Don’t worry, in another forty or fifty years, all the Baby Boomers and “The Greatest Generation” will be gone. Meanwhile, this, from a new interview with Bill Clinton:
I mean, all of this “the greatest generation is World War II?” — it just happens that they’re the most horrible parents in human history, right?
If all of us baby boomers were so bad, then our parents were terrible; they failed. And if we were so bad, how come our kids are so great? We were hellaciously good parents.
I think it’s phony as a $3 bill. I think they had a chance to win World War II and it was clear. These are much more complex things [now]. We have no idea if the World War II generation would have made the decisions they should make on climate change if they thought doing so would bring an end to their economic prosperity.
Grandpa and Great-Grandpa are fighting again! [The Atlantic via The Awl]
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Bill, are ya saying that we blew it?
"Beating the Nazis was pretty cool. What have you done for me *lately,* Grandpa?"
Well, we know Monica did.
You wish ;>)
well I dont know for sure ,,, but i guess it is hard to be good parent with PTSD
Your move, Tom Brokaw.
This is not a good day for Tom Brokaw.
This is good news for John McCain?
Somewhere Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are weeping
It's all right, they will probably get an HBO miniseries out of this.
Post here if your "Greatest Generation" grandparents/parents made you eat some horrible food that is objectively bad for you and will kill you some day, that they claimed was the height of health.
In our family, that was pure fucking buttermilk. MMMM!
My mom, when I was six: "Whaddaya mean, you won't eat the skin of the fried chicken? It's the best part!"
My mom, when I was 14 (after her mother died of cancer and she had read David Reuben's 'Save Your Life Diet'): "Don't eat the skin on that fried chicken!! It's the worst part!"
My husband is still convinced that you should have meat at every meal, but is willing to settle for cereal on weekday mornings.
Remember when cereal was bad, a breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast was so much better?
Full English fry-up or GTFO, amirite?
As a native carnivore who lost the cholesterol lottery, I've learned that tuna is the best available meat-like substitute, as the mercury won't kill you as fast as the animal fat.
However, your post is making me so hungry that I may have to go home at lunch and μwave up two strips of peppered bacon and scramble a couple of jumbos.
Both sets of grandparents routinely cooked with lard. No, not "shortening," and certainly not that heart healthy canola/vegetable oil shit.
My mother still makes pie crust with lard. And it is heavenly.
Buttermilk makes great biscuits. Making someone drink it straight up is child abuse.
It was like a torture session. My grandad, a WWII vet, former college football player who gave it up to go into the Army, who worked in the Empire State Building when the place was hit by a plane in the 1940s and taught economics at a college alongside my grandmother, a math prof., drank 2 glasses a day. He would sit all of us down and bring us up one-by-one to choke down a glass of that shit while he watched to make sure we were getting our "vitamins and minerals" or whatever.
Is it too sad for me to say he died of a heart attack? What about if I mention he was eating sausage when he died?
Will I be banned from Wonkette if I 'fess to liking buttermilk?
My Mom (the Frenchie side of me) would try to get us to eat cow's tongue. And seriously, she also recommended eating the fatty part of steaks. Needless to say, I've been a vegetarian for years.
We ate tongue a lot when I was a kid; it was cheap and when you're feeding a family of nine, cheap counts. I liked it well enough, with plenty of mustard, and liked it sliced thin in sandwiches the next day for lunch, ditto the mustard.
But we do have a pretty cute home movie of my mom basking in the sun in a lawn chair, drinking a beer and smoking a cig, patting her tummy, seven months pregnant with me.
When I had an upset stomach, my ma thought that drinking flat Coca-Cola would help me get better. I can't imagine where the fuck she came up with that. I'll have to ask her, but she'll probably deny ever doing it.
We drink ginger-ale with all the bubbles stirred out of it. It tastes like sugar death, but the ginger is magical. Oh, also, CANADA FUCKING DRY, not Seagram's.
Happily, my mom had the same stomach-settling opinion about blackberry brandy. Roughly until I was in junior high.
Dude, I drink buttermilk straight out the carton…
Mine cooked with fatback. In everything. Everything had fatback. It was fucking delicious.
http://www.baconunwrapped.com/2007/10/baconvision…
There really is just nothing wrong with bacon. Though, I've not eaten it in ages…
Baconz Unwrapped?
