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.'
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.
My kids are Gen Reagan. The spending I'm paying for comes not from my generation, but the "Greatest Generation" -- my parents. The most affluent and government subsidized generation there is.
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?
You are oh so correct.
One of the many reasons my enthusiasim for the Rush Limbaugh show has diminished over the last couple of years is because his "blind" spot to the havoc the "Greatest Generation" has put this country in with Medicare (1968), Gun Control (1968), EPA (1972), Social Security Trust Fund Money used for general revenue (1977)and of course all of the communist/socialist federal judges that were approved by the mostly democrat Senate from 1952 to 1984 that the "Greatest Generation" voted for.
The "Greatest Generation" did a great job from Dec 1941 to August 1945, but really blew it after 1945.
me either. xsteen and i were talking about this, bc she had never heard of Gen X and i explained. so she wanted to know what she was, figuring maybe it was Gen Y. i have no idea and i said if you come on the tale end of one of these groups, you really don't have a lot in common with them. i was in elementary school/Jr high for the vietnam war, what could i possibly have in common with 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.
Unfortunately, Hillary and the big mouths on the coasts. Like it or not, we all have to share their agenda. Even if it is in opposition.
They are always moving the goalposts (so to speak) on the years defining Baby Boomer and GenX. I was born in December 1964 and have always considered myself GenX (I prefer Generation Reagan). I have nothing in common with the Boomers and pretty much despise them.
The Greatest Generation (coined by Brokaw) did a bad job all the way around. Including with most of their kids. It was the preceeding generation that was great, IMO.
Those of us who reacted against the cultural steamroller of our Boomer generation were called stiffs, fascists, nazis, narcs, tight asses. Just because we wouldn't join the foolish hippies dancing in the mud tripping on acid.
Boomers created an idiotic pop culture, anti-intellectual and conformist beyond belief. Cheered on by the Arts and the lamestream media, aging hippies came to believe they were owed the floor. Those of us who actually were "counter-culture" , that is to say conservative, were shouted down or silenced for 30 years. No debate allowed.
You were born in 55, I in 56, so we are probably really "tweeners", and the fun was already sucked out of the Boomer party by the time were were of age. We've spent our lives picking up beer bottles in the morning while the slobs sleep it off.
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.
The Baby Boom generation includes persons born in certain countries after the end of WWII (1945) but before the end of 1964. William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations called this generation the Boom generation (they are no longer babies) and put the birth years of United States members of this generation at 1943 to 1960, not based on parental fecundity, but because of a common peer personality.
I don't think Rush is really blind to it. He's hit issues like Medicare and Social Security pretty hard in the past, though I wish he'd do it more. He's also slammed the boomer generation (himself included) at least a few times on his show. His comments sometimes indicate he has more hope in younger Americans.
WWII heroics aside, I hesitate to call a generation "great" that began what is now the wide acceptance of socialist, taxpayer-funded welfare.
You are obsessed with trashing those of us born after 1946.
If you have "issues," why not take it up with your parents.
As for this:
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.
As if THEY have any good music.........LOL.
Both my husband and I fall into the definition of boomers.......but because of the 5 year age difference, it's almost as if we are from different generations.
Personally, I think of the Baby Boom as 1945-1961. Gen X/Baby Bust is 1962 to 1978. Gen Y is 1979 to 1995.
Those divisions make a lot more sense to me.
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