I’m not denying the point that 60s radicals became 80s boomers — I have seen the Big Chill, thank you — I’m just baffled at the gotcha she thinks she’s making
Exactly! By definition, LOTS of kids were born after 1945. They kept extending the timeline as the boom continued. Those with agendas use a few examples to categorize a huge swath of people!
I mean, they were always boomers, they didn't turn into them, you know, baby boom and all. A lot of the spiritual leaders were whatever the previous generation was (Wavy Gravy, Jerry Rubin, Jerry Garcia, Grace Slick). P.S. Wavy Gravy's actual last name is Romney.
I think that's the point. She's calling the media hypocrites for not kissing beloved Boomer ass. That generation is ceaselessly envious of youth and lust after its relevancy.
Boomer here. Great big cohort, coming of age just as media marketing really took off. We were capitalism's dream children and a lot of us came to believe the hype from the people flattering us to sell product.
Yeah, as always, capitalism is the real enemy here. There are both amazing and amazingly stupid people in every generation. I just wish there was much more empathy and consideration for the future.
So like me, she would have graduated college in 83-84. There were no jobs. No one got that cushy pension they were promised. Unions were being crushed. Fucking Reagan.
I was 10. And I suspect most of the "boomers" people dont like are the ones that watch Fox News, never protested anything, and probably didnt go to college either.
That today's activists become tomorrow's conservatives?
Which, even if true, is such a completely banal observation that it might as well never been made?
Most students on campuses—not to mention most people who were college-age during theVietnam War—didn’t participate in protests. The counter-culture was never a majority; that would have made it the culture.
The students actively protesting now aren't a majority either of course, but the era of PR and constant opinion polling makes some people think that activism is about having a good enough comms game to make your cause popular.
I am often not sure whether these writers actually believe this stuff or if they think their audience is unaware of history and credulous enough to swallow it.
I suspect it's both, depending on the writer and the day. The effect is largely the same regardless.
I think it's a widespread mythology that all young people in the 1960s were doing drugs and going to Vietnam War protests. Certainly, conservatives who were young adults at the time had it living in their heads for 50+ years now, younger people assume it was true because that's what they're told.
I remember as a teenager asking my mother whether she was political in university — she was a student in the late 60s/early 70s — and was very disappointed when I discovered that yes, she was the treasurer for the student union.
Many liberal students weren't radicals either, and she liked math.
I've always had the feeling that she has some complicated baggage related to growing up in Berkeley in the '60s. I read her father's corny Irish history novels when I was a kid, and I'm actually super curious about what the story is there. Did her parents neglect her to go to protests or something?
It's hard to be bothered when we don't seem to exist, at least according to literally every think piece that compares generations. Not complaining, just saying.
Agree 100%. It is amazing how we are literally left out of discussions, as if it jumped from Boomers to Millennials directly. Possibly why we loathe both...?
The best I can come up with is "haha, the people you're talking about as role models are the people you hate and mock, dummies!" And maybe "I'm assuming you don't know that, or you'd reject them for being insufficiently pure!"
It’s self excusing congratulation. “My nihilism is an inexorable historic force, not a personal betrayal of my own ideals. The only real monster is the youngster who critiques my beloved status quo.”
I'm 76. Loathed or not, many of my circle of boomer friends and family are rooting for these students, and thankful for the schools that have chosen to listen and consider divestment, rather than call in riot troops.
I think her gotcha is at the prevailing disdain for boomers. The idea: people who dis boomers now celebrate a particular group w/out taking into account that the group is made up of boomers. As if someone who sneered at the English but loved Abbey Road were reminded where the Beatles were from.
