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 ...
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.
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.
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