Sounds like somebody's pitching Ken on Wonkette… After Dark.
What part of the South are you from?
My greatest generation parts were in Richmond Va. Mom was panhandle of Florida. I'm a freak of nature, I know.
My grandparents are really weird about food, and I wonder if it comes from growing up in part during the Great Depression. When I was a kid, they always insisted that everyone had to finish everything on their plate, as if throwing out food was some great crime. Now, they're in their mid-90s with little appetite and both complain that the cafeteria at their assisted living facility serves them too much, no matter how many times everyone tells them that that's a stupid complaint as they don't have to try to eat the whole thing.
My parents were born at the tail end of the depression and that shit was passed along to them by my grandparents. I can still remember not being able to leave the dinner table till the plate was "clean," one time my cousin still brings up I had to sit there for about three hours playing with the peas that I would not eat. So of course every time I visit her she puts a serving of peas on my plate as a joke. She's got a weird sense of humor, but then she's a lawyer, so go figure.
My Mom STILL insists that I don't lick or write on her Birthday Card envelopes… so they can be reused… as if when you buy a card you don't get an envelope with it… It is definitely the times she grew up in.
My parents adopted every Depression Era behavior my grandparents had. I think it's because my Grandmother, who's the dominant force in the family and always has been, worked on some WPA projects and was head of the Crop Corps (basically roving gangs of girls sent to farms to help out when help was needed since farm labor was low) for Eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island. Then, you couldn't leave a damn thing in the field because one hungry soldier=one more Nazi curbstomping a child.
My mom tells me that my granddad (95 next month) insisted when they were growing up that they only use 2 squares of toilet paper per wipe. Otherwise, WASTING MONEY! He lived with me for 14 years up till last summer and he was just the same. I'd go on a business trip for a week or two and come home and he hadn't run the AC the whole time I was gone to save on the light bill and it would be 95 fucking degrees in the house. Puritan pinch-penny throw-nickels-around-like-manhole-covers New England Yankee ethic, FTW!
If blandness could kill you, that would be boiled rice water for anything from an upset stomach, aching muscles, to what we now call Irritable Bowels.
That might've been their inner Christain Scientist talking — 'them' being my grandparents' — more than any great-generation chops.
My grandmother used to serve us tongue. Never liked eating something that was tasting you back.
I have just two words for you all: Gefilte fish.
Army surplus ftw. Dehydrated potatoes, white margarine (with a little pack of yellow dye), 5 lb cans of peanut butter with the oil floating on top, beans, rice and glorious government cheese!
And liver. Fuck, I hate liver.
Oh yeah I remember that peanut butter.
Boiled garbage and fried crap and a beating if we couldn't eat as much of it as an adult farmer with a hollow leg. At least the old man didn't drink.
Well, I'll agree my parents were pretty bad but generalize much there Bill?
I never generalize, cause the women don't like it when I do.
Yeah, pretty clunky and somewhat vindictive way of saying parents are responsible for how their kids turn out. But his dad was an absentee deadbeat, his stepdad an alkie, so he's got some scars.
"hellaciously good parents."
Right. In the 6th grade, oral is now second base.
"And Chelsea went to Harvard, so nanny-nanny-boo-boo."
You seem to be implying this is a bad thing, somehow. I apologize if I misunderstand your intent.
Well, the children of Bill's cohort are all long since grown up. Bill's about the age of my parents, my parents had me extremely late in life (40s) and I'm 24. So most children of early boomers have families of their own now, and it's their kids who are blowjobbing each other in the bathroom.
Of course, every parental generation seems convinced that the current generation is at risk of spontaneously sucking cock in the nursery. It doesn't seem to be that bad to me.
The Baby Boomers and "Greatest Generation" are grandpa and great-grandpa, not dad and grandpa? I think our Jr. must be 10 years old.
Yeah, because Riley, Arielle, and Jack were soooo old!
Uh, yeah. Bill was born in '46. People of that cohort were breeding by the mid-60s. Which means they could have had grandchildren by the '80s, and great-grandchildren today.
