Maybe Whining Boomers Have a Reason to Complain

We promised we'd weigh in on the recent Boomer-basing articles referencing various research studies about the unhappiness of Boomers.

We did so in our twice monthly Op/Ed column "Viva the Vital." You can read the piece here.

In it, you'll note, we reference "gen-ism," or bias and stereotyping based on one's generational cohort. That concept and term comes from Brent Green, author of Marketing to Leading Edge Boomers and a man on a mission to stamp out ageism and genism.

Brent has a blog worth a read.

Tell us your opinion about generational bias. Send in a comment.

Boomers Skewered in the Washington Post

No wonder Boomers aren't happy these days. It's articles like this one in today's Washington Post pointing out how unhappy Boomers are that is doing it. To wit:

Perpetually restless, utterly mysterious and so very multitudinous -- 76 million -- that the rest of us are doomed to study them, analyze them, wave shiny objects around for them. ...It's all part of the frantic tap dance of figuring out how to raise boomers' tender and flagging happiness, when what we want to say is, BUCK UP ALREADY.

The reporter, Monica Hesse, according to one source, is a twentysomething up-and-comer at the Post. Her story is about the recent Pew Research study that concluded Boomers are gloomier than other generations. We have been thinking about offering up our take on the Pew findings, and will weigh in with a separate post.

Hesse had contacted us last week for a comment, but we didn't connect and she proceeded with her piece. She mentions our Boomer Consumer book -- not exactly in the best context, but we'll take the publicity.

We sent Hesse a note and told her to expect an outpouring of comments from Boomers -- mostly defensive, but also agreeing with her. The reason Boomers will respond is that they don't like being generalized and labeled. Labeling them "whiners," as Hesse does, will surely stir the pot.

Sure enough, take a look at the growing number and intensity of comments the article has generated. There are too many great ones to share here, so here's two:

What an astonishingly ageist article. It would have had more impact without the snark factor, Monica. The way you've written it, the one who comes off as immature is you.

And this one:

My, the writer seems to have "issues" with the Baby Boomers. I thought the whole point of true journalism was to at least try to keep your own attitudes out of your stories - otherwise, there is another venue. It's called an "editorial." Might I say, however, that if the writer's attitudes HAD to have been incorporated, it would have been much more efficient just to say "neener neener neener" and let it go at that. The stick-your-tongue-out immaturity would still have been conveyed.

Gotta love those Boomers. Quick to defend their turf. And predictable.

More "Age Wars" as Gen Xers Attack Boomers

Last week Gen Xer Meghan Daum penned an Op/Ed for The Los Angeles Times called "The millstone of Boomer milestones."

It's a doozy. Some snippets:

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. There are an estimated 76 million boomers (10,000 babies a day on average, born between 1946 and 1964), while we Xers (born between 1965 and 1982) number a paltry 48 million. So boomers set the tone for everyone. Their tastes, needs and values are considered America's default setting. They turn 60, and it warrants magazine covers. They get a cold, and the world sneezes with them.

So privileged is this group, they've been allowed to change generational labels the way they changed their (always "groundbreaking") clothing styles. They've been known, in whole or in part, as the Dr. Spock Generation, the Free Love Generation, the Generation That Changed America, the Me Generation, Hippies, Yuppies, Bobos and, to certain members of Gen X, "moronic aging hippie posers." Despite having grown out of the category years ago, they remain, thanks to a certain iconic TV show, etched in the popular imagination as forever "thirtysomething."

But wait, there's more. The piece generated a firestorm of mail -- almost from Boomers, navel gazing and complaining.

We find this "war of the ages" amusing. Under someone loses an eye.

The Return of the Age Wars

First, there was Christopher Buckley's Boomsday satire, where a Gen Xer suggests Boomers commit suicide at age 65 to save Social Security and Medicare for younger generations.

Now comes Jeff Gordinier's X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft But Can Still Keep Everything From Sucking. Here's a review of it in today's USATODAY. Better yet, read this short excerpt.

We first wrote about the Age Wars about a year ago, and summed up our take on it in this op/ed piece last summer (PDF file).

Here's an excerpt from it:

The first shots came last spring in a PBS documentary, Boomer Century. We don’t think producer Ken Dychtwald meant to launch “Age Wars,” but he did. Virtually all reviews and commentaries were not about the show, but attacks on Boomers. We found it in traditional media. We found it in the blogs.

Commentary by Martin Kuz, in SF Weekly titled “Boomtastrophe” represents the best, or worst, depending on your point-of-view. “Boomers,” Kuz begins, “have largely squandered their chance to improve the world.” He then proceeds to take Boomers to the woodshed for an unmerciful beating. He gets absolutely apoplectic that Boomers haven’t fixed Social Security or Medicaid, and will bankrupt both.

This assessment is at best premature, and at worst, unfair, inaccurate and biased. Neither entitlement was by or for Boomers, nor have many, if any, Boomers collected a dime from either program. Nobody doubts that they have the potential to ruin both through the sheer force and magnitude of their numbers. But let’s be honest. It wasn’t the Boomers who failed to see their own demographic tidal wave coming — it was the previous generations of social policy makers.

We're not sure where the war goes next, but it's interesting to watch it unfold.

Baby Boomers Invented Computers

This week's Newsweek takes a dive off the deep end in another article in their series about Boomers. In this one, Boomers get credit for developing "the tech landscape" over the last 40 years. It's a little over the top for our tastes, and has awakened another round of Age Wars.

In our view Boomers have certainly contributed much to the computer and Internet age, but development of "the tech landscape" has more to do with a period in history than a generation. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did extraordinary things, no doubt, but on the backs of the work of other men, like Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard (by most accounts, the true fathers of high tech).

Where the premise of the article really fell apart for us was the last paragraph:

None of this would have happened if the technology itself had not ripened, and it was for the first time possible to build personal computers and write software for them. But the other element was the generational nature of its innovators [emphasis added]. The magic was that those two factors came together, and as a result, the early lives of boomers will become as quaint to their grandchildren as the tales of the boomers' own forefathers were to them.

Come on, doesn't every generation have innovators? Edison, Einstein, Henry Ford, Thomas Watson?

The kicker in the article is "it can be argued that the best-known baby boomer of all is the computer itself."

Thank goodness other commentators realize this is just too much, and are saying so.

We'll be on the lookout for the Generation X reaction, which we anticipate will be brutal, if not accurate. We'll let you know what we find.