I have no interest in the Conan-Leno steel cage grudge match, but this caught my eye:
People wonder if O’Brien was too hip and young (at 46?) to lull America into a gentle, happy sleep. Part of the “Team Coco” movement that rose up after O’Brien announced his resignation scintillates this creeping feeling that the Baby Boomers (Leno is 59) will never get out of the way. There’s at least some truth to that.
I do get sick of the way everything revolves around boomer narratives. We all joke about hippie-punching, but when Joe Klein goes off on the “far left” (or whatever he calls us now), that is what he thinks he’s doing. And the electorate is polarized along age lines as never before (since the advent of demographically detailed exit polls), though the greatest divide is between those over 65 (who are too old to be boomers) and those under 30, not between Leno’s generation and Conan’s.
The worst part is that when the boomers do get out of the way, it will only be to hand the reins over to their own children (Luke Russert, Meghan McCain, etc.).
This isn’t meant to be anti-boomer — my parents are boomers and I love the music and movies of the late 60s and 70s. But I get awfully sick of the way the specter of the 60s hangs over all things political.
Zam
Yes Leno was so boring people used him to fall asleep.
Robin G.
Thank you. (By the way, I’m amused how, according to narratives, boomers never get old — 40 became the new 30, then 50 became the new 40 and thus the new 30, so on and so on and so on… at the same time, 26 year olds are still considered small children. Not that I’ve ever had this argument. Heavens, no.)
El Cid
The political class remembers the left and liberal turn in the 1960s, but they never seem to remember that it during the late 1960s when business began organizing a counter-attack to roll back the gains of labor and the middle class from the New Deal up until then. They were largely successful and have been winning ever since.
Morbo
Just think… in three years, 1968 will have been 45 years ago, and there will be one or more one hour prime time TV specials to commemorate that fact. And in 8 years, 1968 will have been 50 years ago, and there will be several one hour prime time TV specials on every network to commemorate that fact. And in 13 years…
Brachiator
I enjoy the CoCo-Leno follies because of the general principles revealed, that of people who think they’ve got all the angles covered making incredibly bone-headed decisions, you know, like the Democrats who didn’t keep their eyes on the ball during the Massachusetts special election.
But I agree that the boomer crap is tired, and not even all that meaningful. A media watcher out here in Southern California noted that Leno seemed somewhat insecure — unlike Carson, he’s never gone on vacation and had a guest host and he rarely allows young comedians to appear.
And NBC just doesn’t seem capable of learning from past mistakes. Years ago they alienated Johnny Carson when he wanted to cut the Tonight Show back from 90 minutes to an hour. When somebody looked at the accounting books and saw that NBC had such a crappy prime-time lineup that the Carson show was bringing in the majority of the revenues, the suits turned around and started kissing Carson’s butt.
So now, Conan is gone and Leno is damaged goods. And what, a few years from now when Leno retires for real, NBC is going to turn over the Tonight Show to Jimmy “No Talent” Fallon?
The great lesson here is that stoopidity ain’t generational, for some it’s perpetual.
Ask NBC. Or the Democrats.
licensed to kill time
Boomers are the bulge in the snake and will not fade away until expelled out the back end. No fair using My Generation against us, now get off my lawn!
FWIW, I haven’t watched Leno, Letterman or O’Brien for years and could care less about what happens with them.
I watched a CSNY concert from the Bush era last night (I thought it was going to be CSI:NY, oops!) and was glad to see them still singing out against war, even if they mostly sounded like crap and looked even worse. Lotsa gray haired hippies in the audience with their kids.
What’s my point? I don’t know, just rambling here.
Jim, 42
@Robin G.:
HEY!! Do not harsh my 40 is the new 30 buzz! I’m clinging to it desperately.
and if a Medicare buy-in goes through, it will be because this generation wants it.
But I watch Letterman, who’s even older than Leno, so what the fuck do I know?
Bill E Pilgrim
That perpetual return thing must be why it’s the root of the word boomerang.
Amanda in the South Bay
I don’t think society is anti boomer enough.
I always thought it weird growing up (I’m 30) that my parents were a wee bit older than most other people’s parents (they were born during, not after WW2), but now I take a certain perverse pride in it.
Anyways, its not just any generation that can destroy three venerable spiritual traditions-Buddhism, Sufism and Jewish mysticism.
DougJ
I enjoy the CoCo-Leno follies because of the general principles revealed, that of people who think they’ve got all the angles covered making incredibly bone-headed decisions, you know, like the Democrats who didn’t keep their eyes on the ball during the Massachusetts special election.
Yes, I agree.
When I first heard they were putting Leno in prime-time, I thought “they are incredibly stupid and/or the entire medium of television is dying”.
DougJ
Anyways, its not just any generation that can destroy three venerable spiritual traditions-Buddhism, Sufism and Jewish mysticism.
How did they destroy Sufism? Richard Thompson put out what must be the greatest Sufi-influenced record ever in the 70s.
gbear
But didn’t Obama’s election kind of stick a fork into boomer politics? Or are we experiencing boomer backlash? An under-gratified boomer can be a dangerous thing.
edit: DougJ, are you talking about ‘Pour Down Like Silver’? That is such a marvelous record.
RSR
My mom–technically not a boomer as she was born in May 1945–is right on the leading edge of the boomer generation.
She just recently became eligible for Social Security, she’ll just become eligible for Medicare in May. In other words, we’re barely into the age of providing for that generation. It’s something that is going to be a central issue to the financial concerns of the nation for decades.
Nellcote
Gotta say as a boomer and (still) a hippie, I grow weary of the constant attacks. When do you ‘kids’ start taking ownership of all the under 50s I see on the damn teevee everyday spouting some of the most disgusting crap I’ve ever heard in public. See also Raygun/College Republicans.
PS
serge
“The worst part is that when the boomers do get out of the way, it will only be to hand the reins over to their own children (Luke Russert, Meghan McCain, etc.).”
This will be sad to the extent that nepotism rules the day absolutely. Otherwise, I believe there’s hope. I know a crapload of youngsters (30 and younger) who, in an unbelievably red state, SC, amaze me with their intelligence and openness to ideas. They also exhibit, with some exceptions, an antipathy to the hard core Rethug crap they’re exposed to daily.
The cultural divide between me (55) and these young people is evident in many aspects, obviously. The Beatles…who? But I’m a child of the rock and roll generation, I get it. I can talk music with kids down to the age of 12. What truly blows my mind is the cultural chasm between me and those who are only five to ten years older than I am. A lot of them don’t get it. They missed it by only a few years. That, too, is sad. It’s all in the music…
eemom
I’m just ecstatic to hear a 46 year old described as “young.” Woohoo…….! (I’m 47)
DougJ
Gotta say as a boomer and (still) a hippie, I grow weary of the constant attacks.
Sure, but wouldn’t you agree that it is time for Joe Klein to stop talking about Weathermen and Black Panthers? And quoting Bob Dylan as he praises George W. Bush (in fairness, he’s mostly stopped doing the latter)?
DougJ
edit: DougJ, are you talking about ‘Pour Down Like Silver’? That is such a marvelous record.
Yes!
Gozer
For some reason it seems to be really difficult for Boomers to accept their age. I can only speak of my experience with my parents and extended family (I’m almost 30), but it seems that they are struggling with the aging process more than previous generations.
As an example: My father just retired last year after 30 years with the same company. He has a pension, insurance, a house, the lot. However, he wants to find another job (not that he really needs it) to fill his time. He has yet to accept that many employers aren’t going to just hire a man who is less than 10 years away from “retirement age” with back problems. He’d be better off selling his art or opening a gallery or something.
Additionally, he still occasionally gives me “when you’re an adult” talks, even though I’m married and a homeowner. I’ve seen that pattern with him and my aunts/uncles growing up.
It’s strange. When I was a child I don’t remember my grandparents (who were my parents ages–maybe a few years older) struggling socially or psychologically with getting older. I’ve also been told by uncles that myself and cousins my age are more like what they remember my grandparents as than they are–if that makes any sense…
Brick Oven Bill
Compare and Contrast:
The People of the Great Depression.
And…
The People of Wal Mart.
The developers of the People of Wal Mart web-site are providing, before our very eyes, an excellent source of socio-anthropological data for the future analysis of the consequences of the 1960s.
It is all, of course, a cycle.
Egypt Steve
I think strictly speaking Conan is a boomer. If he’s 46, he was born in 1963 or 1964, right? And the BB was the period in which the WWII generation was in their child-bearing years — i.e., from around 1945 to around 1965. So this analysis sucks.
RSR
@DougJ: Huh. My theory was that NBC was trying to tap into the success the The Daily Show had at 10:00 PM (it was at 10:00 PM at one point, wasn’t it?!?) when the announced a plan to move a ‘late night’ show to that time. The irony is that Coco was probably the guy they wanted in that spot, but, like Mass., “I’m next” ruled the day, to their failure.
Gozer
For some reason I can’t edit my previous comment.
I wanted to add that I mean no disrespect to Boomer Juicers and that I love my elders. They’re some of the craziest motherfuckers I know (my 60+ year old MD/ex-army uncle is a hoot when drunk), but sometimes utterly baffling.
Jane_in_Colorado
Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m a boomer who is being treated for stage III cancer. My 5-year survival prognosis is about 50%. So there’s that for you boomer-haters to look forward to.
Zam
@RSR: I don’t remember the Daily show ever being at that timeslot.
Nellcote
@DougJ:
Well of course! But how is that my fault? I have a problem with the attacks being generic instead of specific. And I agree that all the 60s retrospectives are a serious pita.
somethingblue
“scintillates this creeping feeling”?
What does that even mean?
Fern
@Gozer: Part of it is that the generation of retirees that we are seeing now are overall healthier and younger than previous generations and are also living longer after retirement. Used to be that folks retired at 65, lived maybe another five years, and that was that. But now we have a lot of healthy 55-year-olds who still have a lot to offer and who are looking at what, 20-30 years of retirement? Not surprising that they want to keep working – though maybe not full time – and are not prepared to think of themselves as old.
And one more thing – a lot of boomers are in pretty bad financial shape with regards to retirement, especially when thinking that their financial resources are going to have to cover them during a fairly lengthy retirement. Many can’t afford to stop working.
Mrs. Peel
Oh my yes, everything is the Boomer’s fault because there’s TOO many of them. As if this a new discovery.
Whereas a group that was so apathetic and lazy they could only garner a label of Gen X is now throwing yet another temper tantrum about how they want everything NOW! Yes – take them seriously, fer sher.
Malron
Shit, I AM a late boomer and I seriously wish we’d back the hell up offa the reins of power, or at least learn to share with the coming generation. Look at the senate, for example: a bunch of geriatric, cowardly, self-absorbed losers that are totally detached from what most of America wants. Part of the reason we suffered through the MA debacle is the stubborn insistence by Democrats that they don’t need to groom the future of the party because they expect to live forever – then, someone as important to the progressive cause dies and there’s no credible talent in the bullpen to replace him. That’s gotta change.
The boomers are the generation that screwed up this country. The sooner they step out of the way, the sooner a younger and more savvy generation can get to work cleaning up their mess.
I think the preznit made an excellent move today by bringing David Plouffe back to oversee the midterm races and help the administration sharpen their message.
Zam
@Mrs. Peel: Yes the people who ran off to California to get high are the epitome of strong work ethic…
eemom
@Egypt Steve:
that’s right. Conan and I are at the end of the boomer generation as it is generally defined — though IMO we who were born in the late 50s-early 60s have little in common with those that came/were of age during that era.
Zam
@kgc16: No that would be Soc ialism
Nellcote
@RSR:
“Soylent Green” was prescient?
Gozer
@Fern: I can understand that. Although I think that in my dad’s case he’s just not capable of slowing down.
And I have to say that the focus on the 60s upheavals doesn’t really bother me all that much. My dad and his siblings came of age on the South Side of Chicago and had to deal with not getting their asses beat by cops not just in 1968, but 1965, 66, 67, etc. Long before the ’68 meltdown.
I’d imagine that shit tends to stick with you and with the human mind tending towards rumination, working until exhaustion might keep you from thinking about darker times.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Zam:
Cool… an overly broad, generic stereoptype…
How… how… Incisive… and Original…
kgc16
@Zam: Oh, yeah, I forgot.
Zam
@The Republic of Stupidity: Yea because the original comment was none of that.
Bill E Pilgrim
Stereotypes are dumb.
If post-boomers are left wing hippies, they’re also Tucker Carlson. Or if it’s the boomers who were a bunch of 60s radicals, then we have to explain how so many of them ended up being the current middle-age extreme right wing Republicans.
It’s like people in Europe lumping all Americans into some stereotype as ignorant, narrow-minded cowboys like George W. Bush. After encountering that a few million times you start to realize how easy it is for people to do, yet how idiotic.
