Jeremiah

In practice, I doubt they had a choice either way.

I think it was an artifact of changing economic conditions, especially women joining the workforce and getting more independence.

Hal Johnson, who has a blog at Hal Johnson Books, writes, It's probably a bad idea to hate a whole generation, but I will say a couple things against boomers.

I once wrote a piece on Stand By Me pointing out that the movie is about a boomer who went on a grand adventure and yet won't let his own kid bike to the pool.

Anyone growing up under a boomer hegemony had to have been aware of this.

The feeling that boomers were pulling the doors shut behind them and then celebrating the before times when the doors were open.

When I did drugs it was so cool, but you better not do drugs.

I hitchhiked across America to see the country, but hitchhiking is bad and fortunately illegal now.

If you went to school at a certain time or worked at a certain time, you were guaranteed to encounter a teacher or co-worker who claimed to have been at Woodstock, and who expressed contempt at you, the young, for not having been at Woodstock.

It was weird and also really grating.

Boomers suffered a tendency to self-mythologize, and it never ends.

Remember that boomer-centered bank ad from a few years ago?

A generation as unique as this deserves a bank, etc., etc.,

Boomers were the first generation to have and be an identity, broadly across the whole US at least.

This isn't even their fault, as the identity was invented by marketers to sell pop records, but boomers fell in love with the idea.

It's hard to hate the greatest generation, not because they were great, whatever, but because someone outside their generation declared them to be the greatest.

When Leonard Steinhorn wrote The Greater Generation about how amazing boomers were, he did it because he, a boomer, wanted more credit.

Look at me.

Look at me.

There have been so many years of look at me.