The many faces of AARP (Are you above 50? If so, what did you do with their solicitation letter?)

American Thinker ^ | 04/03/2012 | Theodore Dawes

[SeekAndFind]

My wife just turned 50, so she recently experienced that least favorite American rite of passage: the arrival of the dreaded solicitation letter from AARP.

I'm pleased to say that she took advantage of this opportunity to do precisely as I have done for the past eight years: she immediately and with malice aforethought dropped the solicitation in the trash. Not that she was offended by the reminder of her advanced age; rather, because she holds AARP in contempt.

So do I.

Two quick questions, dear reader:

1) Do you belong to AARP?

2) Which AARP do you belong to?

If you're confused by the second question your confusion is, in AARP's eyes, a marketing triumph.

You are likely thinking, "Which AARP? Why, I belong to the American Association of Retired Persons. I belong to that AARP."

Surprise. There is no such thing as the American Association of Retired Persons. The non-profit organization that was founded in 1956 to help older folks was renamed some years ago. It's now called AARP and it exists as three separate organizations. (Actually four, but for our purposes let's ignore the international branch. This is confusing enough.)

The umbrella organization is a non-profit known simply as AARP.

Then there is the AARP Foundation. It's the AARP of old, a non-profit dedicated to providing for the needs of America's retired folk, or to phrase it more accurately, to anyone 50 or older who's willing to pony up the $16 annual fee. This is the outfit that trains older drivers, provides tax preparation assistance and provides other do-good services.

You belong to that AARP.

[rightwingintelligentsia]

I’ve just started hearing their ads, so I really don’t know. The website looks pretty decent.

I did read that Chuck Woolery has been a conservative (behind enemy lines) for some time.

[Not So Quiet Patriot]

For years I have been putting a tea bag in their prepaid envelope and dropping it in the mail. Their most recent mailing, which I just received a couple of days ago, had an envelope with a hole in it. I suspect they’re on to us.

[GreyFriar]

I was fortunate enough to work within a block of the AARP headquarters in Washington, DC, when I began getting their letters. After a half dozen telephone calls and notes inside their own envelopes requesting that I be removed from the mailing list were ignored, I took a letter to the headquarters itself and turned it in. That was the last time I got any mailing from them, nearly 15 years ago.

[Fire_on_High]

Hope you don’t mind cleaning up crap then. Some cats are mighty fussy about where they drop their load.

[N. Theknow]

Wonder if you could tape their return postage envelope to a brick and mail it?

[Abigail Adams]

Here’s a conservative alternative:

http://www.amac.us/

[fortheDeclaration]

junk mail, in the trash.