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.'
Exactly. And aren't critics supposed to judge music on its artistic merits, and not the politics behind it? Using that critic's logic about politics being the most important, John Lennon's greatest album would be Somewhere in New York City, even though even John Lennon fans find the music on it hard to take.
Your right on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and my Dad (the boomer) hates the Beatles entirely.
There's been a huge backlash about it being the greatest album of all time since Rolling Stone picked it as such in 1987. Most critics will now say that Revolver or Abbey Road or Rubber Soul is better. That book is not exactly going out on a limb in saying it's overrated.
Don't worry - the usual suspect boomer Freepers always end-up attacking us X-ers. When that doesn't work, then come the snide comments about running/crying to our mommies and daddies because we're so screwed up (or something to that effect). I guess we're not allowed to be critical of the (few/many) shortcomings of prior generations - only ourselves.
It's actually quite amusing. Just laugh it off.
I did and will call much of the economic policies enacted by the gray panthers (and their parents) socialistic.
You don't agree?
Absolotely NOT true.
One other thing -- it makes more sense to consider those born in the early 1940s as being the same generation as the boomers as those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Using the traditional standard of what defines a Baby Boomer, being born between 1946 and 1964, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jane Fonda, Abbie Hoffman, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and John Kerry are *not* boomers! How does that make sense?
I'm reading along, mildly interested, then this. A political dig at Bush. Clinton takes 967 pages to say he didn't do anything wrong, and the implication is that he didn't. Bush still won't say he;'s wrong, and the implication is that he is wrong. Bush "still won't say he's wrong," because he isn't wrong, and so the whole credibility of the author goes down the toilet along with this Sunday morning newspaper human interest bathroom reading while taking a dump article. Pardon my visual imagery please.
Now don't tell me that you're going to point the finger of blame at the GEN Xers for the escalation of divorce rates in the 60's? 'Cause I know you can't blame the boomers since they were too young.
Then blame those people .. aka the left .. Liberals
And not blame the whole generation
...but the divorce rate starting climbing with the early 60's and that was again..."The Greatest Generation."
is absolutely untrue. I have no idea where you go that figure.
Howlin! HTG! Where have you been? It's well-known the first half of the 60's is when divorce rates started climbing in this country. Think about who elected the Kennedys.
I feel your pain, Herkimer.
You better check your facts.
The divorce rate in the '60s was 9.2 percent, LOWER than it had been in the 50's.
The divorce rate didn't begin to skyrocket until 1975, peaked in 1979 at around 22.00, and has been relatively the same,if not lower, since then.
Hmmmmm ... are you sure ???
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1169790/posts?page=79#79
Bottom Line.
The boomers embraced what was a sub-culture before them. A culture of free love, do what feels good, institutionalized rebellion and violent protest.
All these things existed before the boomer's, and certainly their parents are to blame for much of the economic socialism we currently live with, but the social decline that happened in the '60's and '70's I place mostly at the feet of the boomer's.
One only needs look at the pinnacle of Boomer power, Bill Clinton, current voting trends and the institutions run by boomers in the '90's up to today.
nah...there's reason to hate YOU... ; ) just kidding.
They did? Then where did the 7 trillion in debt come from?
I will. I voted for Perot. I'm sorry. Twice. I'm really sorry. I voted for Reagan twice, and Bush I once, and Bush II.
That having been said, let me say this: I'm not buying into that the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket nonsense. There is good and bad in everyone and every generation gave and took according to its times, which were all unique. We have longer life expectancies, better health, more entertainment options, freedom to move about at will, and creature comforts beyond the wildest dreams of the ultimate rich people of just 100 years ago. Sure we have problems in the world, but we deal with them. What would life be without problems? Boring.
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