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 have no idea what that means, but here are the government's OWN numbers:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs98/yi/yi04.pdf
I know where they came from .. and I know how they operate
As xsmommy, myself and others have stated .. it's based on PHILOSOPHY and not the year they were born in
As you can see from that graph, the divorce rate stayed nearly the same until 1970 and then skyrocked in 1975, peaking in 1975.
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You are despised because the whiners who are trying to co-opt Reagan (as if they had anything to do with getting him elected) are behaving like democrats....all childish rage, no ideas.
I don't take "blame" as a individual, but as a generation, which only means I recognize the place my generation hold in either the progression of retardation of philosophies.
I believe God had it right when He held generations accountable for certain actions and/or inactions throughout the Bible. Not necessarily individuals, but generations. I gives perspective, understanding and warning.
If there was no social security, I'm sure your generation would be not as upset with the boomers for something they had no control over. And, it was the greatest generation that refused to remove social security because it was an entitlement for them. Now they are reaping their rewards. Boomers haven't received it yet. The boomers, President Bush's admin, have started to get the privatizaion of social security out for discussion. It's going to be a long process, to convince people, especially when you've been paying into something your entire life that is a bust.
The boomers, President Bush's admin, have also started the gay marriage debate. It's a shift in the right direction, but as long as there are liberals fighting conservative values, it's going to be a hard won struggle.
Just don't splatter me with that paint brush!
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In which case, I want to thank you personally for gangsta rap...good job.
You know where we are because you know where we were and that is divided by generations. Each generation making its mark on the progression of the society.
In his own myopic search for self-centeredness, DeRogatis misses the entire point of the verse. It should be:
It really doesn't matter if I'm wrong / I'm right
Where I belong I'm right
Where I belong
In other words, if you're wrong in a situation, perhaps you need to change the situation. If your boss find your work "wrong", perhaps you have the wrong boss. If you're associating with a group that finds you "wrong", perhaps you're in the wrong group - you don't "belong". If you truly "belong" to the group, you will be "right", at least to the extent of having your views heard, without ad hominem attacks.
He should try explaining the value of capitalism to the Young Communists League, or the value of faith in Christianity to Islamofacists.
Then he might understand.
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Johnson's Great Society, 1965-1966....total number of "boomers" with the right to vote......ZERO. Please explain your ignorance, no, don't bother. Just continue to whine in the dark.
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Why is Bubba your boomer model, not W?
philosophies transcend generations. you can take responsibility for your generation, if you choose to do so. My children are being schooled in history and see what various ideologies mean for this country. they will bear responsibility for their own choices, both personal and political. i will not hold them responsible for their overindulged and self centered contemporaries, because they are not being raised in remotely the same fashion.
Peaked in the 80's. Began climbing in early 70's.
I posted his/her post
Gosh, beef. I know a wholelotta late 20-mid 30 year old people who refuse to grow up.
But hey. Somehow that's fine. Right?
Oh....let's see. The WWII fairy?
I apologize.
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