What does being 88 years old have to do with anything? The title could've been "White Mayor Gets City Debt-free..." or "Female Mayor Gets City Debt-free..."
One thing that annoys me is that for anyone over 80 years old, the first (and often only) thing that people notice is their age. When I get that old, I want people to see me first and my age second, not the other way around.
</rant>
It means she grew up during the worldwide Great Depression, but was still old enough to have known its stark contrast to the prosperity of the 1920s. This could have influenced her towards extreme frugality.
She was also an adult before the worldwide adoption of Keynesian fiscal policy, so the idea of even temporarily running an unbalanced budget might be particularly odious to her.
At the very least it makes old age less terrifying.
I remember when Morgan Freeman was on 60 Minutes. It was great: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1131418n
I'm never going to be black. But someday I hope to be 88, and it's going to be really damn annoying if everyone says "wow, that's pretty good...especially for an 88 year old!"
>> But someday I hope to be 88, and it's going to be really damn annoying if everyone says "wow, that's pretty good...especially for an 88 year old!"
If you're 88[1], still accomplishing meaningful things and don't have cancer or dementia you're doing brilliantly and shouldn't care what people are saying about you.
[1] Substitute future impressive age assuming life expectancy continues to increase.
Besides, your claim that specially calling out black excellence is different because of their fundamental equivalence is specious. We know that blacks are underrepresented in many high status areas. Thus, we know that there are barriers of some sort or another blocking them from achievement. It's an incredibly weak argument to say that these barriers aren't worth acknowledging, but the barriers to equal average achievement for older people are.
It's not really relevant whether you think old people are feeble on average. I, as everyone, wants to be judged on my own, as having the full potential of anyone else. When you say, man, you did an amazing job for an old person, you are suggesting that a younger person could do it better, or, at the least, I could have done even better when I was younger. But if some younger person could do it better, why aren't they? It's a little obnoxious.
Celebrating someone for having to "overcome" being black or being old or being a woman lowers their status in each case. This is just a fact.
There exist inappropriate times to comment on someone's age, or to make decisions based on it. This wasn't one of them. The story was much more about her than the debt free nature of the city. I'd also mention that she does not in any way seem offended by such comments, she seems to enjoy playing it up and joking about it.
Yeah, I wonder how I'll feel about this when I'm older. Maybe I won't mind. It just sounds weird to me when people mention the age of someone and it's not relevant to the story, kind of like when someone is telling you a story about someone and they mention that they are black and it's completely irrelevant.
Now, I recognize that 34 is _little_ out of place at some startups, but I hadn't realized I'd moved into a new generation.
It didn't really bother me, so much as cause me to be aware that time is certainly passing by...
Lets remember that the article emphasises the mayor's age precisely because 88 year olds achieving great things is so very rare.
I hope that I'm wrong and you're right, but I'd rather have youth than experience any day of the week.
Good luck.