Helen Andrews lays out her approach in Boomers in her Preface where she writes: “…I found I had no interest at all in writing about buffoons and psychopaths, however colorful some of them were. Instead, I was drawn to the boomers who had all the elements of greatness but whose effect on the world was tragically and often ironically contrary to their intentions.” Andrews quotes David Crosby’s assessment of his generation: “We were right about the war. We were right about the environment. We were right about civil rights and women’s issues. But we were wrong about drugs.” (p.195)
When Andrews tackles Steve Jobs, she goes for the jugular. Not only did Jobs unleash cell phones on an unsuspecting populace–she doesn’t go as far as blaming Jobs for Tinder and Tik Tok–but Andrews suggests Jobs may have sown the seeds to civilization’s impending collapse.
Andrew Sorkin gets blamed for fooling an entire generation about the way politics and Washington works with his fictitious TV show The West Wing. I was surprised that Andrews didn’t blame social media on Sorkin because he wrote the screenplay to The Social Network, a movie about the founding of Facebook.
Jeffrey Sachs gets nailed because his economics doesn’t work. Andrews thinks “the Indian Jones of economics” is goofy and wrong.
Camille Paglia, “the next Susan Sontag,” falls short with her career as an academic superstar. Andrews chronicles the years Paglia labored in obscurity, teaching workers at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts Night School until she hit the Big Time with Sexual Personae in 1990. Suddenly, Paglia was a hot commodity on the media circuit. “Paglia was able to parlay this initial burst of celebrity in a more lasting fame as a public intellectual.” (p. 105) Andrews uses this case study as one of the reasons our vaulted colleges and universities allow dissertations on The Sopranos.
I did not know that Reverend Al Sharpton worked as James Brown’s tour manager. “Traveling on the road with Brown taught Sharpton as much about business as it did about showmanship.” (p. 128). Despite the debacle of the Tawana Brawley hoax of 1987–where Brawley falsely claimed she had been gang raped by law enforcement officials–Sharpton managed to escape most of the blow-back of that escapade. And Sharpton settled most of the income tax problems he generated with his many “charitable” projects. Basically, Andrews dismisses Sharpton as a phony.
I confess I did not know much about Sonya Sotomayor. Andrews lists many of Sotomayor’s faults which basically reveals her as a diva. According to Andrews, Chief Justice John Roberts has criticized Sotomayor for attacking the majority of the Justices in personal terms. Using her heritage as a lever of power, Sotomayor destabilizes the Supreme Court according to Andrews. Personally, I’m not seeing it.
Boomers shows as much about Helen Andrews’s thought process and beliefs as it does the people Andrews accuses of “delivering disaster.” One has to wonder why Trump isn’t on this list… GRADE: C
Table of Contents
Preface ix
1 The Boomers 1
2 Steve Jobs 19
3 Aaron Sorkin 43
4 Jeffrey Sachs 69
5 Camille Paglia 97
6 Al Sharpton 125
7 Sonia Sotomayor 165
8 The Millennials 191
Acknowledgments 199
Notes 201
Index 231
. Seems like she is being contentious just for it’s own sake. Although I have always thought Sharpton a phony. But just what is the disaster she is talking about? I looked her up and she writes for the American Conservative and The National review. Guess that is why Trump isn’t on her hit list. I’ll pass.
Steve, I’m always interested in what “social critics” are thinking. I found Helen Andrews’s whole premise a bit weird.
The chances of my reading this are nil. I am so tired of jealous Millenials blaming all the ills of the world on Boomers, but even by those standards this seems incredibly simplistic and frivolous. I agree on Sotomayor. I have NEVER heard a word about anything like that. As for Al Sharpton, well, yeah. He’s been rehabilitated these days, lost half his body weight, and is now a respected spokesman on MSNBC. But ask Steven Pagones (the cop he slandered in the Brawley case) if he ever got his money from Sharpton. I doubt it.
Jeff, Helen Andrews picked a strange group of Boomers to blame our current social ills on. Where’s Newt Gingrich who started all of this partisan fighting and gridlock? And Grover Norquist who convinced the GOP to sign a Pledge NEVER to raise taxes. I could name a dozen more people–like Phyllis Schlafly who fought against women’s rights–who caused bigger effects and disasters.
Eight essays in search of a cohesive thesis. Hard pass for this Boomer.
Deb, Helen Andrews might not rise to the level of Marjorie Taylor Greene, but she seems to see liberal influence at the root of our problems.
This might be fun to read if you enjoy throwing a book across the room every time you come across something stupid. I wonder if that’s the CSNY David Crosby? Whoever it is, he’s basically right. Definitely agree with Steve and Jeff about Sharpton, a fly in the ointment at MSNBC. I don’t believe I’ve ever read anything, good or bad, about Sotomayor other than regarding how she votes.
