"Twenty-somethings paint a scathing portrait of their elders," the magazine said.
Now this was exciting to me. I had always been taught not to hate people as a group, and here was a respected national magazine giving me permission to disparage a group of 78 million people. As we say in Generation X: "Cool, man." So, let's get right to it ...
If I had to point to one statistic that sums up my feelings about Baby Boomers, it's this one: According to Time, 75% of both Generation X and the World War II generation agreed with the statement: "Material things, like what I drive and the house I live in, are important to me." But only 50% of boomers agreed.
Now, I know a lot of baby boomers, and a majority of them are truly a greedy bunch of bastards. Yet they still answer survey questions like they live on communes or something. It's similar to how Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich busted on the scene like big revolutionaries, only to be revealed as the same old thing. For while baby boomers have chucked their ideals, they still have their pretensions.
To be honest, I may be the one of the only people left who still respects Baby Boomers. This is the generation that changed the world, and mostly for the good. Today, men and women work alongside each other, live together before marriage, and have greater personal freedom than ever—all thanks to struggles of the Baby Boom. Sure, there was some selfishness and grandiosity involved—but there was also genuine heroism. And they made great music in the process.
Yet, today Boomers are widely disparaged. But who is painting these scathing portraits? Newt Gingrinch may hate the counterculture, but when he was younger he took full advantage of it. And whenever Maureen Dowd attacks the Clintons, she makes sure to note they are "self-obsessed, self-important baby boomers." Yet, what is Dowd but a member of that very same generation? (And a pretty self-obsessed, self-important one, too.)
In fact, whenever you read any kind of criticism of the Baby Boom generation, it's a pretty safe bet that the author was born you-know-when.
Perhaps many Boomers still carry a younger version of themselves inside, which periodically reminds just how badly they have sold out their ideals. Time magazine had it wrong. The big generation gap is not between Generation X and the Baby Boom. It's between Boomers and themselves.