People of certain ages aren’t all the same, or even very similar, really.
Anyone who thinks he’s fighting some “60s” battle, like Gingrich, is living in complete fantasy. The majority of the country was much like they are now, the media was mostly conservative and villager as it is now, and so on. We have a black President less because we’ve suddenly become a progressive country and more because that particular issue stopped being so progressive or controversial. Now gay rights is more so, so they fight against that instead.
I sometimes wonder about the whole idea of progress. The longer you live the more circular it all seems. Mainly I suppose because you have time to see more circles.
ruemara
If soylent green is made of old hippies, then at least it’ll be free range, low pesticides, earth friendly and premarinated in tamari. I got no dog in this hunt, I’m gen x and hate everyone. equally.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Brick Oven Bill:
Indeed… indeed… it is painful to see what some College Republicans™ turn into as they age…
Must be something in the
genesprions…bemused
@Nellcote:
Same here. I fuckall sick of the boomer gen getting almost of the blame for the mess we’re in now. I fully expect in the future gen x or whatever generation (just pick one) will be the next convenient fall guys.
I love that Morford piece too.
Funny how we generalize so easily. My inlaws, 90 & 86, think Leno is boring. They prefer Letterman.
Jim
Boomer wars are like PUMA wars. A bloggy quagmire.
Llelldorin
@Mrs. Peel:
Give it a rest. That freaking “Gen X” label was the source of a lot of the antipathy.
We’re working our asses off to stay afloat, here. The least you could do is lay off “kids today” bullshit that’s now two decades stale.
Morbo
@somethingblue: Ha, I wondered about that too but moved right on. But since you mention it, might as well go to the dictionary… Hmmm, RHD says “scintillate” means to sparkle or twinkle, but AHD includes “to give off (sparks or flashes).” So it kind of but not really makes sense. I’d say this is a pretty clear-cut case of thesaurus abuse, Batman.
Mrs. Peel
@Llelldorin: Whereas THREE decades of stale is, what, current?
The emotional maturity of generation x is still age 13.
Cat Lady
I hate my own boomer generation too and wish we could all go away. I was hoping for health care legislation that would allow me to go away to my land in New Mexico and make way for the next generation. Without health care available, and the cratering of the stock market holding retirement funds, we’re going to be forced to hang on until they carry us out feet first.
I blame Bush. Oh, and Joe Klein should just STFU.
Brick Oven Bill
It is Democrats, and not old college Republicans, who are biting off people’s nipples these days, The Republic of Stupidity.
eco2geek
Although O’Brien’s particular sense of humor is (IMO) an acquired taste, and so I was a bit surprised when they gave him the Tonight Show, the real reason Leno took over again had nothing to do with O’Brien’s humor. The reason Leno took over again had everything to do with Leno’s contract with NBC and the major suckage of Leno’s ratings in the 10 o’clock timeslot. And O’Brien’s particular sense of humor has much more to do with his personality than his age.
And I’m not sure what you mean by “the way the specter of the 60s hangs over all things political”. It does? How?
Milo Johnson
I’m 56 and I hate it too.
Zam
@Brick Oven Bill: So because he’s black he’s a dem?
Robin G.
@Mrs. Peel:
Well, we thought about letting the boomers run things for as long as the “greatest generation” did, but then we grew up watching the boomers manage 1990-2008, and decided, nah, we’ll take the country now, thanks, while there’s still a country to be had.
lamh31
I don’t know that all boomers can be lumped into the same category. What you described doesn’t sound like people in my community of the same age, but then again, the 60’s/70’s were more tumultous for African Americans than most others.
Anyway, why dwell on the past, when in the present in South Carolina: “Poor People = Stray Animasl ”
__
Zam
I think he’s talking about all the references our media hacks make to the 60’s, remember 2004 when we had all those battles over Kerry’s Vietnam service and protesting.
ThymeZone
Meh, fuck that, Doug. I’m a boomer and probably the most socially liberal person on the blog. If not, it’s a tie. I’m a true progressive, a believer in the power of government to be the foundation under a strong middle class.
I’m a lifelong Dem, loyal to the Dem machine and tuned in to the realities of grassroots politics. I cut my political teeth on voter registration and digging holes for campaign signs when I was still a kid. I used to help my parents monitor polling places as part of their precinct committeeman duties.
Anti-boomer rhetoric is mostly just cheap, uninformed shots by people who have no fucking idea on earth what they are talking about. And our party was in pretty good shape until the next whiny ass titty baby generation came along and started FUCKING IT UP.
I got your anti-boomer fauxrage right here, kiss it.
–//
I speak for AngusTGOM, DanSmoot’sGhost, Don Belacqua and PoenisAmerican(tm), too. They are all me they all agree totally with me, so kiss their asses too.
And I got five stents in my coronary arteries and take a handful of pills every day, but I will outlive all of you younger smartmouth sonsofbitches who like to trashtalk the boomers. You will all die when your giant inflated self-important heads explode on you.
Citizen Alan
@Amanda in the South Bay:
I was born in 1969 (the cusp of Gen X) to parents who were older than Baby Boomer and who remembered the Great Depression quite clearly. I have always been very grateful for that fact, especially when I notice that the various emotional problems suffered by most of my friends can easily be traced back to their narcissistic Boomer parents.
I just had this strange vision of the current Haitian crisis inspiring aging Boomers to suddenly get interested in Vodoun. Madonna sacrificing chickens to appease the Loa — that sort of thing. Legba help us all.
Zam
@Zam: Oh and I forgot about Bill Ayers
moe99
@ Jane in CO
I’m with you there. A baby boomer myself, and stage IIIB/IV lung cancer. I have health care coverage as long as I can work. It sure tends to focus the rage.
DougJ
Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m a boomer who is being treated for stage III cancer. My 5-year survival prognosis is about 50%. So there’s that for you boomer-haters to look forward to.
Jane, good luck and all the best.
Dean
@ Mrs. Peel:
A forty-six year old man that served a seventeen year apprenticeship is an example of an impertinent whipper-snapper?
The Tonight Show fiasco is just one more example of how Boomers have never shown the slightest regard for either the generations that came before them, nor those that have followed. Leno is a near perfect embodiment of the Boomer ethos. He was handed a tremendous legacy, his ego is puffed with unearned self-regard and he simply will not get off the stage. When he finally leaves this Earth, all he will leave behind is a collection of expensive toys.
Citizen Alan
@RSR:
Unless the Democrats (real Democrats, not the Bay-Feinstein poseurs) get on the stick, I anticipate that the “problem” of our national deficit will be solved by the “solution” of guaranteeing current benefit rates to everyone presently over the age of 55 and severely curtailing or even abolishing benefits for those under. I remember Boomer types warning me back in the 1990’s not to expect Social Security to be there when I retired, and I remember thinking at the time “yeah, because people like you are going to wreck it.”
Anne Laurie
I’d argue that the Jay-v-Conan battle, or rather the battle they are proxies for, actually runs between the Early Boomers born c1944-55 and the Late Boomers born c1955-65. Those of you lucky enough to have grown up before or after us pig-in-the-python babies may think we all look alike, but believe me, half of us now getting blamed for Bob Dylan and Jane Fonda have spent our entire lives hearing “You should’ve been here three years ago, it was all new & shiny & awesome then, not used up and worn out like it is now.” Hey, now we’re looking at retirement, and the Jay-Boomers are telling everybody that Social Security will be hopelessly broken by the time the Conan-Boomers are at the front of the line…
Citizen Alan
@Nellcote:
Hippy =/= Boomer. While I respect and commend you for maintaining hippiedom into your 60’s, most of the Flower Children exchanged their tie-died shirts and bellbottoms for power suits in the 1980s and have never looked back. I think it’s very telling that we’ve only had two Boomer presidents — Clinton and Bush II — and both of them had what I consider to be narcissistic personalities. Clinton had an almost pathetic need to be liked and couldn’t keep his pants zipped, while Bush II grew up torturing small animals.
ThymeZone
@ThymeZone:
Oh, and get second jobs, you will need them to pay for my Social Security benefits until you snap. Thanks in advance for the money I will get from you and then spend any way I damned well please.
Kyle
The Tonight Show has an aging, shrinking audience because they are a stagnant, mediocre institution much like the network news.
When your audience skews to middle-aged couples in Nebraska, they prefer Leno’s baby-food-bland ‘comedy’ to the edgier city hipness of Conan.
Tax Analyst
@ #38 ruemara:
Uh…no. Have you even stopped to consider for a moment all the other chemicals and drugs we boomer’s ingested back in the wild & wooly 60’s and early 70’s?
OMG – I’ve fallen and broken my chromosomes!
Mrs. Peel
“Not keeping his pants zipped” is hardly an exclusive trait of a “baby boomer” in presidential history.
Citizen Alan
@Egypt Steve:
It depends on who you ask and, IMO, who you are talking about. Wiki says Gen X started in 1961, but I’ve seen other sources say 1965. I think if you were born within those years, you could be considered either a Boomer or a Gen Xer depending on which group you identify with. Conan, IMO, is more forward thinking in his approach to comedy than Leno or Letterman (I remember Letterman coming onto Conan’s show back in the early 90’s and commending him on how cutting edge his comedy was.) Of course, that’s purely subjective. And I think you can probably find people of any age who are on the cutting edge within their respective fields, just as you can find people of any age who are hidebound and reactionary. The 20-year-old Republican poli-sci majors who write for the student newspaper in my college town already sound like bitter 60-year-old teabaggers.
Zam
@Kyle: Personally I think Conan should have been the solution to that problem, but they didn’t give him enough time. His original audience who watched him on Late Night are now leaving/out of college and have to work regular hours, moving him up gave this new generation a chance to still watch him. Unfortunately, for Conan and his audience, advances in medicine have allowed the older generations to remain a powerful ratings bloc.
Mike G
@B.O.B.
The developers of the People of Wal Mart web-site are providing, before our very eyes, an excellent source of socio-anthropological data for the future analysis of the consequences of the 1960s.
So red-state, Republican-voting poverty white trash mostly born in the 70s and 80s are a consequence of the 1960s.
That makes as much sense as anything else you’ve ever written – which is to say, fuck-all.
Nellcote
@Citizen Alan:
I know that. It’s why I specified both demographic and cultural identities.
Ekim
How old was Johnny Carson when he started on Tonight?
ThymeZone
@Tax Analyst:
Speak for yourself. I ingested coffee, cigarettes, beer, a little weed, and not much else. And probably less of all of those than a lot of those little Generation Whatever delinquents took in.
My lean frame is a temple of purity compared to most of theirs. Not an ounce of flab on my body. I have the figure of a 17 year old. I can outrun most of you in the 100 meter dash.
Emo Pantload (fka Studly)
I’m 46 (don’t really consider myself a boomer, though, as my mom was a wartime baby), and I have to say, looking to see who in my high-school class of ’82 (as well as my ex-wife, who is my age) does the Facebook thing, or the internets thing in general, I get depressed. *None* of them (well, 95%) have any sort of online footprint beyond what’s available on whitepages.com. And I can’t imagine it’s a socio-economic class thing; most of my classmates were from middle-to-upper-class households (in fact, I was the poor one, fed by food stamps). Yet my current wife, who’s ten years younger than I am, can find more of her old classmates online (or gets found) than she’d care to.
Is my generation that relatively old that we can’t seem to figure out high-speed connections? Are “my people” already modern-media anachronisms?
srv
@ThymeZone:
Uh, they were all too young to be Reagan Democrats your generation aspired to be.
Dougie, what’s the average age of House and Senate Dems?
bemused
@Brick Oven Bill:
One presumed Dem bites off a nipple & the whole lot get labeled as nipple biters. Sheesh.
RSR
@Nellcote: Not sure about the level–if any–of sarcasm in that, but obviously care and concern for all of our citizens is expected. (damn you, Death Panels!)
The Baby Boomers present a budget concern as a ‘bubble’ but I’m not a number cruncher. They–as a generation–paid into the the Social Security compact, and should get their coverage out of it. The health care side is more delicate, and I don’t really have an answer for that one, other than all citizens deserve effective health care at all times.
gotta run to dinner; see y’all in the next thread
DougJ
Look, Boomers, when I put it in terms of Joe Klein punching hippies I thought you would understand. The eternal boomer political narrative is of hippie semi-ascension followed by Nixon’s great victories. Every election is a reprisal of 1968 or 1972. When an election doesn’t fit that mold, it’s seen as either an aberration or a dawn of a new era.
I came of voting age with 1988 and 1992 elections. If, in 27 years, Chuck Todd is chatting with Jake Tapper about how the 2036 election is just like the 1988 or 1992 election, while quoting Eddie Vedder to prove his point, I will be the first to say “these fuckers need to retire.”
