A reader writes:
I am square in the middle of the boomer generation, and female. I have been meaning to write and say that younger people are not the only ones who respond to Obama. You are starting to use "boomers" in the same way you have for a long time used "left," as a mindless, lazy, overgeneralizing all-purpose blame container.
Blaming never helps. Sometimes it’s important to assess responsibility, but that’s a different thing, and it won’t be accomplished with labels like "the left," "the right," "boomers," or whatever, because those labels are so overbroad as to be meaningless in any complex analysis. "Boomers" are people, just like your generation. Being people, they are just as varied as any other group you could put a label on. Being people, they are a maddening mixture of virtues and vices, good habits and bad. Being people, many of them wanted to leave the world "better" (and yes, definitions differ) than they had found it. They — we — did no better, but also no worse in my opinion, than any generation before us.
The world is a mess today not because it has boomers in it, but because it has humans in it. I totally agree that there are deep-seated destructive habits shaping our national discourse, and that my generation has helped to create and indulge those habits; one of the reasons Obama brings tears to my eyes is that he offers a hope that we might actually shape some newer and less destructive habits. You aren’t helping by driving a wedge between generations.
The Dish 