The television news anchor who wrote lovingly about the World War II generation has published his wary look at the Baby Boomers in paperback.
The paperback version of "Boom!", which focused on events in the Sixties, is scheduled for release tomorrow and includes a DVD of some interviews contained in the book.
Tom Brokaw, the semi-retired NBC News anchor and interim host of NBC's "Meet the Press", published the bestselling "The Greatest Generation" in 2004 about the men and women who fought and returned from World War II to create modern America.
He followed that in 2007 with "Boom!" -- which focuses attention on the 1960s and the impact the movers and shakers of that era had on current events and might have on the future.
The fact is the jury is still out on the effects the Baby Boomer have had on society. A post here not long ago discussed how much anger about the current market failings and the need for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout were the fault of Baby Boomer excess.
"Boom!" brings together a variety of people from the Sixties, which for Brokaw starts with the assassination of John Kennedy in 1962 and ends with the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. He talked to such diverse personalities as singer Arlo Guthrie and political strategist Karl Rove.
"For the most part, I am like the old class president at this reunion. I call on others and then let them have their say. I am here as a journalist but also as a citizen, a grandfather now and a young man then," Brokaw says in his introduction.
One participant in his reunion was Bill Clinton.
Writes Brokaw: "Former president Bill Clinton, who was a bearded student and famously avoided the draft during the Sixties, says in these pages, 'If you thought something good came out of the Sixties, you’re probably a Democrat; if you thought the Sixties were bad, you’re probably a Republican.' The evidence is still coming in and the jury is still out — and forty years later we don’t seem anywhere near being able to render a verdict."
Comments
The fact that Boomers' sensibilities and values have driven those of this nation over the past 30 years is not the stuff of conjecture or opinion. After all, historians agree that the Baby Boomer generation has been more influential than any other in the history of our country.
Our mantra of "I want what I want when I want it whether I can afford it or not" that has driven our unfortunate propensities to spend far beyond our means, eliminate that pesky word "savings" from our vocabulary, and place matter (read material things) over mind (read rational behavior), have dominated our every attitude, behavior, our parenting, and therefore, given our sheer numbers, our national state of affairs.
Combine that with the fact that we have been in charge of everything over at least the past 20 years, from the legislature to corporate America, and we now have the perfect storm of immense influence, poor judgment from all the coddling we received as youth, and high levels of generational denial of responsibility borne from a kind of perpetual adolescence.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is all of this is fixable.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
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