'Geezer' Bashing Continues To Slant Social Security Coverage

By Paul Kleyman

Subscribe to Aging Today

Journalistic elder abuse, particularly around the subject of federal entitlement programs, has continued in recent months. Going well beyond the call of opinion journalism--to provide well-informed criticism of public policies and to express particular views of what ought to be done--many commentators routinely daub their articles with derisive images of "geezers," a term yet to be recognized in newsrooms as a politically loaded slur.

For example, Andrew Sullivan wrote of "the old" in his "TRB" column for The New Republic (Oct. 9, 2000), "We still think of them as poor, beleaguered codgers, when in fact they're increasingly fat, rested and happy. Read aarp's glossy literature and you'll find a dazzling array of facts and figures to prove how vibrant, successful and self-reliant today's geezers are." The point of his blanket condemnation of this older, greedier generation is, as he put it, his "completely quixotic proposal" to raise the Social Security retirement age to 68, means-test the program and "devolve Medicare, Bush-style, to the private sector." Somehow, columnists proposing progressive policies haven't yet taken to using derisive epithets for elders, even though older voters have shifted to the Republican side of the ballot in recent national elections. Sullivan also regularly reviews titles on public-policy issues for the New York Times Book Review.

An April 4 screed by Michelle Malkin in her column, which is distributed by Creators Syndicate, derided "the great geezer lobby" for repealing the Social Security earnings limit for those ages 65 to 69. She is identified as one of 60 conservative Contributors to Townhall.com, a conservative news Web portal. Though she may well have offered an insightful challenge to the repeal--which will mainly benefit wealthy retirees at a time when most middle-class older workers would have benefitted from existing changes that were scheduled to take place--Malkin launched into a factually faulty and slanted general attack on Social Security. She ended the column, "The old farts in Washington, however, are unanimous in their opposition to real Social Security reform. So much for doing it for your children. Somebody's gotta pay for your ticket to Leisure World, right?"

The stereotypical image of affluent elders on golf courses was also sketched by Carolyn Lockhead of the San Francisco Chronicle's Washington bureau in her Sept. 10 article, "Where the Money Really Goes: The Big Senior Voting Bloc Turns Into Dollars." She wrote of the "dirty little secret" that 39% of federal spending is on the 65-plus population but failed to mention the dirty little secret of those arguing for the privatization of Social Security--that government spending on elders and children in the United States is roughly equal. In the United States, retirement pensions and most health spending come out of the national budget, while education--the big-ticket item for children--is billed at the state level.

Lockhead's contention that "the elderly are probably the most powerful voting bloc in America" hardly reflects the reality that 35 million people do not suddenly change their politics on their 65th birthdays. Voting patterns actually show a partial shift among older voters to the Republican side of the ballot, because so many were in their prime working years during the Reagan era. (See the article on page one of this issue of Aging Today by Glenn Ruffenach, editor of the Wall Street Journal's Encore.) In addition, Lockhead's ominous vision of elders' political power hardly accounts for the muscle of the medical and insurance lobbies not to mention that of the corporate lobbies that have backed privatization efforts on Social Security and have fought to minimize their own pension and retiree-health obligations.

Newsweek (July 3) continued the slant on elder politics with a heavily biased five-page piece, "The Social Security Crackup," by Allan Sloan. The article included a snazzy-looking two-page graphic layout with short statements enumerating "seven myths" and "three realities" about the pension program. Example: "myth 2: Social Security benefits are protected by a trust fund. The trust fund is an accounting gimmick, with no economic significance. . . ." This spread was not labled "Opinion" or "Commentary"; instead, the section ran under the heading "National Affairs," as if it were a news report.

Newsweek did follow the article with a one-page counterpoint in Jane Bryant Quinn's "Capital Gains" column, titled "A Challenge, Not a Crisis." It carried the smaller headline, "Forget the electioneering blather. We don't have to upend Social Security to save it." Quinn (and reporter Temma Ehrenfeld) offered a sharp rebuttal to Sloan, but the overall presentation on the two sides was hardly balanced. Who cares what the news weeklies do? Unfortunately, national surveys show that younger readers rely more heavily on them for news and related information than on newspapers.

Scientific American--highly trusted for its information but hardly known for its political commentary--has proved to be far from scientific when dealing with public-policy issues regarding older people. The magazine produced a generally excellent special issue this summer titled "The Quest to Beat Aging." The single-topic quarterly included excellent material on subjects such as bionic organs and longevity genes. However, two pieces presented a decidedly negative slant about the impending burden presented by the growing ranks of elders. Readers were presented with a four-page spread on the global demographics of aging. The accompanying article by J. R. Brandstrader took a surprisingly neutral tone given the headline copy spread above it over two pages: "From Baby Boom to Geezer Glut." This presentation immediately preceded a three-page commentary by "The Editors" titled "Social Insecurity," over which ran the line, "You'd Better Save Like Crazy If You Want to Fund a 30-Year Retirement."

Few would disagree that greater population longevity suggests a need for greater savings. However, Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, D.C., noted factual distortions in the essay. Baker, coauthor of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), criticized the Scientific American editors for their hyperbolic statement that the program "faces a long-term funding shortfall of trillions of dollars." According to Baker, they fail to note that the calculations the Social Security Administration's actuaries made for the 75-year period in question are based on conservative projections of economic growth. Even so, Baker said, the editors' numbers represent a shortfall in future obligations amounting to "less than 1% of projected national income over this period." Scientific American did direct readers to websites expressing opposing viewpoints on the issue of privatizing Social Security, yet the overall impression of the issue lent greater weight toward one side of a controversy. One doesn't expect editorials to become lost in the factual minutia of debate, of course, but readers of a publication like Scientific American expect the magazine to express its views in light of available data and interpretations of them, that is, to be well considered and balanced. And, hold the slurs, please.

Aging Today Home | ASA Home

American Society on Aging
71 Stevenson St., Suite 1450
San Francisco, CA 94105-2938
www.asaging.org
info@asaging.org