My grandparents were all (young) WW2 generation and I'm 24, but both I and my parents were born very late in generational terms — I have friends whose parents now aren't much older than my parents were when they had me.
"Dammit you old whippersnappers. Get your Hoveround off my lawn!"
From this Gen Xer, I think you're BOTH shitty generations of parents.
Can't wait to see how the Gen-Xer's kids turn out.
Considering how most of them seem to not let their kids do anything on their own unsupervised, probably unable to deal with life without mommy or daddy holding their hands; in fact, there's stories about current college students whose parents will come in to complain to their professors and still help them with papers.
Those stories are true. Add to them stories about parents who want to plan their child's course schedule and parents who want to set up their chid's internships.
True story: I am on the board that hears academic integrity cases. A plagiarism case involved extensive copying from a "paper mill" website. The student's defense was that her mother wrote that part.
I remember being a kid in the 80s, and just going out, meeting up with other kids and running around the neighborhood; none of that play-date bullshit. The amount of over-parenting done by today's parents, mostly my generation and the one before, is ridiculous. I blame McRuff, the Crime Dog (seriously, I do).
One of my friends in HR told me she once had a guy's mom call her and complain that her working professional son was passed over for a promotion. Because THAT will really help his career…
He deserves noogies and atomic wedgies during the lunch hour.
Fucking
adultskids today.Yeah, I'm glad my parents weren't like that. Otherwise I would have had a lot more trouble sneaking over to my girlfriend's house to fuck and smoke pot.
These children today, when do they find time to fuck?
We're well on our way to having the hippest children ever. Did our parents dress us up in Soundgarden diapers and feed us organic baby food? Don't think so.
My "Generation Jones" parents had me late in life, but gave me a healthy dose neurosis and ambition. As an adult who now has to date Millennials, I find them to be incompetent, inept, self-absorbed narcissists who think its someone else's job to do EVERYTHING. They respect only what they see as "innate talent" and resent hard-work and "strivers." Since most people have to work at talent, this means they usually nurse a powerful sense of self-hatred and/or self doubt. Give me a neurotic, angsty Gen Xers any day.
Not me, I never wanted kids, never had kids.
Man did my kids hate me growing up. I made them do shit like turn off the TV and do their homework. Mow the yard to make money, actually see things through to completion. They didn't like that whole being responsible for what they do thing a lot.
Dad?
"Oh shit, Manchu! Hide that, hide that! Your dad's here. 'Hello, Mr. Candidate…'"
Every generation does what it has to do. It's just that some generations have to be brought to that point kicking and screaming before they finally do it.
Bill, I don't know what kind of defiantly spree-drinking attention whores you have in your household, but if you haven't looked around lately, you may want to second-guess our parental skills.
We have no idea if the World War II generation would have made the decisions they should make on climate change if they thought doing so would bring an end to their economic prosperity.
Well, we know that the current generation of legislators are sure making the decisions they should make on climate change, right?
"Much more complex" indeed Bill! than, say, putting all one's will-to-power eggs in a blender with the relevant juice flavor of the moment for a custom-driveled smoothie-talk. Nature, nurture: it's half-&-half, a dynamic in flux… and I have no idea if my thirstiest generation, of which I am a self-appointed representative, would've made decisions they should make about accepting a pint of half-&-half if we thought doing so would bring an end to our opinions about stout having nothing to do with lager.
What the fuck is nattering on about now?
bill bill bill, newt's out there again. newt's floundering. newt's a much better target than oldz on scooters.
go for it man!
i am a genxr therefore i hate boomers and i have no job.
also, my greatest generation grandmother was a class A bitch and got alzheimers.
these things are not related, but they are true.
Don’t forget the youngest boomers were born in 1964 which makes them not quite fifty yet.
And Helicopter parents were quite common (in college) by the mid-1980’s or so, though I don’t think the term was coined until later (1990 according to Wikipedia).
As a member of the crop of '64, I always saw myself as being in the leading edge of Gen X. Nothing in common with the flower children, Nixon was the epitome of a corrupt and cynical political class, and the people who voted for Reagan deserved what they got.
Same for me…tho' I was born after JFK was elected but before he was inaugurated. My older brother and sisters are baby boomers, but not me. They got the pre-AIDS free love. I got the frickin' Reagan Revolution.
