I met a new Lisa a couple weeks ago, and when she introduced herself as Lisa, I literally blurted, “Another one?” She said, “How many Lisa’s have you met? ” I responded, “I don’t know, 6 or 7.” Then I counted. She was #11.
I had thought Jennifer was the most common female name, but I think Lisa is the one.
Decided to get married on the first date? And together for 31 years. Yikes!
“…I was looking back to see
If she was looking back to see
If I was looking back at her…”
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
Our story is a little like that. On the first day of a college class the professor told everyone to pick a partner for a class project. I had spotted her as the cutest girl in the class, and when I glanced over at her to see who she would pick she was staring at me. We pointed at each other and the rest is history. We decided to get married three months later and were married within the year. Last June we celebrated our 50th anniversary.
This caught my interest. The author is talking about dividing the Baby Boom generation in two. For a long time I thought I was near the end of the boomer generation, but looking it up, I saw I was in the middle, which surprised me.
Mr. Parker suggests calling the first half of boomers the Hippie generation, and then struggles to find a name for the second half. The silent or hidden generation? Generation Jones? Or Generation R, with R representing Reagan?
He then points his finger at the Hippie generation as the source of many of our nation’s troubles. It sort of makes sense of my own history, as straddling these two rather disparate groups.
TommyJay, I read the article and more or less agree though I might put the dividing line a couple years later. Demographically the “postwar baby boom” that gave Boomers the name did not end until the mid-60s. But my own feeling is that to be “culturally” a boomer you need to have a conscious memory of 1) Kennedy assassination and 2) Beatlemania. This puts the dividing line in the late 50s. I was born in 1950 and definitely have noted that people born around 1960 can have a somewhat different perspective often more in common with “Generation X”, the post-baby boom generation.
Bonus question: the two events were in very close temporal proximity. Did one lead to the other?
@FOAF: …[the JFK assassination and Beatlemania] were in very close temporal proximity. Did one lead to the other?
I’ve seen it argued that some of the Beatlemania effect was a rebound from the shock and mourning following the JFK assassination.
I’ve also read that UK Beatlemania was a rebound, as the economy recovered, from the devastation of WW II.
I can go with both. The Beatles were great and they were right on time.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, as Viewed From a Soviet Launch Facility
Speaking as an early Gen-Xer (born in early 1969), let me just say “No! Heck no! No flippin’ way!” 🙂 That is a ridiculous place to put the line between Boomers and Gen-X.
There is a huge cultural divide between those born in even the early 1960s (Boomers) and the late 1960s (Gen-X). I’ve noticed it personally. My whole career I’ve always felt more affinity with people even 15 years younger than I have with people just five years older. Many, many Gen-Xers I’ve talked to feel the same.
This was most pronounced at locations where the generations mixed for long periods of time (such as at job sites I’ve worked at in three different time zones). There is a difference in attitude, a difference in dress, a difference in music, TV, and movies. Even the Millennials there noticed the line between Boomers and Gen-X and marveled at how sharp it is.
An example: I was the lead engineer on a project at a time when my employer was short of engineers, so I got to hire my own team (mainly Millennials right out of college). We were working a lot of overtime, so we often would take a break at dinnertime and head out to a local pizza place together. Since we were offsite and couldn’t talk about work, we discussed a lot of different things.
We all noticed that Gen-X and Millennials liked the same movies and similar music (TV was different). Boomers were different. Gen-X and Millennials mostly got each others’ cultural references. Boomers didn’t understand either younger generation. Gen-X and Millennials dressed the same (casually). While ties were no longer required, Boomer engineers still wore “professional” clothes. It was all something that, once someone first pointed it out, you couldn’t not see it.
The point was really driven home when, in a conversation with someone else while we were present, the tooling engineer revealed he was just five years older than I was. My Millennials looked at me and said “Wow! You two are completely different.” By that time we all knew each other well enough to realize it was generational and not just personal preferences.
I don’t know that the Boomers ever even noticed the gap. They could work with us no problem, but culturally they only really fit in with each other. Which they did, but they didn’t really mix with the younger cohorts outside of work.
The line between Boomers and Gen-X belongs right where it is (1965). It’s the line between Gen-X and Millennials that is fuzzier.
