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Here We Go with That Age Thing Again.
‘Elderly’ Justice Breyer is hanging it up. So who’s next? And why aren’t they?
There’s a whole bunch of hoo-haw going on out there about the aged needing to have the good sense to stop pretending they can still do the job when they would be doing us all a favor if they just shuffled off into the twilight and found a nice hobby.
Every time an important person like Justice Ginsberg or Justice Breyer either dies or retires, the subject falls to which old coot is next? Joe Biden gets it all the time. ‘Senile’ isn’t a word I’d use to describe him — he’s a bit of a dynamo these days — but he’s 79 years old. Emphasis on old.
The lists of public figures in their 70s and 80s are carpeting the internet these days, and they’re not there to congratulate them. They’re there to shame them for keeping on when it’s clear they’re too old. Except, for most of them (not all of them), their age is incidental. They’re doing just fine. They’re doing their jobs.
James Fallows wrote an intriguing piece today, called ‘On Life Tenure and its Drawbacks’, where the subject is Justice Breyer, but the topic moves on to the realities of aging. (It’s worth the read, as is everything James Fallows ever gives us. Every essay from him is a gift.)
