Baby boomers not all alike

Sun News/ Myrtlebeachonline ^ | 7/11/04 | Jeffrey Zaslow

[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.'

[wtc911]

I said I was wrong.....

Not to me, and I'm the one accused of inacurrate posts, but I guess that's ok.

[CyberCowboy777]

my gripe here is using the birthyear as a relevant variable, when political ideology is what is relevant, and crosses generational lines.

I understand that, I am only stating that each generation is responsible for an impact on society, each in variation.

[xsmommy]

yes, but it has significance to me and i am a late boomer and you are a Gen Xer (my first concert was Humble Pie, does that have significance to you?) so what does that prove? i was in elementary school when Woodstock was going on, what did i know about it? but as a boomer, that was supposedly MY TIME. it is just NOT accurate.

[CyberCowboy777]

What issues, with what, would that be?

Please enlighten me.

[Howlin]

Oh, you were QUITE adamant about it. Quite.

[wtc911]

or would you like me to commit suicide since I'm so old?......

Not at all, I'm a grand parent myself. But, and this is truly sad, there have been threads on this topic (started by the same official whiner for xers) that have seen posts wherein freepers endorsed euthanasia for us boomers.

[xsmommy]

to some degree. but again, the lines blur. as i just pointed out to warren, born in 1956, i have just about the same amount in common with the earliest Gen Xers as i do with the Boomers. but the birthyear has me firmly in the boomer generation, regardless of the fact that i was an elementary school student and not out partaking of MY (supposed) GENERATION's excesses.

[CyberCowboy777]

but as a boomer, that was supposedly MY TIME. it is just NOT accurate.

It is not about you.

It is about changes and impacts, one generation to another. The fact that you had little to do with it means nothing.

[CyberCowboy777]

QUITE adamant?

Yes I am.

How many posts have I made where I have said - each generation is responsible for an impact on the society.

[Howlin]

I absolutely believe that.........LOL.

[xsmommy]

well thanks, i am so happy to have been let off the hook by you. but this thread has all along been couched in broadbrushed terms, with people stating such things as I DESPISE BOOMERS, boomers caused this that and the other horrific trend etc. Your imprecise language has led to misconceptions about your views.

[k2blader]

Can't argue with that! Tho' I tend to think boomers are generally liberal.

What do you think should be done about SS?

[Warren_Piece]

I'm not helping, bad example. What I mean is that you and the people you were born with experienced the same history, (no matter if they are conservative or liberal). That's why they call them the formative years. History swept through your lives and helped form who you are. What we're talking about is an inexact science - determining what the cumulative effect of that history was on a given group of people.

BTW, Humble Pie - cool! They came to town with Head East in the 70's. I was a little too young to go to the concert, but I did start listening to the music. We're not THAT far apart in age.

[Howlin]

You've made many posts where you've acted like a horse's butt, that's for sure.

If you're going to say this:

To: xsmommy

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.

79 posted on 07/12/2004 2:44:20 PM EDT by CyberCowboy777 (Veritas vos liberabit)

Then I"m going to blame YOU for this:

From this minute forward, I associate YOU with THEM!

[CyberCowboy777]

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.

[Howlin]

You mean like this?

Gen-X Politics Kill all Baby-Boomers

Quote:

"I can't wait. I just can't wait. In about ten years all the hippy-crits and baby boomers are gunna start dieing en-mass. Then maybe the country and the world will start purging itself of the greed, hypocracy, moral bankrupsy and petulance of the fart ing baby boomers. "

[CyberCowboy777]

Cybercowboy lumps together a black panther activist and a ku klux klan member, both born in 1950.

Yes I do, I lump them in the same generation. Same world events, same politicians, same technology.

That does not mean they are not different people, with different values or lack thereof.

Both are part of a generation that had an impact on society, even if both or neither had a significant role. Both are part of the fabric that molded the society.

[xsmommy]

well i am certainly not counting on it for MY retirement, i think people should fund their own retirement. any self respecting conservative feels that way, irrespective of their birth year, don't you think?

[Betis70]

So that guy on the left, holding the sign, with the gray hair ... he is a Gen Xer? Looks kinda old.

The guy on the right has a mask so its tough to make out his features.

[Brad’s Gramma]

Gen-X Politics Kill all Baby-Boomers

That's horrible, Howlin. There is NO WAY I would've said that about my grandparents OR parents.

[xsmommy]

The boomers embraced what was a sub-culture before them. A culture of free love, do what feels good, institutionalized rebellion and violent protest.

apparently i had missed your post 79, that howlin so kindly reposted, but i think it qualifies as a generalization.