Church Lady
Just reading the comments here provides sort of a snapshot of the generational divide. Boiled down it’s Gen X to Boomer: “Just die already” and Boomer back to Gen X: “Fuck you”.
ThymeZone
@srv:
Those are Young Boomers, who are not really boomers at all, they just slid through a period of very lazy magazine article writing.
They are the Generation With No Name. We never wanted anything to with them, or you.
We really don’t care to share the country with you, but because we are good Americans, we do it anyway.
DougJ
Dougie, what’s the average age of House and Senate Dems?
Good question. I’ll try to look this up. I’ll probably go with media though since otherwise Robert Byrd’s age of 267 adds four years to the average.
eemom
well, it’s good to see that the “generation gap,” as it was called in the 60s, is alive and well here in Juiceland.
Having been just a kid during that time, and a teenager during the boring late 1970s, for me the 60s-early 70s era has a certain mystique that will never die, and I don’t think it should. Not to sound too trite here, but there are so many ways in which those years ushered in earth-shattering changes………a torrent of great music that’s never been equalled to this day………not to mention, a groundswell of passionate political engagement that we are sorely lacking for today. (Outside of the blogosphere and the baggers, that is.)
DougJ
Just reading the comments here provides sort of a snapshot of the generational divide. Boiled down it’s Gen X to Boomer: “Just die already” and Boomer back to Gen X: “Fuck you”.
Church Lady, this is probably the first comment from you that I truly appreciated.
Anne Laurie
@lamh31:
Word. Also women, gays, and people with disabilities. But it was soooo much easier for straight white men to succeed back before all us greedy “special cases” started acting like we deserved the same opportunities as Real People!
(Heck, we — Martha, Oprah, Ellen — have been graciously permitted to take over the daytime talk shows, once the straight white men decided there was no more serious money to be made in those timeslots. And now that the evening news slots are becoming totally irrelevant, they’ll even let us women take front chair at six pm. But this era’s SERIOUS talk venue, night time comedy, that’s reserved for SERIOUS people… straight. white. men. Tragedy, then farce.)
TR
@Mrs. Peel:
You know, that label wasn’t handed down from Mt. Sinai. It was given to us by the goddamn Baby Boomers who had to show that no one could ever be as awesome as they were.
For what it’s worth, the embodiment of the Baby Boomer mentality is none other than Joe Lieberman. Self-centered, narcissistic, clucking his tongue about the young kids, and constantly invoking his noble accomplishments in The Sixties™ to excuse all the bullshit he’s foisted on the world in the decades since.
That’s your poster boy, Boomers. Fuck him and fuck you.
The Other Steve
Actually most of our politics the past 40 years has been driven by Boomers whining.
They demanded tax cuts when they were in their most productive years, and then they demanded massive government handouts as they near retirement.
It’s just interesting.
We Gen-Xers are cynical that there will be anything left for us.
Violet
I’ve been loving the Conan/Jay late night wars. Some excellent comedy has come out of it in the last few weeks. David Letterman has been hilarious. Kimmel’s impersonation of Leno, evisceration of him on the Top 10 @ 10, and subsequent video packages (the ‘Ken Burns’ one, particularly) have been excellent entertainment. And Conan has just loosened up and been tons of fun to watch.
As for why it’s so captivating, there may be some truth in the boomer stuff, who knows. But to me, most of it has to do witch watching someone who I think was screwed over (Conan) stick it to “the man.” I know they’re all extremely wealthy comedians and aren’t really hurting for money. That’s not the point. The point is that Conan got treated badly and instead of slinking off to a later timeslot like that incompetent Zucker wanted him to do, Conan told them to shove it. And he’s been able to stick it to NBC on his big public forum of a show for a few weeks. Anyone who has had a crappy boss and wished they could do something like that can relate. I sure can.
That’s why it’s all so compelling. Sure there may be some generational subtext. Or that might just be pundits trying to come up with something to say. But the big issue is how the proxy for “little guys” everywhere (Conan) stuck it to his boss and did things his way. Conan’s show last night was great fun and he went out with a bang.
bemused
@Church Lady:
Lol. Lots of truth to that, if this post is any indication!
eemom
@ThymeZone:
are you really all those people? I wondered what happened to Angus.
Why do you do that?
srv
@Emo Pantload (fka Studly):
If you couldn’t get the VCR to stop blinking, you can’t handle the intertubes.
And yet we let those people vote.
robertdsc-PowerBook & 27 titles
LOL.
Speaking of heads exploding, if one is a Firebagger, what’s their reaction to the giant HuffPo headline calling for Gruber-lover O-bot Paul Krugman for Fed chair?
Bob
The only thing more trite, boring and cliched than boomer nostalgia is boomer-nostalgia backlash.
Tax Analyst
Generational resentment sux! Some “boomers” became (or really always were) money-grubbing weasels in suits…and some did not. Yeah, and so fucking what? No generation has a patent on greed, stupidity, racism, or anything else, although it does seem that time and familiarity with diverse peoples has had a positive effect on today’s younger people. My parents (born 1915 & 1920 respectively) were not racists, but they certainly had some paternalistic attitudes towards blacks and other minorities. Dad died in ’05, but I know he would have been amazed and thrilled at Obama’s election – his last few years he continually marvelled at all the change he had seen in his lifetime. Radio, for Godsakes, and TV, airplanes, jets, all the social changes that seemed as though they would never happen. For all our nation’s troubles he continued to think we would get through them.
I wish I had his confidence in this…I try to hold onto a little of it just for my own peace of mind.
b-psycho
It’s still kinda hard to believe Conan is in his mid-40s. He just seems perpetually youthful.
TR
Oh cry me a river.
Oprah has a net worth of $1.5 billion. Martha has a net worth of $685 million. Ellen Degeneres has a net worth of $65 million.
If that’s not “serious money,” you boomers are more delusional than I thought.
ThymeZone
@DougJ:
Where did you get your degree in political science, from a cereal box?
Nixon resulted from a shift in some demographics and backlash against the Great Society. You can move 5% of a large bloc in this country and get a political sea change. “Boomers” en masse are not responsible for Nixon. You might as well say that Depression Babies are responsible for Nixon, because they were to a large degree.
My generation marched for Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War. What was the next generation for? Their parents’ credit cards?
Brachiator
Johnny Carson was 37 when he became Tonight Show host in 1962.
Steve Allen was 33 when he became Tonight Show host in 1954.
ThymeZone – I ingested coffee, cigarettes, beer, a little weed, and not much else. And probably less of all of those than a lot of those little Generation Whatever delinquents took in.
You shouldn’t brag about an insufficiently delinquent life.
srv
@ThymeZone: I see your future clearly. In an old folks home with post-slackers responsible for your meds.
Glorious.
Brick Oven Bill
Maryland is a blue state Mike G.
WereBear
I thought some of us were Generation Jones.
Which means we can’t be blamed for anything.
TR
Right, because college students in the ’60s — the first generation that went to college in overwhelming numbers — never ever relied on their parents for college tuition or anything else.
And you all marched from Selma to Montgomery, didn’t you? All of you. And you were all at the Pentagon in October ’67, right?
You all were the first generation in history in inflate your numbers as it was unfolding. Even CSNY’s “Woodstock” claims you were “half a million strong” when the numbers were more like half that. You can’t help yourself, can you?
Yes, some people did good things in your generation. But you sanctimonious assclowns make it seem like the John Lewises of your generation make up for twenty times as many Gordon Gekkos in it. Get bent.
bemused
@Bob:
Cliched, that’s the word I was searching for. The comments are drowning in cliches.
It’s been a lousy week…people are cranky everywhere. I recommend reading the sleep talking man blog. It’s completely silly & I want a “I can’t control the kittens” t-shirt.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Brick Oven Bill:
Yeah… ‘n they’re also the ones who get found hanging in two wet suits w/ a dildo stuck up their Cheneys, or wear diapers whilst getting spanked by their prosties…
Oh wait…
Llelldorin
@Mrs. Peel:
I don’t go in for generational slap-fests, because they’re mostly pointless–you’re really going to say something about all thirty-somethings, or all sixty-somethings?
I won’t say a damned thing about all boomers, because I know many who don’t fit the stereotype.
You, personally, take the cake, for eagerly adopting the slurs on my generation that were originally developed to slam boomer women for having careers and so, supposedly, raising us wrong. If you want to fight anti-boomer slurs, for the love of God stop posting.
ThymeZone
@srv:
I own the rest home sonny, and I will be raising the rates when your crowd of losers starts to move in.
DougJ
“Boomers” en masse are not responsible for Nixon.
Where did I say they were????
They are responsible for comparing every election since then to the ones he won. I spelled that out clearly.
I honestly thought boomers like you would have some insight into why the 60s dominate all political discussion of today.
Citizen Alan
@The Republic of Stupidity:
I’d say it was at least as incisive and original as the person he was responding to who insinuated that my age group was dubbed Generation X because we’re all lazy and shiftless.
Tax Analyst
@ #73 ThymeZone said:
I was being a bit facetious, TZ, although I must admit to several years of excess at the end of the 60’s until about the mid-70’s. Not necessarily proud of it, but I won’t run from it either. Sometimes we learn from shit – sometimes we don’t. I have no idea what Gen. Whatever imbibed and it’s none of my bizness anyway.
I’m 59 and pretty fit. Well, right now I’m about 5-8 lbs overweight and not thrilled about it (6-day work-weeks this month and almost no exercise), but I still play a mean game of ping-pong and don’t get too badly embarrassed when I play basketball with some of the guys here at work (age range: 22 to about 32, most around 26/27). I don’t know if I could beat you at 100 meters, but I know I sure don’t have that extra gear or two to shift into at 60 or 70 meters and I’d be sucking wind at the finish line.
But anyway, good for you – and I am not being facetious when I say that.
eco2geek
Well, as we all probably agree, the SBVT was simply a group of liars who organized a smear campaign to derail Kerry’s campaign for president. They wanted to find something in Kerry’s background to bash him with, and that’s what they came up with. Not to mention, Bush’s hiding out during the Vietnam War didn’t keep him from getting re-elected.
But all of that seemed like a side show, a distraction from the real issues.
I must admit that I don’t read many pundits – I mostly let blog posters like DougJ do the filtering for me – so I have no idea how many references they make to the 60’s.
Betseed
And this is exactly why Gen Xers are resentful. Because after your anti-draft movement, and the civil rights movement that was led mostly by Silent Generation folks like King, you wouldn’t shut up about it. We came of age in an America in decline, and nobody in power then did anything about it.
Mrs. Peel
Like your caption invited a rational discussion. It was “us vs. them” from the first letter you typed.
Citizen Alan
@Mrs. Peel:
Says the lady who names herself after a Sixties tv show. I bet even at 65, you still think you look awesome in a black leather catsuit.
Libertini
@eemom: I’m with you. At 46, I am glad to be considered young. And having been born at the tail end of what some define as the Baby Boom period, I mostly have no problem being considered a boomer. The early boomers had a lot to contend with, and in many ways deserve as much (if not more) respect than their predecessors, the supposedly Greatest Generation.
Regarding the Coco/Leno issue, I watch neither, but I see the whole folly as a prime example of The Peter Principle at work in the NBC executives.
I think it’s the rise of CEOs as gods that made this possible. Unfortunately, it’s ruined (and will continue to ruin) much more than our late night teevee, and with much more painful consequences. I don’t think we can solely blame the boomer generation for that.
ThymeZone
@DougJ:
You were thinking it. We can read your minds.
Because the right still hasn’t recovered from that period. Thye just can’t believe that their States Rights Cold War Silent Majority bullshit didn’t actually produce anything of value.
DougJ
You were thinking it.
No, I wasn’t at all. I don’t think it’s true, so how could I be thinking it?
ThymeZone
@Betseed:
We talked about it because the next generation didn’t do the work necessary to advance the causes.
Weaklings, all of you.
DougJ
Like your caption invited a rational discussion.
It’s a quote from a baby boomer anthem!
srv
ppGaz, we can all hope you’re around in 2044, but me thinks you’ll tired of hearing Glenn Beck on the TeeVee in all those boomers discounted rooms.
For you 40-somethings (“late” “faux” Boomers or pre-X), when did y’all get your first credit card? All my marching didn’t get me one until I was 20-something.
Nellcote
@Violet:
There may also be some residual resentment for the way NBC dumped Letterman all those many years ago.
eemom
well, no one ever listens to me here, but I humbly offer my comment above as such insight. It is because those were exciting, tumultuous times to a degree that has not been seen before or since, and they were times when people actually CARED enough to drag their asses out into the streets to scream truth to power.
Llelldorin
Just to clear something up–DougJ, which generation are you, anyway? You’re a current grad student, so I was guessing upper twenties… is that ballpark?
