The real reason people of a certain age see everything through the prism of the Baby Boom Youth Experience is, obviously, that there are just so damn many baby boomers that they're able to get away with it. The cohorts right before and right after the baby boomers are just too small to form an insular and self-referential circle. My generation is really big, and someday we'll be as annoying as the boomers are today, but for now too many of us are too young and obscure to inflict it on others.
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So Damn Many
25 Oct 2007 03:49 pm
Comments (76)
SO waht your sayin is us GenXers are hosed on both sides:-)
The Baby Booners will dominate things until they are in their 80s and by then your generation will have reached your 30s and 40s so us 50 and 60 something GenXers will still be afterthoughts.
but for now too many of us are too young and obscure to inflict it on others.
Don't sell yourselves short.
I dunno, Matt, you guys are already pretty annoying, but it's kind of a personal, small-scale sort of annoyingness. From what I can tell, the boomers were already annoying in bulk when they were 15.
Thing is, with so many sub-cultures, and sub-sub-cultures, and this whole "internet" thing, even our future annoyingness will be fractured and diffuse.
We will never wield an instrument so over-archingly annoying as Rolling Stone magazine.
Eric K,
IIRC, some political science types have done a more general analysis of how certain generations get hosed like that.
Matt,
Anyway, though, the shear number of baby boomers is a big part of why they think their generation is the center of time. But your generation even if it's as big, ain't gonna have the same sort of influence 'cause your formative years weren't the 1950s in which there was this desparate desire for bland normalcy that included a certain focus on the kids at the time, which'll never get replicated.
Nu? The boomer generation essentially was raised in a nation-wide version of The Village (even with fear of red[s]) ... and when they went off to college they all saw the world outside the village with the predictable results. Your generation didn't quite have that same experience, so you won't have the same viewpoint of the history of your times that the boomers have.
Out of curiosity, MY, what would you say is your "generation?" Can you pin it down by dates of by culture?
(Pushing 30, I may or may not be part of it, myself. By some measures I'm Gen-X, at least at the very tail end of it; I'm the youngest child of pre-boomer parents and I was born in the 70s. By other measures I'm on the old end of Gen-Y.)
People try to put us down--just because we get around.
"My generation is really big, and someday we'll be as annoying as the boomers are today, but for now too many of us are too young and obscure to inflict it on others."
This is not accurate. Birth rates began to fall in the mid 1960s and have been relatively stable - with intermittent, but not dramatic - highs and lows since then. The only way you come up with an especially large post-post-boom generation is by defining generation x as those born during an absurdly short period of time.
I don't know, Will Allen. You comments are most often as thoroughly annoying as any "Boomer" I know.
I'd be more sympathetic to posts like this if I ever saw any popular or even semi-academic writing on my generation (born 1948) that had any resemblance to the experience we lived.
And it's not new; I'll never forget that the morning after my college commencement in 1969 my father wadded up the New York Times and threw on the floor after reading their account of the commencement, which blended silly and cheap cliches with out-and- out lies about what he'd just seen with his own two eyes.
People try to put us down--just because we get around.
I think most of us have reconsidered the "hope I die before I get old" line from that song.
Atrios is right- he just doesn't get it.
The 60s were big because everything about the 50s- colonialism, sexism, homophobia, racism, segregation, militarism, blacklisting, corporate foods (there just isn't an easy end to this list)- all of this was challenged and ended in a few years. The national head exploded.
And the reason this is important is that another larger change is needed to stabilize the temperature of the earth.
The second reason this is important is that most of the challenges of today are the unsolved problems of the 50s.
Younger folk forget that the 60s were worldwide revolution. France was shut down for a month, the Mexican police murdered 400 students in one rally, the last act of the Portugese Empire began, the US overthrew the Greek government to prevent democracy, the Communists took over Indonesia, and Mao lunched the Cultural Revolution in an attempt to prevent the growth of the industrial dictatorship we know today as China. (Again, where does the list stop?)
