An Apology From a Contrite Boomer

we were naive enough to think half a million of us in a field was the whole world

I was born in 1953. I am, therefore, a boomer.

What went wrong? We were such idealists. We were going to change the world. The world changed us.

I want to apologize on behalf of us oldsters. The NY Times said today that the average age of Americans is older than ever. And a lot of those oldsters are apparently stuck in a past they can’t even remember, because it was what they saw on TV. A past when everyone got along. A past where things were simple. A past that never was.

The reason for change is usually because what exists isn’t working. For instance, sexual uptightness, a hallmark of the Eisenhower era, was creating a demand that was met, eventually, by the Hugh Hefners, the Marilyn Monroes, and the Lenny Bruces. They didn’t come along in a vacuum. They were serving a need people had…to be human. To acknowledge their humanness, and find out they weren’t alone.

Kinsey stirred the pot. Comedians of the era scored with double-entendre nods to sexual acts. By the time we boomers were old enough to play that game, we created what was then called the ‘sexual revolution’.

Now, according to the revisionist history perpetrated by some of us old-timers, that was the beginning of the end. The end of innocence. They forget, everyone was guilty. Is there anything smarmier than an early 60s Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie?

Boomers invented ‘wokeness’, before it was called that. Cultural sensitivity didn’t exist in ‘the good old days’. Ask those who lived it, and actually remember it! Ask not only blacks, ask italians, ask jews, ask gays, ask women. It wasn’t easy to be anything, except a wasp.

And yet, many of these same people seem to recall a halcyon time when they could feel safe. They were too young to worry about ‘the bomb’. All their meals were served to them by mom. They played ball in the street (at least the boys did, girls weren’t welcomed). Of course they think of it as the best of times.

Fact is, what we think of as the ‘revolution’ of the 60s, both cultural and sexual, was only experienced by a small number of boomers. I know this because, at 18, my family moved from Brooklyn to a rural area in upstate New York. This town was a real shocker to this city kid. It was a place I’d only seen in sitcoms. My school was like ‘Room 222’, a sitcom which depicted a school filled with kids who cared about Proms, Sports and Cars. In Brooklyn, proms weren’t even a thing anymore. Sports was for the ‘jocks’, and games were attended only by their friends. Cars? Who had cars in High School in Brooklyn? Most of our parents didn’t even have cars!

shameless plug for my new album with a coincidentally relevant title

That’s when I realized, Brooklyn wasn’t the world. Most kids didn’t go to Woodstock, or concerts, or be-ins. Our focus was always on convincing the adults that things should change. We should’ve sold our peers the idea first.

Sure, our peers listened to the same music, for the most part. But the music was just entertainment to them. To us, it was a quasi-religion. It never ceases to amaze me how many current rock music fans have racist, reactionary and clueless mentalities, 50 years later. How can you like, even love, The Beatles while carrying these thoughts inside (and sadly, outside) you. It wasn’t ‘All You Need Is Hate’, guys. What happened to you? Didn’t you get the message?

One of the things that happened to some of us was: ‘the 80s’. It was a time of greed and excess, two concepts that were very un-60s. Suddenly, it was cool to be rich. It was even hip to be square, or so declared a popular song by that famous revolutionary rocker, Huey Lewis. Sure, let’s celebrate everything corrupt and decadent, now that we’re in our 30s. Even famous Yippie leader Jerry Rubin got sucked in.

So now, in 2023, we live in an old country. And it’s no country for old men. But they hang on, not to peace and love, not to the awakening of oppressed people demanding their rights, not to freedom to be who they are, but to some weird, pseudo-religious fantasy time that only exists in their heads. Trump has tapped into that warped mindset really well.

‘I know we all enjoyed the 60s, the 70s, and especially the 80s, but we should now wish to live in the 50s. That was when blacks/gays/transvestites/intellectuals/you name it, had no seat at the table. They were a dark secret in our safe little world, and that was as it should be. Make America great again.’

Old people seem to be the best audience for that message. The nostalgia for younger days is a part of every generation, but for some boomers, changes happened too fast. Long hair on boys? Openly gay people? Seat belts? This has all gone too far!

You under-50 people never lived in the dark ages, or at least not those dark ages. It’s hard to understand what all the hubbub is about. That’s because, for a short time, sanity ruled, and only zealots were against the progress society made over the last 50 years. We tend to forget (or never even knew) how uptight society was back in the 50s and 60s. Why it needed to change. And why it did.

Change is inevitable. No ‘back to the past’ movement can ever survive. The first time any of the fruits of the changes that happened gets reversed, that’s the end of that movement. Case in point: Roe vs Wade. Not too many people, even conservatives, like that one. Wait a minute, they say, aren’t we for less government?

Only theoretically. Everyone wants government to run things. They just want their own ideas to be the government. Not big democracy fans, these MAGAs.

So, on behalf of all us boomers, us old folks who are holding back America, I apologize to you younger folks. We tried, and we did change a lot of things. But that crazy old pendulum must swing, and it moves oh-so slowly. You can help, by doing what some of us did. Go out there and push! Push that pendulum, and get momentum. Things can change again… at least until you get old and turn nostalgic for those wonderful days spent texting and streaming, pre-AI.

So start pushing!