On July 30th, Brent Green, in his interesting and insightful Blog--Boomers wrote the following as a response to an op ed piece by Bill Keller of the New York Times. The full post is here. I think the bashing will continue as it is easier at the political level, to blame someone for the mess, rather than take responsibility for trying to fix the problem. Boomers are an easy target because we are a large group, and we are somewhat unaware of parts of our own history. This is an interesting blog and many more of boomers should be speaking out as Brent is doing.
Bill Keller, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, painstakingly summed up his baby boom birth cohort as “The Entitled Generation.” This snippy criticism is typical of jeremiads written by and for Boomers to portray unseemly conclusions about the nation’s largest generation.
So writes the columnist from on high, “We are an entitled bunch.”
Keller’s views fall way short of balance. For example, while warning of and alleging future entitlement fund shortfalls to be imposed by the generation, he neglected to mention the Greenspan Commission, which in 1983 increased Social Security withholding from 9.35% in 1981-83 to 15.3% by 1990.
...Keller also trotted out a cursory summary of Boomer bashing, from Paul Begala’s Esquire diatribe “The Worst Generation” to ignoble actions of Clinton and Bush, the Boomer presidents who were either morally clumsy (Clinton’s Monicagate) or brashly deficit inflating (Bush’s Medicare Part D drug benefit).
Bill Keller, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, painstakingly summed up his baby boom birth cohort as “The Entitled Generation.” This snippy criticism is typical of jeremiads written by and for Boomers to portray unseemly conclusions about the nation’s largest generation.
So writes the columnist from on high, “We are an entitled bunch.”
Keller’s views fall way short of balance. For example, while warning of and alleging future entitlement fund shortfalls to be imposed by the generation, he neglected to mention the Greenspan Commission, which in 1983 increased Social Security withholding from 9.35% in 1981-83 to 15.3% by 1990.
...Keller also trotted out a cursory summary of Boomer bashing, from Paul Begala’s Esquire diatribe “The Worst Generation” to ignoble actions of Clinton and Bush, the Boomer presidents who were either morally clumsy (Clinton’s Monicagate) or brashly deficit inflating (Bush’s Medicare Part D drug benefit).
Keller’s snarky criticism skirts mentioning the extent to which the Boomer generation has propelled the consumer economy for the last forty years, while standouts from the generation have created enduring business legacies such as Microsoft, Apple, Starbucks and Whole Foods.
Encouraging the Boomer generation to take corrective action by rubbing faces into threadbare criticisms of this generation’s alleged turpitude is not the way to motivate Boomers. Boomer bashing articles lacking journalist balance are neither fair nor accurate nor potentially effective.
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