So in 2007 we're still slogging wearily towards Churchill and Roosevelt's vision of a world community in which we enjoy the rights of freedom from fear and freedom from want. They were not stating wild-eyed dreams, but what they thought were the bare essentials in preventing even worse wars in the future that might destroy us all.
Why young people "just don't get it" baffles me. They're the ones who will survive to experience what happens.
If MattY's cohort can make as much change as happened it the 60s, they'll have good reason to talk.
"Younger folk forget that the 60s were worldwide revolution."
Yeah, 'cos there wasn't revolution amongst the Gen Xers. Except, for, umm, Poland and East Germany and Hungary and Romania and almost one in Tianamen Square, and the Soviet Union in 1991. Only the Boomers experienced change.
History stopped outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago in '68. That's why us Xer's have to f**king relive it all the time, and view history through the same tired old lens all the time, even though anyone alive then is in middle age or beyond.
"Why young people "just don't get it" baffles me."
And when are they going to get off my lawn?
My generation is really big, and someday we'll be as annoying as the boomers are today, but for now too many of us are too young and obscure to inflict it on others.
Hey Matt, how many Transformers references have you caught in the past year?
Ooooh- "the last act of the Portuguese Empire began"...I'm impressed.
The most immportant Baby Boom contribution is, of course, making complete self-centeredness culturally acceptable. You'd have to have a completely self-centered view of history to believe France being "shut down for a month" is something "revolutionary". Without going back more than a generation, you can see more disruption in France than being "shut down for a month". Go back another generation, and you have the French army going on strike in the middle of the largest war to date. That France had some rioting in the '60's isn't exactly "revolutionary". Of course, the Boomers believe they invented social disorder (again with the self-centered view of history), so there you go...A couple of people who want to screw with impunity and not serve in a war they dislike ranks pretty low on "great generational accomplishments"...
Ooooh- "the last act of the Portuguese Empire began"...I'm impressed.
The most immportant Baby Boom contribution is, of course, making complete self-centeredness culturally acceptable. You'd have to have a completely self-centered view of history to believe France being "shut down for a month" is something "revolutionary". Without going back more than a generation, you can see more disruption in France than being "shut down for a month". Go back another generation, and you have the French army going on strike in the middle of the largest war to date. That France had some rioting in the '60's isn't exactly "revolutionary". Of course, the Boomers believe they invented social disorder (again with the self-centered view of history), so there you go...
A couple of people who want to screw with impunity and not serve in a war they dislike ranks pretty low on "great generational accomplishments"...But you'd have to think of something that happened before the '50's to get that...
"The cohorts right before and right after the baby boomers are just too small to form an insular and self-referential circle. My generation is really big, and someday we'll be as annoying as the boomers are today, but for now too many of us are too young and obscure to inflict it on others. "
Nah. If you look at it in 20 year blocks, 1945-65, 1965-85 and 1985-2005, the last 2 are about the same. If you do it i 18 year blocks, then you get a small increase in size for boom+2 over boom+1.
What could make things more like Matt thinks they are is that we are no longer just tacking years on at the end. We seem to be stretching life out. You're a kid until your early 20s - you have kids until your early 40s - you work into your 70s etc. This will tend to make future cohorts bigger compared to the retire at 65 crowd.
Younger folk forget that the 60s were worldwide revolution.
Because there weren't worldwide revolutions in the 20s, 30s, and 40s? You've gone and proven our case, you self-centered old shit.
Y'know, catastrophic human-caused global warming doesn't seem so bad if it means the end of writing like in the 4:44 post.
Just to be clear, though, Gen X is indeed going to get completely hosed when the bill for the massive transfer of wealth that the Boomers have been giving themselves comes due. And that is not because we are less numerous than Gen Y (or iGen as I prefer), but rather because the people in their peak earnings years when that bill comes due will be us.
A couple of people who want to screw with impunity and not serve in a war they dislike ranks pretty low on "great generational accomplishments".
Your generation was certainly free not to screw with impunity and to march off to war. I believe you chose neither option. Instead, I believe you chose mostly to emulate your elders on those two specific items.
Oooh, did I hit a nerve? Hey, how're you liking the things we didn't change, like Big Oil, military-industrial Keynesianism, and Dick Cheney.
