“Boomer,” do not go gentle into that good night.
Millennials, pay attention. There’s a lot you can learn from a baby boomer.
This happened to me a few weeks ago. A fine student in one of my senior classes who I also taught as a junior last year turned to me in my class after I lectured them about something and said, “Okay Boomer,” and laughed. I’m assuming I was on some sort of rant although like most of my rants, I can’t for the life of me remember what I was ranting about, but ranting I must have been because this young woman felt the need to utter what has become a most controversial phrase known as “Okay Boomer!” When did the actual idea of being a baby boomer become a punchline, and what did the phrase even mean? Is this attack on the generation known to history as the “Baby Boomers” just a thinly disguised attempt at ageism, particularly in the workplace?
For starters, let’s set the record straight. Yes, I am a baby boomer, but barely. I was born in 1964, (June 20th for those of you who were worrying whether you had enough days left in the calendar to do a little shopping.) and as anybody with even a rudimentary understanding of American history can tell you, the baby boomers are those Americans who were born between 1946 and 1964. For many years the baby boomers represented the largest segment of the population in these United States. For better or worse, and for the sake of Medicare and Social Security probably better, this is no longer the case. Today, the group that makes up the largest chunk of the population in our nation are those known not very affectionately as millennials. The millennials are those in our population who were born between 1981 and 1996. They are in essence the children of the baby boomers, and there seems to be a generational disconnect that exists between the two.
These fine fellows are amongst the last survivors of a group known affectionately as the “Greatest Generation.” These parents of the baby boomers survived the Great Depression and saved the world from tyranny in World War Two. “Yeah, but what have you done lately? (Getty Images)
The baby boomer generation came about as a result of World War Two coming to an end. All of those hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sea-men, pilots, as well as the denizens of the mess halls and galleys came home from Europe and the Pacific theaters of war, and for many of them, there was a lot of lost fornicating time to make up for. As a result, these brave souls who preserved our freedom and destroyed the two most racist and evil movements ever known to man, the Nazis and the military dictatorship that ran Japan, disembarked from their boat rides home, made a beeline to their honeys, and proceeded to “mount” full-frontal assaults upon their best girl. (Probably under the apple tree, whether they were sitting with anybody else or not.)
By the time these brave boys finished making up for lost time, an entire generation had been born, forever to be known in American history textbooks as the baby boomers. The first wave of baby boomers born between 1946 and 1948 were on the whole, not that different from the generation that had sired them. They joined the military, wore their hair short, respected President Eisenhower, and his honorable and honest vice-president, Richard Nixon, and fell in love with black and white television. When Soviet and Sino Communism reared their ugly head and once again threatened our way of life, they heeded their parent’s wishes, joined the military, and defended those threatened by the red menace in places like Cuba (Just in case,) and a place few Americans had ever heard of, or could even locate on a map, Vietnam. Then, their little brothers and sisters came along beginning in 1949, and all of a sudden it was the “Age of Aquarius.”
At first, the baby boomers grew up innocent and naive with their coonskin caps, and PF Fliers. Then a certain hillbilly, one with swiveling hips, and a curled lip came along, and all of a sudden their minds had been warped forever. (Getty images)
As is sadly too often the case, baby boomers now find themselves embroiled in a situation where society’s respect for them and their accomplishments are the subject of social media bullying. How difficult of a concept is this for baby boomers to comprehend? Well, consider that most of that generation were raised on a black and white television with three networks to choose from, and now they are being attacked “virtually” on a medium that has essentially made the concept of television as they knew it, obsolete. You can begin to understand their frustration. Nobody likes to be made to feel obsolete or irrelevant, particularly when all it takes is a video circulating on the internet where some young punk turns to one of their elders and says sarcastically, “Okay boomer!”
Apparently if you want to humiliate or insult a baby boomer, all you have to say to them after one of their tirades is the following: “Ok Boomer!” Ouch, damn millennials! They cut me to the quick! (You Tube)
The irony of baby boomers being told that their ideas and understanding of modern culture is out of touch and obsolete could not be more ironic. Recall, it was the baby boomers who built their identity upon their rejection of the values of their parents. Baby boomers literally declared war on the ways and means of the so-called “Greatest Generation,” and they took no prisoners. Behold:
- Their parents — Fought in World War Two
- Boomers — Protested Vietnam (Although many fought with great bravery.)
- Their parents — Having survived the Great Depression, believed in saving for a “rainy day.”
