A few of the more entertaining comments from the 550 or so that my little piece on the Woodstock-Boomer generation drew yesterday at the Huffington Post.
"Wow. Another bitter neocon conservative heartless Republican (don't mean to be redundant) who wants to blame the fall of of the American Empire on the dirty hippies. You probably believe that Reagan single-handedly defeated the Soviet Union and Saddam conducted 9/11. Dude, smoke a doobie. It'll lower your blood pressure and chill you out a bit."
-- oyoyoy
"Mr. Pazienza is simply regurgitating the gross stereotypes about the 60s that have haunted our culture for decades. Two main groups have manufactured those stereotypes: pro-war rightwingers and marketers for industries pandering to, and exploiting the boomers. Actually, I guess those two groups are really just one: "the establishment".
-- Noam4Prez
"I'm almost old enough to be your grandmother so let me say... in my opinion, you seem to be a rather angry little wretch who likes to hear himself talk."
-- Lilies
"A completely offensive article dismissing a whole group of people completely ignoring all the advances made due to them. If you were talking about blacks or gays you'd accurately be called a bigot. Maybe it's because your own generation has done nothing of value and only made greed acceptable as a way of life."
-- Oafishcad
"Since so many people seem to think that Wavy Gravy was just a Woodstock character, I would like to note that like many folks who were "hippies" back then, he has gone on to do a whole lot of good in his life."
-- auntles45
"Sounds like someone is trying to have a seat at the adult table, but we are not ready to give our places up yet, so please go back to the kiddie's table... Please show respect, you have forgotten who has given you that soft pillow that your generation has landed on."
-- donnal
"I wonder if this writer voted for GW. Oh, I forgot - that generation never votes at all. They are too busy sitting on their behinds watching tv, texting and being the little consumers that they were trained to be."
-- Sharon40
"It's obvious from the above that academic standards have slipped to near zero. Glorified day care. Several whole generations of Jay Leno's Jaywalkers have been spawned and are now posting on this and other blogs. You lot have set a standard for passivity and ignorance... Oh, and almost all your music is ugly and incompetent, a perfect reflection of your inner landscape."
-- Bluesman48
"Well join the club, generation zero... I find you not very interesting as well. In fact I can't think of a thing to say about you that isn't boring and whiny. You can go your own way, you can call it another lonely day. Buzz off and get off my cloud, two's a crowd baby!"
-- Lakat
"The author is... a bigot and should be observed as such. Somebody needs a hug."
-- OneVoiceofReason
"and gen x has done.....stood up for.........were willing to die for..........pioneered what lasting cultural trends...... baby boomers have not taken all the oxygen. your generation(or y and z) doesn't want any because you have never done anything that required it for your ameoba existence."
-- yappnmutt
"Find something to believe in and you won't waste your time writing cynical rants."
-- Lawyerfan
"Grow up and quit blaming your parents for your pitiful life."
-- Biglith
(Author's Note: For the record, my parents were born in the early 40s and are the furthest thing from Boomers in every possible sense of the word.)
"I have never read anything so clueless in all my life. And considering the crap that passes for ... well ... anything nowadays THAT'S saying a lot!"
-- Cybershaman
"What a hate filled diatribe. I hope you find peace at sometime in your life."
-- RTTucson
"This is perhaps the best case I have seen for reviving the draft. Let this little pisher get conscripted and then he can tell us how irrelevant the sixties were."
-- RedStateDemocrat
"You write with a very pointed tone, and sound like a pushy a-hole. I get the impression you suck at conversation, are domineering, imperious, and probably very LOUD."
-- SteveDenver
"I wonder what some angry, pious kid will say about YOUR generation in another 40 years."
-- Nightwind928
"I am in the over 60 group. For me, when people in polite settings use (even) a single profane word to emphasize a point, the point of emphasis for me is immediately lost. No amount of dictum thereafter can inform me or enlighten me. I have received more information and insight about your piece from responses of Bloggers than I did from reading your piece up to the “F” point."
-- Seventhrama
(Author's Note: Dear Seventhrama, Go fuck yourself.)
And my personal favorite:
"I left 40 over a decade ago this author has issues... It sounds like to much nintendo and he didn't discover outside. What did Joan Baez do to him? Why do you sit in the house to watch a live concert? You should go to the show. Not enough outside thats all it is. I was a kid in the sixties talk about turbulent times. These you folks can't fathom all the things that were squelched in the 60's he wasn't there. The establishment espionage that left JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcom X and Meager Evans dead. So perhaps Jesse Jackson just wanted to live. The Cuban missile crisis I was to young but my dad was within earshot of what was going on it was a very tense time. The bodies of dead soldiers stacked in tents outside the DAFB Morque so many the mortuary couldn't keep up. So if the Boomers did little else they lived through it and 4students dying at Kent State did more to end Vietnam than anything else. Kids get back outside if its safe cause its still whats up!
-- Dieselis
But among my, ahem, "detractors," there were quite a few HuffPo readers who not only pushed back against the circle jerk of Boomer self-love but who understood perfectly the point I was trying to make in the first place.
"I can't help but laugh at the comments to this article. When a snarky GenX'er (or is that redundant?) writes an article pointing out the obvious truth that we boomers are obnoxiously narcissistic, what do we do? Well, we write long, impassioned (and, as per usual, self-righteous and thin-skinned) comments about how wonderful WE WE WE are. For a group of people who are legendary for being self-absorbed, we exhibit an amazing lack of self-awareness. This clever writer has tricked us into unintentionally revealing ourselves and thereby proving his points."
-- SadVoter
"The author's point is not that you didn't do anything worthwhile. It's that half of you won't shut up about it, and the other half abandoned it for cash years down the road. Remember this Boomers: there are 80 million of you. There are 47 million of us (Gen X). When you need us, that size gap is going to feel enormous."
-- Coolmaiden
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