Mkent, I feel that the Boomer/GenX lines are much more confused than that. I was born in 1959 which is supposed to make me a Boomer. My attitudes are firmly GenX. I listened to a comedian talk about GenX and what she listed out for GenX were things I went through and believed in. The Vietnam War had a much greater influence on my life than the Korean War or WWII.
I see a lot of posts blaming Boomers for wokeism and the other depradations of Leftism…and I could see how someone might think this from observing the participants in many demonstrations…but all the surveys I’ve seen show that these attitudes are much more prevalent among the younger population
”The Vietnam War had a much greater influence on my life than the Korean War or WWII.”
And that makes you a Boomer. I’m an *early* Gen-Xer, and the Vietnam War had *no* influence on my life. It’s something I only learned about in school. I think the first time I ever heard about it was when the first Rambo movie was released.
Likewise with the Korean War. The earliest Boomer would’ve been seven when that war ended, so for a Boomer, that’s a school lesson, not a personal experience. Vietnam is to Gen-X as Korea is to Boomers.
I would caution conflating “hippie” with “Boomer.” The hippies were Boomers, but not all Boomers were hippies. The differences between the generations were much bigger than that.
I think Maria is a liar.
Lol.
David Foster: “…wokeism and the other depradations of Leftism” are mostly found in people younger than Boomers.
I’ll note that the very dangerous ones are involved in education. Or politics.
But many retired Boomers on the left (of those I know) DO support a lot of the insanity.
It feels like a plea to still belong, and still be relevant to their younger “kin”.
Very sad, to me.
@mkent: I would caution conflating “hippie” with “Boomer.” The hippies were Boomers, but not all Boomers were hippies
Quite so.
Being a Boomer is well-defined by cutoff years — usually 1946-1964.
Being a hippie is not well-defined and I can’t find any firm statistics. According to this article only 50% of Boomers even tried marijuana.
Hippies were very visible and influential beyond their numbers, but as I remember things, comparatively rare against the general population.
When conservatives use the term, as D. Parker does, it’s as a stereotype for those of a certain age. For other conservatives it’s usually a term of abuse.
It ought to be noted that almost all the leaders of the hippie movement were of the Greatest and Silent generations.
When conservatives complain about the hippies, IMO they are really talking about the New Left, which strategically rode the back of the hippie movement and the counterculture for its own political ends.
See my comment on Bill Ayers in the Mayor’s Race topic:
Hippies influenced culture, then faded away. The New Left burrowed in for the Long March Through The Institutions and successfully changed the media, education and politics in America.
So what makes Gen-X different than the Boomers and Millennials? Besides cultural references such as music, movies, and TV, I think it is two things:
1) Gen-X either grew up or came of age in the Age of Reagan. As this crowd seems to be mostly Boomers, I don’t think I need to tell you just how dark and gritty the 60’s and 70’s were with the assassinations, the race riots, Vietnam, Watergate, the oil embargoes, malaise, stagflation, and the Iranian hostage crisis.
That ended literally within seconds of Reagan taking office. I think Reagan’s hand was still on the Bible when the hostages left Iranian airspace. Within 2-3 years the whole culture changed to one of unbound optimism. The economy was booming. Chrysler was running commercials “The pride is back!” with American flags everywhere. We weren’t just enduring the Cold War, we were winning it (Reagan’s “We win, they lose!”). Alex P. Keaton was the most popular character on TV. The Voyagers were touring the outer solar system, and the Space Shuttle was making outer space useful, beautiful, and elegant. We were the first (and, it turned out, only) colorblind generation.
Then the Wall came down, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and the future was so bright, we had to wear shades.
Gen-X didn’t just experience that era, we came of age in it. It defined us. The sense of optimism among us was immense. We thought that that was just the start, and we really had no idea that things wouldn’t just keep getting better and better forever. It was intoxicating.
2) We were the first hi-tech generation. We grew up with microwave ovens and cordless phones (our parents couldn’t listen in on our conversations). We were the first to take our music with us *everywhere* (the Walkman). We were the first to control our own TV viewing (the VCR). Our parents controlled the TV, but in general they didn’t know how to program the VCR, so we could still watch our shows, even in primetime. And that was before the advent of the culture-shattering of video streaming, so we all watched the same movies and TV shows. The VCR made that easier, so it helped unify our generation, not fracture it.
