Posted on 07/12/2004 9:38:33 AM PDT by qam1
1946, 1964 classes don't always agree........
There's a great distance between Barry Manilow and Barry Bonds.
Manilow, the singer, was born in 1946, the first year of the postwar baby boom. About 76 million births later, Bonds, the baseball slugger, became one of America's last boomers. That was in 1964, when demographers say the boom ended.
Typically, those born within that period are lumped together as the "baby boom generation," as if their values, beliefs and habits are unified. In fact, as the "late-wave boomers" turn 40 this year, it's clear that the classes of 1946 and 1964 are often very different, at times resulting in alienation and even finger-pointing.
John Dieffenbach, a 40-year-old attorney in Pleasantville, N.Y., says many of the oldest boomers are "a self-aggrandizing" bunch who treat him like an auxiliary member of their generation. "I'm part of their club but don't get the benefits." He doesn't get the "benefit" of nostalgia - being able to say he recalls when Kennedy was shot or the Beatles arrived in America. And people his age might not receive full Social Security benefits when they retire because the oldest boomers may strain the system.
The oldest boomers came of age at a time of affordable housing, easier acceptance to colleges and better job markets. The youngest boomers struggled through deeper recessions, crowded workplaces and, now, outsourced jobs.
Younger boomers also worry that in the next decade or so, their 401(k) values will fall as retired older boomers cash out of stocks.
"I share very little culturally with a 58-year-old," Dieffenbach says. In 1986, when the media declared "Boomer Generation Turns 40," he was just 22. In 1996, when newspaper articles celebrated "Boomers Turn 50" - counting the candles on their cakes (400,000 a day) and the cash spent on their birthday presents ($1 billion that year) - Dieffenbach was just 32.
"I'm waiting for the 'Baby Boomers are Dead' stories," he says, only half-jokingly.
This month, a new book, "Kill Your Idols," features essays in which rock critics who are young boomers and Generation Xers tear down allegedly classic boomer albums such as "Tommy" by The Who, released in 1969, and "Pet Sounds" by the Beach Boys, out in 1966.
"I grew up with the notion that I missed out on the greatest party ever because I wasn't at Woodstock," says the book's co-editor, Jim DeRogatis, born in 1964. "Well, I've seen the movie, and it's a stone-cold bore."
In his essay, DeRogatis slices up The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." He mocks one of the 1967 album's songs, "Fixing a Hole," which he says embodies the myopia and self-centeredness of older boomers: "It really doesn't matter/If I'm wrong I'm right/Where I belong I'm right."
The song reminds DeRogatis of two boomers born in 1946: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In his autobiography, "Clinton takes 957 pages to say he really didn't do anything wrong," DeRogatis says, while President Bush "still won't say he was wrong" about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Dennis Peterson and his daughter, Dee Ann Haibeck, are boomer bookends, born Jan. 1, 1946, and Oct. 28, 1964. Peterson of Bellevue, Wash., says people from his era "opened the door for a lot of discussions America hadn't been having" - about such divisive matters as race, women's rights, the Vietnam War. He says those of his daughter's era "didn't have the testosterone to get involved in social issues. I don't think they had our sense of responsibility."
Haibeck feels some of her dad's hippie contemporaries "changed our culture for the worse" by making society too liberal.
Dieffenbach has a suspicion about why he and others born in the early 1960s are counted in the boomer generation. As the oldest boomers continue to lobby for power and their legacy, they think there's strength in numbers, he says. "They're just using us to increase their volume.'
I'm a Gen Xer, but I have to admit that the boomers had the better music. Besides, according to another freeper thread, I understand that the book mentioned attacks Lynyrd Skynyrd and Led Zeppelin. Rock critics have *never* liked Skynyrd (they're still not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, for one thing) and the critics only came around on Zeppelin long after they had broken up. It would be more "groundbreaking" in that book if the Gen Xer critics attacked boomer critics for ignoring those bands at their peak. Not to mention, I've been hearing people call Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band overrated for a good 15 years now; it's hardly a new argument.
Then you would know .. they are LIBERALS
Not all Boomers are Liberals
All your Generation doesn't want to Shoot Our Officers and become members of ELF
Many Many of them are serving our Country Proudly ..
Again .. it's not a generation thing .. It's Right vs. Left
Put the blame were the blame belongs .. and stop lumping EVERYONE into one pot
It was not a debate point, it was a joke made to a friend... hence the LOL.
I agree with your points in the above post. I just disagree on assigning blame to another based on a birth date... to me that is as arbitrary as assigning blame based on hair color.
Did you or did you not say this:
The Generations that embrace the other side should be pointed out - just as the so called greatest generation should be vetted for their socialist economic culture.
That looks mighty personal to me; if it's not your parents, you have issues about something, because you sure are trying to blame SOMEBODY for everything you think is wrong with the world.
I actually like some of the new stuff; Maroon 5 (and I even like Outkast, but don't tell anybody.....LOL)
Horse pucky. Medicare, Medical, Social Security, Drug Benefit, Proposition 13, and the list goes on. Don't take my word for it. Check the demographics.
In your parents time, divorce was not 50%
I don't know what YOU THINK my parents time was, but the divorce rate starting climbing with the early 60's and that was again..."The Greatest Generation."
The most politically pandered-to segment of our society.
Interestingly, I have far more quarrels with 'Nintendo' Xers than I do with boomers, yet you rarely see these discussions get personal between younger and older x-ers, or between younger and older boomers. Weird.
I remember the music critics calling Bowie a 'genius'. So I checked him out. After that, I stopped listening to music critics.
Go bury yourself in a Tom Brokaw book. The networks love people like you.
But the X'ers really need to stop painting such a broad brush
You are painting us ALL with a broad brush.
and stop lumping EVERYONE into one pot
You do realize you are saying these things on a thread titled "Baby boomers not all alike,
hee, hee...
Yeah, I do, sonny boy.
But I can also read down the thread to other posts.
You certainly protest loudly.
Read the posts for others :0)
for = of
I'm not the one calling other people greedy and/or socialists.
I think the fundamental problem with this thread is that some folks are insisting that others admit they deserve "blame" for ideological or societal changes that they personally fought against.
And they are doing so based on entirely artificial constructs... Boomers 1946-1964 and X-ers 1965-1981 could have just as easily been classified under different names and lumped together through the years 42-58 and 59-75 or other sets of numbers. The changes in society one would be expected to accept personal blame for would change based on the whim of the individual setting the ranges.
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