Joshua Glenn over at The Boston Globe/Brainiac has been working on a smart series on American generational categories. In the inaugural post, he takes on the question of whether Barack Obama (born in 1961) is part of the baby boom generation or the post-baby-boom generation. Arguing that the traditional twenty-year generational divisions aren't sufficiently flexible, he proposes the following categories:
1914-23: Greatest Generation
1924-33: Postmodernist Generation
1934-43: Anti-Anti-Utopian Generation
1944-53: Boomers
1954-63: OGX (Original Generation X)
1964-73: PC Generation
1974-83: Net Generation
1984-93: Millennials
1994-03: Too soon to say
Like many people here, I was surprised to see myself thrust out of the tail end of Generation X and into "the Net Generation." But when you read through Glenn's justifications, and his extensive lists of members of each of his ten-year generations, it starts to make sense to think of each generation as a more discrete, self-contained group, and that the Baby Boom and Generation X both actually begin and end quite a bit earlier than at least I had previously believed. Thus Hilary Clinton (b. 1947) is a Boomer, but Barack Obama is not. Instead, he's an OGX (the Original Generation X):
The OGX is a generation that has brought us post-punk and cyberpunk, hardcore and hip hop (I borrowed their moniker from Ice-T's "Original Gangsta," did you catch that?), DIY and zines (before they were called zines), "Seinfeld" and "The Simpsons," "Master of Puppets" and "Pulp Fiction," "Slacker" and "Do The Right Thing," sardonic "charticles" and impossibly convoluted and footnoted prose. Howard Stern, Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Arsenio Hall, Rosie O'Donnell, and Conan O'Brien are OGXers; so are the Hollywood Brat Pack and the New York one. Also: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Steve Ballmer; Jonathan Franzen, Rick Moody, and David Foster Wallace; Al Roker, Katie Couric, and Matt Lauer; and Madonna, Prince, Bon Jovi, and Michael Jackson. Plus: Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee.
I thought about this categorization watching (what else) Michael Nutter and ?uestlove's performance of The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight":
Michael Nutter was born in 1957, putting him smack in the middle of Glenn's Generation X. Just as Obama is 14 years younger than Clinton, Nutter is 14 years younger than John Street -- who is actually pre-boomer, part of Glenn's Anti-anti-Utopian generation of 1960s activists. (Street is in good company with Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Gloria Steinem, Eldridge Cleaver, Robert DeNiro, and Woody Allen.) John Street is the Huff and Gamble Mayor; Michael Nutter is the Double Dutch Bus Mayor. (Sorry. "Mayizzor.")
Seth Williams, meanwhile, is a member of the PC Generation (as is ?uestlove); Tony Payton is, like YPP's founders, a member of the Net Generation.
City and state politics, like presidential politics, are getting younger. With those changes come different cultural assumptions and inevitably, different political assumptions. If most of Young Philly Politics is Nutter's generaton or younger, it's worth asking how these generational similarities and differences affect our sense of politics in general or Philadelphia politics in particular. What will change as Philadelphia's leaders grow younger -- besides the music at the victory parties?
in all seriousness
jobs and policy around jobs. we work differently than our parents do. those of us without educations, work crappier jobs, or more jobs, with less benefits and for lower pay. And even those of us with degrees are working at more jobs in our lifetimes, and don't have much of a guarantee of retirement income and healthcare.
When people our age are in power, these concerns will have to be addressed more.
Jobs and Health Care
I think you see some of these generational changes starting to shift the rhetoric around healthcare. For our parents, employer-based health care and pensions was a serious competitor and maybe even preferable to gov't-provided care. The issue has been about trying to give health care to people who didn't have it already. (I remember some pundit not very long ago, probably Pat Buchanan or somebody on the McLaughlin group, arguing that universal health care was a nonstarter since most middle-class, middle-aged men liked their employer-based plans.)
But now, programs like SCHIP are seen as real competitors to employer-based insurance -- and more significantly, gov't-provided insurance seems much more attractive as an economic choice to people who could otherwise afford private or employer-based insurance. We're talking about labor flexibility and entrepreneurs, as well as the necessity of universal care. And employers and economists are thinking more about global competitiveness. Market justifications and social justice arguments are converging.
It is possible that the gradual shift to fully universal, single-payer health care will not be a political shift as such but almost wholly a generational one.