What stereotypes of boomers are you sick of hearing?

[CBHagman]

Oh, dear. I just flew into a rage after reading a few posts claiming that we boomers A) got everything handed to us on a silver platter and B) merrily screwed up the world, leaving a disaster to the poor, heartbroken upcoming generations. :eyes:

While I'm warming to the subject, I mustn't forget that some in the media appear to believe we boomers A) invented premarital sex and B) teenaged pregnancy and C) drug abuse and D) coarsening of the culture. :eyes:

Ahem. I had no idea I'd be leading such a life, nor that I had such power, nor that the people who surrounded me growing up were such pampered little souls.

So unload your beefs here, please. I'm dying to hear them (perhaps literally).

[Imalittleteapot]

1. Yeah, we boomers really screwed things up.

Guilty as charged: Civil Rights. Womens Rights. Supporting the aging "Greatest Generation" through SS. The Beatles. Mick Jagger. Bob Dylan. Space Exploration. Ending the Vietnam War. etc. etc. etc.

Someone called c-span this morning and said that we boomers are a selfish bunch. The trend is to frame us as you stated, "...got everything handed to us on a silver platter...". I think it's an effort to make those of us that have faith in the Social Security and who are unwilling to support Bush's privitization scheme look as if we are thinking only of ourselves and not of future generations. Of course, the opposite is true.

[CBHagman]

2. I know. People act as though pensions...

...are a handout to the undeserving, rather than a civilized way of keeping society reasonably stable and just.

However, I will say that the stereotype of baby boomers as spoiled brats preceded the Bush administration and its Social Security plans. It's the kind of lazy generalization I've noticed in editorials and articles of major newspapes (e.g., The Washington Post). Perhaps it's fed by the silly notion that this country was a place of virtue and perfection until the '60s came along. :-)

[shanti]

15. of course the opposite is true

there were so many of us that there was a LOT of competition. now the group after us....:evilgrin:

[Longhorn]

3. I resent the attitude that we don't know when to quit and let the younger

generation take over. Instead of being admired for wanting to stay young and vital, our parents' generation seems to resent that we haven't given up. So those younger and those older all seem to think we should be be headed to the old folks home!

[CBHagman]

4. David Broder, of all people, has that attitude.

Some months back Broder wrote a column on the attacks on John Kerry's military service, painting it as merely an old baby boomers' tiff. He then observed that boomers were in their 60s and would be passing the torch to another generation anyway and in so many words said they'd be out of the country's hair shortly.

Mind you, I haven't heard that Broder is going to quit any time soon, and I'm sure he must be a good deal older than the average baby boomer.

Anyway, apparently Broder got all kinds of e-mails pointing out his faulty math and logic skills, given that boomers range in age from the 40s to nearly 60.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. That we were all hippies who hypocritically turned into yuppies

I was too straight-laced to be a hippie and too poor to be a yuppie.

[SW FL Dem]

6. LOL, I was too young to be a true hippie

Hubby and I made enough to be Yuppies, butwe always supported and voted for Dems.

[raccoon]

7. Both those things you said,

and that baby boomers are spoiled, selfish, self-absorbed.

Not all baby boomers had everything handed to them--I didn't, most of my friends didn't either.

That we "screwed up the world"--yeah, that one p's me off too. At one time in the 60's I thought "the older generation" (the one Tom Brokaw named "the greatest generation"--so if a JOURNALIST said it, it must be holy gospel, right?) had messed everything up. Some years later I could see that it wasn't my parents and my friends' parents who "screwed everything up;" the power elite did that. Same stuff, different decade.

[CBHagman]

8. About the spoiled bit...

When I was growing up, I knew really large families, families with nine to 13 children. Granted, it wasn't the average, but you'd hear of it. That meant brothers bunking six to a room or the like. Having your own room was a pretty big deal in those days (at least to me it was :-)), and of course there were families who just had one bathroom for the entire clan. Habitat for Humanity families still live that way.

The era immediately following World War II did see a rise in standard of living, but it wasn't luxury for everyone.

Also, I recall parenting styles were still pretty strict (corporal punishment and the like). Again, it's not everyone's story, but it pretty much puts the lie to the spoiled baby boomer stereotype.

[raccoon]

9. Similar to my experience

I don't recall families that big, but 3-4 kids seemed to be the norm.
Five or six occasionally.

Having your own room was a rarity. One bathroom was the norm.
One car per family was the norm. As for high school students having a car, very few did. Some boys did, and they were older cars.

And in my experience, too, parenting styles were still pretty strict. No "permissiveness" in my neck of the woods.

[spooky3]

17. Two parents and 3+ kids in a 1000 square foot house

was the norm when I grew up. Most of my friends did not have their own rooms, and I didn't for a long time.

[fortyfeetunder]

10. That we are practically dead at 50.

My boomer friends who've lost work have been stymied by HR, thinking folks in their 40's and 50's are incapable of being productive workers.

What a crock of stuff....

