Word: boomerism
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Were you there, back in the beginning? Were you one of the 76 million children born in the most fertile years in American history? If you weren't, you're probably thinking that you really can't take any more boomer solipsism. You've already suffered through a lifetime of references to Woodstock and the Beach Boys and Vietnam. You've gritted your teeth as you endured the preening, self-congratulatory smugness that leads Ken Dychtwald, a gerontologist who has lately made his living warning about the coming boomer bust, to say, "Boomers feel superior to the younger generations...
Need more? There are no movies made for people your age, the music on the radio is dreadful, television programmers behave as if you don't exist. In an astonishing merger of boomer aging with boomer self-involvement, Matsushita Electric has built a prototype smart toilet with built-in microsensors that can run an automatic, daily chemical analysis of the user's urine. Stock-market analysts are growing bullish on companies that build nursing homes or manufacture laxatives...
...slippage probably began on the turf that the boomers seem to have owned for more than three decades: popular culture. Listened to the radio recently? Do you feel any different than your parents must have felt when they first stood aghast as you fell in love with the Beatles? Of course you do--if you're a boomer, you knew then that your musical taste was superior, and you know it today. What about the movies--weren't you watching The Graduate at the same age that these kids are drooling their brains away over Scream XXVI...
Such anguish has grown palpable. FORTUNE magazine's career-advice columnist, Anne Fisher, calls the angst pouring in from her boomer readers "a continuing lament," and there's evidence that it will soon become operatic. From the mailbox of Fisher's website, askannie.com "I'm learning that being over 40 is not only an obstacle, it's more like a brick wall," writes someone who signs himself "Not Dead Yet." Bob C. thinks "younger bosses see...older [workers] as a menace." Edward, the realist, writes, "Many of us over 40 have failed to constantly update our skill sets...
...anecdotal evidence certainly supports data that would have 3 out of 4 experienced workers, even in a full-employment economy, fearing for their jobs. Steve Harrigan, 51, of Austin, Texas, asks a question that virtually any leading-edge boomer can relate to: "Where are we?" When Harrigan is sitting in a restaurant, visiting an office or just walking down the street, he wonders, Why does it always seem he's the oldest person in view...