- Boomers — Having grown up at a time of great economic prosperity, they thought money grew on trees, particularly the one in the backyard.
- Their parents — Thought it was okay to have a cocktail, but drugs, particularly marijuana was a scourge.
- Boomers — Believed that marijuana as well as LSD were good for expanding one’s mind. “Tune in, turn on, drop out.”
- Their parents — Believed in dressing respectfully, with short hair, even crew cuts for men, and appropriate length dresses for women
- Boomers — Their clothing could be androgynous, meaning everybody should wear jeans, and the men’s hair should be as long as a woman’s. Let your freak flag fly!
- Their parents — Frank Sinatra was the definition of “hip,” and “with-it.”
- Boomers — Believed that Frank Sinatra was literally everything that was wrong with the world, and instead discovered for the rest of us, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd, to name a few. (I think they have a point on this one.)
Considering how much the baby boomer generation influenced pop culture as well as the many righteous movements that helped make our society and world a better place, imagine how aggravating it must be to be lectured about not being “with-it,” or “#woke” when it comes to social issues today.
Every baby boomer’s nightmare, a snotty, vegan, uber-riding millennial for a boss. (You Tube)
So what happened? How did baby-boomers become viewed as out of touch, and insensitive? How could this generation, of all generations be seen as the ones who gave us global warming, runaway gun violence and gasp, President Donald Trump? Well, on the one hand it could be explained by an ideology that is as old as time. Every generation, no matter how accomplished, successful, or trend-setting they may have been, at one time will inevitably be seen eventually as out of touch, un-hip, and a roadblock to progress due to the fact that they are stuck in their old ways. I have little doubt that the first time some teenager in 1780 ran into his shack in downtown Vienna, and said “Mom, dad, put down the “poop” bucket, I just heard the greatest music ever composed. It’s by a guy named Mozart, and it’s swingin’ man,” their father turned to them and said. “I don’t want that crap being talked about much less hummed in my house, you kids don’t know anything about music. Now come help us drag your two brothers out to the curb who just died from consumption.”
It is possible that baby boomers have themselves to blame. Recall that many baby-boomers as the 1960s ended seemed to find their way onto Wall Street where making money seemed to have replaced “Tuning in, turning on, and dropping out.” They did “turn out” in droves to vote for one Ronald Reagan, who once declared verbal war on the University of California at Berkeley, the symbol of baby boomer resistance in the 1960s. This seismic shift in politics and values by the generation that participated in the “freedom rides,” to the deep South, burned their draft cards in opposition to the war in Vietnam, and flocked to join the Peace Corps has muddied the legacy of the baby boomers, and left subsequent generations wondering if this group ever really cared about what they claim to have accomplished.
Incredibly, it is a man who literally pre-dates the baby boomers, Bernie Sanders who has captured young people’s imaginations with his angry yelling, and promises of a more fair society. Anybody who yells “Okay Boomer” at Bernie, does so at their own risk. (Getty Images)
In fairness, Baby boomers don’t have to take crap from a bunch of “live in their parent’s basement until they’re 30, everybody gets a trophy, I’m a vegetarian except I sometimes eat fish and chicken, Uber riding, why do I have to pay my college debt whining, I don’t have any privacy even though I put my entire existence on social media complaining millennials.” Of course the boomers raised these little bastards so they have nobody but themselves to blame. Millennials have to understand, the baby-boomers were forever scarred when the president they most identified with, John F. Kennedy was taken from them violently. Instead of heeding the words of JFK about seeing what they could do for their country, they chose to establish the counterculture, before succumbing to Reaganomics.
From a cultural standpoint, the baby boomers gave us the great music of the 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, as well as providing us with long hair as a fashion statement. They triumphed at Woodstock, organized protest movments, as well as establishing Live Aid. They gave us Disco, but they rebounded with Punk Rock and New Wave. They fought the fires on 9/11, and celebrated the first Earth Day. They forever changed the 20th Century for both better and worse, and now it’s their pleasure to suck up all of the Medicare and Social Security reserves. Yes, we baby boomers have done it all, but now we’re getting tired, and we’re ready to turn it over to the next generation of leaders, provided you have enough sense to listen to our sage like advice, and can actually put down your iPhones for a minute. It’s high-time we get to kick back and relax while we pay for a long-distance call on our rotary phones before listening to our LP’s on our turntables, and no, I’m not just making up words. Now, get out of our basements you anxiety laden bastards!