Golly! Baby boomers are self centered and ungrateful? I'm shocked!
Remember, parents are supposed to be shitty. Otherwise you would want to live at home forever, and that's just sick.
Bill obviously has forgotten that without the greatest generation, we never would have gotten Japanese porn.
Clinton had better be careful what he says or a lot of Republicans are going to be mad at him.
"Honor your father and your mother". Let's just say there's a reason god had to make that a Commandment.
Don't forget "Fathers, don't provoke your children."
Fuck the Ten Commandments, and the stone tablets they rode in on.
I am the greatest generation.
While I, on the other hand, am the greatest degenerate.
People — especially conservative Tea Party types it seems — like to talk about the great sacrifices they're willing to make for their children. They'll do anything to insure them a better future. Well, anything except pay-up in taxes to reduce the deficit and the debt. Anything except invest in schools and teachers. Anything except take the smallest step to slow climate change.
Don't forget paying taxes for transportation and infrastructure, and developing alternative fuel sources so that we aren't dependent on foreign countries that we secretly kinda dislike.
Well that only applies to their kids. Fuck the rest of those bastards; who cares if your kid has to deal with a poor uneducated mass of people who are looking at your kids and trying to figure out how to take their shit.
All this means is that Sarah Palin is a typical boomer.
Absolutely not! We may be all kinds of bad, but not that bad.
One night, my husband and I were standing at the departure area of Tulsa airport. There were some flight delays. There were a lot of blue hairs there. An announcement was made about the gate change for the flight to Branson and asked no one to go to that gate yet, because it would slow down the crew, or something.
Yeah. Every fucking member of the Greatest Generation went directly to that gate. Fuck everything and everyone but them. They wouldn't recycle if all they had to do was throw drop shit out the window and wait for the recycle people to gather it up.
This isn't everyone, of course, but by and large, they'd sell out the future tomorrow, as long as it was a future they were in, if it meant enough spare change to pay for the charter bus to Branson's gospel shows.
And someday ask your Baby Boomer parents or grandparents what it was like to live with parents who answered every damn request you made with a story about what they lived through during the Depression. And who didn't want to praise their kid much because, you know, you wouldn't want them to get a swelled head and stop working hard.
And now these assholes are the first generation to pull up the ladder of safety nets on the rest of us. Or vote in assholes to do it for them.
Once again the republican view, I got mine fuck you.
My grandkids, when I have them, are going to be living on Soylent Green.
You know who else disparaged the Americans who fought in the Second World War? (Really, 70+ comments and no one had taken that one yet?)
Godwin's law to the rescue.
Hideki Tojo?
Robert Taft, Sr.?
The WW I generation. The Spanish-American War generation. The Civil War generation.
Il Duce?
And there's the Baby Boomers, the Giant Generation, in more ways that one. The people who took all the drugs, had all the sex, spent all the money and are sitting in front of the teevee waiting for the winner of American Idol to be announced.
BTW–When does Wonkette Junior get something better than a green cyclops for his/her/its photo? Talk about self-esteem issues. Poor kid.
I've already blamed my parents for all of my problems, so there.
I told my parents that I went to law school so I could sue them for all they did to me. Damn Statute of Limitations.
I went to law school because I don't believe in nothin no more, man.
I went to law school to get one of those cushy jobs where I could post on Wonkette all day. People want shit done and it is pissing me off.
NEEDZ MOAR CLONES.
Suck it indeed.
(You've got a little pearl jam on your chin, there.)
"Put on a swetah! You need me to knit one?"
You're in Generation Jones.
The other day I pulled up next to some 20 year old kid jamming AC/DC's "Back in Black" real loud on his car stereo. If I had been listening to 30-year-old music when I was 20 years old, I'd have been cranking "How Much Is That Doggy in the Window." Say what you will, our generation did make some good music.
These were the same guys that ran a 40 year untreated syphillis test on black men and gave acid to unsuspecting soliders to test its effects on people. It seems they were really great at being dicks. And they raised a generation of selfish bastards. George Carlin had my favorite baby boomer quote, "its mine, gimme that". Sums up the kids fairly accurately I would say.