Betcher not man enough to spend a week on the white bread, 'American' cheese, and Maxwell House coffee we had to eat in the 50s.
Yeah, like the Prague Spring had nothin' to do with the end of the Warsaw Pact. Check out KDrum's neat chart today to find out how the Russian Revolution of '91 has made things better for gays in Russia.
But, hey, "It's your party and you can cry if you want to!"
Re "My generation is really big "
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"Your" generation had better learn to fucking speak Mandarin Chinese.
Serial, unless you were actually in Prague in '68, stop using the word "we" in a post about who changed things, while including the Prague Spring. If you were there, congratulations, assuming you weren't on the wrong side. If you weren't there, geez, one of the most aggravating things about boomers is their penchant for collectivizing the extreme risk and courage displayed by a tiny fraction of that huge group.
Let's see....we set back the military industrial complex and the corporate fatcats for a decade and now we are made out to be the villians. By Whom? This seems to be the theme on the blogs this week. Perhaps if you had critical thinking skills, you might be asking questions instead of jumping on the bash boomer bandwagon.
Under conscription, our generation lost 200 a week in the jungle. For what? Perhaps when the draft comes back and casualties mount, you might seek the wisdom of your elders.
In response to a less-annoying-than-usual David Brooks column, I wrote somewhat recently about the Boomers' odious effect on the workplace and economy.
Considering we now live in a cultural dominated by Family Guy, Transformers chic and literally drowning in 80's pop culture references, I'm beginning to think the Baby Boomers weren't that bad.
To be more fair, all generational back-slapping is annoying beyond description. I'm with Andy Rooney regarding the moniker "Greatest Generation".
Great hilarity ensues at the thought of "the beginning of the end of the Portugese Empire."
Well, I know you guys are busy with your iPods and suchlike.
And maybe there really won't be any further interest in how army officers fighting a losing war in the Portugese colonial possessions came home and overthrew the dictatorship, setting up their own 'enlightened' dictatorship in its place, that could at least end the colonial wars.
After all, it's not like that could happen here, right?
Re "Let's see....we set back the military industrial complex and the corporate fatcats for a decade and now we are made out to be the villians"
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Rightfully so. Because we sold out to the Fortune 500 so that we could buy a disco suit, dress like John Travolta, and run big bar tabs in order to rise above the grubby proletariat and ,hopefully, get laid.
Remember? http://www.70tallet.no/film/saturday-night-fever.jpg
A fiendish experiment in social engineering by the Church of Scientology. And we lunged for it like a trout going for a fly.
Now, the big bar tab is coming due-- and it's what? $10 Trillion?
When considering the plusses and minuses of the various generations, I count the creation of Disco as a strength for team Boomer.
"Check out KDrum's neat chart today to find out how the Russian Revolution of '91 has made things better for gays in Russia."
Catowner, I was *in* Moscow in August '91. And I still have a copy of the bilingual Moscow News during that time with a report on a survey by the [Russian] Council of Sexual Minorities (a gay rights group, but they couldn't call themselves such for reasons which will become obvious) on Russian attitudes towards homosexuality.
The results were (may be off a bit as it's been 16 years):
Should Be Legal: 10%
Should Have Compulsory Medical Treatment: 30%
Should Be Imprisoned with Hard Physical Labor: 33%
Should Be Liquidated: 27%
[I am not making this up. Liberal, educated, city-dwelling Russians would swear to me that there was a medical cure for homosexuality. Appalling.]
So, if Kevin Drum posts a report that 28% of Russians between 18-39 believe that homosexuality is acceptable, it is actually a *big frickin improvement* compared to what things were like for gays in the Soviet Union.
I helped Russian friend get into the UK, and he then came out of the closet (which totally floored me, but being heterosexual my gaydar is non-functional). He's still, AFAIK, with the same guy he met 16 years ago, and within six weeks was earning twice as much money as I was. Helping him get out of Russia to where he could be himself is one of the good deeds I'm proudest of.
