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 don't think there is an indictment on EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL of the Boomer generation.
That would be akin to saying all Catholics (by association) were responsible for the Inquisition.
You can not lay blame for the lost moral values on the boomers, it was going down hill since right after WWI (and before, but in modern society, that was the turning point).
Next look at the roaring twenties. Flappers, bootleggers, speakeasys, the mob, jazz, and dancing. And the advent of massed produced automobiles let couples get away without chaperone's.
A huge part of the lost moral values can be attributed to the 18th amendment, prohibition. That lovely amendment forced people underground where it was anything goes. Lots of people died from poisoned liquor.
Right after WWII, there was the beatniks, there was a huge gay movement in that era, which lead to the hippies that you are so worried about.
Lets not forget grunge, and now, your generation is home to the anti-Americans. I could go back earlier in time. Have you studied Victorian era? Those people were not puritans but sure pulled it off as they were.
The baby boomers were the first generation popularized by television, which was the first generation to be so widely studied by thousands of scholars. As others said, you are painting with way too broad a brush. One generation is not at fault for today's mess, it was a gradual decline over time. You might want to bone up on some history.
I put your whole quote in .. I didn't cut and paste pieces of your post
AGAIN .. it's not a generation thing .. It's a Right vs. Left thing
I said "help pay"! LOL!
They did help.
Boomers 1946-1964 and X-ers 1965-1981...
Change the categories to Bloomers 1936-1954, X-ers 1955-1971, and Y-ers 1972-1989.
The individuals getting "blamed" on this thread for specific cultural movements change...
exactly. casting the argument in terms of year of birth, instead of targeting people based on PHILOSOPHY is just senseless.
And your brilliant #162 should completely end all the debate in this discussion... but of course it won't LOL
i am relieved : ) i am teaching my Gen Y kids that they are responsible for their own lives, and it is a copout to blame another GENERATION for their lot in life.
Well there are some that are lumping the Boomers into one pot
And that is the point many, like myself are trying to point out
Put the blame where the blame belongs .. on The Liberals
EXCELLANT POST!!
I will concede to that...
So you just need a different name for the Boomers that grew up. LOL!
"Between the late 1960's and 1980, the divorce rate doubled, reaching a level where at least 1 out of 2 marriages was expected to end in divorce... The divorce rate remained relatively unchanged during the 1980's, exhibiting a small drop toward the end of the decade... the divorce trend reflected in these rates implies a continued high proportion of marriages ending in divorce, even though there has been no increase in the last decade."
U.S. Census Bureau
Nope. Ah well. Back to HTML bootcamp for me. If you're interested:http://christianparty.net/divrate.htm
of course. my kids are very historically and politically well informed, at ages 10, 13 and 15. again, the problem is political PHILOSOPHY not birth year. they know that the liberal PHILOSOPHY has caused the problems of society and will know enough to vote against such things. we can all, at the end of the day, only be responsible for ourselves and our own decisions. i refuse to be responsible for a GENERATION. i am responsible for myself and myself alone.
____________________________________________________
And now you get to defend yourself against charges of being lazy, selfish, anti-God, just the worst generation....oh, and those charges are being made by the whiniest generation here on FR.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.