Posted on 07/15/2009 11:12:23 AM PDT by bs9021
Baby Boomer Apology Tour
by: Deborah Lambert, July 15, 2009
When faced with periods of gloom and doom, there are two ways to respond. Ignore it—or dwell on it. As noted in previous columns, many commencement speakers for the class of 2009 chose Option #2. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported that “graduation ceremonies have become collective airings of guilt and grief,” adding that “it’s now chic for boomers to apologize for their generation’s crimes.”
GOP governors like Mitch Daniels, R-Ind, told Butler University seniors that his generation was “just plain selfish.” NY Timeser Tom Friedman compared boomers to “hungry . . . locusts” during his address at Grinnell College. And filmmaker Ken Burns told his Boston College audience that boomers had “squandered the legacy” of the WW II generation.
It’s bad enough when adults are doing the guilt trip speech, but when graduates echo the trend, it’s downright unpleasant. At one Washington D.C. area prep school, that’s exactly what happened when seniors who “stepped up to the podium dutifully moaned about how terrified they are of America’s future.”
After duly noting the trend, economist Stephen Moore proclaimed that he’s definitely not in the same camp as those mea culpa boomers. In fact, he’s far more likely to blame the parents for “rearing a generation of pampered kids who’ve been chauffeured around to soccer leagues ever since they were six.” Since these kids have never known anything else but rising affluence, can you blame them for thinking of iPods, designer phones and GPS systems as entitlements?...
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
Boomers are bad? Do they mean the ones that ended the Cold War and walked on the moon?
Three simpletons.
Reagan was a baby boomer? The men who walked on the moon were not baby boomers to my knowledge
Their generation’s crimes??? Heck, half of them are groveling in apology over pre-Civil War slavery and the fact that the planet’s mean temperature rises a two degrees every few hundred years. I wish I held stock in some company that manufactures knee pads.
Reagan was a baby boomer? The men who walked on the moon were not baby boomers to my knowledge
Do you consider giving any credit to the people who died in Vietnam or designed and supported the means to get to the moon? I guess it's true there really are a lot of FReepers that hate boomers.
And, those "crimes" would be . . . . . . ????
If only these boomers would stop blaming their age group and focus on their real mistake: Liberalism.
In addition to developing PCs, iPods, digital cameras, cell phones, lasers, etc., etc.
In addition to developing PCs, iPods, digital cameras, cell phones, lasers, etc., etc.
Thank you! I'm slaving over a laser this very minute! (military contracts)
which boomers desinged the means to get to the moon? yes - baby boomers died in Vietnam and it was the BABY BOOMERS who spit on them when they came back.
"Many Gen Xers resent the Baby Boomers and feel they are the single most destructive generation EVER to have thrived in America, and that they have, Locust-like, destroyed everything they personally didn't like or, worse, threw a monkey wrench into the works just to see if they could, or for the challenge. Right or wrong, Gen Xers believe that Boomers destroyed the media, the government, the family, religion, small business and international and internal relations. Gen Xers feel the Boomers have destroyed the future of all Americans by selling out and then overcharging for the American Dream (home, education, information, services, etc.). In other words, many Gen Xers feel they are lied to often, and that, in the work place, that they will be both lied to and used for someone else's benefit at their own personal cost. As a result, Gen Xers prefer to act as paid mercenaries or ronins. This armors them, because that way, they aren't taken in by the hypocrisy or wasted when some 50 year old has a bad day on the golf course and decides to lay off fifty people. Thank you for the insightful article."
http://americaspeaksink.com/2008/12/baby-boomers-have-destroyed-the-world/ and http://makeitso57.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/baby-boomers-the-worst-generation/ and http://www.creators.com/conservative/dennis-prager/baby-boomers-owe-america-s-young-people-an-apology.html and
Sorry, I'm not buying any of it. This is one person's whiney complaint about her own inability to succeed. Gen X'ers excel at blaming everyone else for their own shortcomings and the italicized line above shows the incredible stupidity of the person who wrote it!!
What else ya got??
Pretty lame compendium - 2 clueless, ignorant juveniles ranting on a blog, and one article from Dennis Prager who has so-so credibility. Get back to me when you have something more substantive beside juvenile rants.
For example, in the first rant, most of the things cited by the author were occurring at a time when boomers were too young to vote and most of the early class of boomers were still in school. So, how is all of this our fault??? The second rant at least had examples but, like the first, the rant was based on complete and total ignorance and a culture of blaming everyone else for their problems.
Prager is a little different but, still, even his apology tour paints with a broad brush and apologizes for things that are not specifically related to boomers. In fact, when I first started reading it, I thought it was tongue-in-cheek!!
So, I recommend that you and the other boomer bashers do a little research before you sit around and congratulate yourselves on "showing that old geezer a thing or two". Start by reading up on the Beatniks. And, really, try to learn a thing or two about the Vietnam War before you decide that we lost it. In fact, let me broaden that last statement - try to learn a thing or two before you engage in more boomer bashing. All you do is make yourselves look lame, silly, whiney and weak.