Well, I figure Gen Xers and Gen Yers will view all politics for the rest of their lives through the prism of 9/11 and Iraq. That's no different than what boomers do vis a vis Vietnam, Nixon, etc., and will become just as annoying to generations yet unborn.
In a sense, this is a falling-down funny thread. Like, the Gen Xers had the spunk and creativity to overthrow the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact governments, but as a Boomer, I'm not even allowed to take credit for having failed to do something unless I was actually there.
Of course, the comments on a thread don't really tell us much about anything. They're more like ideas, really, which you can believe or disbelieve as you wish.
So a thread can have little of intellectual merit and still be worthwhile if it is falling-down-funny. Sometimes it can even be smart and funny.
But that doesn't happen very often.
I for one cannot wait until all the baby boomers out there recede into driveling senility. Counting the days...
Thanks for the clarification, Sock Puppet. I was feeling pretty blue about the whole Russian Gay thing after looking at Kevin's graph. Russia is, after all, a big country we'll be living with for quite a while.
"Betcher not man enough to spend a week on the white bread, 'American' cheese, and Maxwell House coffee we had to eat in the 50s."
Translation: we busted the New Deal Coalition with our antics, and in return we'll take credit for Alice Waters and Starbucks (who cames a few decades later, but anyway).
'Cos its not like the Boomers are self-absorbed consumerists or anything.
Re DRR's comment "I count the creation of Disco as a strength for team Boomer. "
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I dunno. Causing abnormally low levels of testosterone in American males by broadcasting old Bee Gees songs on AM stations for 30 years surely goes in the negative column -- and explains how Al Qaeda pulled 911 off.
Why all the resentment.
We saved Harley-Davidson from bankrupcy. If that doesn't earn the boomers a place in the greatest generation hall of fame I don't know what will.
Boomers also created Microsoft and Apple, and still run them for your benefit, so you can complain about us on the internet, which one of our own created, and who is now busy trying to save the world from global warming.
You really should show a little appreciation.
>>Why all the resentment.
One word: Riverdance.
"Like, the Gen Xers had the spunk and creativity to overthrow the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact governments,"
No, catowner, you're being exceptionally thick here. It's that you believe that there was an exceptional level of turmoil in the 1960s compared to subsequent generations. As a guy born in Northern Ireland at the start of the Troubles who went on a short-term placement to the Soviet Union and left it as Russia, I'd say my experience at least matches yours. And, as others have pointed out, the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s all had their turbulent events
But some off our resentment is that the Hippeis, Yippies and the counterculture left so damn little institutionally behind them. In fact, the breaking of the New Deal Coalition in the 1960s set the stage for 30-odd years of GOP dominance, and the fracturing of progressive politics into a myriad of small single-issue groups.
Now, MoveOn and DailyKos and suchlike seem to be reversing that fracturing and unifying the liberal-left axis. Perhaps you might check their ages sometime.
"Like, the Gen Xers had the spunk and creativity to overthrow the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact governments,"
No, catowner, you're being exceptionally thick here. It's that you believe that there was an exceptional level of turmoil in the 1960s compared to subsequent generations. As a guy born in Northern Ireland at the start of the Troubles who went on a short-term placement to the Soviet Union and left it as Russia, I'd say my experience of historical turmoil at least matches yours. And, as others have pointed out, the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s all had their turbulent events.
But some off our resentment is that the Hippies, Yippies and the counterculture left so damn little institutionally behind them. In fact, the breaking of the New Deal Coalition in the 1960s set the stage for 30-odd years of GOP dominance, and the fracturing of progressive politics into a myriad of small single-issue groups.
Now, MoveOn and DailyKos and suchlike seem to be reversing that fracturing and unifying the liberal-left axis. Perhaps you might check their ages sometime.
The real reason people of a certain age see everything through the prism of the Baby Boom Youth Experience is, obviously, that there are just so damn many baby boomers that they're able to get away with it.
