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.'
sweety pie, please tell me you are not talking down to me? i am old enough at 48, to be your momma, and i am a lawyer to boot, so please, no talking down to your elders : )
And to do so based on something irrelevant. I find it amusing that I am held blameless for some cultural calamities that my older sister is responsible for... simply because she was born 2 years earlier.
i suppose generationally is ONE way of looking at these things, but most certainly not the only way. and as demonstrated, herein, not the most accurate way.
LOL!
:-)
Again... you assume that because someone differs with you that they didn't "read the entire thread".
Since you insist that "generations are how we look at these things", then rework your arguments using a different set of generations and see how useless it is a premise. Events and trends in ideology are responsible for cultural change, not groups of individuals who share nothing more than a birth date.
As I mentioned above, Boomers 1946-1964 and X-ers 1965-1981...
Change the categories to Bloomers 1936-1954, X-ers 1955-1971, and Y-ers 1972-1989.
Oh, shoot.....you're right. I forgot I did NOT vote for Nixon in '68!!
Duh CC...
On that? Yes. A majority of anyone/thing is something over 50%.
Now look at the voting trends of Boomers.
Yep. I have. Think GW. Think Cheney. Think Reagan. Think Contract with America!
Now look at the TV viewing trends of Boomers.
Well, me, personally...I don't WATCH TV. I'm absolutely DISGUSTED with the viewing habits of the younger generation. So? I don't watch it.
Now look at the Best Seller trends and so on.
The TRUE bottom line sales (which I don't think we actually SEE!!!) or the hyped media numbers?
The majority of boomers are center/left, left of the Conservative culture.
You're wrong. But hey...IF I'M WRONG, I am going to whoop it up come election day cuz you younger whipper snappers are gonna elect CONSERVATIVE across the board. And for that? I'll humbly thank you!!!!!!!!
Well? It's true!!!!!!
oh you most certainly do generalize. you are treating a set of people with a birthyear within a particular range as a monolithic group. that defines generalization.
yeah.
A generic kind of question. WITHOUT BEING A BRAT....CONGRATULATIONS!!!! on owning your own home, having a wife and family!!! And I really mean that!
Why did I ask that question? Because ALMOST WITHOUT FAIL, the generation that you're in, is still living off of their parents in some way. Either they're living at home or their parents have bought them their homes.
I'm seeing some real mooches.
The Baby Boom generation includes persons born in certain countries after the end of WWII (1945) but before the end of 1964. William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations called this generation the Boom generation (they are no longer babies) and put the birth years of United States members of this generation at 1943 to 1960, not based on parental fecundity, but because of a common peer personality.
As for myself, as a Boomer, I can say that I never attended a demonstration until the 2000 election fiasco, was an Air Force wife, never collected welfare or unemployment, didn't join a commune, free love church, or environmental group. I didn't smoke dope. I worked hard, honored my parents, raised my children the best way I knew, and have been married for over 25 years.
There a lot of us Boomers who are being tarred with the liberal brush because of the media.
Good for you!
I'd be interested in seeing a survey on the boomers' general opinion of an issue such as Social Security. My guess is a majority supports the institution and desires to "preserve" it. My guess is most in that age group view SS as an entitlement they somehow "deserve".
LOL!!!
Lighten up. You'll end up with FAR LESS WRINKLES later in life.
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