ThymeZone
@DougJ:
It’s typical of your generation to assert that you can’t be thinking something if it is not true.
Shh, but, yes you can. That very thought is an example of why the idea is wrong.
My advice is to take up meditation and quiet those wrongheaded thoughts. At least for a few minutes at a time. During those periods, the truths your elders tried to teach you will shine through.
xjmueller
Don’t think that a lot of us boomers aren’t tired of the same old shit too. That’s why I couldn’t vote for HRC. For pete’s sake, we’re still living Viet Nam, watergate and the cultural divide. Of course, if my folks were alive today, they’d be amazed that the republican party is still slandering the New Deal. I guess every generation has it’s curse.
Mrs. Peel
Not to mention that when the current batch of rug rats go on their “baby boomer” bashing sprees, they channel every freaking one of the rat-fucker talking points of that era. Phony stories like “Hippies” spitting on returning vets and all.
Tax Analyst
@ #117 DougJ:
Yeah, but like Tommy, some folks don’t even know what day it is.
Leelee for Obama
@ThymeZone: Add tea and delete the weed and that’s me. I am thinner now than I have ever been, except for that short anorexic stint in the summer between 9th and 10th grade! I have been reading about how we boomers may not live as long as our parents and, since I’ve seen both my parents make 89 and Mom make 90, all I can say is THANK GOD! While some of our fellow boomers may have defiled more than we did, we all have lived in a world post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki and all the nuclear tests and the refined foods and polluted water and air and global warming all the other lovely crap that the GREATEST GENERATION decided wouldn’t hurt all THAT much. After which, we did the same to ourselves and our posterity.
I wish we could fix what was fucked by members of our generation, even if I did what I could to stop them. I raised two kids who think like me, so there’s that. I have fourGrandKids and three of them will be my political legacy, at least so far.
We are all victims and perpetrators. it is a circular kind of thing. God, by accident I actually agreed with BOB.
chrome agnomen
what eemom said. yeah, a lot of the boomers won’t get out of the way, but the cocksuckers wouldn’t get out of the way back in ’69 either. that’s why a lot of the exciting hope for change that thrived then started to die then and is pretty much dead now. talking bout my g-g-g-generation.
DougJ
I think he’s talking about all the references our media hacks make to the 60’s, remember 2004 when we had all those battles over Kerry’s Vietnam service and protesting.
Yes!
But let’s just make a short list of this stuff: Kerry’s military service and protesting, Clinton’s (lack of) military service and dope smoking, John McCain’s time as POW, George W Bush’s (lack of) military service, Obama’s supposed affiliation with Bill Ayers. That’s just off the top my head from the last few elections.
eemom
anyone here hope they die before they get old? Maybe that’s something we can all agree on.
DougJ
Just to clear something up—DougJ, which generation are you, anyway?
I’m 40 (and I’m not a grad student!).
Citizen Alan
@Mrs. Peel:
No, but when the phrase “bimbo eruption” is introduced by your own campaign as a short hand term for a recurring problem that nearly wrecks your campaign (until you persuade your long-suffering wife to go onto Sixty Minutes with you to talk about what soul-mates you are), I think it behooves you to wait until after leaving office to get blowjobs from groupies and in the meantime just take a lot of cold showers, particularly when an entire political movement is devoted to destroying your presidency by any means necessary.
Having an adulterous affair represents a moral failing. Having an adulterous affair with a twenty-five year old intern while nearly the entire world already suspects you of being unfaithful to your wife and while the whole GOP is watching for the slightest misstep is narcissism, pure and simple.
DougJ
well, no one ever listens to me here, but I humbly offer my comment above as such insight.
Yeah, you’re right. TZ got me so worked up I forgot about your comments.
jl
I don’t watch late night TV regularly enough to know what these people do on a regular basis. But, my reactions from infrequent watching.
When I do watch, I find Craig Fergusan most interesting.
OBrien’s humor too often reminds me of smart alecky Jr High stuff. Leno is like a comfy lazyboy chair, good for falling asleep. Letterman often takes his acid cynical self-contempt schtick too far for me, and he too often flings it at other people. I’ve watched old clips of Letterman and he did not seem that way years ago. Kimmel seems wildly inconsistent, gyrating between Leno approach and Letterman, which is why I think he better be careful with his Leno-abuse act.
Any I have forgotten? Probably.
I think Letterman’s prepared skits are the funniest, except when he is flinging cynical monkey poo at random people.
I have no idea whether it is a generational thing or not.
ThymeZone
@DougJ:
Jesus, I have a kid older than you.
Okay, he will be 40 years old this year. But like you, he thinks he knows more than his old man. I have proof, he does not. He just doesn’t listen. At all.
Anne Laurie
@Dean:
Actually, Leno-the-person, as opposed to Leno-the-figurehead, seems to be the antithesis of your strawman. He worked really hard for a long time before he was “given” Carson’s slot, although the “smart people” called him a drone and a toady who made up for his lack of edge by putting in longer hours and being nice even to people below the executive-suite level. He works long weeks and doesn’t take vacations because he really, really loves his job even when “everybody” is telling him he sucks at doing it and should FOAD. His parents were first-generation immigrants who worked hard to reach the middle class, and Jay toiled his way through a third-rank college despite his dyslexia because his degree meant so much to them. And he’s supposed to have found, encouraged, and promoted a lot of younger comics during his career, including some of the hipsters now pishing about Mean Jay’s Big Shadow.
I seem to remember St. Johnnie Carson getting ripped the same way back when his ‘unearned self-regard’ kept him from ‘simply getting off the stage’ and letting Letterman — no, Leno! — no, Letterman! — take “his” chair. Because all the cool people knew that Carson was just a poor imitation of Jack Parr, anyways, and the Tonight Show hadn’t been cool since the Suits cut Steve Allen’s legs out from under him…
mai naem
I didn’t watch Carson until the very last few years and have hardly watched Leno. I’ve watched Conan but he just isn’t my cup of tea. Carson was great. Even though he was not close to my age he was funny. Leno OTOH is boring and trite. BTW, Carson was from Nebraska and gave a lot of money to the Dems which surprised me. For whatever reason I figured he would be a conservative. I’m surprised NBC didn’t go after Jon Stewart who I think would fit in even with his obvious political bent.
dr. bloor
@DougJ:
It may or may not be fair, or helpful to the dialogue for subsequent generations, but the sixties were the definitional decade for our generation (1959, I’m an eighteen-day-before-it-ended boomer). In the same way that our parents referenced the Great Depression and WWII–eventuallly, long after they tended to be relevant–so will we reference the 60’s as a frame for understanding the present. It’s just how we work as people.
Nellcote
@DougJ:
Well, I hoped to die before I got old but looks like i failed at that too. Yer right boomers suck!
Llelldorin
@DougJ:
Ah, OK. I was wondering how Gen X even got involved in this conversation. That explains that much, anyway.
Mrs. Peel
Hardly an anthem. I’m into the Beach Boys myself.
Royston Vasey
DougJ,
If someone was born in 1965, and thus 44 (going on 45…later) now, what bracket/group/generation do they fit into?
Just asking, as there seems to be some debate as to who is or isn’t in one generation or the other.
ThymeZone
@Leelee for Obama:
I hear ya. My elders asked me on a regular basis to dive under my school desk while they pretended to blow up the fucking world, as if we should settle for a world like that.
We said Hell No. We raised hell over what we thought was right.
What does Gen X raise hell about? Fur coats? Italian strollers that cost $400?
bemused
I don’t know how I came to have this book, “The Late Shift, Letterman, Leno, & The Battle For The Night” by Bill Carter, on my shelf but the peter principle was just as prevalent among the tv execs then as now.
At the moment, I can’t think of any group or generation that has ever learned a thing from past messes.
Nellcote
@ThymeZone:
Congrats! You’ve answered Doug’s question.
Task Force Ripper
This is one wankerific topic.
jl
Also. Sometimes neoptism specials like Luke Russert and Meghan McCain and Jenna (or is the other one?) have behaved better than their boomer sponsors. But overall, they seem very much like their boomer mentors.
So, where is the generational element there? Evidence for Lmarckian evolution? Or is it a certain dubious boomer personality type that can be handed down through the generations.
Perhaps an innovative research grant idea there.
I am not comfortable with generalizing the generations. Heck, I am not even sure I have all their names straight.
CaseyL
The 60s still dominate politics because that was the last time most Americans took for granted that humankind in general and America in particular were perfectable. We were going to eliminate poverty, war and racism; explore and colonize outer space; and do it all to a rock-n-roll tune.
Then Martin and Bobby were murdered and Nixon got elected, and that was the end of it.
Llelldorin
@ThymeZone:
Generally speaking? Not being able to afford health care for our kids. Nice of you to ask, though.
Mrs. Peel
Finally, someone with sense.
Viva BrisVegas
All this talk about a “Boomer war” fits into what I like to call the Cartman syndrome.
There is this desperate need on the right to discredit everything on the left (or centre), which then manifests itself as a intense irrational hatred of hippies. This hatred then transfers to Boomers, presumeably through propinquity.
Since the right has been on the wrong side of history with pretty much everything and they are unable to mount a coherent argument in support of any of their dearly held beliefs, they resort to arguing in emotional terms. This is a favourite tactic in the MSM. We are then conditioned to see the 60’s through the eyes of the right, as disruptive, destructive, chaotic and pointless.
So it is that the gains of that decade, whether they be civil rights, women’s rights, anti-war, tolerance of gays or even good music, can be belittled and dismissed without the trouble of rational analysis. So it is with the younger generations that the Boomers are useless and wrong, because the 60s were useless and wrong.
The older generation have always been in the way of the younger, what is different now is the way the right is using this in their culture wars as a tool of resentment, and that everybody seems to be buying it.
ThymeZone
@dr. bloor:
If young people would have just turned out to vote in the last 30 years, none of that stupid shit we call The Right would have ever made it into government in the first place. We would never have had George Bush, younger or elder.
Now that the younger ones have started to vote, their parents act as if they should take credit for it. Psh.
Ann B. Nonymous
Generation X is the first generation where interracial relationships became commonplace — not counting Generation Tippecanoe and so on, of course.
The Baby Boomers, bless their hearts, rarely walked that particular walk — though I honor the pioneers who did, largely against the advice of their peers.
A little bit later for gay families. Again, not so much for the Boomers.
Zam
@ThymeZone: Global warming?
Church Lady
BTW, no one seems to note that if Conan’s ratings hadn’t been much worse than Leno’s when Leno was sitting in the Tonight Show chair, he’d still have his show in his preferred time slot.
For what it’s worth, I can’t shed too many tears for poor old Conan. Forty four million in walk away money tend to take the sting out of any hurt feelings.
dr. bloor
@Royston Vasey:
Boomer cut off is generally regarded as 1960, although as someone on the tail end of it, I can assure you I was too young to march in the 60’s, a little late for all the drugging and sex of the 70s (well, most of it), and all of the money-making in the 80s. Dunno what 1965 gets you.
Although it’s interesting that DougJ and I are only ten years apart and on different sides of the fence. That’s a very big ten year span from a psychohistory point of view.
Brachiator
@eemom:
Nick Romano: I wanna live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse.
The film, Knock on Any Door, 1949
Bill E Pilgrim
DougJ
Okay, to take a stab at seriously answering your question: I think it’s a combination of what happened in the sixties and the simple fact that it’s the past, and the past gets talked about by those who lived through it.
If you were a kid in the 60s all you heard about was World War II and the Great Depression. You sort of understood why people would go on about a big war, of course, slightly less so about this Depression thing you kept hearing about.
So if you started hearing about the 60s somewhere in the 80s, I gather? That’s how it works. There are certain years that are seismic shifts, techtonic plates moving, and all the rest of it. So those get focused on, like the world war. So there was this other war in the 60s, tens of thousands of Americans died, and so on.
I guess my point is that I really don’t think it’s perpetual, I mean other periods will take its place, and yes I think the middle-aged people ten or twenty years from now will talk about the Bush years and 9/11 and etc in similar ways. And of course we still talk about the Depression and WWII, so the Sixties will be like that. Still memorable, but not the only topic anymore.
Robin G.
@eemom:
I don’t doubt the truth of that… but frankly, the next generations looked at the pictures of their parents as kids smoking pot and burning flags, then looked out the door at those same parents driving their SUVs off to grab us McDonald’s for dinner before watching Linda Tripp on CNN talk about a blue dress, and a lot of us came to the conclusion that no matter how you tried to be a force for change, within a few years, comfortable suburbia will make you care a lot more about other people getting blowjobs.
jl
@Royston Vasey: I think commenters here said that you would be Generation Jones, which I never heard of before.