And as boomer myself I can't say that at times I have not been guilty of that selfishness.
I don't know, Bill…growing up during the Great Depression and winning World War II only to have your kids turn on you despite providing for them greater access to education then any generation before vs. the boomer legacy of sexual irresponsibility and drug use…that's a tough call…
the concept of a "Greatest Generation" is idiotic. Bill's got that right
using that as a prop to defend the boomers? not so much
What Bill is doing is conflating "Greatest Generation" with "greatest at everything."
Every "generation" will suck at parenting, because we Americans subvert our influence as parents to capitalistic interests – and have since before the industrial revolution. That Greatest Generation is called great DESPITE the fact they bred and raised such selfish, destructoBots as Baby Boomers, is a testament to that fact.
What a jackoff.
Sure, I guess passing job destroying NAFTA, getting a blow-job, and raising a generation of sad nincompoops isn't exactly like leading the country out of the Great Depression and saving the world from Nazis, but it's close, right?
Let's see, first lets compare FDR and Eisenhower vs GWB and that fat head Bill Clinton on the scales of history and see how that weighs out.
What a dope. Go blow some saxophone tunes out your ass Bill.
Oh gawd that was awful. Who started this thread, anyway? Repressed memories should stay repressed.
I blame the Greatest Generation for ruining my chances at collecting my SS and Medicare. If they hadn't enjoyed sexy time so much, there would be fewer of us Baby Boomers around to use up the resources.
Well, the proud parent in me wants to boast that I raised a productive member of society so…there.
The Boomers, the generation that marched for freedom and free love and all that, then settled for mediocrity… that one?
Bush Clinton Bush Obama
keep voting establishment
media will sell it to you
receive the status quo
COHORT WAR!
Hey, Jim, get your bat. Cohort War!
Bill wins the internets with being able to sneak in "hellaciously good" into a sentence. Yes, Mr. President; it hurts so good.
Also, Oxford. Also.
Damn overachievers.
Mrs. Tribbz here. I just had to hack the Squidz account and rant about Billy's ASININE assessment of Boomer parentz. Yes, I'll generalize my hatred for them. They're evil, insipid, and selfish, self-absorbed, narcissistic, lying, careless, latchkey kid spawning arseholes. IMHO, we should give them what they so richly deserve, an extended retirement at the very tip of the farthest key, replete with plenty of cocktails, pills, and plastic surgeons to keep them addled and harmless while the younger generations, yes X & Y!, get on with the business of repairing the damage of said arsehole boomers' time in positions of authority. Oh, the litany of abuses they have meted out over the years. Maybe Billy can play sax at their extended drug-in.
I dunno. Chelsea seems like she turned out OK.
By which I mean, she didn't get knocked up young, didn't get heavy into the coke or the meth or the goofballs or whateverthehell the kids are snorting/smoking/mainlining these days, didn't commit any crimes (THAT WE KNOW OF!), didn't (say) insult the Queen of England at a state dinner, etc. Coulda been a lot worse.
OTOH, she married an investment banker, so maybe you have a point.
She didn't puke on the prime minister of Japan.
She didn't promote torture as central to the American character.
The Bush twins seemed to have turned out OK but it was questionable for a while. Maybe it's hard to buy meth with the Secret Service watching you all the time.
Why ya' gotta' keep bringing up the Bush twins like that?
Isn't that pretty much what killed off all the French geriatrics few years ago. Oh no, I'm fine, I'll just sit here and die…
This is funny! I blame McRib, the official meal of my childhood.
Interestingly, a certain amount of parenting is now expected of the faculty of college students. We are expected to nurture and support and oversee them, especially the freshmen. I can see tracking down a student who hasn't been to a class in a week to make sure she's not in a suicidal depression but it's not my nature to treat an 18-year-old like an 8-year-old. I don't have an attendance policy. Does it make students more likely to skip? Yes. Is that my problem? NO. But some of my colleagues are horrified by this attitude.
I blame MacDuff, from the Scottish play. That dude just scares me.
I blame MacDuff, my dad's Scottish terrier. Fucking dog gets treated better, and with more consideration for his feelings and ego, than I ever fucking did.
I blame Duffman and the loose morals I learned from him.
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