“After 15 months of investigation, Hur determined Joe Biden is old. And I am sorry you all had to find out this way… We fact checked this and he is old. We double checked and he is still old.” So wisecracked the host in The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. In The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, 61, tickled his audience with puns such as electile dysfunction, and mimicry of senior moments and expressions. It is election season in America and television show hosts have Biden, 81, in the dock for his age. It is not as if Biden’s rival in these elections, the Republican candidate Donald Trump, 77, is being spared either for his advanced years, but he has actual misdemeanors to discredit his candidature. As Colbert put it, the choice is between a “sympathetic well meaning elderly man with a poor memory” -- as observed by Hur --- and “a contemptible malicious elderly rapist with a poor memory”.
Just say it
"Joe Biden is very old. He was born closer to the Battle of Gettysburg than the 2024 election. He was an adult before the JFK assassination and a senator before the fall of Saigon. And it shows," reads an article in the Vox. A piece in The Atlantic says: “He is older than the hovercraft, the barcode, and the Breathalyzer. And he looks it…” Biden is known to experience memory lapses, he stutters, mixes up names and places, and has tripped and fallen on more than one occasion. According to a health report released last year by the White House, Potus has a stiff gait; suffers from gastroesophageal reflux, which makes him clear his throat several times; and has mild sensory peripheral neuropathy of feet. Most of the health issues listed are age-related except for the Covid-19 infection and the cancerous lesion on his skin that was removed not long ago. Colbert joked about the Democrats jumping to Biden's defence, “Some say it’s the lighting, other democratic operatives are pushing for Biden to use better makeup.” The articles, observations and greater criticism all add up to a valid point. But what does not quite add up is their attitude to ageing, their near vilification of it. All of it from a country where life expectancy is 79.25 years and elders constitute 18 per cent of the population, and a culture apparently so very sensitive of every small and big community and their rights.
