The AARP Tries to Expand Its Base With the Under 50 Crowd

The American Thinker reports:

He’s Jim Aley, he’s 40, and, yes, he just joined AARP. Turns out that this organization of more than 36 million members is ready and willing to take in people who aren’t “over 50,” though that description still fills its literature and Web site. All you need to join is $12.50.

FORTUNE caught on to these surprising facts when a direct-mail pitch from AARP came to Aley, a FORTUNE editor. The first sentence of the letter said, “Our records show that you haven’t yet registered for the benefits of AARP membership, even though you are fully eligible.”

Neither shy nor retiring, FORTUNE editor Aley, with his children David and Lucy, is an associate AARP member. So Aley sent in the application, scrupulously giving his birthdate as Dec. 25, 1965, and waited. Back came word that he was now an “associate member” – what AARP labels under-50s on its membership rolls.

America's most powerful interest group went into mutual funds,now it wants younger people.What's next? Are they going to go after Fannie Mae's business?