I was pegged as a Generation Jones person.
I don’t know what it is and what our cred is. It sounds like a slogan from a bad soft drink or niche booze ad campaign. I can imagine the phrase coming up in a Zima spot.
Josie
I can’t believe the way you guys are lumping people into groups according to their age. I am 66 and have three sons, aged 25, 27 and 33. The oldest and youngest are rather liberal in a desultory sort of way (they prefer not to have political discussions) and the middle one is a social liberal and fiscal conservative, like me ( we talk politics all the time). People don’t fall into neat political categories by age; if anything, it has to do with personalities and experience. You just can’t pigeon hole people like this. It is a useless exercise in bickering. As to why the 60’s comes up in discussions, it’s because it was the first time young people entered vociferously into politics and had an effect, but it certainly wasn’t the only time and is still happening today.
Tax Analyst
Absolutely! I watched last night’s show and even though I didn’t know jack-all about his guests (they were all from some show called “Mythbusters” or something like that) the interviews were really interesting and funny. Ferguson managed to draw out a generous and interesting amount of information about what they do and still do plenty of joking around with what they were saying. And you could see the guests were having a good time, too. I loved when he asked the robotics guy what he thought about “Robot Sex”.
Llelldorin
I’m also wondering why people still conflate “young people” and “Generation X”. I mean, I’m flattered and all, but I really thing we’re knocking on a bit to be “young people” anymore.
ThymeZone
@Llelldorin:
Well then the younger voters should have turned out in 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2004. A little late to start complaining about things you could have changed by voting when you had the chance. It wasn’t me that gave you all those Republican presidents, and Newt Gingrich.
The Contract With America congress came in on a wave of young voter apathy. We exhorted them to vote, and they had better things to do, apparently.
Andy K
@The Other Steve:
Yahtzee!
Am I the only one who noticed that the proposed Medicare buy-in for those 55 and older was aimed right at those born at the very peak of the Baby Boom?
Leelee for Obama
@CaseyL:I didn’t lose hope, I just became what Conan said he dislikes, a card-carrying cynic. It comes and goes, but right now, I’m in cynic mode. Maybe better tomorrow.
@Llelldorin:As I have those GrandKids I mentioned above, I know this fear and worry. Here’s an interesting data point: Both of my kids, and all of my GrandKids were born on Medicaid, and at least three of them are on it now. There’s a lesson in that, but who’s listening?
Gozer
So what is the designation du jour for those of us younger-than, but nearly 30 (ie. born between say 1980 and 1985)? I read somewhere that we aren’t technically Gen X’ers…is it Gen Y?
This demographic naming shit is confusing.
chrome agnomen
@TR:
lieberman is not a boomer asswipe.
/hippie
ThymeZone
Alas, this high-minded viewpoint didn’t turn into things like dragging their asses to the polls to vote and try to get change that would have moved things in the right direction. They just decided to sit around and blame their parents for whatever was going wrong.
Citizen Alan
@ThymeZone:
Behold the Baby Boomer, ladies and gentlemen. Better than his parents. Better than his children. The absolute apex of the human species. And he cannot imagine why people younger than himself associate pathological narcissism with his generation.
If you were my dad, I wouldn’t listen to you either. Luckily, my dad is 79, so he actually has wisdom to pass on.
ThymeZone
Uh no, your progressive parents and grandparents did not demand tax cuts. We are the people for whom the phrase “Tax and Spend” was coined. We believed in the power of government, never dreaming that our kids would see that our efforts did not produce total and all-encompassing pony world, and therefore decide to sit out 30 years’ worth of elections because it all seemed so discouraging.
The same whiny babies who now say things like Kill the Bill because it wasn’t the final solution to all our healthcare problems, and then try to blame the lack of HCR on us.
Llelldorin
@ThymeZone:
Weren’t the “younger voters” still boomers in 1980? I’m 36, so if I’d turned out in those first three I’d have run into trouble. (Hey, if you want to advocate for franchising 6-year-olds, make your case.)
TR
Alright, technically that’s correct, as he was born in 1942.
How about George W. Bush then? Born in 1946. He’s all yours.
Citizen Alan
@bemused:
I was just about to reference that book. It’s sitting on my bookshelf right now. Small world.
Fern
@eemom: Well, watching my mother’s dementia, I have say dying before you get old might have its compensations.
DougJ
I think Letterman’s prepared skits are the funniest, except when he is flinging cynical monkey poo at random people.
Letterman is/was a genius. His show bores me now.
I agree that Craig Ferguson is the most interesting. It feels like real late night tv, unpredictable and aimed at the weirdos who are still awake.
ThymeZone
@Citizen Alan:
Who do you listen to? We listened to Martin Luther King and Adlai Stevenson and Eleanor Roosevelt.
You? Michael Jackson?
eco2geek
Sorry, I’ve been paying attention to national politics since becoming eligible to vote in the early 80’s (I’m the same age Conan O’Brien is), and I sure don’t agree with your premise. The 60s certainly influence today’s political discussion, but “dominate”? And I can’t recall ever hearing a modern election being compared to Nixon’s win in ’69.
For a reality check, I asked my wife; she thinks it’s an odd idea. I asked my brother, he thought it sounded like a neat headline but was not true.
ThymeZone
@Llelldorin:
Not sure that six year olds couldn’t have done better than their parents did during the Reagan and Bush and Gingrich years. All they would have had to do is split down the middle and show up at the polls, and they could have made a difference.
Lesley
This post is rather hilarious considering the post that comes after it.
Yours truly is one boomer who has never liked Leno. He’s always been “too old.” He was born old and conservative. He’s a political coward; and although he’s rolling in money he says he lives his life as though he’s on the verge of being fired and homeless.
The reasons boomers continue to feature prominently is because there are so many. Boomers dominate the labour force and the economy. Employers, prior to the downturn, fretted about mass retirements and the loss of experience and knowledge. Boomers can’t help that.
`````````
@ThymeZone:
A lot of us were made sufficiently cynical by this before we were of voting age. And besides, the whole lesson was that getting out in the streets didn’t do very much; the Boomers did one big dance of one step forward, two steps back. LBJ, Nixon. One step forward, two steps back. Carter, Reagan. One step forward, two steps back. Clinton, Bush. One step forward… five steps back. Then — just like in this thread — when asked, our parents proclaimed that they did absolutely all they possibly could have done ever (you know, protesting the Vietnam war in their teens, then apparently declaring their duty over and letting the country go to hell for the next forty years), so quit whining.
Lots of us are saying, fine, fantastic, you did your duty, you booed Nixon. That being said, we’ve seen what you’ve done since then, so kindly step aside, because we’re more than happy to take over now. Hence the original post of this thread. We’re ready, but the Boomers don’t want to go — though they retain the right to complain about how their ungrateful children don’t do shit.
(Sigh. This is Robin G. My cat stepped on the keyboard.)
Carol
I would also add that they are shocked that the changes all of those “uppity” people made are now permanent. Despite AIDS, nobody has repealed the Sexual Revolution. Backlash hasn’t ended the Civil RIghts Revolution (which really started all the other changes). All of the billions spent on right-wing thinktanks, Rush Limbaugh, and tea parties have really been for naught except for the occasional right-wing politician elected in a place that hasn’t gotten over the Civil War. It hasn’t brought back the dream Pleasantville of their youth, where the only minorities were maids and butlers, where people prayed Christian prayers every morning at school, and folks listened to Lawrence Welk on the radio.
Notice the memes brought out by the right wing: none of them make sense to anyone under 70. Communism and socialism because of government health care? Who is afraid of that under 60? Bill Ayres? Half of the voting population were either kids during the sixties or too young to remember, and the rest no longer want to talk about it. So who’s afraid of sixties radicals who have grown old and grey? The last of the right-wing financiers of chaos, now nearing 80 and ninety and seeing their world collapse totally.
Anne Laurie
@TR:
Bingo. And they all worked hard to get to the point where their dollars would start breeding dollars. But when each of them started, there was much MediaBusiness babble about how “handing over” formerly valuable airspace to non-serious niche programming heralded a great decline in the worth and seriousness of our national media. Cooking shows! Fat Negro ladies talking about ‘self-empowerment’! Novelty lesbians! Where would the global marketplace go for The Next Big Money-Maker when this was the best we could offer?
As it turned out, there was just as much money in cooking for self-empowerment on Ellen as there was in Bob Barker or Merve Griffin shilling washing machines, but the same class of Very Serious Media Watchers now blaming Leno and O’Brien for “breaking” primetime did NOT see the new era coming. What they saw, at the time, was that Phil Donahue (straight white guy!) had “failed” to change what was perceived as an immutable formula, and therefore, Daytime TeeVee Was Dead. There will be new people making things happen during the 11:30pm time slot, and probably the 10pm timeslot, fifteen years from now — and the Very Serious Media Watchers will totally have forgotten that today’s Leno/Conan Crisis was supposed to indicate the end of network television as we had known it, absolutely and forever.
gnomedad
@Task Force Ripper:
No kidding. Let’s teach the teabaggers critical thinking by having an intergenerational poo-flinging battle.
Chris Johnson
Ha! Gen X has ALWAYS been the fall guys. I was born in ’68, atari wave gen X, first to grow up with a computer and video game in the house (Apple II and Atari 2600 respectively).
Read ’13th Gen- Abort, Retry, Fail?’. We’ve always got the blame, and the shit end of the stick. The Reagan years saddled us and us alone with Great Depression-scale unemployment and obstacles.
I’m kinda like do your worst, here…
I’m fighting like a rabid weasel to get and hold a few thousand dollars in the bank, and like every good GenXer, I figure I personally am going to survive. If I don’t, trust me, you’ll never notice, nor will I lose a lot of time freaking out about how this can’t happen to me.
To me, ‘catastrophic failure of health care, social systems, and my country’ is kinda like welcome to my world, what kept you?
Somebody’s gotta come along with the pushbroom after the elephant shit parade, so fine- just don’t be so damn shocked when we are generally unimpressed and focussed on keeping our own boats afloat. Thus it has always been. I bet if you count up all the firebaggers and freaks derailing health care, there will be very few GenXers hopping up and down with outrage. I bet we mostly just voted, and our contribution to the problem was to leave it at that.
Oopsy. alright, pile on ANOTHER new job, in this case calling Washington a lot to counterbalance boomer wingnuts. Cowabunga, dude. whatEVer. We can take it.
ThymeZone
Agreed. Early Dave was just fabulous stuff. Larry Bud Melman, how can you top that?
ThymeZone
No Republican ever said it better.
debbie
@licensed to kill time:
The highlight of Conan’s last show was Neil Young, all alone with his guitar, singing “Long May You Run.”
@Violet:
A lot of payback. Leno’s bad rep among his peers goes back to the 70s when he crossed the picket line during the comics’ strike. I think a lot of the recent jokes are passive/aggressiveness-in-action. If anyone’s interested in how these guys got started in the 70s, “I’m Dying Up Here” is a pretty good book.
Graeme
I also don’t watch the Coco or the Leno, but I was under the impression that most of Conan’s charm was that he’s not hip or cool enough to be doing that job. I think the issue is that the Boomers find that annoying, and Gen X finds that charming.
I don’t care much for the Boomers or for Gen X. They’re all too human, these people.
TR
I don’t know what’s most laughable here.
The idea that the networks would turn over any amount of airtime to a show they thought would be unprofitable?
The idea that cooking shows were seen in the 1980s — two decades after the phenomenal ratings success of Julia Child — as some weird novelty?
The idea that anyone in the 1980s would have referred to Oprah Winfrey as “a fat Negro”?
The insistence that “self-empowerment” shows were something new, when Phil Donahue had been doing precisely that?
I know, I know. Don’t bother a boomer with “facts” and “logic.” The all-encompassing power of their endless nostalgia and Important Memories will conquer all.
Andy K
@ThymeZone:
I don’t think anyone here is blaming Nixon on you personally, and if I’m guessing correctly, not even those early boomers. But the boom peaked in the mid ’50s. Those peak boomers were 10-15 years old in 1967, and they weren’t protesting in large numbers, nor were they old enough to vote in ’68. There was a huge chunk of them who were still too young to vote in 1972!
ThymeZone
Yes, the signature of a proud generation of Me Firsters.
My generation was not unflappable. We were eminently flappable. Because there was a lot to get flappable over.
News flash to people whose first thought was to “keep their own boats afloat:” Marching for Civil Rights wasn’t about our boats. It was about other peoples’ boats not sinking.
When the Civil Rights marches formed up, blacks and whites marched together.
Today, when Gay Rights marches form up, straights who don’t toe the line are called “bigots.”
It’s a different time.
New Yorker
I’m late to this party, but….