I expected a response yours calling me whiney and weak. And I have done my research. What cracks me up more is that your generation is now calling themselves “the greatest generation”. What a hoot! Can you actually tell me that you deny every accusation in those links I posted?
And no, us Gen-x’ers dont blame everyone else.
We just call it like it is. After all, we got dumped on by your generation, so yeah, we are kind of cynical.
Let's start there. I didn't say that you were whiney and weak, I said the rants were weak, whiney and lame. Unless you authored those rants, they weren't directed at you.
And I have done my research. What cracks me up more is that your generation is now calling themselves “the greatest generation”. What a hoot!
Absolutely false. The greatest generation name belongs to my parents' generation. I don't know where you are getting that, but your source is totally and completely wrong.
Can you actually tell me that you deny every accusation in those links I posted?
Yeah, pretty much. But, let me give you the opportunity to start fresh. Let's take your accusations one at a time and discuss them. Start with the biggest on your list and we'll work through them, ok? Don't give me things like "the boomers destroyed America", give me specific examples on how you THINK we destroyed America, fair enough?
And no, us Gen-x’ers dont blame everyone else. We just call it like it is. After all, we got dumped on by your generation, so yeah, we are kind of cynical.
Ok, we'll discuss that, too. Tell me HOW you think you got "dumped on" by boomers. Again, please state specifics.
well its quite simple, high divorce rate, rise in STD's uncontrolled spending destroying of the moral fabric of this country It's going to take us GenXer's and later to fix these problems that the boomers created. And those are only a few.
You have a divorce or an STD problem and Boomers are to blame? How does that work?
I'm not sure how the divorce rate, high or otherwise, is specifically related to boomers. In the mid- late 60s, as I recall, the Congress decided that it would be a good thing to make ending marriages easier. So, they did their Abra-cadabra thing and, POOF!, marriages started ending like they were ice cream cones in a hot southern summer. At the time this was occurring, the earliest boomers were just graduating from high school and starting college. Most of us couldn't vote because we hadn't reached age 21, yet, so I'm not sure how the high divorce rate is our burden.
In 1969, 4 homely women burned their bras in NYC and began the Women's Lib movement. The Women's Lib movement, which holds that men are, essentially, an unncessary appendage in a marriage, has been the source of a massive social issue in this country, whose impact continues to reverberate. In addition, it is important to understand some of the social issues we were undergoing as a nation, at the time. In the social revolution of the 60s, one of the things which had NOT changed dramatically, was the status and stature of women in this country. During WWII, when a majority of eligible men were fighting the war, the women turned to and learned skills and abilities that they never realized they were capable of by taking the manufacturing jobs and making the weapons of war that our military needed. Consequently, when the war ended and the men came back, the women didn't willingly go back to their roles as homemakers and mothers - they wanted to re-experience some of what they had done during the war.
Thus, when the Women's Lib movement began, it gave women the excuse they were seeking to change the paradigm. While I'm not sure that Betty Friedan, Gloria Steiem, et al, technically are boomers, I also can't rule them out. So, the high divorce rate is a combination of factors - Congress making it easier through the courts, Womens Lib and the paradigm shift in the status of women away from their traditional role in society.
rise in STD's
Again, I'm not sure how this relates specifically to boomers. STDs have been around for centuries and claimed the lives of numerous prominent figures in history, not to mention wiping out a number of ancient civilizations. However, let's step back in time. When many of us boomers got "the talk" from our parents about the "birds and bees", sex was a taboo topic in society. You didn't really talk about it openly or in public and it was still something that only married people were supposed to do. Condoms were considered dirty and no guy would ever willingly use one.
As the likely result of rising teenage pregnancy rates through the 80s, it became necessary to open up the discussion of sex and talk about the use of condoms, safe sex practices, etc. This was all stuff too many of us knew next to nothing about. It is also illustrative to know that several guys I know were startled out of several years of life when their female bed partner (with whom they lived or slept) would roll over and ask them where babies come from. It isn't the kind of conversation you want to have when you just finish "doing" your girlfriend.
uncontrolled spending
This one ya got me on. I'm not exactly sure how boomers have anything to to with uncontrolled spending. It tends to be more aligned with political philosophy than anything else. First of all, I know a LOT of boomers who don't like the spending that Congress has been doing, so it is disingenuous to tar us all with that brush!!! This isn't necessarily something that you can lay on boomers as a group, but should view from a political philosophy/association perspective.
destroying of the moral fabric of this country
I'm not sure if this is a separate issue or if it was supposed to be part of the previous topic. A punctuation mark or two got lost along the way. Anyway, if this is a separate topic, I'm not going to go into it because it is one of those generalizations that lack specifics.
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