every to run for president … They’re objectively old … they’ve got their AARP card, they’ve got Social Security, they’ve got their movie discounts.” Yet, as he stared into the camera, all Stewart seemed to see in himself, then projected on a president who is two decades older – is the fate of the nation sinking more feebly in Biden’s slower gait.
Wait, wait – GBONews readers — meet me over on Camera 2. OK, I don’t have a Camera 2 like Comedy Central, or a Camera 1 for that matter. But hear me out here, just down screen:
Jon, it’s me, your long-time fan, Paul. I’m so grateful that I can again tune in to your smart, sharp and, yes, focused, satirical edge, so well honed by you and your brilliant production staff. You helped me and millions of others endure Bush-Cheney and degradations beyond. I’m so glad to see you return with so much verve. The gray becomes you so well. It adds gravitas down jaw, beneath the punchline always wrinkling up around the eyes. That smooth younger you in the old photo? He was just building trust. But the new you – Jon, you’ve nearly attained Cronkite-hood. Maybe not “The Most Trusted Man in America.” But the proudly elder “ Most Trusted Dude,” and so much cooler than Cronkite.
That gray, the lines? Funny thing, Jon, I’m two decades older than you are – and a year older then Trump — but with naturally dark hair and pretty good skin. For sure, I’m a member of the Fiber Generation, but given my work in the journalism of aging, a few more gray hairs like yours might enhance my credibility.
Here’s the thing, Jon: Knock off the bemoaning and groaning. For Trump, his aging is the least of our worries from his world of woe. On President Biden, seasoned judgement backed by officials with most hired for their competency to manage rational policies engaged with respect for debate and acceptance of the right of protest.
You made some good points, but then muddled it with presumptions about chronology. The two oldest whatevers ever known hold sway – that’s not about inevitable declining with age, Jon, it’s a sign of our new era of longevity. The whole population is annuating like crazy – over 30 year on average of added life expectancy in a mere century of human history. Yeah, sure, we all still die, but those at the top of health, who lead lives of purpose – for good or evil – tend to beat the average for decline. That’s the science, not the sputterings of ill-informed politicians, pundits and partisan special prosecutors.
Who do we want in charge in the meantime? How about one who might croak tomorrow as much as anyone, even you, but who’s apt to leave a human infrastructure that would stand, versus the other guy? Aging, Jon, it’s not an equalizer, but only tilts away the real factors that make a democracy work.
So, give years a chance, Jon. Longevity – it has its advantages, especially for those who mature with their experience. It’s called wisdom. Embrace aging, my friend. It’s a good thing.
Live long and prosper,
Paul
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 2024 Paul Kleyman. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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