I think you mean “1860s”, Bill. After all, if we let the Confederacy leave, Wal-Mart and Pat Robertson and Jim DeMint and all the other shit the South has foisted on us over the years doesn’t happen.
And while I don’t particularly wish to get into a generational pissing match, I don’t particularly care to hear the self-righteousness (we marched for this! we marched for that!) from the wealthiest, most privileged generation in human history. Yeah, you marched on Washington in 1963….and then you voted for Reagan’s tax cuts and Bush’s medicare expansion and wars. The country is bankrupt, its military is shot, and there hasn’t been a decent job created in a decade. Sorry, I’m not going to lay that at the feet of the WWIIers in their nursing homes.
Citizen Alan
@ThymeZone:
I thought you were just bitching and moaning about the fact that your 40-year-old son has better things to do than listen to your tired ramblings. Are you comparing yourself to King, Stevenson and Roosevelt? You’re farther gone than I thought!
You’re a ridiculous person, you know that? No, I did not listen to Michael Jackson for political guidance, since he never had anything to say in that area. Actually, I listened to some of the same people you did — MLK, JFK, FDR — since, regrettably your generation did not see fit to produce anyone who had anything productive to say during the 1980’s. Bill Clinton had a lot of pretty words in the 1990’s, but it soon got drowned out with “triangulation,” “end Welfare as we know it,” “keep abortion safe, legal and rare,” and of course, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
Brachiator
@Church Lady:
Leno trailed Letterman for about 18 months. When he had Hugh Grant on and famously quizzed him “What were you thinking?” Leno started to take off.
Conan was only given 7 months to succeed. And let’s see, Leno was a flop at 10:00 pm, so he gets his old show back?
Not everyone is motivated by money. I give Conan high props for defending the integrity of the Tonight Show tradition. The show comes on after the news. And if you had moved it to 12:05, it aint’ Tonight no more, it’s Tomorrow.
Leelee for Obama
@Fern: A-fucking-men!
ThymeZone
@Andy K:
Duh. The boomers in the streets in 1967 and 1968 were not born in the fifties, they were born mostly in the forties.
The people who were 15 in 1967 were not part of what happened in the sixties, and as I said in a very early post to this thread, they really weren’t Boomers as much as they were a generation without a name.
I hope not, I campaigned against him in 1956 and 1960.
Andy K
@Anne Laurie:
Anne, I’m not so sure that the success of Oprah, Martha and Ellen has as much to do with the Baby Boom generation as much as it has to do with the fact that a higher percentage of Boomer women went to work compared to women of earlier generations.
debbie
@Anne Laurie:
Your post is interesting, but Oprah predates Ellen and Martha (and whoever else) by a good 10 years. Oprah may make me shake my head from time to time these days, but she really was ahead of her time. Watching her back when her show was first syndicated, it was amazing to think there were a whole bunch of white women following her. I think she was the first to really transcend race.
By contrast, Phil Donahue had become a joke. I can’t remember who parodied him on SNL as a shrieking shrew, but that was really all he was. What could Marlo have seen in him?
Chris Johnson
Uh, Public Enemy, a lot of us. Why?
ThymeZone
So, we listened to the same people, according to you. And what … we didn’t fix all the problems those people described? Excuse us, you whiny little shit. At least we tried. What did your generation try?
Your soapbox is built on trashing Bill Clinton’s sex life? You are a piece of whiny crap. My generation tried to stop the Vietnam war, and yours got all disappointed and stopped voting.
Yeah, you clearly have something lecture me about.
Citizen Alan
@debbie:
And then, years later, he had by far the most successful show on MSNBC until it was canceled for no reason other than corporate fears that it would rain on Bush’s war parade.
Anne Laurie
@Libertini:
Quoted for truth, and seconded. Some of my dearest friends are MBAs, but they’ll be in the forefront of the mob when we finally decide to burn down the “top” business schools.
Leelee for Obama
@debbie: Having the pleasure of meeting Phil Donahue once, while waiting on his table, I can tell you he is a great person who was polite and appreciative of what people did for him. And generous as well.
Mrs. Peel
Oh, a lot. Teen violence, Marilyn Manson, Columbine…
chrome agnomen
@TR:
and scott brown is all yours.
this shouldn’t be a generational argument. the poisonous side of the political spectrum, the right, has always been existent. i do not dwell on the sixties, or the eighties. i dwell on what should be done now that is right and proper, just as i did then, when i threw away my vote, you might say, on mcgovern in 1972*. the right wing boomers of my generation should DIAF, just as the ones from your generation.
i’ll tell you this though. there was REAL hope alive then, and no presidential candidate was pushing it; it was in the air, at least with the people i hung with. peace.
*(and massachusetts, with DC, was the only state to vote for him)
ThymeZone
Uh, Public Enemy, a lot of us. Why?
Andy K
@ThymeZone:
Then why are you taking this all as some kind of slap in the face rather than pointing out the differences between the ’46-’51 boomers and the ’52-’57 (and later) boomers? You older boomers tend to vote Democratic, and those later boomers tend to vote Republican (and I wish I could remember where I read the study that showed how people tend to vote for the party that was in the White House when they were born), and there are more of them than you.
TR
Born in 1959. Yours again.
kgc16
@gnomedad: I’m with you and Task Force Ripper. What a depressing thread. We need to lock Thyme Zone, Citizen Alan, and TR in a room together and let them fight it out. I hope the rest of us have better things to do–I really need to give up this BJ addiction.
By the way, I’m a late baby boomer, born in 1954. I’ve always been liberal and I’ve always voted. I never demanded tax cuts. It seems to me that like all things in life, there are good and bad aspects to every “generation.” In spite of the cranky HCR threads recently, BJ is usually the one place on the interweb a reader can visit for sane and thoughtful discussion. Not so much tonight.
chrome agnomen
@Chris Johnson:
Waaaahh! so you’re making us the fall guys? thought you said you could take it? for the record, i’ve got 150$ in the bank, and a 10hr/wk job. but go ahead and pile on me, because i CAN take it!
TR
@ThymeZone:
Again, this is what it all comes down to.
Yes, some people in your generation marched for civil rights. The leaders — King et al. — were not of your generation, though, and the numbers of people who actually marched is pretty small. The Selma-to-Montgomery March had about 2,500 people, for instance.
And you protested against Vietnam? Great. It’s not like draft-age kids had any vested, selfish interest in opposing the war. Nope, none at all.
kgc16
@kgc16: Not that I’ll be staying away. I am addicted, after all….
tammanycall
@Gozer:
We’re Gen Y or Millennials.
Andy K
@chrome agnomen:
As a first year Gen Xer (b: 7/1965), I don’t blame Boomers for the lack of jobs. I do hold your parents somewhat responsible for doing it like rabbits, though.
ThymeZone
I pointed out the fact that the Late B(l)oomers were not really what I call Boomers, early in the thread. Those so-called later Boomers were sort of out there in a no man’s land of identity. I really don’t know where their heads were at then, or now. We got mad and set flags on fire and got Governor Reagan to send the troops out to tamp us down, but other than getting people all pissed off, didn’t finish the job. The next gang didn’t even care about the job. And the gang after that turned into the John Coles of the world, who would write things back in 2005 like “I hate demonstrations.”
America is all about demonstrations, AFAIC. Ugly, messy, even stupid, demonstrations at least show that people care enough to get out in the street and raise some hell. Even if they are wrong, like the ‘Baggers, they are trying. I admire that more than sitting on hands and bitching about how their parents didn’t solve all the problems already.
I admire taking the dangerous road even if it is wrong, more than taking the safe road even if it is right. America isn’t about being safe, to me, it’s about being just. Safe is a lot easier than just. That’s why I hate the Cheney version of America. It’s all about safety (perceived, not real) and not what’s right.
Chris Johnson
I wondered if you were a GenXer trolling for lulz, but now I know you’re real ;)
Dude, look at what just happened. You boast of being flappable and that is just what has thrown health care reform into chaos. Don’t be proud of being overemotional and filled with empty passion, buckle down and figure out what’s actually going to work, be practical.
My generation developed LOTS of republicans. Because we were lied to, and you guys seemed too full of drama to get anything done. Some of those republicans ended up going back when it became obvious that it was a terrible mistake. We’re used to having to cope with terrible mistakes. Do you really think liberal passion will save you? Seems like it’s leading some of you astray.
I think I’m doing a lot better by keeping my head and picking up new strategies like
-capitol hill needs feedback in the form of continued calls stating my liberal _wishes_ whether or not they are being immediately followed with passion
-the wingnuts can be addressed through the concept that they are being played and tricked by their leaders, and that this is dishonorable
-reading thoughtful studies like ‘The Authoritarians’ rather than just emotional outbursts, which gives me a conceptual background for developing strategies for swinging those guys away from outright fascism
Explain how getting really upset is better, I’d love to hear it.
Ruckus
So I checked on the average age of the senate 110th average age is 61.7 yrs. But you have to look at the age chart to see that there are a lot of senators either pre-boomer or just plain old fart.
Here’s a good one Hawaii’s senators are both 85 and born within 4 days of each other.
The median age of current senators is 63 yrs 28 days. So early boomers. But that means of course that fully 1/2 of senators are older than 63. One is in his nineties. Now in my lifetime I have met on person who at 95 was sharper than a lot of people at any age. He lived till 105. I have also met a lot of people 75 and older who are about as sharp as a 2×4.
And, So what? I can not imagine that things are that much different from an age perspective other than there are more of us old farts now than in previous generations.
I’d like to see the average age of the financial wizards who crapped on the rest of us, I believe that would be more important.
ThymeZone
I was 4F. Until I got the 4F ticket, I was going to sign up for the Army and a special ride to Warrant Officers school (owing to my commercial pilot’s license). Flying a gummint plane sounded like an adventure to me. I did the anti-war march thing because I didn’t like the government lying to me.
Task Force Ripper
@Citizen Alan:
ThymeZone
Um, I just spent a year arguing loudly here for an end to Kill the Bill rhetoric and supporting Obama for practicing (or trying to practice) the Art of the Possible, after spending the previous year donating the legal limit to two of his campaigns (primary and general) which put me close to $4600 on his tab. I fell just short of that goal but not much. Taking 80% of something is better than taking 100% of nothing, in my book, and I have fought a lot of flame wars over it right here.
So, who are you talking to? Cause it ain’t me.
chrome agnomen
@Andy K:
they sure did, but that was a time, maybe the last time ever, that the ‘american dream’ of the kids having it better than the parents, was still alive. and contraception wasn’t a hot topic either, so i’ll let them slide on that
Anne Laurie
@Viva BrisVegas:
Excellent summary.
I would add that some of the loudest “anti-Boomer” pundits on the right, like David Horowitz, were criminally complicit with the fringe excesses of the late 1960s/early 1970s and now lead the opposition precisely to keep people from raising questions about their pasts. This tactic has been refined by fReichtard infotainment-pundits like G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North, who don’t want the ugly facts about Watergate and Iran-Contra investigated outside of the “four legs good, two legs better” framework.
Comrade Mary
I’m got to run off to dinner, but I just point want to point out that 1961 marks the beginning of Generation X because that was the year Douglas Coupland was born.
Don’t call me a Boomer. Don’t call me a Jones. I’m X, damn it!
(And don’t get me started on the lazy, lazy way the media has started using Gen X as a synonym for anyone in their twenties. Not. The. Same.)
Tax Analyst
Hell, contraception was illegal in Connecticut when I was born (1950). How’s them apples?
Overturned by SCOTUS in “Griswald v. Connecticut” in 1965.
Llelldorin
@Ruckus:
Collaborative effort. Boomer execs working with Gen X statisticians and post-Gen X traders.
See what we can accomplish when we set aside our petty generational squabbles?
ThymeZone
I’ll bet you would. Your strawman will suck your c_ck for it.
But I am not about “getting really upset.” I am about working to change things as opposed to sitting around whining about them, which is the signature of the GenX approach to America.
I am about getting involved in real politics and trying to get something done, even if imperfect, or even if it just fails. Support a candidate. Raise or give money. Plant signs.
Doing those things is what propelled the Moron Brigade into power. Not listening to Public Enemy and laughing at ones’ parents because they didn’t leave behind a perfect world.
Like I have said umpteen times here in the last few years, we outnumber the idiots. Just not, until recently, at the polls. We still do. And the gap is widening, not narrowing.
Chris Johnson
This is a good dividing point. GenX does not respect stupid, and only moderately respects caring. Demographically, GenX has tended to respect power, and results.
Being a drooling rightwinger does not necessarily constitute real power. It might seem like it, but when you keep your head and look at what results occur, sometimes you see that the blustering powermonger wingnuts are actually pursuing policies that will cause a lot of harm for their results. Health care crisis, climate change, stock market- you name it.
