and even on our Democratic political website is beyond appalling. This is a technique Karl Rove has hyped the last 14 years in order to pit the younger people against middle-aged and senior citizens. Just looking at the number of references of old, white folks on this one thread alone is unbelievable.

Definition:

Ageism is a type of discrimination that involves prejudice against people based upon their age. Similar to racism and sexism, ageism involves holding negative stereotypes about people of different ages. The term ageism was first used by gerontologist Robert N. Butler to describe the discrimination of older adults. Today, the tern is often applied to any type of age-based discrimination, whether it involves prejudice against children, teenagers, adults or senior-citizens.

http://psychology.about.com/od/aindex/g/ageism.htm

This is a very dangerous road for people to start down, claiming ageism is not discrimination. If society as a whole buys into that claim, this practice can accelerate to adversely impact other groups of Americans, such as children and teenagers (see the above quote.)

People on this site which are cool with using this term I hope will take a time-out to rethink this practice.

Sam