30 October 2020

Those Irrepressible Boomers

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I just can’t get all hot ’n bothered by all this pro/anti Boomer stuff.

I remember not caring about it and making fun of it almost twenty-five years ago:

The Anti Boomer Page
Published April 8, 1997
… Here's a kid sick of hearing about Boomers -- and I don't blame him … When I was his age all I ever heard about was the Depression and WWII. What a bore.

Sixteen years ago this was published:

The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy
by Leonard Steinhorn
It's fashionable to mock Boomers as self-involved and materialistic. But what really is the true legacy of the Boomers?

Good book. Read Brent Green’s take on it: Redefining Generational Greatness.

Professor Steinhorn was featured in a Washington Post Magazine piece in January:

He wrote the book on boomers, and he thinks the Gen Z rap against them isn’t quite OK
By Graham Vyse
… As a millennial raised by a pair of liberal boomers, I’m instinctively sympathetic to Steinhorn’s case. I’m close to my parents, and I share their values, so it made sense when Steinhorn told me there’s much less of a cultural “generation gap” between boomers and younger cohorts than between boomers and their parents.

Now David Cravit is tossing up videos about it all. He does a fine job walking us through the history of Boomers, demolishing dumb myths:

The Unapologetic Boomer
... If you're a Baby Boomer tired of being blamed for everything, this is your place. I offer a blunt, but evidence-based, argument for why the Boomers have nothing to apologize for.

And Ashton Applewhite is pulverizing parallel myths about Ageism:

This Chair Rocks
… From childhood on, we’re barraged by messages that it’s sad to be old. That wrinkles are embarrassing, and old people useless …

May I mention that yours truly is mentioned in Ms. Applewhite’s book?

The Chuck is Very Cool and Cutting-Edge and a Very Important Person Post
… Ashton Applewhite, a leading activist and shaker-upper in the You’re-An-Asshole-If-You’re-Ageist world, quoted me in her book This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism

My takes on these subjects are usually tongue-in-cheek. A few years ago a silly book came out and I had fun goofing on it:

76 Million Sociopaths Outed
… Being a narcissistic boomer, I loved reading the article - although it was rather vague, didn’t have any substance or facts. But that’s fine. It’s a teaser. No doubt the author has impressive degrees in history and sociology, maybe even psychology. So the book should be fantastic, and not written by some dildo blowhard with nothing much to say …

And there are other underlying reasons why my generation is the tops:

People are always coming up to me and asking, “Chuck, why are Baby Boomers so wonderful?”
How rare it is to have an infinite number of correct answers to a single question! One of my standard replies: It has to do with our alimentary intake during adolescence …

Blaming Boomers. It’s just simple-minded people looking for simple-minded answers.