I realize our GenX guys are absolutely implicated in things like ‘innovative’ stock market destabilizing ‘inventions’- that’s so like us it’s not even funny. Sorries :) we weren’t setting the rules, we were exploiting how they were set up, that’s how we’re wired.
Now that things are going to hell on a lot of fronts, I’m going to suggest that our levelheaded, detached, get-it-done-at-any-cost qualities are more useful than your emotionalism and outrage. If you’re so good, why didn’t you spot that Capitol Hill was reeling around confusedly, being swamped by winger phonecalls while we sat there trusting them to follow the electoral mandate?
(edit) I’m going to edit that- if you’re not just advocating outrage, good for you. Sounds like you’ve been putting a lot of work in, sorry for going off halfcocked. Also sounds like your financial resources are a couple orders of magnitude greater than mine- which is also characteristically Boom vs. GenX..
Karen in GA
Actually, from what I understand, first moving Jay Leno to 10 PM and then moving him back to 11:35, which triggered the whole war, were both Jeff Zucker’s ideas. He’s a year — younger? older? not sure — than O’Brien, and was at Harvard with him.
The local NBC affiliates complained that Leno’s rotten 10 PM ratings were wrecking the ratings for their 11 PM news broadcasts, and demanded that Leno’s show be cancelled. One could argue that given the drop in the ratings for the local 11 PM news, O’Brien had no lead in, so of course his ratings would suffer too.
The idea was that Leno at 10 PM would be cheaper to produce than hour-long dramas. Now, the story is that it’s cheaper to let O’Brien go than it would be to let Leno go.
This is just standard “executive goes for cheapest options, quality suffers.” How the WaPo turned this into a generational thing is beyond me.
And nobody asked, but I’m not saying when I was born. I’m not interested in any generational fight. Too many generalizations — the media likes to easily label everything, including generations, and I have no use for that. Either you’re an asshole or you’re not — I don’t care when you were born.
chrome agnomen
@Tax Analyst:
i’m 1950 also. massachusetts. roman catholic. been fighting against that last part all my life.
ondioline
If you don’t hate boomers, you aren’t paying attention.
Lisa K.
@ThymeZone:
I don’t that is a fair comment right now. Boomers-white boomers, anyway-crawled up McCain’s ass during the election and are still far more likely to say they disapprove than approve of the first black president. It is the Gen Xers that really made their mark in this last election.
Tax Analyst
@ #229 chrome agnomen:
My sympathies on the last part. Jewish parents, but not very religious and neither am I. Thank God.
Andy K
@ThymeZone:
Doesn’t really matter that you don’t associate yourself with them. You were all part of that 19-year trend of high birth rates. That those who came later in the boom are greater in number than you probably gives them more claim to the title Boomer. You, due to your earlier birth, are atypical.
I kind of understand the “I hate demonstrations,” perspective. The common perception of left-of-center demonstrations as being led by DFHs is not entirely misplaced, if misplaced at all. If by demonstrating you’re trying to sell your ideals to an unconvinced segment of the public, you’re basically advertising. You want the public to relate to you. All it takes to blow away your work and make you never want to demonstrate again- or to start in the first place- is one guy who’s letting his freak flag fly by holding up a “Communists For Peace” placard on the corner of State & Main. And don’t tell me that doesn’t happen, because I’ve been on that corner.
chrome agnomen
@Tax Analyst:
i thank god for nothing. :))
Jane_in_Colorado
@moe99:
I’d say… don’t give up, and try to let go of the rage. Cancer treatment has come a long way. Do what the docs say, but I also recommend David Servan-Schrieber’s Anticancer book–lots of good stuff about supporting natural healing processes.
I too have health insurance only as long as I can work. That Medicare-buy in thing would have been great for me, although without a job I couldn’t afford to buy in. So I go to work even when I’m puking my guts out from chemo.
Does it feel like there’s a cancer plague going on? This isn’t just a boomer thing. I’m from a very large extended family, and not one of us ever had cancer until this year… when my younger brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and I was diagnosed with endometrial-ovarian. Both stage III, though of course my 50% prognosis must look like heaven to my brother.
Citizen Alan
@ThymeZone:
I cannot imagine why your son ignores what you say. Wait, yes I can — it’s because you’re nuts. Bill Clinton’s sex life nearly got his dumb ass impeached, when he wasn’t triangulating with Republicans to undermine Welfare or pass NAFTA.
You may have marched in some protests, but Vietnam ended because Cronkite told Americans it was unwinnable, because RFK expressly ran on ending it, and because after RFK’s death, Nixon expressly ran on his “secret plan to end the war” (even though that was an atrocious lie).
None of those people were Boomers. You just claim credit for what the generation ahead of you took care of.
If your precious protest marches accomplished anything at all, it to hand the ’68 election to Nixon when you went berserk at the Democratic Convention.
And then, your generation gave us disco, junk bonds, and MILFS. And for an encore, you’re probably going to make it so that you’re the last generation to get social security benefits.
Well, you’ll be happy to note that I won’t be lecturing you any more, because I think you’re ridiculous and not worth another minute of my time.
Andy K
@Citizen Alan:
Wait a minute….What’s wrong with MILFs?
Citizen Alan
@Mrs. Peel:
Columbine was the fault of Gen X? Good to know. I’d always thought it was because of the lax parenting of Kleibold and Harris’s Boomer parents, but you learn something new every day.
And we invented teen violence, too? Really?!? Juvenile delinquency was never a problem before those nasty Gen Xers came along? Wow.
You and ThymesPast should really go see a doctor. There are some promising treatments for senile dementia if you catch it early enough.
Gozer
This discussion is giving me some hardcore jollies.
Mnemosyne
@ThymeZone:
Then you’re not talking about GenX. GenX came of voting age in the eighties, not the seventies. I’m 40 and I wasn’t eligible to vote until 1987.
You’re directing your rage at the wrong people here if you’re wondering aloud why we didn’t vote during the 1970s. Those people would be — guess who? — your fellow Boomers.
Llelldorin
@Mrs. Peel:
I have to ask: Are you actually a boomer woman, as your name implies? You keep using these tropes about the kids of boomers that were entirely intended to “prove” that career-minded boomer women were ruining their children. It was bullshit, of course, but you seem to really be invested in that old antifeminist trope.
Amanda in the South Bay
Well, my line about boomers ruining those traditions has to do with the watered down choose your own spirituality so exemplified by that generation. Its like-wow, a baby boomer Buddhist! You practically trip over them in Palo Alto, for example.
The other thing is that when I see annoying, materialistic yuppies in their 20s and 30s (a not uncommon thing in Silicon Valley) I tend to assume their parents were BBs as well.
Mnemosyne
I have to admit, TZ’s rants are getting funnier and funnier as we realize that s/he is blaming GenXers for not voting when they were 10 years old.
Get off my lawn, indeed.
Ruckus
@Llelldorin:
If it was all because of inter generational cooperation then let’s have more generational squabbles. And I thought it was plain greed, which has no generational bias. I’ll be the only reason we are arguing about this is because we have a place to. I remember growing up being told that I was supposed to respect my elders, even though so many of them did not respect me, my generation or even each other. I suspect wash, rinse, repeat at each generational marker.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Citizen Alan: Teen violence? Wasn’t Charles Starkweather 19 years old when he went on his killing spree?
Gozer
@Mnemosyne: Well…in his day they had to walk 10 miles uphill, both ways…in the snow…to vote~!
And that’s how it was…and they liked it!
gwangung
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: And didn’t the big swatch of teen violence coincide with a big hump, demographically, of kids hitting their teens?
Citizen Alan
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Yes, according to Wiki. Of course, that was in 1958, so he wasn’t even a Boomer, let alone a Gen Xer.
MattR
Let’s see if I got this right
Boomer to Gen X: You got your chocolate in my peanut butter
Gen X to Boomer: You got your peanut butter on my chocolate
magurakurin
Some funny stuff. Late to the party, as always. That’s the hallmark of the Boomer/GenX cusp generation. The so-called Generation Jones. Born in ’62 and followed in the shadow of “the 60’s” for all of my youth. We called dime bags “dime bags” even though the price had risen to $20. To me the older Boomers were always like a big brother or sister. I’d walked into the kitchen and my older brother was standing over the cookie jar with his friends and said, “you missed it, man. Those cookies were so good.” Then Mom’s car door slammed and his friends ran off and he ran up stairs and put on his Sunday clothes to greet Mom at the door. And there were never anymore cookies in the house again after that.
No more cheap college tuition.
No more pension plans from employment.
No more health care plans without co-pays from work.
and ahead
No more SSI benefits
But I’ve never felt like I was cheated, I always figured that’s just the way life rolls. I do wish my brother would stop telling me stories about how awesome those cookies were, though.
gil mann
GenX also, demographically speaking, has no idea what the hell you’re talking about.
Sotty, you’re gonna have to hunt down a Simpsons quote that makes your point if you want it to register.
Ooh ooh! Or wear a t-shirt with the exact opposite of your point emblazoned on the front. That’ll work too.
Joe Lentz
I’m a boomer, born in 52, and more often than not boomers just piss me off. They came up in an era when almost anything was possible, but instead of learning from the counterculture, they just used it as a cosmis playground, and then sold out and cashed in. Pearls before swine. Duh.
Dean
By this standard, neither is Jimi Hendrix, nor most of the Beatles, nor Martin Scorcese. Most of the good stuff that the Boom Generation gets credited for producing was created by folks that were born either a bit before ’43, or at least before the end of the war. I think drawing a hard-line at ’43 is a bit of a fantasy. Lieberman certainly has boomer-like qualities.
henqiguai
@Ann B. Nonymous (#152):
Umm, the (on point) “advice” was that, generally, the whole interracial thing was a short walk to some serious violence. Minimally, there was serious ostracization. Assuming you were in an environment which would even facilitate that sort of congress.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Citizen Alan:
Um, he was impeached. He just wasn’t convicted. Not that subtle distinctions mean anything to you.
I must say, getting you guys to say stupid shit is a lot like setting fire to ants with a magnifying glass. Just point and shoot, so to speak.
So Doug got his money’s worth out of a good troll on a night where there was nothing much to talk about.
Meanwhile, while you lazy people with hair sit around and try to blame your parents for all your problems, boomers like me are WORKING and PAYING TAXES for you on this Saturday night. Yes, working. It takes more than heart attacks to deter us. Which is more than we can say for your pussy attitudes.
Politics is about coalitions, you snot nosed fools. It’s about working together to get things done. If you can’t get along with your own parents, what exactly are you good for?
You better get to work, too, because we are going to suck your wallets dry to pay our medical bills for the next 40 fucking years and we won’t be shorchanged. Get weekend jobs, you don’t have time to sit around and talk smack on blogs unless you are doing it on the job.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Okay, you guys and your goddammed mod filter, here I go with the endless reposts until I bypass that piece of crap.
Number One:
Um, he was impeached. He just wasn’t convicted. Not that subtle distinctions mean anything to you.
I must say, getting you guys to say stupid stuff is a lot like setting fire to ants with a magnifying glass. Just point and shoot, so to speak.
So Doug got his money’s worth out of a good troll on a night where there was nothing much to talk about.
Meanwhile, while you lazy people with hair sit around and try to blame your parents for all your problems, boomers like me are WORKING and PAYING TAXES for you on this Saturday night. Yes, working. It takes more than heart attacks to deter us. Which is more than we can say for your weak attitudes.
Politics is about coalitions, you snot nosed fools. It’s about working together to get things done. If you can’t get along with your own parents, what exactly are you good for?
You better get to work, too, because we are going to suuck your wallets dry to pay our medical bills for the next 40 fuucking years and we won’t be shortchanged. Get weekend jobs, you don’t have time to sit around and talk smack on blogs unless you are doing it on the job.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Yes, nothing ever changes. Posts go into moderation for using language that is the same kind of thing used by the hosts and the advertisers every day.
Something that IT people in my generation would never have put up with.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Uh huh. Yes, we all know that our perceptions and attitudes and our group culture are set by commonality of birth rates.
That’s why the nearly 20-year long “Baby Boom” is such an accurate identifier of … exactly nothing, as near as events would teach us.
No, the truth is that my demographic is shaped mainly by the common experience of Duck and Cover, not by some chart with birth rates on it. Duck and Cover showed us what can happen when you let the Protection Racket version of government take over your life.
Task Force Ripper
@MattR:
I hated this fucking wankerific thread but this was really good.
Thank you.
Task Force Ripper
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
Funny, I never knew telegraph operators were in the IT field.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
After only 40 years, they made a mark. We were out there on the streets raising holy hell and pissing off Ronald Reagan and Robert McNamara when we were 18.
We were taking bullets at Kent State while GenX was soiling its diapers.
Task Force Ripper
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
Shorter TZ:
And we would’ve gotten away with it too, if not for your meddling kids!
