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.'
"In about ten years all the hippy-crits and baby boomers are gunna start dieing en-mass."
Boomers started dying en masse in the jungles of the sixties...about 50,000 of them are named on that wall in DC.
Fine. If they are my generation. Our generation will be responsible for an impact on society as well.
I am not offended to be born into the same generation, I can try to shape the impact though.
Agreed. In fact, SS is not part of my financial planning at all. If it is still there when I retire, I'll give my monthly checks to my church (unless it gets all liberal on me, then I'll just give it to Catholic Charities or some good works group like that). Yes, that issue crosses generations, BUT - the conversation IS irrelevant to a WWII gen member, so generation DOES matter.
And what the heck do you think WE'RE trying to do?
WHY the ANGER towards a group of people who happen to be a certain age?
Do you think all the people in the steets in the 60's were 18?
If you all came blame US for THEM, surely I can blame YOU all for the people who are in the streets protesting this government right this minute.
It's a generational thing, you know?
so you are using the term GENERATION as a synonym for ERA then. it was an ERA of free love, liberalism etc. That sort of DEpersonalizes it, bc as a member of a generation, being born, by happenstance in a particular time period, assigning generational responsibility, makes it personal. i think that is where the confusion lies. you are talking about the ERA of the 60s.
Discussing TRENDS does not equate expressing anger. Don't take it so personal!
Oh, I see; how nice for you that you get to shape OUR impression of THEM and YOUR impression of US, too!
Two way street, my friend, two way street.
That was a genralization and I apologize.
i do not think you are meanspirited, but many of your comments were taken that way on this thread. that is why i suggest that you be more precise in your language to avoid the misunderstandings. : )
SS should eventually be cut off for everyone. Bureaucrats shouldn't be meddling in our retirement affairs. We can invest and grow our own money without their "help". Also, people of a certain age shouldn't be essentially stealing from those of another.
What it comes down to is this: SS is a completely socialist program. As responsible conservatives, do we continue to cling to it and hope for the best despite the facts and figures, or do we self-sacrifice now so the younger folk have a better opportunity?
I saw that talked about somewhere here on FR....who's the author?
"Oh, shoot.....you're right. I forgot I did NOT vote for Nixon in '68!!"
I've been wrong before
http://www.abanet.org/publiced/lawday/convo/00/citizenship.html#18
but not this time. Maybe the rules were different in your state.
Meaning what? Should we "self-sacrifice" our elders?
All that "theory" is nice -- and I agree with some of it -- but try to live in the world we are in and the situation we are in -- in other words, you play the cards you're dealt.
I'm sure there is somebody in your family who is receiving SS. Try to think about them, eh?
i think era is more apt for what you are seeking to say, it takes into account the prevailing thoughts/trends/events of a particular time period, but doesn't ascribe responsibility to individuals who happen to have been birthed during those years.
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