Many young people in the 60s had to make incredibly difficult life-changing character-making personal decisions back then - that kids today just don't seem to have to make. There is no universal draft, so young guys today don't have to face the intense moral life-or-death dilemnas of being caught up in an unpopular war - or the odds of getting beaten or having the police dogs sicced on you when integrating schools and lunch counters and voting booths that had been previously totally and violently denied to your people meant that one's politics really mattered in a very personal way then that barely registers now. The pill, the sexual revolution, the entire role of women and what was expected vs what was possible, again compared to what came before was completely changed in the 60s - how many of your young female readers would even consider that issues involved in establishing personal credit, or going to the schools or vocations of one's choice would even be an issue now, when they were huge and intensely personal political issues back then, and again, something totally denied to all or most woman previously.
Especially considering the conformist attitudes of the immediately preceding generations, who weilded power well into the 80s and who were also very much shaped by their own very personal shared experiences of the 1930s and 1940s when they were young, what the youths of the 60s had to face, and what they acheived was revolutionary in so many personal ways.
I'm having a really hard time trying to think of ways in which those who came afterwards had to face those kinds of choices or effect those kinds of changes or make such complete breaks with what came before (unless you consider general apathy to be such a break - /snark)
There's two separate discussions here - one is the one raised by Atrios, complaining of those who still view the world as shaped through a 1960s prism - and I suspect he really means the social conservatives who just don't get it and wish things hadn't evef changed - the one dominated by those who don't really understand or appreciate much of the context of what was so revolutionary about the 60s in so many ways on so many very personal levels that really have no counterpart today and who's frame of reference seems to be the corporate/media co-opted version of the boomer social culture or have embraced the politics of resentment represented by such issues as Social Security.
It's not that the "real reason" that many "of a certain age" see things through the prism of their youth is because there are "so damn many" - most people, regardless of their generation, will view things through the prism of the issues of their youth if they had to face dramatic life-chaging consequential decisions in their youth that shaped their experience and character. No one really faults those from the '30s and '40s from viewing things through those prisms for the reason that there "were so damn many that they were able to get away with it" - they were part of world events that had profound effects on individual lives. The 60s were like that too.
Was there really anything in the 80s, 90s, or 00s that you guys can anlagolize to that on a mass yet deeply personal level? Compare how few people the war personally affects now compared to an entire generation 40 years ago.
It has nothing to do with having the numbers to 'get away with it'. That conjecture could only be postulated by a young insular 20-something totally lacking in historical context. Sorry, Matt.
We boomers don't need to fight with you children, we have our own internal battles. Kerry and his swiftboaters, Bushies and movement liberals, etc. etc. Our Watergate breakin defending wingnuts are still blaming everything on the "programs" of the 60, feminism, sexual freedom, recreational drug use, casual business attire, etc. Just ask Rush, Bill and W. They'll tell you.
In fact, if you want to really localize it, it is all about California--our natural catastrophes, our ridiculous celebrity politics, our wealth and success and maybe it is just about the SF Bay Area.
Just remember it is also all about the music.
Hell, politically, you could have a raucus generation that hates war and brings down the government. You just need to reinstate the draft.
Fucking hippies.
Young punks don't have the guts to do anything but watch Bush torture and whine about how it's all their parent's fault. I've been waiting for the serious, committed clean-for-gene v2 kids to stop the war and save their brothers & sisters for 6 years now. All I hear is whining. I'm fucking 60, why do I have to come out and save their sniveling latte-sipping whiny little asses.
Yeah, go ahead and check the ages at DKos. The membership is boomer.
Ha ha, I went to high school with the people who started Starbucks. We just had our 40 year reunion last month in Medina.
Ethel-to-Tilly pretty much nails it. First, that young people really don't understand that everything around them is not as it was.
I mean, like you guys are all boo-hoo, bad police state, bad Supreme Court, bad racism- you think things are getting worse because your baseline starts after the big changes of the 60s and 70s.
Second, that there are all different kinds of Boomers. And even this kind of misses the point that it was the 'Greatest Generation' that rolled over the WW II debt and spent it building freeways, creating the balloon-frame oil-addicted economy we know today while Boomers were bitching just like you are about the older generation holding on to all the good jobs.
