The Pig In The Python

A recent article in the New York Times touches on a favorite subject of mine: just who is a baby boomer?

I’ve always accepted the idea that the American baby boom is comprised of those born between 1943 and 1964. Some people are now saying it ends with those in my birth year–1960.

It’s no surprise that those folks born in the early 1960’s do not have much in common with those born 20 years earlier. The author David Leavitt (born in 1961) wrote an excellent article in 1985 for Esquire magazine (I can’t find an internet citation) entitled “The New Lost Generation.” Leavitt pointed out that the tail-end boomers had different values than their idealistic boomer elders. Our part of the generation was more cynical, having grown up to see sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll degenerate into AIDS, addiction and ABBA. Marketers and brand-conscious capitalist trader-types even tried to come up with a name for us: Generation Jones.

Anyway, folks of my age are starting to even deny our membership in that hallowed cohort. The most famous example of this is Senator Barack Obama (born in 1961). In his book “The Audacity of Hope” Obama writes:

In the back and forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage.”

The article also states that an interest in post-boomer politics is developing because we need to deal with post-boomer issues: the war on terror, global warming, energy, technology and globalization. Our nation needs a new set of ideas and a new mind-set to deal with the problems that will outlive the boomers.

In other words, the pig in the python is almost ready to be fully digested. Boomers have come to expect everything to be all about us and our numbers usually made it so–a huge bulge sliding through an otherwise narrow age distribution. This next Presidential election will have a full range of demographic interest: pre-boomers like John McCain, Hillary (an uber-boomer, just like her husband) and the tail-ender boomer Obama.

The Baby Boomers time is almost up, but as one of the youngest boomers I’ll (hopefully) be there to watch the python poop.

It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll? Hardly!

Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book “Dancing In The Streets” examines the ceremonies of collective joy and exaltation that were at one time a profoundly important part of human life, and notes that their disappearance has greatly diminished us.

According to Stephen Amidon’s review of the book on Salon, Ehrenreich argues that these group dances and Dionysian festivals created what the French sociologist Emile Durkheim termed “collective effervescence: the ritually induced passion or ecstasy that cements social bonds and … forms the ultimate basis of religion.”

How can we reclaim this important heritage? “The early rock audiences who stomped and jumped out of their seats to dance were announcing, whether they knew it or not, the rebirth of an ecstatic tradition that had been repressed and marginalized by Europeans and Euro-Americans for centuries.”

If only I had known about this when my parents would yell at me for wasting money on concert tickets or for jumping around upstairs with my music cranked up all the way. I wasn’t just some punk kid, I was fighting for religion and civilization itself.

ROCK ON!

A Blogroll Stroll

I updated my blogroll with the blogs that I am reading with regularity (excluding more technical things, like those written by non-profit agencies etc.) Here’s some detail on the new blogs I added (check ‘em out):

blogJosh Josh Shear updates this more frequently than his Alive in CNY blog, with a wider variety of topics.

Groovy Green If you miss regular posts to Baloghblog, catch all the posts Steve contributes to this group blog on sustainable development.

Cookin’ In The ‘Cuse Great writing on food issues and the photos can only be described as food porn.

Further On Up I discovered this blog after Janey posted on my prior blog to comment on my Springsteen obsession. She’s a much more devoted Bruce fan than I, but her site also talks about issues such as her career in adolescent mental health and her beautiful doggies.

Listen Up Mark Bialczak is the music writer for the Post Standard. He covers a multitude of local events and even got a song named after him by Fritz’s Polka Band (how cool is that!)

Gen X At 40 Alan’s blog out of Kingston is about a little bit of everything–but the fact that he’s a fan of both the Red Sox and Syracuse U. was why I started reading. Now, despite Alan’s continual arguments that blogging is all a bunch of crap notwithstanding, I can’t stop reading.

The Salt(ed) City
Interesting writing about economic development in our fair city from a couple of bloggers, one of whom is a member of that caste we’re so desperate to lure back home–young professionals that left CNY for a hotter career.

This Biochemical Life This blogger earned a PhD at S.U. in biochem and now has his eyes trained on a law degree–all while parenting a young toddler with his wife. How does he find time to blog?

He’s Ready, Why Wait. Obama in ‘08!

I don’t often post about national politics. I still believe that what you do in your own town, with your own folks, has a more important effect on your life than the spectator sport of Presidential politics. And Obama’s not even an official candidate. Anyway:

This blog officially endorses Barack Obama for President of the United States.

1) National politics isn’t always relevant to our everyday lives. However, in an attempt to spread the freedoms of democracy, the current Commander in Chief sends young men and women overseas to die, tortures enemy combatants and suspends the constitutional rights of foreigners and citizens alike. It doesn’t get more relevant than that. We need a strong advocate for the dismantling of our current policies. Obama is one of the few declared candidates that has opposed the war since the beginning.

2) In order to move beyond the red/blue state divide, we need a candidate, like Bill Clinton in 1992, who combines a razor-sharp intellect with the political skills to reach out to a much broader spectrum of the populace than just an electoral college plurality.

3) Especially after the reign of Bush/Cheney/Rove, we need a leader that will explain, mediate and compromise. Our country needs a President that understands that his opponents’ views ought to be respected, even if they are not supported.

4) We need a campaign that focuses on issues, that elevates the public discourse and disavows the politics of hate, fear and division pioneered by consultants such as Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. No candidate is as attuned to this reality as Obama.

5) Barack Obama was a community organizer. He knocked on doors, developed citizen leaders, organized meetings and protests. Obama was recently quoted as saying that “ordinary people working together can achieve the extraordinary.” Organizers may never get this chance again, to elect one of our own!

6) Have you read his books? He doesn’t use a ghostwriter and they are not typical political tripe. Thoughtful, open and eloquent expression, a first for a politician.

Runnin’ With The Devil To The Hall Of Fame

Van Halen made the cut and was one of five acts in the Class of 2007 elected into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

I thought the usually hard-rock averse Hall would make VH wait, but selling a boatload of records and all the drama of both Diamond Dave and Sammy Hagar at the awards ceremony apparently put them over the top.

Honoring the best that hard rock had to offer certainly wasn’t the major criterion, because one of the failed nominees was the Stooges and you can’t get much tougher, rawer and more RAWK than Iggy and the boys.

I picked four out of five–R.E.M., Patti Smith, The Ronettes and Grandmaster Flash, guessing wrong on disco/funk act Chic.

Cool group of inductees: A punk poet, indie-rock pioneers, singers of the greatest pop song ever (Be My Baby) and the first great rap act.
Oh. . .and Diamond Dave! However, as much as I like the early VH albums (especially Fair Warning) The Stooges albums between 1969 and 1973 (The Stooges, Fun House and Raw Power) are amongst the most important hard rock records ever made. VH would never have run with the devil without The Stooges raw power.

So now the next questions are induction speeches and the jam session at the Waldorf. I guess the one certainty is that Phil Spector will not induct The Ronettes, accused of abuse by his ex-wife, lead singer Ronnie Spector and currently charged with the murder of another girl friend. Which VH’er freaks out first: Dave, Sammy, Eddie or recently fired bassist Michael Anthony? Michael Stipe and Patti Smith are close friends–induct each other? Will R.E.M. play “E-Bow The Letter”, where Patti sang backing vocals? Will everyone rap together on Grandmaster Flash’s “New York, New York”. Will the wheels of steel find their way into “Be My Baby” or “Gloria: In Excelsis Deo?”

And, of course, will Hall of Famer Bruce Springsteen sing “Because the Night” with his co-writer Patti Smith?