Columns

Changes the boomers wrought

By ROBERT N. JENKINS
Published March 27, 2007

Baby boomers, notes gerontologist Ken Dychtwald, "have been glamorized and reviled, applauded for their idealism and attacked for their materialism, praised for their innovation and at the same time condemned for their rebelliousness."

As the theme song and clips from American Bandstand play in the background, Dychtwald continues his introduction of a PBS special by adding, "We boomers tend to transform every stage of life through which we pass. We changed America in so many ways."

That's the theme of the feel-good two-hour show, The Boomer Century, 1946-2046, which airs at 9 tonight on PBS. Whether it is much more than a history souffle depends on your level of skepticism.

The show is rich in nostalgic sounds and images as it follows the chronology of boomer existence. The generation began with the return of service personnel after World War II and a sudden prosperity in America due largely to the war having destroyed the manufacturing capacity of Europe and Japan. Alvin Toffler author of the seminal Future Shock explains, "If you wanted to buy something, you had to come to America."

Among the astonishing facts dished out on the show:

Between 1946 and 1964, about 92 percent of all American women who could have children did, averaging 3.8 kids each. That meant on average, a baby was born every 8 seconds, or 10,000 a day, for those 18 years.

By extrapolation, now a native-born American is turning 60 every 8 seconds. The boomer generation is so large - about 76-million born here, plus nearly 2-million immigrant children, during the 1946-64 span - that their numbers alone make the group significant.

(A closing segment also warns that this huge volume of aging and increasingly ill people poses a financial risk that "has the potential to bankrupt the U.S. It will bust the federal budget," warns Dr. D. Quinn Mills of the Harvard Business School.)

Lots of self-indulgence

But does this engaging show prove the host's thesis - that boomers have wrought change on most facets of daily life?

Numerous authorities, and several celebrities, show up to support the premise of widespread change.

There are academicians from the University of Pennsylvania and UCLA. The CEOs of AARP and advertising/public relations giant Ogilivy Mather Worldwide appear on camera as do politicians and presidential advisers - even current White House press secretary Tony Snow, who plays flute in a boomers rock band, playing Born to Be Wild, and also opining. Snow warns at one point, "One thing we learned in the '60s is that . . . we can't remake the world, with all new values. It doesn't work that way."

That is one of the few counter-arguments offered to the idea of the boomers as an unstoppable force for positive change.

Dychtwald, who says he has spent 30 years studying his own generation, offers too much look-at-us indulgence. Experts and statistics support the characteristics or personality traits that Dychtwald says define this generation: idealism, anti-authoritarianism, openness to change and self-empowerment.

Director Oliver Stone endorses the first three but then reveals even he doesn't believe the whole generation embodies all of them:

As a child at a private Manhattan school, Stone recalls, he didn't misbehave for fear of being thrown out "and messing up my life." But just a few years later, "I became another person over the 15 months" he served in the Vietnam War. "It opened my eyes to go to the bottom of the deck and to see what was going on . . . division in every unit I was in."

So he created the antiwar Platoon, which won the Oscar for best film. But in a later segment of the PBS show, Stone offers a wry comment on materialism in America.

A famous scene from his 1987 movie Wall Street is shown in which a manipulative broker played by Michael Douglas says, "Greed is good. Greed is right. Greed works."

Stone responds: "I thought (he) was the bad guy. I was shocked to see (audiences) loved him. They were worshiping money."

And then, over images of Kenneth Lay and Martha Stewart, a narrator rather daintily announces: "A generation that had experimented with sex and drugs experimented with money. Not all of the results were positive. . . ."

The downside

That is typical of the shortcoming of this documentary: The show is too forgiving for what millions of people can say is a lack of moral fiber. The show states boomers are responsible for:

- Bringing drug use into the mainstream.

- Following FDA approval in 1960 of birth control pills, creating a surge in sex with little consideration for affection or relationships.

- By the end of the 1970s, with the oldest boomers then in their 30s, there were twice as many divorced people as at the beginning of that decade.

- Feeding on America's constant prosperity, boomers now have an average household debt equal to 120 percent of their annual income - more than five times the household average in 1946.

What's more, the show's images and experts are mainly white men and women. Yet Julian Bond, former Georgia legislator and current NAACP chairman, offers some of the most prescient comments; he and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin are the primary black experts seen. A single Hispanic-American is an on-camera expert, and there are no Asian-American speakers.

Maybe these complaints are just the journalist in me looking for greater balance. Actually, I enjoyed the trip down memory lane and was impressed by some of the statistics.

But the topic is more suitable for a college course. I'm guessing the 352-page companion book (The Boomer Century, 1946-2046, by Richard Croker, Springfield Press, $25.99) due out April 30 would be a good text.

Robert N. Jenkins can be reached at (727) 893-8496 or bjenkins@sptimes.com.

. TV PREVIEW

The Boomer Century

Airs at 9 tonight on WEDU-Ch. 3.

TV PREVIEW

The Boomer Century

Tonight at 9 on WEDU-Ch. 3

[Last modified March 27, 2007, 07:15:28]