This post isn’t actually a review of a chapter from Jon Keller’s “The Bluest State,” but it’s related.
As you know, if you’ve read either the book or one of my posts on it, Keller’s central narrative is that “boomer liberals” are responsible for much, if not all, of what is wrong with Massachusetts (and perhaps the entire country). And his focus in the book on “boomers” is unmistakable. He sees something deeply wrong with his own “boomer” generation, especially those of the “liberal” persuasion. As I’ve explained in my posts, there are serious questions as to whether Keller’s narrative can withstand scrutiny.
And it’s now getting wildly out of hand. Witness today’s post at his blog:
Boomer Hubris Alert
Unintentionally hilarious reading in this account of the anti-war left’s impatience with and political threats against the Democratic establishment for not getting us out of Iraq quickly enough.
Unlike at the MoveOn.org offices, where visionary moral arbiters sit around and cook up sophomoric ad campaigns, then write a check and publish them, their pandering dullard allies in Congress have to actually submit their ideas to a vote, and cannot enact them without bi-partisan support. The war isn’t over yet? Why, summon the whambulance! The new (old) left (Tommy Hayden, is that YOU in there?) might well throw a tantrum that could (as it did in the 2006 Connecticut Senate race) reinforce pro-war political power.
Brilliant! Thanks, egomaniacal Boomers, you’re tops!
Set aside the political point. Maybe I’m misreading the post, but it sure reads to me like Keller is lumping MoveOn.org in with his detested “egomaniacal Boomers.” But, like MoveOn or hate ’em, there’s one thing they indisputably are not: boomers. Tom Matzzie and Eli Pariser, the MoveOn folks most talked about in the Politico article Keller links to, are in their early 30s and late 20s, respectively. So is a lot of the “anti-war left” of whose strategy Keller so thoroughly disapproves. It’s probably fair to describe Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, MoveOn’s co-founders, as boomers, but they don’t do the day-to-day work anymore.
Unintentionally hilarious reading indeed!
Ted Kennedy, a frequent target of Keller’s throughout his book, is also self-evidently not a boomer. Hard to be a member of the post-war baby boom generation when you were born in 1932.
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Think I’m making up Keller’s boomer obsession? From p. 86:
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Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see how a lineup of a non-boomer and a boomer followed by a keynote non-boomer proves that boomers are running the show.
Well, yes, technically he's a boomer… but he came along well before the demographers said “Sweet mother of Abe Lincoln, we got ourselves a boom here!!!!' which argues against him being shaped by the boom…
But Kellers argument doesn't have to stand on it's merits when it's got such verve and elan to hold it up…
Someone who thinks Ted K. is a boomer is practically admitting he was dropped somewhere in Idaho by aliens and raised by marmots until the age of 30.
One of the GOP’s biggest fears is that they are losing the youth vote. And they are losing the votes of the generation after Gen X, because younger people don’t fear equal marriage rights, and the new generation has a higher proportion of Hispanics (who don’t want to get trashed in this “illegal immigration” ire that Lou Dobbs huffs and puffs about).
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If being liberal were bad (and it’s actually good), then it would not matter what generation liberals were from. But for the GOP to be competitive, it will need to drive a wedge between voters and the Democratic candidate they agree with. So I think the GOP will try to use generational resentment as one wedge.
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Now, Keller’s not GOP on the face of it, but he is a pundit of a certain stripe, trying to say things that will sell his books. I’ll bet he wanted to sell a book, and publisher/literary agent told him, “this is the kind of thing we are looking for…” and that’s why we’ve got a lot of these common, hackneyed narratives running through his book. (I know, I know, the phrase “running through” implies there’s more to the book than hackneyed narratives, and that might be wrong.) Let’s face it, the genre Keller has entered has already been well-defined by Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Howie Carr, etc. Republicans are proudly and invariably “on message” thanks to Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz. It’s not too far-fetched to think Luntz or some pollster like him came up with a scheme to offset the youth vote’s tendency to favor Dems by trying develop a “Boomers Have Cheated Gen Y” meme, and a Republican in the publishing industry was looking for an author to try to sell books with that meme.
These days, “bipartisan” is a term without any meaning on its own used as shorthand for “willingness to lick the behinds of corporate/moneyed interests.” The hell with it.
(Imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger reading this comment out loud:)
Tom Matzzie? Not a boomer.
Eli Pariser? Not a boomer.
Tom Hayden? Not a boomer. (b. 1939)
Ted Kennedy? Not a boomer.
John Kerry? Not a boomer. (b. 1943)
etc.
Jon Keller? Ah, I think we're on to something. Me Generation, indeed.