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Task Force Ripper:
Your forebears invented radio, and you guys are wasting it on sexting.
Tsk.
Task Force Ripper
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio: You’re just trolling now.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Task Force Ripper:
Oh yeah, and the GenX apologists are serious people. I get it.
Take it up with DougJ, this whole thread is a troll, kid.
Task Force Ripper
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
Sexting, my good man, is anything but a waste. It’s an all day foreplay exercise.
We understand your old ticker can’t take it.
Task Force Ripper
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
They always are.
moe99
Well it seems that our circular firing squad works damn well this evening.
Christ on a cracker, can we stop this internicine slugfest and use the energy, instead, to take on the Republicans?
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
@Task Force Ripper:
Bah. In my generation, we just went out to the car on lunch hour and did it in the back seat. Foreplay was for people who watched the Purex Specials for women back in 1961.
Dean
Leno’s father was an insurance salesman from New York. His mother was from Scotland. They raised him in New Rochelle, NY, which is not exactly the Bronx Saying that he was raised by “immigrants” is a touch disingenuous. His blue collar schtick seems to be entirely manufactured.
Leno was 42 when he took over the Tonight Show, which is younger than O’Brien is. I am fairly sure that Conan logs long hours himself. The primary difference is that Conan was more successful than Leno prior to assuming the desk. So, not only is O’Brien older than Leno was in ’92, he is better qualified.
So, let’s see …
Under-stating the relative privilege of his background? Check.
An excuse for his early failings that does not include actually taking responsibility for them? Check.
One sets of values for me and another for thee? Check.
Making an elaborate show of your utterly hypocritical value system? Check.
Fingerprints on the knife in the back of a mentor, a peer and a potential successor? Check.
A flaming ruin of a great American institution while he screams “not my fault”? Check.
The more I think about it, Leno is pretty much the embodiment of everything I dislike about Boomers.
Betseed
@Chris Johnson
13th Gen is great! It’s all about the post-boom generation and what they think about Boomers.
As for the anti-war movement, who do you think was protesting the second Iraq War? Millions of Gen Xers–who weren’t at risk of being drafted.
Citizen Alan
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
You were at Kent State? You personally were at Kent State? As opposed to it being something that you saw on TV and then decided was something that you were a part of just because it happened to other people with whom you identified? I bet you marched with Dr. King and moshed at Woodstock, too.
Citizen Alan
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
You are absolutely right. He was impeached but not convicted. Because he couldn’t keep his fucking pants zipped up around a 25-year-old intern. Thank you for pointing out a minor misstatement which is completely irrelevant to my larger point. You ridiculous pedant.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
(1) I don’t blame my parents for jack. Because my mom and dad are are 74 and 79 respectively, way too old to be a Boomer. That’s why they raised me right, unlike most of my friends who got all kinds of fucked up when their loser Boomer parents got divorced when the kids were still in elementary school because somebody either “wanted to find themselves” or just hooked up with somebody else.
(2) I may not be working on a Saturday night but I work and pay taxes just like you do. I expect I’ll have to do so until I’m 70 because greedy grasping Boomers will push Congress to “fix” Social Security by preserving all benefits for people presently in their mid-50’s and slashing benefits for everyone who comes after, even though those of us who started working in the 1980’s paid a bigger percentage in payroll taxes than our blessed elders did before Reagan came along. “Shared sacrifice,” and all that.
I get along fine with my parents. They aren’t whiny selfish jackass Baby Boomers.
Of course. Exactly the mind-set I’ve come to expect from the worst generation in American history. Big ole babies, every one of you.
Ronnie
@Citizen Alan:
There were no mosh pits at Woodstock. Mud pits, yes.
Uriel
Hmmm I only got to around post 130 or so, but I just wanted to clear something up about this particular thread and all the “shut up grandpa/get off my yard punks” stuff-
This is just sort of an elaborate performance art thing, right? Sort of throwing all that around ironically to highlight it’s absurdity and such. Like the Church of the SubGenius?
I mean, I just want to make sure that I don’t read 200 posts only to find I was mistaken about everyone’s real intentions. Because then I’d miss all the subtle nuance and technique.
So we all agree- none of us actually believes this nonsense, right?
Uriel
@Citizen Alan:
Hey- I like MILFs. Everybody I know likes MILFs. What the hell is so wrong with MILFs?
This thread really better be an exercise in surrealism. Or I’m going to have to punch a whole bunch of hippie and punk rocker necks.
Will
Yeah. Fuck those boomers and Gen-Xers. They suck.
You know who else sucks? The Jews.
And don’t even get me started about the blacks.
…
Fucking morons.
mapaghimagsik
@Citizen Alan:
oh snap!
scarshapedstar
Young folks watch Conan because we like to actually watch the show. And then have sex.
Geezers prefer to start snoring after the opening monologue, and enter deep REM sleep while Leno interviews 4-year-old spelling whiz.
Then they wake up to turn the TV off when they’re woken by the noisy performance by Huey Lewis and the News or whatever.
Royston Vasey
@jl: Generation Jones? That’s a new one for me. Not quite a boomer, and not quite Gen-X.
Older than DougJ and younger than Dr Bloor.
No real recollection of the 60s, apart from the moon landing. The 70s were growing up time.
Iran and Carter were the first real items that I took an interest in.
RV+10
NobodySpecial
Folks bagging on GenXers who didn’t seem overly motivated? Wow.
Us GenXers were brought up on the idea that the boomers had already done it all – given us civil rights, women’s lib, free love until disease, illegal substances. And then in the mid 80’s, the Berlin Wall fell and so did the USSR. Then entered an age where everyone who was running things assured us that the Golden Age of America had begun, and we had no peer in the world, and everything had been fixed.
Of course, it wasn’t, but we didn’t learn that until much later.
mattH
No, it was when Young told Conan just how much he appreciated how Conan helped out new musicians and new music.
The Rolling Sex Pistol Stones
You know who I hate? Those fucking gen z punks.
I mean, half of them are dumping good money into special ‘dreadlock’ product even though they’re white kids with stringy blond hair, and fooling themselves into believing The String Cheese Incident and Lenny Kravitz are the spiritual successors of the Dead and Hendrix, while the other half are runnig around sporting faux-hawks and pretending that “Plans,” “Dookie,” and “Antichrist Superstar” are somehow equivalent to “Pornography,” “My War,” and “Nail.”
Look, kiddos- if the dreads don’t form naturally then what you’ve got is long hair, and if you get to comb your hair down and return to your fucking 9 to 5 at state farm in the morning, then it’s just a fucking Halloween costume. I don’t care all that much if you lack the imagination to develop a cultural identity of your own, but if all your going to do is steal mine, at least do it fucking right. Assholes.
Plus, what have their politicians done for us lately?
They are a cancerous blight on the face of this country and I say: Kill them all, burn the bodies where they fall, and salt the earth that covers their bones.
The horror. The horror…..
(And don’t get me started on the 8-13 year old Miley Cyrus set. Because there’s no end to the horrors they will have to attone for.)
The Rolling Sex Pistol Stones
@The Rolling Sex Pistol Stones: Sorry- I meant gen y. That’s how angry this crap makes me!!!!!
TR
Again, 0.00001% of your generation does something good, and you all wrap yourselves in it with utter sanctimony like you ALL did it.
But millions and millions of yuppie scum in the 1980s? Oh no, that had nothing to do with you.
debbie
@Leelee for Obama:
I don’t dispute that Phil Donahue was a nice guy, but he made the choice to go for sensationalism over substance. He’s the forerunner for so much of the garbage in media/news today.
Svensker
If there were a draft now, a heck of a lot more kids would be involved, as in the 60s. A friend’s 32-year-old DIL was one of those arrested in D.C. for protesting Guantanamo. Here’s an e-mail:
Day 12: Fast and Vigil for Justice
Hello Friends-
All of our friends who spent last night and the better part of today in jail, have now been released. After 30 hours locked up, the system slowly grinded on, and people have a first court date of March 18. We’ll keep you in the loop as details around a possible trial come together.
From those who were arrested, there were stories of joy as well as frustration…fear as well as affirmation. The cuffs that were painfully tightened. The prison guard in DC who was once a guard in Guantanamo (and supports our protest). The prisoner in central cell block sitting down after getting a four year sentence to share some of his own journey. The US Marshall quietly slipping a few dollars to a defendant clearly down on his luck. (we’ll share some more reflections from those who spent time in lock up as they are written) Exposure to the criminal justice system, behind bars and in the courtroom, often reveals human beings at their best and at their worst.
After leaving the courthouse and shuttling folks back to the Capitol police headquarters to receive property, we returned to St. Stephen’s for a 9:30pm meal to break our fast together. There were around 75 gathered in community to end the 12 day fast.
For many, the end of the fast is bittersweet. There was something beautiful about the gathering this evening, and at the same time, quite sad. The focus which we have maintained for two weeks, on the lives of the men in Guantanamo, will dissipate as many begin to enter the routine of three meals a day and our “regular” lives.
The news here in Washington for the men in Guantanamo is not good. Not only has the deadline for Guantanamo’s closure been missed, but the Obama administration has announced an indefinite detention scheme, currently focused on 50 men being held in Guantanamo.
So tomorrow we get up, go back to the White House to join with the Voices in the Wilderness “Peaceable Assemblies” campaign (http://vcnv.org/pac), and then gather for a final reflection at St. Stephen’s. Our time together in DC is drawing to a close. It has truly been a gift to be able to share it with each other and with you. And we look forward to building on what we have learned, and continuing to plan, experiment, and conspire with this growing community.
Thank you for all that you do!
Peace with Justice,
Witness Against Torture
http://www.witnesstorture.org
Chris Johnson
GenX kids being shot to death was not epochal news, it was routine.
We count black people, you see.
If you figure Kent State was epochal and the first time kids were shot to death- you are STILL not counting black people, even while claiming the mantle of the greatest civil rights generation ever to exist.
WTF?
Mothra
Hi, Baby Boomer married to Baby Boomer mother of Gen Xers here.
The health care crisis impacts those of us in our fifties hugely. We can’t make the moves we’d like to make solely because of the problem of health insurance.
My brother can’t quit his job and start a new small business because his wife is an uninsurable cancer survivor.
My best friend and her husband are paying $1,400 a month for family coverage. They have preexisting conditions that make their insurance bill that high.
My oldest son is currently unemployed and could be added on to my insurance under the Senate bill.
Another friend would love to retire and let a young new teacher take her job-but she’s in her late fifties, which is a long ways from Medicare.
I know few folks in their fifties who do not completely get why we need health care reform and why we need Wall Street reform.
We aren’t a bunch of tea baggers. A lot of us even love Conan. :)
I share DougJ’s view that we may have a rough ten years ahead of us, and then we’ll finally establish ourselves as a first world social democracy.
We won’t get there if you guys don’t keep pushing. Whine, yes, you need to whine and complain, but please, let’s act, too. Call, write, march, and proselytize.
Pococurante
A 46 year old is still a boomer… ;-)
Maxwel
But, but boomers were the original hippies!
MaryS-NJ
I was born in 1962 and started college in 1980 which makes me a demographic misfit (Boomer? Gen-X?). My peers at the (northeastern, Catholic) University that I attended Freshman year were practically rapturous about Ronald Reagan. Some of their zeal reminded me of young Obama supporters in 2008 actually. Many of our professors, including the (Boomer and older) Jesuit priests, were more liberal than these 18-25 year old energized disciples of Reagan. Anyway… Those of my peers are part of the “Right” that put Reagan in the White House and set the whole ball of shit in motion.
MaryS-NJ
I was born in 1962 and started college in 1980 which makes me a demographic misfit (Boomer? Gen-X?). My peers at the (northeastern, Catholic) University that I attended Freshman year were practically rapturous about Ronald Reagan. Some of their zeal reminded me of young Obama supporters in 2008 actually. Many of our professors, including the (Boomer and older) Jesuit priests, were more liberal than these 18-25 year old energized disciples of Reagan. Anyway… Those of my peers are part of the “Right” that put Reagan in the White House and set the whole ball of shit in motion.
MaryS-NJ
I was born in 1962 and started college in 1980 which makes me a demographic misfit (Boomer? Gen-X?). My peers at the (northeastern, Catholic) University that I attended Freshman year were practically rapturous about Ronald Reagan. Some of their zeal reminded me of young Obama supporters in 2008 actually. Many of our professors, including the (Boomer and older) Jesuit priests, were more liberal than these 18-25 year old energized disciples of Reagan. Anyway… Those of my peers are part of the “Right” that put Reagan in the White House and set the whole ball of shit in motion.
CS Lewis Jr
Fuck the Boomers. Fuck them in the ear with a borrowed dick.