generations

Yglesias is trying to form a "Generation Oregon Trail," which is a good idea but makes the crucial Gen-Y error of thinking they are the first to discover something. (Comment 81: "Maybe we could call Gen Y the hey-check-out-this-cool-thing-I-just-discovered-that-nobody-else-has ever-seen-it’s-called-Star-Wars Generation.")

Other links he serves up:

Boston.com - Brainiac's Guide to generations. His system is idiosyncratic and arrogant (see comment on this post for the latter). Here's his replacement for X.

more millennials - the smackdown finally comes

Finally, someone says what I've been thinking about all the millenial praise going on right now. (Robert Landham, "Generation Slap" in Radar Online) It's those Boomers again, praising the Ys as much as they buried the Xs:

The boomers' decades-long spin campaign against Generation X has entered a new phase as they've begun to promote Millennials at our expense. Lest you think I'm paranoid, the proof of their plot to elevate the so-called "Internet generation" can be discovered by anyone who knows how to use Google. As it turns out, my generation founded the company. So, to prove my point, let's Google back in time to provide a little context.

On Monday, July 16, 1990, the largely baby boomer–run Time published a cover story called "Twentysomething." It was the one of the magazine's best-selling covers in history, and introduced Generation X—we were known as the baby busters then—to the public, largely defining how we were perceived as a generation. Those who read it will recall that the piece possessed the journalistic muster of a Dateline story on poisonous dog food imports from China. In short, "Twentysomething" was meant to alarm the public into believing they'd raised a generation of stoic nihilists who, as one interviewee stated, were destined to be America's "carpenters and janitors." The only thing preventing us from flushing America's future down the toilet was our lack of initiative. We were too slack to flush.

Reminds me of a statement by Michael Hais in the FDL Book Salon thread on Millennial Makeover (comment 197):

In our PPT presentation, Morley and I show Time and Newsweek magazine covers taken from issues ten years apart–the former when Gen-Xers were teens and the latter when Millennials were teens. In the older picture, all of the Gen-X teens were dressed in black, none were smiling, and none were looking at any of the others in the pictures. In the newer cover, all of the Millennials were dressed in bright colors, smiling, and toching one another. It surely captured the individualism and pessimism of the X’ers and the optimism and unity of the Millennials.

What a dumb statement. Those covers are STAGED images. Boomer-constructed stereotypes of the generations after theirs. It's like Reality Bites, where the footage the Xers shot the whole film is re-cut into an acerbic, nihilistic hit job on their generation. (Done, as Lanham notes, by a few sellout Gen-X traitors catering to corporate Boomer types.)

more on political generations

As the Obama youth revolution kicks into high gear, some more thoughts on GenY/GenMe/Millennial Generation politics in the American Prospect. It responds to the work of psychologist Jean M. Twenge (Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- and More Miserable Than Ever Before), which paints the kids as narcissistic and self-absorbed. The author discusses a UC-Davis study refuting that, and adds:

It's no surprise that our generation is voting for Obama in the Democratic primary by margins of two to one. We're hungry for someone to tell us that change is up to us, that we have a place in the public sphere, that we have to look up from our computer screens, roll up our sleeves, and get involved in the hard work of citizenship. It's more than his oratorical gifts that inspire us, the young and skeptical; it's his insistence that we are ready for a paradigm shift in politics and within ourselves.

A good commentary. Also speaks to some of my recent thoughts on Generation X and how we've been overlooked in politics, sandwiched in between the reigning Boomers and rising Millennials. It's because nothing was ever asked of us. Politics for our adult lives were at first a joke about stained blue dresses, then a tragedy overseen by shady established powers immune to influence by a generation just entered into adulthood. We wanted to be called to a mission on 9/11, but our leaders never asked challenged us except with expectations of base and mindless obedience. But where was the challenge to engage? Where was the call for civic service?

generational theory of Obama

Morley Winograd and Michael Hais have ripped off the Strauss-Howe generational thing and are pimping their own generational theories about American politics. It sounds so great until you look into it... then it becomes way too simplistic and massaged to fit the narrow reality of the late 20th century.

This WaPo op-ed might make interesting assignment for its practical applications. ("The Boomers Had Their Day: Make Way for the Millennials") Even if it is idiotic:

Nor does the millennials' rhetoric reflect the cynicism and alienation of Generation X, whose philosophy is, "Life sucks, and then you die."

Thanks, boomers. Way to swallow a stereotype you created and think it's true. Part of the problem with hyping the Millennial Generation's takeover at this moment in time is that we GenXers get our turn at bat first. What happened to us? Oh, I guess our boundless cynicism removes us from the equation altogether. We are "reactive" "nomads" who don't trust anybody, are just out for ourselves, and I suppose can't be bothered to get involved in politics at all.

The whole project is just so fuzzy on terms and definitions as to make it worthless... just like the "historical" model it's based on.