We were the first generation to play video games (Space Invaders, Pac-Man), not pinball. We were the first to have game consoles (the Atari 2600) and personal computers (the Apple II and Commodore 64). We were the first on the internet.
I had my Apple II on the internet 24/7 (not dial-up) in 1988 at the age of 19. Imagine going back home for Christmas and trying to explain to parents and family — who didn’t even have computers — what the internet was. What email and telnet and ftp and Usenet News were. What a chat room was. “You mean, like a party-line telephone?” Or the cultural phenomenon of having friends that I’ve never met. “You mean like pen pals?”
The early internet was a very different place than what it is today. It was a very optimistic and very libertarian place. Just about the opposite of what it is today, in fact. The optimism of the early internet combined with the wonders of the personal computer and the optimism of the Reagan era to drive our sense of awe and hope even higher.
It didn’t last. Bill Clinton’s BJ seemed to be the wrench that shattered the dream. I think we still have an innate hope that our collective dreams will still come true, but they’re buried under a pile of woke rubble. I still blame Ross Perot.
What defines the Millennials the way the above defines the Xers? I think it’s 1) coming of age in the age of the BJ and 2) the advent of the cellphone and social media. I think they really changed the culture, and not for the better.
Winsome Earle-Sears Details Racism She’s Faced From Democrats and the Misogyny of the Left – Video
Cute story
The U.S. Gaza plan as reported by the WSJ
A U.S. Plan Splits Gaza in Two—One Zone Controlled by Israel, One by Hamas
– Jared Kushner floats a plan to rebuild the Israeli-controlled half of the Palestinian enclave until Hamas can be disarmed
https://archive.fo/T9aXC
Ha! Tom and Lisa.
I met a new Lisa a couple weeks ago, and when she introduced herself as Lisa, I literally blurted, “Another one?” She said, “How many Lisa’s have you met? ” I responded, “I don’t know, 6 or 7.” Then I counted. She was #11.
I had thought Jennifer was the most common female name, but I think Lisa is the one.
Decided to get married on the first date? And together for 31 years. Yikes!
“…I was looking back to see
If she was looking back to see
If I was looking back at her…”
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
Our story is a little like that. On the first day of a college class the professor told everyone to pick a partner for a class project. I had spotted her as the cutest girl in the class, and when I glanced over at her to see who she would pick she was staring at me. We pointed at each other and the rest is history. We decided to get married three months later and were married within the year. Last June we celebrated our 50th anniversary.
Chris B:
Wonderful – congratulations!
Time for a hidden generation to clean up the Hippies’ messes
This caught my interest. The author is talking about dividing the Baby Boom generation in two. For a long time I thought I was near the end of the boomer generation, but looking it up, I saw I was in the middle, which surprised me.
Mr. Parker suggests calling the first half of boomers the Hippie generation, and then struggles to find a name for the second half. The silent or hidden generation? Generation Jones? Or Generation R, with R representing Reagan?
He then points his finger at the Hippie generation as the source of many of our nation’s troubles. It sort of makes sense of my own history, as straddling these two rather disparate groups.
So: https://x.com/ChuckGrassley/status/1981426515284721848
And: https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1981428458568974536
Re: Hippies
What can I say?
Mistakes were made. 🙂
TommyJay, I read the article and more or less agree though I might put the dividing line a couple years later. Demographically the “postwar baby boom” that gave Boomers the name did not end until the mid-60s. But my own feeling is that to be “culturally” a boomer you need to have a conscious memory of 1) Kennedy assassination and 2) Beatlemania. This puts the dividing line in the late 50s. I was born in 1950 and definitely have noted that people born around 1960 can have a somewhat different perspective often more in common with “Generation X”, the post-baby boom generation.
Bonus question: the two events were in very close temporal proximity. Did one lead to the other?
@FOAF: …[the JFK assassination and Beatlemania] were in very close temporal proximity. Did one lead to the other?