As for the guy who went from Northern Ireland to Russia and believes turmoil and struggle are always present- well, sure they are, if you live in Northern Ireland or Russia. Believe it, kids growing up in the American suburbs were not driven by hardship or necessity to decide they needed to make the world a better place- and a lot of them did not make that decision.
Now, the ones who make that decision are being bitched at and vilified if, after twenty years of brown rice and run-down artists corners of town, they got a job and bought a house. Sell-outs, I calls 'em- hell, I did it myself, and can't say it's all it was cracked up to be.
The smartest thing the Boomers did was not to get tattoos. Thirty years from now you'll understand that.
I think the real take-away here is that when you have a serious get-your-hate-on conflict, the memories don't fade that easily.
The Americans didn't celebrate Christmas or drink tea for 40 years after the American Revolution because Christmas and tea were British.
It's a bad thing when protesters in NYC were held illegally for three days in a concentration camp in 2004. In '68 rioting policemen chased the network news crews into the lobby of a Chicago hotel and beat them with clubs.
The next time you think the Boomers should just forget what happened, grab a baseball bat and hit yourself in the head a few times. Maybe that will knock some sense into you.
Matt you and your smug, smarmy generation can please just go fuck yourselves non-stop for however long it takes you to come up with one accomplishment toward advancing a more humane life in this country for which you can take credit.
Until you you button your privileged, preppy, upper-middleclass lip and actually do something, as opposed to tossing off inane criticisms, you remain a totally pile of shit and deserve an equal amount of credence and respect.
You think we are annoying? Just imagine how we feel about do-nothing poseurs like yourself.
Re: the US overthrew the Greek government to prevent democracy
Gross hyperbole. The US supported the Greek colonels as a fait accompli but did not invade Greece and overthrow its government then install the colonels. This is an area where I part company with the far Left, this warping of history in ways that weirdly mirror the far Right's distorted view of things: in both wingnut views America is the Center Of The Universe and nothing happens on the planet that is not authored in Washington. The Right sees this as desirable, the Left as baleful. But both need to put down their respective vodka bottles and realize that the US is just one country out of many, that the peoples of the world are abundantly capable of screwing up or saving their day with no assist from the guys in DC, and most of what happens in this world for good or ill really has nothing to do with America.
It has nothing to do with having the numbers to 'get away with it'. That conjecture could only be postulated by a young insular 20-something totally lacking in historical context. Sorry, Matt.
Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | October 25, 2007 6:46 PM
=================================================
I find it continually depressing how ignorant 20-somethings are of history. Not just from a 45 year or so Boomer perspective - but overall
oh. yeah. and Duncan Black hit a double today, making himself not only a W.A.T.B. (his expression, not mine) and achieving the dubious distinction of being wanker of the day to boot.
Maybe he can go for the trifecta and come up with more under-informed crap sufficient to elevate himself to the Olympian heights of unsubstantiated ludicrousness and prejudice usually staked out by the likes of Rush, Bill, Ann, & Michelle.
Looks like a contender to me.
Thank you, JonF, for a short breeze of sanity in a thread filled with cyclonic nonsense.
Yeah, right, and the US didn't have anything to do with the overthrow of Allende either. It was the housewives beating pots and pans who brought him down.
Well, those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it. Not just a line from an Archie comic.
Another funny thing here is that MattY failed to learn from the experience of the 60s, supported the invasion of Iraq, and now he's all like "Wow, I really wish I hadn't done that".
I went to an anti-war rally before the war. There was one (1) person there under 40. About two-thirds of the Boomers were vets. There were people there demonstrating who had told me during the 60s that demonstrating was the wrong way to get things done.
I went to the precinct caucus in 2004- there was one (1) person there under 50. Same thing in 2006.
