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.'
so, use of the word boomer is IMPRECISE, because it lumps all of us in with the despised, just by virtue of date of birth, regardless of our personal philosophy.
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...
And weez payin', and payin', and payin'.
I don't see that as being so much a generational difference as it is a difference in people in general. Some are irresponsible, others are not. That occurs in every generation.
Sadly to say, in my experience they've turned into the most "entitled generation."
I have read on these threads that we're all selfish and that we're greedy......and, most importantly, we've left them with so much debt.
Like OUR parents didn't leave us with any.
I was thinking about that book when I read this for the exact same reason. Don't have the book around at the moment, but I remember them talking about how those born in the early 60's did not belong in the boom generation.
Interesting reading the comments from the 1964-born "boomers" in the article above. They could have come right out of Strauss & Howe's description of the "Thirteenth Generation" (a.k.a. Generation-X).
Are you under the impression that we haven't paid? Who the hell do you think paid off World War II -- you know, one of the wars that gave you the freedom to sit on threads like this and carp about how bad we all are.
ummm....just like my ancestors coming over from eastern europe in the late 1800s, early 1900s, makes me guilt free from slavery, the fact that my parents paid their own way, never had a mortgage, never took a dime from the gov't for anything, i would like to know how they contributed to anyone's debt.
Read '13th Gen' by Howe and Strauss, and then you'll understand. I don't agree with all of their conclusions, but they do a pretty good job of getting into the X-ers heads. Xers have been shaped by sweeping changes happening in the world during their childhood.
If you want to know, what is going on here is a severe case of second-child-itis . Believe me, I'm a (marginal) x-er and a second child. The problem is the MEDIA's fascination with the boomers. Our (X-ers) whole lives, we're wondered When the heck are they going to talk about US? When we were babies, the world was worshiping the youthful boomers. When we became young adults, The media stopped focusing on youth and along came 'Thirtysomething'. When we turned 30, the focus of the media had moved to 'The boomers turn 40' . You get the picture.
After a while, it gets maddening (if you're not a boomer). Like I said, we're the second (or middle) child acting out. It's wrong to blame the non-hippy boomers (and downright stupid if you ask me), but instead of getting mad at our parents (the media) for ignoring us, we blame the older sibling.
It's basic psychology.
Anyway, don't play the same game. Not ALL people born after 1960 blame you for their problems.
I think what he really wants to say is "won't die soon enough." :-)
all i can say is, Gen Xers need to grow up. Falling between the Gen X and Baby boomers, at least philosophically, leaves you in an even worse position, you belong NO WHERE. but as the OLDEST child, i guess i am secure enough not to need approbation from the media or anyone else : )
I understand ... but what I see from some on this thread and other threads I've read
Too many are lumping ALL boomer into one pot
To give an off topic example .. I once had a discussion where I saying the "Union Boys" and I was ripped into for lumping all union members into one group
That person was right in correcting me .. not all union members are flaming liberals like the Union LEADERS are
Can't answer for their performance in WW2, but let's take a look at the world they made afterward. Skyrocketing divorce rates, an increasingly materialistic and consumer driven culture, an economic system requiring double wage-earner families, the first generation in American history that did not have a higher standard of living than it's parents. A very mixed legacy.
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 don't know where your confusion stems from, but if you want to harp on my postings you should read them first.
Well, we just have to distinguish between the boomers who grew up and those who didn't. There are a lot of boomers who were fashionably marxist in the '60s and '70s but but came back to earth later on. They embraced the Reagan Revolution and laid the foundation for the prosperity of the '90s, from which GenXers greatly benefited. On the other hand, the marxist/pantheist environmental movement is primarily made up of GenXers, and they causing and will continue to cause a lot of trouble. So I think there is plenty of blame to go around. There is actually a term for those of us who are "late boomers". Generation Jones.
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.
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