A Significance They No Longer Possess (redux)

To ring in the new year, I'm digging up and dusting off an old post that was inspired by some things I saw last New Year's Eve. The hoopla over the front-end Baby Boomers turning 60 this year was a bit much for me to take. In the original post (below), I expressed hope that sometime later in 2006, the media could "give some attention to the rest of us." That happened in a few cases, but 2006 was, generally, a very Boomer-centric year.

In spite of the fact that I'm quite critical of Boomers around here, I really don't have anything personal against any of them. I count many Boomers among my family and friends (including all my older siblings). But as a group, and as a cultural force, I really find them over-rated and overly celebrated in our society. That's why the title of this post was (and still is) "A Significance They No Longer Possess" -- one of my favorite titles from the last year. I have a prize for the first person who can tell me from what TV show I borrowed that phrase. No fair Googling it. And now, here it is:


New Year's Eve, I caught a glimpse of the future that was so disturbing, I've continued to ponder it ever since. Throughout the late evening, my husband and I were flipping channels between MTV, ESPN (yes, they had a New Year's Eve special), and New Year's Rockin' Eve on ABC. We saw Dick Clark's return to television, which was disturbing in itself (the best description I've heard was when Glenn Beck called it "heroic and sad"), but a commercial that soon followed is what really made me stop and think about the new year that was beginning.

Within moments of Clark's appearance, I saw a commercial for Ameriprise Financial which tells me: "This year, the Baby Boomers start turning 60. Some might say that's the end of an era. We say it's just the beginning."

Holy crap, I said out loud.

How frightening to think that the Boomer generation, which has lived as if it is the center of the universe since the 1950's, is going to continue to do so, even well into the retirement years. I wanted to jump up and scream at the TV, "It's not about you!" and I may have even done so.

Two other very important generations - Generations X (for which I could have been the poster child) and the Millennial Generation (or Generation Y) - are now impacting our culture in some very significant and positive ways, yet all we continue to hear about are the Boomers. Gen-X'ers and Millennials are highly present in the workforce and the marketplace, yet all we seem to hear about are Boomers who are scrambling to save enough to retire soon. Many X'ers and Millennials are parents now, and both are doing some unique things to change the work-family balance in our society, yet we hear more and more about Boomers discovering their role as grandparents.

As they begin to retire, Boomers are leaving the X'ers and Millennials a humongous mess to contend with, but society continues to celebrate them as if they invented sliced bread. (I had to look that up, just to make sure a Boomer didn't invent sliced bread, since it seems like they've gotten credit for darn near everything else that's good and right.)


For every step the Boomers have taken in life, our society has reacted as if Boomers were the first to do it - going to college, getting married, having children, sending kids to college, and now turning 60 and preparing to retire. In the first two weeks of 2006, there were numerous news features on the Boomers turning 60, including a series on ABC World News Tonight called "Boomer Breakthroughs." I hope sometime later this year, the media can give a little attention to the rest of us. The Boomers have made some very meaningful contributions, however, for every Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey there is a John Tesh or David Hasselhoff. And as the Boomers near the end of their careers, our culture needs to shift focus to the next generations, or we're all going to be stuck watching 60-somethings moving into condos while a group of 30-somethings are changing the world. It's like ESPN staying on the Senior Open when the Cubs home opener is starting.

But even as they enter their sixties, the Boomers are refusing to let go of their younger image. One very prominent Boomer website is called Aging Hipsters. That name might sound cute now, but imagine a bunch of gray-hairs surfing over to that site to chat about incontinence or early warning signs of stroke. Some have predicted that the Boomers will make aging "cool" or "hip" - but I think if they aren't careful, they'll come off as kind of pathetic and awkward.

So happy birthday, Boomers, and now please step aside.