Tom Brokaw Lets Baby Boomers Off the Hook
In Tom Brokaw’s documentary Boomers!, which aired last week, the main subjects — six baby boomers — asked the narrator at the end of the program what he thought a good word was to describe the baby boomer legacy. To which Brokaw answers, “Unrealized.”
Brokaw had spent the better part of the two-hour documentary describing how boomers harbored big dreams that never came to fruition. His focus was on the financial aspects of the boomer generation: how they ultimately “traded communes for co-ops” by spending money they didn’t have — which has now led to a faltering economy that has since “humbled” many boomers.
Now in their fifties and sixties, today’s baby boomers control 3/4 of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, the White House, and Congress. They are “the largest, richest generation in history” — and there are 78 million of them. How best to describe baby boomers?” According to Brokaw, this way:
“The fear and conformity of the World War II generation gave way to a flowering of self-expression and sweeping social changes — including personal behavior.”
Bingo! But he then spends very little time discussing the “personal behavior” to which he refers — and how this behavior led to an unprecedented moral decline in America. But there was one subject — one — who did: author P.J. O’ Rourke. He tells Brokaw,
“We were stoned all the time; the sexuality was utterly irresponsible, utterly irreligious; we had no respect for any kind of authority. We just left a trail of wreckage behind us.”
The last time I heard anyone talk this way about baby boomers was in a Wall Street Journal article last June. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, 60, tells the graduating class at Butler University that boomers have been,
“self-absorbed, self-indulgent and all too often just plain selfish.”
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, 44, tells seniors at Colorado College that the modern generation “has not been faithful enough to our grandparents’ example.” Neil Howe, an author and historian, said the social movements of the 1960s “caved in on itself” as boomers focused more on “their own inner voyage” and less on their obligation to society.
Indeed. Before the boomers came along, most Americans believed in a universal moral order that makes demands on us — and felt an obligation to conform to it. Unfortunately, the various factions of the 1960s countercultural movement — the antiwar movement, the feminist movement, the gay activist movement — “attacked the moral consensus as oppressive and fought for a new ethic that would be based not on external authority but on the sovereignty of the inner self,” writes Dinesh D’Souza in Letter to a Young Conservative.
This revolt, which began over forty years ago, has officially made its mark on American society: We are no longer a unified nation. Rather, we are split down the middle: on one side are those who still believe in a universal moral order — we call them “conservatives,” but it includes independents and Kennedy Democrats, too — and on the other side are those who remain faithful to the inner self.
Today, a mere 20% of Americans describe themselves as liberal — but this is a misnomer. Conservatives and independents are liberal; the rest are leftists. This 20% represent the worst of the baby boomer mentality. While the rest of us still take into account the universal moral order on which America depends, leftists pray to the altar of moral relativity — a concept invented by baby boomers.
This philosophy is the reason partial-birth abortion is not considered a travesty by 100% of the population. It’s the reason parenting has changed for the worse. It’s the reason divorce and single motherhood is accepted and even embraced. It’s the reason public schools are a disgrace. It’s the reason sex education is a license for kids to engage in casual sex. Indeed, the consequences of taking the focus off what’s best for society and onto the desires of the individual is mind-numbingly far-reaching.
Guess Brokaw thought this was too much truth for television.
Suzanne Venker is an author, blogger, and former teacher. You can read more of her work at No Bull Mom and Right Pundits.
I think a better appellation for my generation is the Cry-baby boomers.
Love it and I will use it along with my belief that they need "whinners anoymous" to work out the cobwebs
I LOVE that! May I use it?
Absolutely.
I was born in 1965 and grew up in the turmoil the ME generation created. Many of my friends grew up in broken homes and others with drug addicted parents. But what really bothers me about the generation that demanded they could do whatever they wanted so long as it felt good is now trying to control what we eat,drink,smoke and even what we say. Not only are the boomers the most selfish generation in American history they are the most hypocritical.
I strongly recommend conservatives refuse terms on the branding of the boomer generation as one of the same as the hippy/yippy/nihilistic movement. There are many strong Americans from that generation. G. Gordon Liddy, Dick Marcinko, Carlos Hathcock, and Bill Gates just off the top of my head.
A branding of the '60s and '70s as a defeat for America is by nature a defeat for conservatives. The peace protest will be a blip on the radar compared to the rise of the integrated circuit, the ICBM missle shield, the weaponized laser or nanomachines which that generation laid the foundation to produce.
There should be a re branding effort on conservatives after this election to eliminate this view of the 60s and 70s and focus on space exploration, science, technology, and pragmatic American technical advances.
G. Gordon Liddy is not a baby boomer. The Boomers were born after 1945.
Yes, there a some from the Baby Boomers that are self reliant, strong Americans. They happen to be the same ones who were spat upon when they returned from fighting in Viet Nam.
As far as dreams gone unrealized, the Baby Boomers who wouldn't sell-out, or cop-out back in the day, seem to have done noting but sell-out and cop-out, ever since.
"Question authority" was a significant rallying cry for many Boomers. As a "Late-Boomer" myself (too young to tour with the Dead–too old to tour with the Dead Kennedys) I believed then, as I do now, that a vigilant skepticism of all institutions of authority is a good thing. Unfortunately, many Boomers jumped on the establishment bandwagon the moment it was convenient. Now they seem to have embraced a blind faith in government. Pete "Townshend sure had it nailed with that "new boss/old boss" lyric. And that was 1971! It's a timeless phenomenon of the political weasel: Authority sucks until you're the one in charge.
I think the issue was that reality set in. You can't do "Drugs, Sex, and Rock n Roll" the rest of your life. Some still live that way, though — I think they call them cults. Plus, maybe a lot of it was to get attention and once everyone was doing it, it lost the excitement.
Maybe it had a lot to do with whether or not the Boomer parents allowed them to be raised more by the culture than their own family values. I was born in '55, and we were raised to be moral, good stewards of our earnings, etc. However, the culture we grew up in told us something very different. This was also the first generation to be raised on TV.
I think many of us were gullible about money and happy to accept credit card companies that would offer us unlimited credit, mortgage companies that would qualify us for way more house than we could afford, etc.
Because our parents had gone through the depression (and many lost parents to TB at that same time), they didn't like to talk to us about money or have us worry about money. That might be the key to many of our generation's financial failures.
sorry, should read "anonymous"
I just finished watching the show and I was looking for somewhere to vent my frustrations. I think that the negative review (in the New York Daily News) is a good start. I was really disappointed by the show. First off, Boomers today range from age 64 to 46. The latter age is of guys and gals who are just getting started with what they are going to really do in life, I’d think. As the writer says, the scope of the group is way too large to grasp in one show. But I agree with the writer than the show was not focused. What was with the guy who lost a giant house and a well-paying job after a huge severance? He now lives in an apartment and worries about his future? What else do we need to know? A divorce? Other stuff? Hardly typical, but possible, but what was the point? That a fairly middle of the road white guy Boomer could be failing? And the guy who said that society is not ready for “a very large number of relatively unhealthy people who live into their 80’s”? What has HE been smoking. Boomers are relatively healthy group who will enter Medicare in relatively good shape. What a crock that guy was spouting! There was so much wrong with the show I don’t have time here to retort it all. The old guy still fighting the Vietnam War and still believing that we were “abandoned”? Nonsense. The show really lowered my opinion of Tom Brokow.