Aged boomers on the road: a looming threat

"Sober, belted, attentive, courteous old folks driving their Buicks down the slow lane, hands positioned at 2 and 10 o'clock, will be supplanted by a generation that always thought it could outrace old age. America is facing the specter of 75 million oldsters engaged in cellphone conversations while reading e-mail and deciphering their whereabouts on the GPS screen on their way to the Rolling Stones farewell concert. More than a few of these drivers permanently damaged their cognitive abilities on a summer night in 1969." "Woodstock Generation is Hell on Wheels" Miami Herald

In Australia: incendiary new book lashes out at coddled boomers

"Baby Boomers rule by numbers, not talent or potential. The buying power of suburban middle age triumphs over the animated spirit of youth. It's an inefficient, unfair and dumb system — a recipe for slouching towards mediocrity." "Please Just Fuck Off, It's Our Turn Now: Holding Baby Boomers to Account" Excerpted here via ryanheath.com.au/

Life before generation joy police (thanks Boomers!)

"A friend recently e-mailed a list of things children once did before parents became so very safety conscious. The list prompted my own family and friends to make a list of childhood activities, most of which would make today's parents faint dead away. Topping the list was playing in city streets when they were flooded with rainfall. A more germ-laden spot cannot be imagined, but the participants assured me they had a wonderful time splashing in that nasty water." In Past Years, Safety Wasn't a Big Concern For Kids at Play" Navasota Examiner (Texas)

The Boomers in the Pentagon: "hubris, incompetence, and folly"

"The title of this devastating new book about the American war in Iraq says it all: “Fiasco.” That is the judgment that Thomas E. Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, passes on the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq and its management of the war and the occupation. And he serves up his portrait of that war as a misguided exercise in hubris, incompetence and folly with a wealth of detail and evidence that is both staggeringly vivid and persuasive." "From Planning to Warfare to Occupation, How Iraq Went Wrong" New York Times

Sell out generation

"My cohort of early baby boomers has been called a lot of names in its nearly six decades of existence—we were the insolent teenagers of the 1950s; the self-centered Yuppies of the 1980s; now we are the aging spendthrifts who will bust the federal budget and bankrupt our children with unreasonable demands for creature comfort in old age. But maybe it would be more appropriate to think of us as the Faustian generation. We didn't exactly sell our souls to the devil—not collectively, anyway—but as we jog toward senior status, it's hard to escape the sense that we were complicit in our own unique kind of unholy bargain." "The Faustian Generation" Newsweek via MSNBC.com

Seasoned boomers: best served old

"Time passes, and we get old. Our faces wrinkle, our hair goes gray and MIA, our teeth yellow, our knees ache, we forget the names of people we said hello to just yesterday on the way to pick up the Geritol, and there are days when a nap sounds real nice. At least that’s the way it’s been for most of humanity. But rumors that boomers will be joining the great biological stream turn out to have been greatly exaggerated. Boomers—especially feminist-influenced women of a certain class who are now publishing their philosophy of life after 50—will not be growing old. And it seems equally inaccurate to say that they will mature. They are going to season, as Gail Sheehy puts it in her most recent book, Sex and the Seasoned Woman. They will “develop”; they will “grow.” Sheehy and her sister scribes have come forward to tell you that today’s older women are a new breed. They’re busy, busy, busy! They go to the gym! They work in animal shelters! They travel! They get divorced! And yes (Yes! Yes!), they have orgasms!" "Desperate Grandmas" City-Journal.org

In the UK: 60's generation crippled by addiction

"They are the generation who grew up in the Sixties: the middle-aged adults forever associated with free love, rock'n'roll, and drugs. Now a more disturbing legacy of that era is revealed, with new figures suggesting more and more 'baby boomers' are becoming addicted to heroin, sleeping pills and tranquilisers." "Heroin and Tranquilisers Curse the Baby Boomer Generation" Guardian Unlimited

Dislike of hippies shapes federal anti-pot propaganda

[A]nother obstacle to the end of medical marijuana prohibition is the association between 'pot smokers' and the 1960s counter-culture movement. The assumption is that today’s legitimate medical marijuana patient is merely yesterday’s dropout looking for a free ride from society in order to pursue a life of pleasure and sloth. This explains why the Office of National Drug Control Policy spends millions of Federal tax dollars on advertising designed to encourage Baby Boomers to be a 'hypocrite' when it comes to marijuana 'for the sake of the children.' The message? Don’t let your children be hippies like you were." "Medical Pot" OpinionEditorials.com

Boomer Congress and the Woodstock imperative

"It wasn't that long ago that an American rallying cry for the Woodstock generation was, 'If it feels good, do it!' Politicians have tapped into this wavelength and have been reluctant to inconvenience anyone. Witness our being the first country in history to have embarked on a war without raising taxes..." "Feel-Good Ethos Proves Costly" Contra Costa Times (California)

Netroots: where yesterday's hippie is today's 'youth movement'

"One might be tempted to assume the netroots are young people organizing to fix their parents' mistakes to ensure a better future for themselves. That doesn't appear to be the case." "The Hippies Behind the Youth Movement" Technology News