Betty White's 90th birthday party on NBC was really a celebration of the Golden Age of television. The bigs were there, ranging from Mary Tyler Moore to Carol Burnett. Sweet. But was that a smart move as a lead-in for White's new reality show "Betty White's Off Their Rocker" or for NBC to move the dial on attracting a younger audience. After all, we over-50 aren't a treasured demographic to advertisers.
The elephant in the room is that glamour industries such as media don't know what to do with aging. It's almost as if aging imposes on the the one becoming older a shame situation. From the flaming I received from the merry pranksters at GAWKER to the silence that had followed my application for full-time work after, I suspect, employers googled me, I get the message that I should, well, be ashamed of myself.
From a purely capitalistic stand point, this can't go on. We geezers have extraordinary buying power. That will continue to increase since, unlike Generation Y, we know how to get work, keep work, and go on to find even more lucrative work. Like White and the late Andy Rooney, we will be out there hustling until we die.
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