I’ve seen it argued that some of the Beatlemania effect was a rebound from the shock and mourning following the JFK assassination.
I’ve also read that UK Beatlemania was a rebound, as the economy recovered, from the devastation of WW II.
I can go with both. The Beatles were great and they were right on time.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, as Viewed From a Soviet Launch Facility
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/75267.html
”This puts the dividing line in the late 50s.”
Speaking as an early Gen-Xer (born in early 1969), let me just say “No! Heck no! No flippin’ way!” 🙂 That is a ridiculous place to put the line between Boomers and Gen-X.
There is a huge cultural divide between those born in even the early 1960s (Boomers) and the late 1960s (Gen-X). I’ve noticed it personally. My whole career I’ve always felt more affinity with people even 15 years younger than I have with people just five years older. Many, many Gen-Xers I’ve talked to feel the same.
This was most pronounced at locations where the generations mixed for long periods of time (such as at job sites I’ve worked at in three different time zones). There is a difference in attitude, a difference in dress, a difference in music, TV, and movies. Even the Millennials there noticed the line between Boomers and Gen-X and marveled at how sharp it is.
An example: I was the lead engineer on a project at a time when my employer was short of engineers, so I got to hire my own team (mainly Millennials right out of college). We were working a lot of overtime, so we often would take a break at dinnertime and head out to a local pizza place together. Since we were offsite and couldn’t talk about work, we discussed a lot of different things.
We all noticed that Gen-X and Millennials liked the same movies and similar music (TV was different). Boomers were different. Gen-X and Millennials mostly got each others’ cultural references. Boomers didn’t understand either younger generation. Gen-X and Millennials dressed the same (casually). While ties were no longer required, Boomer engineers still wore “professional” clothes. It was all something that, once someone first pointed it out, you couldn’t not see it.
The point was really driven home when, in a conversation with someone else while we were present, the tooling engineer revealed he was just five years older than I was. My Millennials looked at me and said “Wow! You two are completely different.” By that time we all knew each other well enough to realize it was generational and not just personal preferences.
I don’t know that the Boomers ever even noticed the gap. They could work with us no problem, but culturally they only really fit in with each other. Which they did, but they didn’t really mix with the younger cohorts outside of work.
The line between Boomers and Gen-X belongs right where it is (1965). It’s the line between Gen-X and Millennials that is fuzzier.
Mkent, I feel that the Boomer/GenX lines are much more confused than that. I was born in 1959 which is supposed to make me a Boomer. My attitudes are firmly GenX. I listened to a comedian talk about GenX and what she listed out for GenX were things I went through and believed in. The Vietnam War had a much greater influence on my life than the Korean War or WWII.
I see a lot of posts blaming Boomers for wokeism and the other depradations of Leftism…and I could see how someone might think this from observing the participants in many demonstrations…but all the surveys I’ve seen show that these attitudes are much more prevalent among the younger population
”The Vietnam War had a much greater influence on my life than the Korean War or WWII.”
And that makes you a Boomer. I’m an *early* Gen-Xer, and the Vietnam War had *no* influence on my life. It’s something I only learned about in school. I think the first time I ever heard about it was when the first Rambo movie was released.
Likewise with the Korean War. The earliest Boomer would’ve been seven when that war ended, so for a Boomer, that’s a school lesson, not a personal experience. Vietnam is to Gen-X as Korea is to Boomers.
I would caution conflating “hippie” with “Boomer.” The hippies were Boomers, but not all Boomers were hippies. The differences between the generations were much bigger than that.
I think Maria is a liar.
Lol.
David Foster: “…wokeism and the other depradations of Leftism” are mostly found in people younger than Boomers.
I’ll note that the very dangerous ones are involved in education. Or politics.
But many retired Boomers on the left (of those I know) DO support a lot of the insanity.
It feels like a plea to still belong, and still be relevant to their younger “kin”.
Very sad, to me.
@mkent: I would caution conflating “hippie” with “Boomer.” The hippies were Boomers, but not all Boomers were hippies
Quite so.
Being a Boomer is well-defined by cutoff years — usually 1946-1964.
