Xer Ping
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social aspects that directly effects Gen-Reagan/Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
I don't consider myself a boomer either, even though I fall within that 20 year window. I have nothing in common with those aging hippies.
This so true. I'm near the tail-end of the Boomers and I have pretty much nothing culturally in common with them.
Let's face it, big turning points like the civil rights movement was organized and carried out primarily by the Silent Generation. The same was true for the equal pay for equal work drive. Boomers were just along for the ride.
Boomer values, however, did change the face of religion in this country and changed the face of dating, marriage, childrearing, and divorce. I don't think those changes were all that great.
Now I'm really wondering about the author's point about demographics. Can I "unenlist" from the Baby Boomers?
I ashamed of most of my generation. Mostly, it's the vocal rich crowd from the left. The artiste's. Free love, free dope, freedom to do whatever we "feel". It's become acceptable and expected to divorce rather than stay married. Our kids kids are passed back and forth. Nearly 30% are raised by grandparents. Personal responsibility has been replaced by psychobabble and "free" handouts.
IMHO, the way to define boomers is if whether they were of draftable age for Vietnam. That's the definiing moment of that generation, like it or not.
Here's a perfect example of why I loathe the Baby Boomers. So full of themselves, so self-righteous, so arrogant and condescending. And of course, the irony is that for all of their talk, they are the most selfish, self-centered, self-absorbed, self-important bunch of brats the world has ever seen.
I wish the entire pack of pompous, spoiled jack@sses would go save someone else's world and leave us and ours alone. I'm a 37-year old Gen X'er, and am more than a little tired of the Boomers telling me and everyone else how awful we are, how much we don't care as much as they do about whatever, and of the Boomers trying to tell everyone else what they should and shouldn't say or do.
I was born in 1963 and this guy needs to get a life
I was born in 1960 and am a late Boomer.
I have FAR more in common with Gen X and Gen Y than I do with , say, my idiot Yuppie sister-in-law who is 12 years older than I am.
Thanks for posting this.
I think I am going to have to read this book...
I was born in 1963 (just turned 41). I never have identified with the boomers. The 1964 cut-off date may have a demographic basis, but it is unrelated to the cultural divide between the Boomers and GenX. Douglas Coupland wrote the novel "Generation X," which poopularized the term. He was born in 1961, and many of the GenX-ers in his book were all similarly born in the early 1960s. Clearly, many of us born before the arbitrary 1964 date are culturally part of GenX. On the other hand, many of my high school classmates are definitely Boomerish--I'm referring to the ones who worshiped the Beatles, "the Movement," hippie fashions, and other already-dated cultural icons.
I'm an X-er.... and consider this thread sewage.
Assigning "blame" for cultural changes to groups of individuals simply by the date they were born is even junkier science than John Edward's cerebral palsy propaganda.
I'm reading along, mildly interested, then this. A political dig at Bush. Clinton takes 967 pages to say he didn't do anything wrong, and the implication is that he didn't. Bush still won't say he;'s wrong, and the implication is that he is wrong. Bush "still won't say he's wrong," because he isn't wrong, and so the whole credibility of the author goes down the toilet along with this Sunday morning newspaper human interest bathroom reading while taking a dump article. Pardon my visual imagery please.
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.
Americans are not all the same and neither are all "Republicans" or "Democrats". Sounds like a rehash of "new study reveals men and women are different".
I was born in 1947 and I am quite disgusted with my generation. I don't share any of their 'values' at all. And I wasn't at Woodstock. I'm a Vietnam vet. We raised four responsible adults who don't reflect the inflated ego's of most of their generation either. - By the Grace of God.
"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."
Oh this is beautiful.
Dad was only 18, some damn SELFISH drug- and sex-crazed narcissist, when he sired this girl. He doesn't see how HE is the selfish, self-gratifying idiot. And every1 else is inferior, older and younger. So typical '60s hippie. (Likewise selfishly and self-righteously, he thinks his little teenage butt had so much to do w/what was "questioned". Nevermind all that '60s stuff was simmering in the '50s at least, and could only be brought to the fore by those at least in their mid-20s - you know, those who had lives?)
She's a bit older than I am and she must oppose her dad's views. Well, isn't it a shock that an 18yo "father" who praises self-gratification anything-goes and "rebellion" (for the sake of rebellion, against older people like your parents) would find himself w/a daughter who's "rebelled" against him? Oh no, it couldn't be!