Posted on 02/03/2008 8:44:02 PM PST by Linda is Watching
A generational struggle is underway. What's so unusual is it's taking place within a single generation
[Obama] represents a new generation of leadership, even though technically he's part of the same generation as Hillary, the baby boomers. Here's where it gets a bit complicated. This tussle pits an Early Boomer vs. a Late Boomer, and the two cohorts have little in common...
In the case of boomers—those born between 1946 and 1964—the whole frame is wrong. It's based on birthrates, not common cultural and political affinities...
Worse, the Early Boomer sensibility gets all the attention. Five decades of newsmagazine boomer cover stories have focused on the (often narcissistic) preoccupations of the Woodstock generation as it ages. But those boomers born after 1955, now mostly in their 40s, missed Woodstock (unless a few snuck in as 14-year-olds). Our coming-of-age decade was the 1970s, not the 1960s. Our presidents were Carter and Reagan, not JFK, LBJ and Nixon.
So it's no surprise that Hillary Clinton (born 1947) would have a different generational identity from Barack Obama (born 1961). Late Boomers, dubbed "Generation Jones" by activist Jonathan Pontell, make up the largest share of the voter pie—26 percent. Despite our size (the peak of the baby boom was 1957, the year I was born), we spent years feeling like generational stepchildren. It was as if we arrived late at the '60s party, after everything turned bitter. But if we weren't convincing flower children (or anti-hippies, like George W. Bush), we weren't part of Generation X either. The Gen-Xers were too cynical. Instead we became the perennial swing voters, with residual '60s idealism mixed with the pragmatism and materialism of the '80s. Even as demographers concluded that generations are really 10 to 15 years, not 20, no one represented us.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
For example, much of the polarization in this country stems from Boomers vs. Boomers, but also from Boomers vs. GenXers. GenJonesers are in a unique position to mediate between these skirmishes. It is no coincidence that the two candidates most associated with reconciliation/compromise are Obama and Huckabee--the two GenJones candidates.
I’ve always resented being lumped togeter with the baby boom.
Being a Gen Xer (1966) explains the ole' cynicism. Thought it was just me. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a duck and I am saying either way both Obama and Clinton are liberals no matter what decade they were born in. A liberal is a liberal no matter how one tries to spin it. Is that too Gen X of me?
My birth year of 1960 has often been the hinge for fairly nasty (from my perspective) changes in public policy. It was those born in 1960 who were the first to be required to register with Selective Service under Jimmy Carter, after the post-Vietnam hiatus. And we were the first to face delaying of retirement age for Social Security benefits.
From my vantage point the 1945-1959 boomer got the breaks and my tail-end boomers got the screws.
Ditto. Born 1960.
Not that McCain or Mitt (Gay marriage and justice for all) Romney are any better. Looks to me that the White House is going to move to the left; the only question is how far and how fast.
Me too. Never had a damn thing in common with them. How a baby born 15 to 20 years after a war could be considered the same generation is beyond me. Sounds like the next generation after.
Not true. Us pre-boomers were required to register, WWII and all that, you know.
Agreed 1962 here
The beauty of being born in 1961 was that the first election I got to vote in was for Ronald Reagan! What an honor and thrill that was.
Welcome to FR.
Well, you have to go somewhere. And while I can certainly appreciate the alienation from a generation that defined themselves (hippies) when you were, say, eight, those of us in GenX (1969 here) don't really associate ourselves with anyone that can actually remember the sixties. Even if you were eight.
Now if you want to talk about forming one's sense of the world around Sid and Marty Kroft, and the Six Million Dollar Man, well, then pull up a chair my friend. We'll listen to some Nirvana, drink some Zima, throw it away, open some Killians, and I'll dig out my old Crue CD's.
Things changed very rapidly during that time. I was born in ‘51. Ironically, the 2nd wave feminists were born slightly before me and are completely different from me, but my sister was born in ‘61 and the two of us had such a different upbringing that we might as well be a generation apart. I had a stay-at-home mom. She had a working mom. I was appalled when she told me that our parents were just about the only ones still together and that many of her classmates were going to school stoned or drunk.
See? I look at the boomers as an advantage to us X'ers, aka baby-busters. I'm anticipating that the boomers will work the kinks out (as much as technologically and culturally possible) of aging in America. So a comfortable infrastructure will be in place by the time we GenXers get there, one that suddenly finds itself with an abundance of resources to demand ratio, given the relative size of the boomer and X generations.
Its a theory. I admit to being optimistic.
I was born at the end of ‘64.
