Right up front, let me proclaim that I have many friends, family members and colleagues who are members of Generation X. We hug. We get along. We learn from each other.
I don’t have a problem with GenX, but emerging opinion leaders from that generation sure have a problem with Boomers.
Just in the last couple of years various op-ed columns have appeared in the nation’s newspapers, written by admitted members of Generation X. And they’re peeved at Boomers. This includes columns in the New York Times, The Rocky Mountain News and SF Weekly.
The most recent journalistic exercise in Boomer bashing comes from the LA Times under the authorship of Meghan Daum and entitled The Millstone of Boomer Milestones.
You can read the full version from the link above. But if you’re pressed for time, allow me to share a few pertinent quotes:
As a member of Generation X, I should know I've been strong armed into an appreciation of '60s and '70s pop culture my whole life.
... for every truly significant event of 1968, there are half a dozen not necessarily newsworthy happenings that we're goaded into remembering with just as much gusto.
Maybe that's because my generational cohorts and I have already endured five anniversaries of 1968 (one for each decade, plus the 25th thrown in for good measure) as well as four Woodstock revivals and countless Summer of Love themed concerts.
In the 1990s, when GenXers weren't busy thinking up synonyms for “alienated,” we were carving out a collective identity largely concerned with our role as the victims of any number of Boomer imposed crimes (dwindling Social Security, fearsome divorce statistics, AIDS as the death rattle of the free love party).
... the Boomers' monopoly on society, namely that any cultural artifact predating the 1960s is no longer merely obscure but facing imminent extinction
Trying to confront this silliness with a thoughtful letter to the editor is nearly futile. I've rarely seen a rebuttal letter to any Boomer-bashing column, my own included. The gatekeepers at newspapers and magazines really don’t embrace challenging criticism of their coddled columnists. So here’s the letter that the LA Times might have printed if they had editorial cojones.
The Millstone of Boomer Milestone Criticism
Meghan Daum’s op-ed screed against the Boomer generation reflects four decades of obstinate antipathy toward Baby Boomers — another kind of millstone. Self-anointing herself as a vitriolic voice of Generation X, she rails against this springs’s many commemorations of 1968: a bellwether year that most historians agree constructively changed the world.
Ms. Daum apparently does not appreciate the distinctive force of generational identification. Generational identification is the degree to which members of a group born at a certain time in history see themselves as different from previous generations and then form a unique social class. Although generational identification becomes obvious through popular music and art, it is also a fundamental force of grassroots societal change. Some generations have a lot of it; some don’t. Boomers probably do; GenXers probably don’t.
When we see ourselves as part of a dissimilar generation, and powerfully identify with gathering collective mentalities of that historical time, we embrace and help force revolutionary ideas into mainstream value consensus. For Boomers, this drive toward perfectibility of the human condition most constructively spirited activism around civil rights, gender equality, institutional accountability, and environmental awareness. Everything else was just cultural window dressing.
High levels of generational identification persist, leading to communal actions and periodic commemorations across the lifespan. This columnist/critic obsesses about the obvious and neglects the most striking manifestations of 1968 in today’s news.
Boomer optimism, self-empowerment and activism have helped escort the nation to a time when an African American man, a middle-aged woman, and a 72-year-old man are simultaneously vying to become the American president while shattering the once intractable barriers of racism, sexism and ageism. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are members of the post-World War II baby boom cohort. John McCain is of the Silent Generation, a cohort Daum acknowledges as having substantive influence on the values that became important to Boomers as they reached adulthood. In all three candidacies, we see the walls crumbling down.
It’s one thing to grow weary of a generation’s cultural dominance and therefore predictable celebration of milestones; it’s quite another to miss the significance of that generation’s enduring contributions.
Ms. Daum’s jeremiad further fails to address one widely appreciated consequence of Boomer assertiveness — in the marketplace. Few businesses revile Boomer consumers, including a newspaper that undoubtedly counts on this self-absorbed generation to provide a disproportionate share of subscribers/readers and advertising-targeted dollars.
These truths continue to emerge about media coverage of the Baby Boomer Generation:
1) Economically, the Boomer market is white hot, with dozens of daily news reports covering how our collective wealth is changing marketing and invigorating an entrepreneurial surge of new products and services;
2) Sociologically, Boomers constitute one of the nation's most disparaged reference groups, with periodic journalistic diatribes berating the generation for narcissism, cultural hegemony, and other high crimes.
Pick one.
Boomers ROCK! They have power that the GenX's wish they had ... perhaps when they grow up!
Denise
Posted by: Denise Clarke | June 12, 2008 at 07:24 AM