Yup, you're doing a heckuva job there, young people.
or the odds of getting beaten or having the police dogs sicced on you when integrating schools
Please spare me the dramatic turmoil of the 60's routine. You boomers grew up in a Leave It to Beaver world. Golly Gee Whiz, what exactly were the odds that your average boomer was ever beaten with a baseball bat by the police? Pretty small unless you happened to be black. You ruined everything you touched. You managed to turn the wonderful and long overdue struggle for civil rights into the Black Panthers. You turned the Sexual Revolution into the AIDs scare. You turned recreational drug use into the War on Drugs. YOU FAILED AT EVERYTHING! What ever happened to the ERA? You walked away from your communes and became the greediest capitalists since the Robber Barons. Nice job. Don't give me this crap about what a struggle it all was, about all the tough decisions. From the moment your generation was born, it was given every advantage. New schools, new highways, new technology, the greatest economic boom the world has ever seen, and you squandered it all. You greedy bastards are the most selfish people our country has ever produced. Those who cry that this generation is not saving the country from GWB should realize that Bush IS the epitome of the baby boom generation. Spoiled, selfish, and stupid. I have no doubts that you will bankrupt this country before you finally die off.
I went to an anti-war rally before the war too. It was attended overwhelmingly by 20- and 30-somethings. Of course, I just assumed that this was because I myself was a 20-something and am therefore attracted to the same anti-war rallies as other members of my cohort. It didn't occur to me that it was because baby boomers didn't care. Don't tell me I could've been using this against you guys all along!
Just Karl is super-shrill and I dig it.
One more erectile dysfunction ad and I swear I'm going postal.
Just Karl, you have been cut out of the will. Sharper than a serpent's tooth. I'm leaving my vast wealth to kitty rescue, NORML, and the R & R HoF.
Play "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" at me wake, please. With bagpipes.
The Boomers fuck up the country and then they have the nerve to blame the younger generations for not stopping them.
It's going to take at least a century to undo the damage that they have done and pay back the debts they racked up in just the few short decades when they were in power.
Yeah Karl - we all remember the episode where Wally got his draft notice and June tried to get a credit card but they wouldn't give her one unless Ward co-signed and the black family next door... oh, wait a minute, never mind.
Please spare me the dramatic turmoil of the 60's routine. You boomers grew up in a Leave It to Beaver world.
================================================
Hehe. How would you know, you weren't around.
it's not just the boomer numbers. it's the fact that they are in their 50s and 60s. They dominating the media business and they are taking over the political power now. They are taking control of univeristies and corporations. This is their power time. We all remember Woodstock, but only a few think it was as important as losers like jow klein do.
Uhh exactly. The Boomers are in their 50's and 60's, they aren't just now taking power, their in the process of relinquishing it.
Which of course makes all these ridiculous reactionary tantrums about Baby Boomers so bizarre. We're long past the male pony tail and "No Jacket Required" days. Boomers are ancient now, collecting social security and wondering if their generation will get something like the equivalant of Murder She Wrote to watch in their old age. The relevant time for challenging their alleged tyranny is about 25 years past due. What happened Generation X?
For whatever else they failed at, I would like to thank Baby Boomers for creating all the great music from the late 60's to the mid 80's, particularly Disco, Glam Rock, Punk, Hardcore, Metal and Hip-Hop. Subsequent generations' musical achievements are positively nancy by comparison.
Sometimes I feel like being wispy
And once in a while I feel like being dry
But we're doomed and we're drowned by this feeling we surround
So I hope that I get old before I die
Ohhhhh
It's a long, long rope they use to hang you soon I hope
And I wonder why this hasn't happened
Why why why
And I think about the dirt that I'll be wearing for a shirt
And I hope that I get old before I die
--They Might Be Giants
I just amazed that anyone believes that there is actually such a thing as The Baby Boom Generation.
So one guy is a paratrooper on D-Day and is later part of the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne, while another guy sweeps floors at a transhipment depot in Utah, and a third guy has flat feet so he works in a Jeep factory in Michigan, but they're all part of The Greatest Generation, you bet.
And I had friends to went to Woodstock and they all left early because it was a really crappy festival.
So which of you guys wants the credit for Lindsay Lohan? Milli Vanilli? Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Straight Outta Compton?
Then can we decide which of the states are the coolest, and which are filled with real vuutles? But watch out for the guys with white shoes and white ties.
Well dang, cross-posted with DDR who seems to be claiming hip hop for Boomers. Lordy that's as lame as claiming that we were responsible for rock and roll and folk music.
