djackson wrote:

It would have been equally acceptable.

There is nothing at all wrong with the statement. We as a society really need to stop all the PC garbage.

Or it would have been equally unacceptable. Part of the reason 'all the PC garbage' (as you put it) exists is because some people are indeed insensitive to the disadvantages other groups have endured in past and present.

A meritocracy is to what we all should aspire, most certainly. And whilst youth and age confer their own particular advantages and disadvantages, I do think it was in poor form to single out older workers as an editorial example.