Regarding Baby Boomers as ‘Greater Generation’

It had to happen. Years after the media began deifying the generation that
won World War II as the "Greatest Generation," someone has finally said, "Oh,
really?"

As Leonard Steinhorn points out in his book, "The Greater Generation: In
Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy" (St. Martin’s Press), the "Greatest Generation"
tag was not created as a stick to beat Boomers with, but it has served that
purpose. Tom Brokaw, whose book coined the phrase, wrote: "In the World War II
generation, ordinary people found common cause, made extraordinary sacrifices
and never whined or wimpered. Their offspring, the Baby Boomers, seem to have
forgotten the example of their parents."

Steinhorn agrees that WWII vets made great sacrifices in wartime, but he
believes they failed to live up to democratic ideas after the war. Too many were
content to move into suburbs that excluded blacks, join clubs that barred Jews,
women and minorities, and support a pointless war in Southeast Asia that killed
58,000 Americans. Surveys showed most members of this generation did not want
women to have careers and did not approve of interracial marriages.

If the Greatest Generation’s heyday was no picnic for people with black skin,
imagine if you were homosexual. Well into the ’60s, newspapers referred to gays
and lesbians as "perverts" and "deviants." Imagine if you were a college
professor who didn’t think Joe McCarthy was all that great. You could lose your
job for saying so.

Anyone who differed from the norm was regarded with suspicion. Just growing a
beard made you an "oddball." As Steinhorn recalls, bearded strangers would be
stopped by police and asked to produce identification. After all, didn’t Castro
and Lenin have beards?

Social conservatives have created a Norman Rockwell fantasy version of the
1950s, a world of happy, crime-free suburbs — with white picket fences, of
course — presided over by upstanding white WWII vets, their June Cleaver wives
and squeaky-clean kids. This wholesomeness was allegedly ruined by the 1960s,
the decade when the oldest Boomers reached college. Since then, Boomers have
been attacked as spoiled, whiny, materialistic narcissists who all drive Volvos
and drink Chardonnay.

That’s a media caricature, but some of the bashing is justified. Those oldest
Boomers have created a Garden-of-Eden myth about the ’60s as a paradise
destroyed by the Me-Decade ’70s and the Yuppie ’80s. This can become as tiresome
as hearing conservatives pine for the ’50s. Take off those rose-colored glasses.
There never was a golden age where everything was wonderful for everyone.

Steinhorn argues that Boomers have lived up to American ideals better than
their parents, in terms of trying to eradicate racism, sexism and unregulated
industry. There’s some truth in that, but don’t forget it was Lyndon Johnson (born
in 1908) who signed the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. Martin Luther King
Jr. (born in 1929) was hardly a Boomer, either.

Considering how many Boomers have carved out careers as right-wing pundits
(Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, etc.), it’s hard to
buy Steinhorn’s portrayal of Boomers as overwhelmingly progressive. But he is
right about one thing: most Americans don’t want a return to the attitudes that
ruled the ’50s. Almost nobody today would endorse the casual racism that kept
blacks away from voting booths (in the South) and outside the gates of Levittown
(in the North). By their sheer numbers, Boomers have played a key role in
changing these attitudes.

Steinhorn perceptively notes that much of the Boomer-bashing has been
administered by Boomers themselves, particularly as they come to terms with
their elderly parents. "Boomers may have fought their parents and found their
society wanting," he writes, "but Boomers still love their parents, and as the
fever-pitched generation gap from the ’60s fades into memory, Boomers long for
their parents more and more.

"So, in retrospect, Boomers — often at their own expense — glorify the
neighborhoods, virtues and moral clarity of their parents, and overlook all the
bigotry and hypocrisy and double standards and blind obedience that came with it."

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SOURCE: http://www.theleafchronicle.com