Look, we're all primarily along for the ride. "I saw the Grand Canyon" does not translate into having created the Grand Canyon. "We're the same age," does not translate as being part of some actual thing. Mostly it just means that we saw some of the same movies when they came out.
Newt Gingrich and Bob Dylan were both born during WWII. Superman is just a little older than Dylan. They are mostly imaginary characters.
Your generation is already annoying. Are you going to get worse?
Aren't both Yanni and Bush boomers? Really, debate over.
Serial Catowner is blaming young people for not stopping a war started, supported, and executed by Boomers. SC is also blaming MY for not learning the lesson of Vietnam, as opposed to all the boomers in congress who learned it well.
Please.
"Yeah, go ahead and check the ages at DKos. The membership is boomer."
I meant check the ages of the founders.
The founders of MoveOn and DKos aren't boomer.
"The next time you think the Boomers should just forget what happened, grab a baseball bat and hit yourself in the head a few times. Maybe that will knock some sense into you."
But it didn't stop the war, did it? All the antics at the Democratic Convention just aided the fracture of the New Deal coalition between the white lower middle/working class, the unions and the urban liberals. And put nothing institutional in its place. It was all just self-indulgent Situationist stuff.
Compare MoveOn or DKos to the antics of SDS or its factionettes like the PLP. Could SDS or any of the New Left credibily claim to have changed the control of congress: 'cos DKos can. And Kos or the founders of MoveOn aren't boomers.
I guess I don't get why Boomers are supposed to get the credit for all of the good stuff that happened in the 60s and 70s. In 1970 the Boomers ranged in age from 5 years old to 25 years old. How could this cohort have had any political power at this time?
Sure, they had cultural power. Kids have long controlled the pop culture in this country. But political power? Making a difference? Please.
When the Boomers gained political power this country went dark and right wing in a big way. Reagan, Bush I, Gingrich, and Bush II, and even the watered down triangulation of the Clinton years. I lay all of these at your door, Boomers. I remember in the 80s thinking that surely, now that the Boomers were really coming into their own politically, these 60s radicals were really going to change things. They did. They turned the country into a right-wing paradise. Thanks, guys.
Another funny thing about all this is that seeing everything through the prism of the 60s is indulged by everyone.
Look at the comments on any thread like this- about 75% of them come from non-boomers. And boy, are they passionate about this. I see above that I'm blaming young people for not stopping a war.
This, frankly, is gibberish. You'll have to wait 100 years for some historian to sort things into neat boxes and even then it won't be real history, just a sort of condensation to fit some truncated curriculum.
When I can point out a few facts, or offer a few ideas, and a dozen commenters immediately read my comments through their own prejudices and get totally enraged...they are the ones focusing on and perseverating on the 60s.
When you reach the age that the Boomers are today, you'll understand that at that age you have more things to think about than what happened in your twenties. At least, I hope that's the case, because it would be mighty sad if all you could do then was sit around and think about how great things used to be.
"The Americans didn't celebrate Christmas or drink tea for 40 years after the American Revolution because Christmas and tea were British."
True (or at least sort of close to the truth) for tea, not for Christmas. Christmas was verboten among the Puritans (both in England and America) long before the Revolution because a religious calendar was associated with Catholicism. Thus, it generally was not celebrated in New England. It was always reasonably popular in the South and quite popular in New York. In fact, the decades after the Revolution were the decades when it started to become popular in New England as well.
Re: Ignorance of history on the part of 20-somethings, I can speak a bit to this...
When's the last time you heard an education commenter say "You know what our kids need to learn more of to stay competitive in the 21st century marketplace? History!"
And what about History majors? C'mon! They get made fun of almost as much as Philosophy majors (sorry Matt).
So maybe it's the sort of knowledge that's (unfortunately) not very highly regarded these days. Say what you want about us 20-somethings, but we pick up societal cues as well as everyone else.
Comments closed November 08, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
No age demographic will ever, ever, be as annoying as the Baby Boomers. It is not possible.
Posted by Will Allen | October 25, 2007 4:00 PM