I agree with this point: Those of us born at the end of the so-called “Baby Boom” had a far different experience and have far different views from those born at the beginning. I can communicate with and understand both the older “baby boomers” and the so-called “Gen-Xers”. But those of us born at the end of the boom don’t think alike.
My first election was Reagan, too. And, in college in the 80’s, many of my fellow students and professors were outspoken Republicans. I returned to college in the early ‘90’s, and, wow, was it different.
We'll listen to some Nirvana... and I'll dig out my old Crue CD's
Kurt Cobain, Vince Neil, Tommy Lee... all born in the early '60's. :-)
In that case, I guess you couldn't be expected to grok Aristotle. He's like, so old! Like the boomers!
Huckabee might be a Joneser by birth year, but he looks OLDer.
Hillary seems like a dowdy-old librarian compared to the full of energy-looking Obama. Hillary sounds shrill. Obama sounds confident. I think a lot of folks subliminally hear Hillary’s voice and would rather hear fingernails against a chalkboard. Obama’s voice is calming.
A deep internet search will reveal conflictng dates for “Baby Boomers”.
I was born in 1961 and consider myself more of a Gen-Xer.
I don’t know if you feel like devoting a lot of research to this, but it’s out there.....:)
Wiki has a pretty good article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomer
[or perhaps I’m merely a “Shadow Boomer”]....;]
I was born in 1957 and completely reject the Generation Jones thing, which was a real Johnny come lately idea.
...there's a voting cohort between Generation Xers and boomers that bears watching. They're the not-so-young of Generation Jones. If they're not "the lost generation" they're invisible to most of our culture commentators. The Joneses, who were born between 1954 and 1965, are usually included in the boomer cohort, but Jonathan Pontell, a pop culture consultant who coined the name, says that's a mistake. He thinks the Jonesers may be crucial in next week's congressional elections.
"Coming of age politically in the late 1970s and early 1980s," he says, "Jonesers were the much discussed 'ReaganYouth,' and is the most conservative U.S. generation by a considerable margin." He credits Jonesers, particularly the women, with tipping the election for George W. in the swing states two years ago when they comprised approximately a quarter of the electorate. They are disproportionately represented among theme voters, such as NASCAR enthusiasts, Office Park Dads and Soccer-Security-Mortgage Moms. They cluster around issues of "moral values," and were polled as pulling away from conservative candidates after the Foley scandal.
Now the latest polls show that they have conspicuously returned to the Republican base (apologies to Peggy Noonan). What makes them different from the boomers is that during their formative years, while their older brothers and sisters were indulging the hedonistic pleasures of Woodstock, they were at home watching the Brady Bunch and supping on mashed potatoes with both parents at the dinner table. They were not traumatized by the Kennedy assassination, but were terrified by Jimmy Carter's Iranian hostage crisis. They weren't interested in kicking Richard Nixon around, but were grateful to Ronald Reagan for restoring America's strength in the world... Next week we're likely to learn which candidates kept up with the Joneses.
So, I didn't just imagine those Republicans at college in the '80's (earlier post). This explains a lot.
Born in 55 here - and a proud Joneser. I was in college in the 70’s, and we were vastly different than the college students of the 60’s. No protesting. No flowers-in-the-hair. No ‘sit-ins’. I actually remember reading an article that called the 70’s the ‘nothing decade’. After the upheaval of the 60’s, it was a welcome time of relative quiet. The hippie generation was as far from being like us as you could get.
Funny, my semi-liberal 61 year old co-worker sits back in his office listening to the loud, raucous rock music, and I (53 years old yesterday!) tend to sit in my office listening to classical and Latin Mass music! (when I’m not listening to conservative talk radio!)
A while back I wrote, but never recorded, a song about them that more or less rips them. Coincidentally on Friday I had my 15 yr old niece in my studio and she really liked the volume and venom of the song and said she’d sing it. I promised her I’d have it on you tube by the end of march. The poor kid has no clue (I tried to tell her)of the hornets nest she may be stirring up, but she’s 15 and invincible. A verse from the song:
You;re proud you haven’t changed at all since you were 17
When you raised your voice and so impressed yourself that today you still believe
All the silly good intentions in your adolescent master plan........
'64 here. I was in college in the '80's. I remember a professor - who was a Republican - teasing us. He said he remembered the days when students would have "earth day" and come to school wearing gas masks. He said, in comparison, "you people are boring." Lol... We all were accounting, business, or marketing majors back then.
Oops. I was wrong about Cobain. He wasn’t born until 1967.
Thanks. Nice to read a fairly accurate description of how it was when I grew up (1960 here), vs. the hippie/flower-children crap of the _real_ baby boomers, and the GenXers that came after. Generation Jones, the Lost Generation, or whatever.
