Anti-boomer boomer?

In our youth we are horrified by our inheritance, the world bestowed upon us by those who have flagrantly exploited it, then passing onto us, their heirs, the toxic runoff from their vicious destruction of all that matters. Then in our late youth, we are so busy surviving the life that most of us have accidentally fallen into, careers, families, homes etc to have energy for anything as minor as the state of the world.

Next stop, middleage – that cranky time when we decry the world that is clearly going to hell in a handbasket, no fault of our own, mind. It’s those reckless progress seekers who are destroying every institution that mattered, ie every nostalgic memory we have that bears only a passing resemblance to reality. What’s particularly horrifying at this juncture is that we boomers get to take centre stage due not to the wisdom of our outlook but by our sheer numbers and economic clout. Yes we are in charge of most major news outlets - newspapers, TV shows, publishing and as a result we are paid a good wage to cry foul about where all this is headed - okay I'm not, which may explain my bitterness.

Could this boomer-crusted media empire be why we are subjected endlessly to the ongoing kerfuffle about a grammar-stickler's punctuation book, an insult laden judge of perky young divas and divos (the male equivalent?) and an apparently mediocre novelist taking a strip off his more successful peers? While bloggers obsess over hangovers and Paris Hilton, we boomers who are not in charge, sit in our easy chairs and say, you tell ‘em Lynn Truss, Simon Cowell and Dale Peck. And then as a just reward for your cranky dismissal of all those who do not match your exquisite expectations, we shall turn our magnifying glasses on you and burn gaping holes in your work.

How many times has Lynn Truss been accused of bad grammar? How many words have been spent on Dale Peck’s failings as a critic and novelist? Just desserts or holding them up to their own criteria? Or is it just one more opportunity for the self-aggrandizing among us to poke fingers at those who have achieved success even though we're way smarter, and despite, or because of, the fact that they are achieving this success by ruining all that really matters (to us). Maybe it's simpler than that though. Maybe it's yet another example of self-righteous nastiness disguised as fun - lots of that going around too, always has been. Hey, wait a minute, that sounds just like this blog. Or as Emily Litella would say, never mind.