Tuesday, December 20, 2005
The Grating Generation
I've been hearing about the 'baby boomers' all my life. Not falling into that particular cohort (unlike the propriator of this blog) I'm a little weary of the whole thing. Too bad for me. They have and will continue to profoundly influence our culture and politics, for good or ill.
When Bill Clinton was elected my late father said "I always dreaded the day when the 60s generation would come to power." He maintained hope that somehow the presidency would be skip that generation, but no such luck.
What is it about this cohort that drives many of us crazy? For me, it is their obsession with self, and since they now essentially control the media, we're all along for the ride whether we like it or not.
In the Boston Globe, columnist Alex Beam writes about what he calls the Grating Generation (of which he is a member).
Steel yourselves. There's a lot more where that came from.
When Bill Clinton was elected my late father said "I always dreaded the day when the 60s generation would come to power." He maintained hope that somehow the presidency would be skip that generation, but no such luck.
What is it about this cohort that drives many of us crazy? For me, it is their obsession with self, and since they now essentially control the media, we're all along for the ride whether we like it or not.
In the Boston Globe, columnist Alex Beam writes about what he calls the Grating Generation (of which he is a member).
The first baby boomers start turning 60 next month, and of course there is a rush to analyze What It All Means. Newsweek arrived early to the prattle-fest, blathering in a cover story about the boomers' ''existential journey" and how they have ''leveled the decades-old walls between the races . . . and the genders."
Here's what it all means to me: The continuing cultural hegemony of the boomers means that, for the rest of my life, every time I turn on a radio, I run the risk of hearing the song ''A Horse With No Name." Now there's a reason to move to Canada.
How does one loathe the boomers? Let me count the ways. Their obsession with money borders on the comical. About half of them were planning to live off their stock portfolios up until the dot-com crash of early 2001. Oops. Time to recalculate. The Wall Street Journal has predicted that a hot book of 2006 will be ''The Number," by former Esquire editor Lee Eisenberg. The title refers to how much money the typical boomer will need to ditch the rat race and fulfill his/her biological destiny: doing nothing.
The logical extension of the boomers' breathless self-regard is their plan to live forever. (Newsweek sadly notes that several hundred thousand boomers
have already died -- how can this be?) The Pied Piper of boomer immortality is inventor Ray Kurzweil, who gobbles 250 pills a day and says, ''We have the means right now to live long enough to live forever." Whatever that means.
Steel yourselves. There's a lot more where that came from.
2 Comments:
By 
Cardinalpark, at
Tue Dec 20, 01:04:00 PM:
I would actually call them something a little more serious, I think -- the decadent generation. For whatever combination of reasons, it is a generation that has embraced one example after the next of moral decay. Our society will ultimately not miss the self adulation, the relentless pursuit of instnat gratification and other less appealing elements of this little birth bubble...
By 
, at
Tue Dec 20, 10:06:00 PM:
May I recommend 'The Boomer Bible' by R. F. Laird? Check it out:
http://www.boomerbible.com/