[CBHagman]

11. My professors at university were MOST productive in the 50s

I recall a group of professors who simply seemed to flourish in their 50s -- writing, taking on creative activities, leading stimulating courses, and obviously loving their work.

My new mantra is that 60 is the new 40. Hey, I can dream, can't I? :-)

[libodem]

12. hhhmmmmm,very interesting

I also contemplate the fate of the baby boomer's. We are thus named, such as we happened, after world war two. Those of us born between the 40-60's may be sharing a unique point in time. I can't say how. But we belong to together in a shared experience. And our world is changing before us, before our very eyes.

[ruthg]

13. That we were all rich and that we are all rich....

I never was and I am still not.


I am a social worker, the husband is a teacher. We have two kids in college....we ain't rich. We never will be. And that is just fine with us.

[Lowell]

14. We weren't all hippies

I spent most of the 60s and 70s serving in the Army overseas. I watched it all happen on the pages of Stars and Stripes Pacific edition. There are a lot of veterans from the boomer generation that never really fit in completely because we were part of the disaster in south east asia.

That said we loved the same music and shared many of the same views. Being witnesses to history in Vietnam we had an even better grasp of what was really going on than the rest of the population did sitting at home and watching it on TV.

So many of us never were hippies, but we did protest the war and share a time in history when civil disobedience gained acceptance. I don't think we were lazy and I know we didn't have everything handed to us on a silver platter.

[CBHagman]

16. A hero and a zero in today's battle of the boomer stereotypes.

Oh, how I hate that 90th rate cartoonist Scott Stantis (he of "Prickly City," for which there are many good derogatory names). See the cartoon for November 29, 2005.

http://www.ucomics.com/pricklycity/

On the other hand, Abigail Trafford ROCKS. :loveya: You don't have to be a boomer to love her column, but she really speaks to people where they are. She really smashes the stereotypes and deals with the issues.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/26/AR2005112600033.html

[Acryliccalico]

18. The Ultra Rich always have to blame

something other than themselves. We learned in the 60s to challenge what we believed was unjust. If we waist our time defending ourselves, instead of looking for TRUTH, then they win. :kick:

[CBHagman]

19. Good point.

Also, I was re-reading an e-mail that Michael Moore sent out concerning the anniversary of Rosa Parks's decision to challenge a discriminatory law rather than just complying with it. The point is this, and it's not a direct quote from Moore or Parks: We have to be willing to be ridiculed and slandered when we do something that challenges the existing order. Remember that quote from Gandhi about how you face opposition and ridicule before you succeed in your effort? We have to think about that right now.

Also, I was very taken with a quotation from Gerry Adams, and I think this is an exact quote: It's not the leap itself but where it takes us all that's important.

[CBHagman]

20. Memo from Robert Samuelson: We boomers are "selfish."

:eyes:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/09/AR2007010901334.html


I'm glad to see all the intelligent commentary from various Post readers here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/comments/display?contentID=AR2007010901334

[raccoon]

21. You hear it on DU too. I guess it's still OK to stereotype a whole generation,

but saying similar things about a certain ethinicity or even one sex or the other is a no-no.

[Why Syzygy]

22. Someone on DU equated Boomers with the "Me" Generation.

A bunch of us set them straight. Hippies get a bad rap these days, too. I don't get it. Never appreciated :(

[old mark]

23. Well, I don't know what you expect from young DUers - they are shallow

whiners who never had to pull their own weight and are too inexperienced to know anything anyway.DU's mainly reminds me of high school with a bad attitude (Learned from idiotic TV shows.)
Felt great to say that.
:evilgrin: :hippie: :spank: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

mark

[MzNov]

24. Hippies' stereotype of being dirty, lazy, always on drugs

Hippies experimented quite a lot, of course, with drugs and sex. But so did "regular" people in the 60's and 70's. But the hippie movement had some positives. There was much attention brought to Peace and Anti-War, which the country eventually agreed. The Hippies were the beginning of an important movement.

[LiberalEsto]

25. We're hogging all the good jobs

Give me a BREAK!. Nobody wants to hire a 57-year-old female former newspaper reporter. I'm as obsolete as a buggy whip maker.

Companies LOVE buying out older workers and replacing them with low-paid new college graduates or, better yet, lower-paid people from other countries who come here on H1-B visas. There companies whine that there aren't enough American tech workers, so this somehow justifies increasing the number of H-1B visas. Well the companies are lying. My husband's a data professional, and he knows plenty of people, including his brother, whose jobs have been destroyed by H1-B visa abuses. There are plenty of competent computer professionals out there looking for work; unfortunately they need to earn enough money to eat, pay the rent, have health coverage and pay off their student loans. Corporations just don't want to pay people enough to be able to do those things.

[MzNov]

26. No better example of this than in CA

Silicon Valley.

I see it every day. I thank my lucky stars every day that I still have my job.

[CBHagman]

27. And don't forget the ever-popular...

...cry of "It's our turn now. Get out of the way!" :eyes: As if we're going to slap our foreheads and say, "You're right! How selfish of me to work for a living, or volunteer. I'll just go die, shall I?"