Benjamin Cheever: Is It Really “The Worst Generation”? (Baby Boomers)

...Google “the Worst Generation” and you get us, the boomers. First there’s a book actually titled The Worst Generation. I quote from the preface: “Boomers have created an anti-America, an “Evil Twin” America, a Frankenstein America… .” The next hit is an essay with the same title by Paul Begala, published in Esquire in 2000.

“I hate the Baby Boomers,” writes the former Clinton adviser. “They’re the most self-centered, self-seeking, self-interested, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing generation in American History… .”

Begala, himself a late boomer (1961), would have been six when I went to jail. He worked for the early boomer Bill Clinton (1946), which may help explain his fury. But then Begala is not alone.

When was it agreed that we are the absolute worst? Was a vote taken when I was out sick? What is it about my birth cohort —outside of the size and the alliteration—that makes us such a target?

I’d guess it’s about change. We’ve been safe, we’ve been affluent, but the world has been changing at a dizzying rate. Nobody likes change. Somebody needs to be blamed....

It’s difficult to come up with a generalization that holds for 3 people, but 76 million? I’ve been married for 23 years now, and I’m still never sure what my wife will want for breakfast or even if she’ll want breakfast at all. Ever count up the men in our selfish generation who prepare breakfast or at least bring coffee to their wives? Whereas “the Greatest Generation” couldn’t toast toast.

Related Links

Joshua Zeitz: Boomer Century

Kevin Baker: What do all these baby boomers really have in common?