Me and Mrs. Jones have a thing going on... -— Clemenza, a Gen Xer ;-)
Whether same generation or not, the dysfunctionality of the early Boomers (Woodstockers) spilled over to the later Boomers.
Hussein NObomba is the perfect example.
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Exactly right!
Plus, its not exactly noteworthy that the singers that young adults are listening to are a little older than they...
Ping!
Yup. Born 1945 and had to report for my Selective Service physical in 1963.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations 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.
As a Gen Jones myself, I can understand my own schizophrenia re political parties & issues.
I absolutely hate the liberal Baby Boomers. I tend to identify with those 10 years younger than me.
I thought he was black.
That's awesome! How fortunate you are, to have been eligible to vote for Ronaldus Magnus.
I was too young to vote for Reagan, but cast my first ballot for VP Bush in '88.
Tragically, once I saw what a squishy loser GHWB turned out to be ("read my lips") it's been mostly downhill from there.
I think we can come up with a better yardstick than Starwars, surely we can. I was born in late 63, and my wife was born in 1959. We’re definitely in the same generation. Neither of us can relate to the “real” boomers like my brother who was born in 1947. Theirs is just a completely different world filled with completely different experiences.
The music reflects the people who write and produce it, as well as the people who listen to it. In Cobain's case, he was quintessential Gen-X -- his age, everything about him.
P.S. (I take these studies about demographics with a grain of salt, but they are fun to talk about.)
Trust me, he’s Generation Cake.
He's in a league all by himself. His early life experience was so unusual (for the time) that he's the exception, not the rule.
I’m a Gen Xer, and my first election was Clinton-Dole. I voted for Harry Browne.
It is funny how that works out. I was born in ‘77, so Cobain is 10 years olders than me, but I was in high school in the early 90’s when Nirvana was HUGE. I’m toward the later end of Gen Xers, so I actually identify more with the 90’s (when I was in high school and college) than the 80’s.
I completely agree with this article and comment. Those who have mistakenly referred to Obama as a GenXer miss the point, and that matters in this election. Obama was a child in the 60’s, and that informs his political views now; he was exposed to strong idealism at a young formative age, which is one of many clear distinctions between he and GenXers (e.g. Xers don’t write books with titles like “The Audacity of Hope). I was born in 1961, like Obama, and I know I’m not an Xer. I do, though, very strongly relate to being part of Generation Jones, and I voted today for Obama, partly because of this.
Does Obama get the name from when he was “Jonesing” when he needed a cocaine fix?
Here is a simple test. If a person can remember the JFK assassination, he or she is a boomer. If he or she cannot, and yet, can remember Reagan, he or she is an X-er. If too young to really remember Reagan, than a Y-er or Millenneal, etc. The Boomers always claimed the early X-ers, to inflate their numbers. But the real break point is what I wrote here.
>>>I was sick of hearing about the “Boomers” by the time I was 12. Imagine my surprise in my early twenties when I realized that technically I was one of them.<<<
I was too. I couldn’t figure out how I ended up a part of the BBer’s [1960]. And, I went back to school in the later 80’s. The Baby Boomers were many of the professors who fussed continuously about the ‘lack of idealism’ in college kids ‘these days’. I have no idea then how I got folded back into this group. One of the great things about Obama as candidate is that now we can finally assert generational identity.
My birth year of 1960 has often been the hinge for fairly nasty (from my perspective) changes in public policy. It was those born in 1960 who were the first to be required to register with Selective Service under Jimmy Carter, after the post-Vietnam hiatus. And we were the first to face delaying of retirement age for Social Security benefits.
From my vantage point the 1945-1959 boomer got the breaks and my tail-end boomers got the screws.
I think there's no question about that. Preboomers like me retired and got grandfathered in on Social Security; the chickens will come home to roost in the next decade as the current-accounts cash flow of Social Security goes from positive (throughout history) to negative (in about 20018) to horrendous.People claim that the Social Security Trust Fund will remain solvent until 2045 or so. But don't count on the SSTF to help you pay my Social Security; it won't help. Any more than simply cranking up the presses and printing more dollars to hand out would help, or did help during the Carter Stagflation.
The SSTF is useless because it is nothing more than IOUs the government has written to itself to document how much money it has taken from us under the pretense that it was invested for our retirement. And blown, with nothing to show for it. When the Social Security cash flow goes negative, and they try to tap the SSTF, who is going to cash that Treasury bond? You are, via your taxes to the Treasury - precisely as if there were no SSTF in the first place. The SSTF is "Enron Accounting", nothing more.
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