There actually ought to be an alert system in place for TV marketing campaign advertisements within the run-up to the November elections. Purple lights would flash and sirens would wail proper earlier than they aired, so you can rapidly change channels or dive behind the couch earlier than you’re sucked into the fetid squalor of the political season.
The thought got here to me throughout an early June go to with household in central Pennsylvania. I occurred to be watching tv one night time, and a political advert popped up on the display.
I used to be gradual on the distant set off, so I watched the advert, which started with a critique of Bidenonmics. “Americans are struggling,” the narrator mentioned, and sure, many are struggling. However that’s has been the case throughout each presidential administration.
“Biden’s ignoring our problems,” the advert continued. Nicely, not precisely, however nuance and complexity are a troublesome promote.
California is about to be hit by an ageing inhabitants wave, and Steve Lopez is driving it. His column focuses on the blessings and burdens of advancing age — and the way some of us are difficult the stigma related to older adults.
After which got here the half that basically obtained my consideration: “He keeps denying reality,” mentioned the narrator mentioned.
“Is it dishonesty or dementia?”
OK, let’s cease there.
As we’re all conscious, that is down-and-dirty season, when the depraved and the vile sharpen their knives, and we absolutely count on issues to get nasty, particularly given the rancid state of American politics.
However dishonesty or dementia?
That crosses a line, not that anybody ought to be shocked.
“If the concept of shame still exists, I’d call it shameful,” mentioned Dr. Laura Mosqueda, a Keck-USC geriatrician and director of the Nationwide Middle on Elder Abuse. “This is a cynical and sad attempt to plant a seed with zero basis in fact,” Mosqueda continued. “There is not one shred of evidence that President Biden has dementia. It does a disservice to people who truly do have dementia and does a disservice to all older adults with its ageist messaging tactics.”
So for those who’re questioning concerning the “not one shred of evidence” a part of Mosqueda’s response, given Biden’s occasional fumbles, right here’s a proof from Dr. Zaldy Tan, a neurologist and director of Cedars-Sinai Well being System’s Reminiscence and Growing older Program:
“Dementia is a medical diagnosis and can only be done by a qualified healthcare provider who has personally examined the person,” Tan mentioned. “It is a serious neurologic condition that should not be taken lightly. It is not a label that should be given casually.”
So how is such a analysis made?
By acquiring a historical past of signs and “performing a cognitive evaluation, and a neurological examination, and ruling out other causes of memory or cognitive change,” Tan mentioned. “In my view, stating that an older person must have dementia is an ageist and unfair statement. It is similar to saying that a public figure who has recently lost weight must have cancer.”
Somebody ought to have talked about that to Robert Hur, the particular counsel who interviewed Biden about his dealing with of labeled materials. Hur known as the president “a well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden mentioned, defiantly: “My memory is fine.”
Former President Trump speaks at a marketing campaign rally on June 6 in Phoenix.
(Rick Scuteri / Related Press)
It’s attainable Biden has a problem, however we don’t know that. And it’s not one thing that may be recognized by an beginner physician or a political hack.
The advert in query was “paid for by Make America Great Again Inc.,” and “not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee,” says the small print on the advert. Politico reported that Securing American Greatness, a nonprofit “dark money” group (donors don’t must be disclosed) was behind the advert and that the group is run by Taylor Budowich, a former spokesman for Trump.
What got here to thoughts after I watched the advert was that outdated line suggesting that individuals who reside in glass homes shouldn’t throw the primary stone. Any Trump surrogate or supporter who’s being sincere has to confess that psychological acuity and coherent discourse are subjects finest averted.
On June 9, at a rally in Las Vegas, Trump took a rambling hypothetical journey into uncharted waters. Trump speculated — for no clear purpose — whether or not it might be worse to die of electrocution or to be eaten by a shark. The context, fairly loosely, was fossil gas options and a dialog Trump claimed to have had about electrical vessels with a ship producer.
You should watch the video, for those who haven’t already seen it, particularly for those who’ve been scratching your head and questioning what would occur for those who had been in a battery-powered boat that started taking up water on the open sea.
Spoiler alert: After telling the viewers he was “very smart” due to his “relationship with MIT” (an uncle was a professor there), Trump concluded, “You know what I’d do, if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I’d take electrocution every single time.”
Nicely, taking a agency stand on necessary points is definitely what we’re searching for in our leaders.
And ageing, by the best way, is a subject wealthy with policy-making alternatives, given how shut the U.S. is to having a inhabitants with extra people who find themselves older than 65 than are youthful than 18. Ought to the candidates select to weigh in constructively, they’d acknowledge that the USA faces nice challenges in relation to increasing the elder-care workforce, creating ample inexpensive housing, and managing the wants of a era that’s dwelling longer, reinventing the principles of retirement and looking for methods to contribute by way of prolonged careers or volunteering alternatives.
Biden, 81, and Trump, 77 on June 14, would do properly to embrace all these challenges — together with harnessing the knowledge and expertise of the ageing inhabitants — moderately than take low-cost pictures and feed stereotypes.
It’s attainable the president has a problem, however however we don’t know that, and an beginner analysis is simply that.
“The assumption that Donald Trump or Joe Biden may have dementia is unethical and stigmatizes people living with dementia,” mentioned Craig Fleishman, development director of OPICA, an grownup day care and reminiscence loss remedy middle in West L.A. The TV advert’s suggestion that Biden might need dementia “is said in a negative and demeaning manner. This is not helpful to people living with dementia and their families, who…often struggle with the condition every day.”
I visited OPICA final summer time whereas profiling the lives of Mannie Rezende and his spouse, Rose, a household therapist who juggles work and the wants of her husband, one among roughly 7 million People recognized with Alzheimer’s.
I requested Rose to look at the advert and ship me her ideas.
“No matter where one resides on the political spectrum, the flippancy with which this ad uses the clinical term ‘dementia’ is cruel and disrespectful to those suffering with it,” she wrote.
Dementia “is a series of progressive and heart-breaking losses that clearly do not describe Biden,” she continued. It’s “one of the most harrowing of diseases. It involves the progressive unwinding of the self…from early-on memory loss to…the loss of language, recognition, motor ability, and, finally, death. It is a clinical term, and to use it so misleadingly is, to me as a therapist and wife of a husband with the disease, unethical and immoral.”
I couldn’t have mentioned it higher myself.
Steve.lopez@latimes.com