Yes—the quote is from CSNY’s David Crosby. I’ve seen him in an interview saying that. However, what’s interesting is that Andrews uses that quote and then apparently doesn’t focus in any way on how Boomers were “wrong on drugs,” but on how—in her opinion—Boomers were wrong on everything else. Yeah, not gonna be reading that book.
Michael, I was tempted to fling BOOMERS across the room a few times, but managed to control myself. It’s sobering to see out some other people on the other side of the political spectrum see the world. And scary…
Well, this is the trivial right. A toady to the powerful right, quite likely, given her other markets. But not worth much worry.
Todd, you’re right about the Trival Right. I’m more worried about the Gun-Toting Right.
Jackie wants to know what possessed you to read it in the first place.
Jeff, I read a review of BOOMERS, in the New York Times Book Review I think–and the Library had it so I requested it. I was curious what Helen Andrews would have to say about Boomers, especially the crew she decided to profile.
Uh-oh. George has brought up the name of the loathsome Marjorie Taylor Green, and it may be her first mention on this site. Just as residents of Georgia are basking in the glow of turning blue, along comes MTG, a real POS even by Republican standards. I’m hoping she’ll destroy the GOP, now known as the GOQ. But don’t be too shocked if she gets reelected. Drive through her district in far NW Georgia and you might hear the sound of dueling banjos.
Michael, Majorie Taylor Greene is just the tip of the political conspiracy iceberg. Although the House voted 230 to 199 to remove Ms. Greene from the Education and Budget Committees, with only 11 Republicans joining Democrats to support the move, the 11 Republicans who did vote for her ouster are getting Death Threats. And, good old Liz Chaney, fresh from her own vote to get ousted from her leadership position in the GOP, turned around and voted FOR Marjorie Taylor Greene!
Here’s what Peggy Noonan said in her Wall Street JOURNAL article today: Mr. McCarthy said in an interview soon after that he didn’t really know what QAnon is. He knows what QAnon is. They all know.
Here is what the party, and conservatism, cannot do. They cannot sit back and hope the new extremism will go away, play itself out, magically disappear. It won’t. It is going to get worse. This is the moment, while it’s fully on the table, to face it down. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is not exactly excitable and tends to choose his words carefully, called it what it is, a “cancer for the Republican Party and our country.”
And when we consider how much McConnell has enjoyed using the reactionary and worse loons for his own purposes, it’s amusing, after a fashion, that he is now thoroughly sick of them…but not yet quite ready to do more than say a few rude things about them, and make the vague statement about how those voting on conviction in Trump’s impeachment have to follow their own (whatever serves for a) conscience.
Todd, you’re right about Moscow Mitch. He’s ready to jettison the wacky elements of the GOP but keep the reliable Trump base that can turn an Election.
She’s got her head up her… and wants to yell “blame”. Bah.
Rick, sadly the Blame Game gets votes. That’s how Trump rose to power.
That and lies, and phantom influence. He is evil, and those he has mesmerized (MTG and others) extend it.
Rick, some of my friends who are active members of the GOP contend it will take the Party 10 years to recover from the mess they’re in.
I wouldn’t read this even if it were available here in Europe but I have to agree with the remarks on loathsome Marjorie Taylor Green. Never thought that this would be mainstream politics in the USA!
What happened to the GOP?
Here she would be a menber of a fascist party maybe, yes we have them – fighting against LGBT,refugees aka migrants, the Rotschilds and Soros …
But on the other hand in my home state Baden Württemberg the Greens will probably get more than 30% in the next elections and our Green prime minister will continue his successful work.
Imho at least in Germany we had a continuous positive development over the last 60 years, so over several generations.
Wolf, the GOP made a Faustian bargain with White Supremacist groups, conspiracy groups, and basically wacko groups in order to gain enough votes to win the White House and the Senate in 2016. Now, the GOP has to live with the unholy alliance of weirdos they’re jointed to for the foreseeable future.
Greene isn’t even in the mainstream of the increasingly reactionary Republican Party, Wolf. Hence the mild problems she’s facing. Representatives Andy Biggs (R., Ariz.), Mo Brooks (R., Ala.), Paul Gosar (R., Ariz.) and Lauren Boebert (R., Col.) are among those accused of helping the Capitol invaders out beforehand.
We’ll see what happens to them and because of them.
Todd, to coin a phrase…LOCK THEM UP!!!
Todd, thanks.
Some of the names you mention I’ve heard already – and they make me shudder.
I might add Andy Harris whom we just discussed on a Hungarian site (in English). His father was Zoltan Haris who in the eyes of his son was a victim of communism in Hungary after WW2.
But actually he was a fascist involved in the killing of the Hungarian Jews and later even worked for the communists – so going from ome extreme to the other!