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'm sick and tired of reading all these threads about how bad we've trashed this country."
The solution: stop reading.
Ummm .. My parents are from that generation and I think they did a pretty good job raising their kids
You are painting a pretty broad brush there
They are called Liberals
there is slaphappy broadbrushing all over this thread!
Can't argue with that.
To me the Boomers seem to be those were teens or early 20s in the late '60s and early '70s. How about we just categorize it as anyone who sits around fondly remembers being a hippie and can't remember anything else. Those who would say, "If you remember the '60s, you didn't live it."
That would be the entire Democratic Party, IMO. :-)
So of us actually grew up and became productive.
Gen Xers have always been defined as being born after 1946. Not directly after, but after. 1965 is after 1946, unless as I said before, I missed something.
So saying he is bashing everyone born after 1946 is sheer hyperbole. IF he is bashing anyone (not sure he is), then it is Boomers, who are usually defined as 1946-1964 inclusive, and the totality of humanity born after 1946.
I'll read whatever is posted on FR; that is, if you don't mind.
>>and the totality of humanity born after 1946.
should read "and NOT the totality of humanity born after 1946."
me too!!!!!!!!!!
Gabz .. what many are doing is lumping everyone born in that time into one box
Yes, music, cloths and TV shows were different .. but that is not what makes us different
In EVERY generation the are Conservative and Liberals
Too many are lumping Boomers into the Liberal category
And that is not how it is
My older brother is 12 years older them me .. An "early Boomer"
He also spent 26 years in the Marine Corps .. and I can guarantee ... He ain't no Liberal
I know, I know. Many X-ers paint with a pretty broad brush.
However, these sort of discussions ARE very interesting. Demographics are real, and they are a pretty good predictor of behavior. I am a Southern White male, and not very amazingly, I am a republican, protestant and country music fan. Although not ALL southerners fit into these categorizations, the majority do.
As for the irrational hatred - remember - EVERYTHING in life boils down to money or sex. Money: most X-ers believe that boomers plowed through the American economy like locusts, leaving nothing behind. The sex part? I love how Bobcat Goldwait (sp?) put it. He said his son told him, "Because you had sex with EVERYBODY, I can't have sex with ANYBODY!".
As XS said in an earlier post --- there is far too much broad-brushing of labels going on in this thread.
Both hubby and I fall into the technical definition of BB - but never into the current definition of "liberal."
i am looking for someone to tell me what i have done, other than just happening to have been born in 1956, to have made life hell on earth for Gen X'ers. i am 48 years old, i pay a crapload of taxes, my husband (born in 1954) and i send our kids to Catholic schools, and have never gotten dime one from the gov't for anything. oh and i was a virgin til age 25, so count me out of the free love crap too. so how have i adversely affected anyone, i am waiting to hear why i am so despised.
Not just on this thread
my husband and i were born in the NE, born and raised Democrats, but moved to VA and became right wing conservatives shortly after we got married. He is a country music fan as well. so we have more in common with you than our date of birth, again, why a universal hate for babyboomers. liberals i can see, despising, it is a mindset freely chosen. date of birth is really beyond anyone's control.
And that is what should be argued ..
I'm not pointing this at you ... But the X'ers really need to stop painting such a broad brush
Not all Boomers are Liberals
We were talking about the boomers that didn't grow up. They are leftists.
The original definition of 'Baby Boomer' were those born in the years after the end of World War II, when "the daddies" came home from the war, because when we first entered elementry school there were so many of us.
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