Being a hippie is not well-defined and I can’t find any firm statistics. According to this article only 50% of Boomers even tried marijuana.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/353645/nearly-half-adults-tried-marijuana.aspx
Hippies were very visible and influential beyond their numbers, but as I remember things, comparatively rare against the general population.
When conservatives use the term, as D. Parker does, it’s as a stereotype for those of a certain age. For other conservatives it’s usually a term of abuse.
It ought to be noted that almost all the leaders of the hippie movement were of the Greatest and Silent generations.
When conservatives complain about the hippies, IMO they are really talking about the New Left, which strategically rode the back of the hippie movement and the counterculture for its own political ends.
See my comment on Bill Ayers in the Mayor’s Race topic:
https://thenewneo.com/2025/10/23/nyc-mayors-poll-tightens-if-there-were-a-2-person-race/#comment-2827221
Hippies influenced culture, then faded away. The New Left burrowed in for the Long March Through The Institutions and successfully changed the media, education and politics in America.
So what makes Gen-X different than the Boomers and Millennials? Besides cultural references such as music, movies, and TV, I think it is two things:
1) Gen-X either grew up or came of age in the Age of Reagan. As this crowd seems to be mostly Boomers, I don’t think I need to tell you just how dark and gritty the 60’s and 70’s were with the assassinations, the race riots, Vietnam, Watergate, the oil embargoes, malaise, stagflation, and the Iranian hostage crisis.
That ended literally within seconds of Reagan taking office. I think Reagan’s hand was still on the Bible when the hostages left Iranian airspace. Within 2-3 years the whole culture changed to one of unbound optimism. The economy was booming. Chrysler was running commercials “The pride is back!” with American flags everywhere. We weren’t just enduring the Cold War, we were winning it (Reagan’s “We win, they lose!”). Alex P. Keaton was the most popular character on TV. The Voyagers were touring the outer solar system, and the Space Shuttle was making outer space useful, beautiful, and elegant. We were the first (and, it turned out, only) colorblind generation.
Then the Wall came down, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and the future was so bright, we had to wear shades.
Gen-X didn’t just experience that era, we came of age in it. It defined us. The sense of optimism among us was immense. We thought that that was just the start, and we really had no idea that things wouldn’t just keep getting better and better forever. It was intoxicating.
2) We were the first hi-tech generation. We grew up with microwave ovens and cordless phones (our parents couldn’t listen in on our conversations). We were the first to take our music with us *everywhere* (the Walkman). We were the first to control our own TV viewing (the VCR). Our parents controlled the TV, but in general they didn’t know how to program the VCR, so we could still watch our shows, even in primetime. And that was before the advent of the culture-shattering of video streaming, so we all watched the same movies and TV shows. The VCR made that easier, so it helped unify our generation, not fracture it.
We were the first generation to play video games (Space Invaders, Pac-Man), not pinball. We were the first to have game consoles (the Atari 2600) and personal computers (the Apple II and Commodore 64). We were the first on the internet.
I had my Apple II on the internet 24/7 (not dial-up) in 1988 at the age of 19. Imagine going back home for Christmas and trying to explain to parents and family — who didn’t even have computers — what the internet was. What email and telnet and ftp and Usenet News were. What a chat room was. “You mean, like a party-line telephone?” Or the cultural phenomenon of having friends that I’ve never met. “You mean like pen pals?”
The early internet was a very different place than what it is today. It was a very optimistic and very libertarian place. Just about the opposite of what it is today, in fact. The optimism of the early internet combined with the wonders of the personal computer and the optimism of the Reagan era to drive our sense of awe and hope even higher.
It didn’t last. Bill Clinton’s BJ seemed to be the wrench that shattered the dream. I think we still have an innate hope that our collective dreams will still come true, but they’re buried under a pile of woke rubble. I still blame Ross Perot.
What defines the Millennials the way the above defines the Xers? I think it’s 1) coming of age in the age of the BJ and 2) the advent of the cellphone and social media. I think they really changed the culture, and not for the better.
Winsome Earle-Sears Details Racism She’s Faced From Democrats and the Misogyny of the Left – Video
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2025/10/winsome-earle-sears-details-racism-shes.html
mkent is veering into artfldgr scroll-by territory …
I want to drone strike anyone who uses the term ‘Boomer’.