I always hate these generational boxes because the culture of "getting yours" on the backs of others, and the pursuit of buying bigger houses to keep up with Joneses can't be blamed on one generation, can it? And not all Gen-Xers are lazy, are they?
It's always the marketers that try to label everything so they can figure out how to sell stuff. To them, everyone is a market.
No matter, the culture ushered in by the Boomers is over. So is ideology.
This story says Obama signifies the start of a new era of practical idealism, courtesy of the Cusper generation (those born 1954-1965). Interesting story but it seems to me, there's much more than a generational shift going on:
MSNBC: If Obama isn't a boomer in spirit, then what is he? Not exactly a member of Generation X, though obviously that generation and the next, Generation Y (also known as Millenials) embraced him fully and fueled his historic rise to the presidency.
"Gen Xers are known to be more cynical, less optimistic," says social commentator Jonathan Pontell. "Xers don't write books with the word 'hope' in the title."
Some call late boomers like Obama Cuspers — as in, the cusp of a new generation. One book has called it the 13th generation, as in the 13th generation since colonial times. And Pontell, also a political consultant in Los Angeles, has gained some fame coining a new category: Generation Jones, as in the slang word 'jonesing,' or craving, and as in a generation that's lost in the shuffle.
Jonesers are idealistic, Pontell says, but not ideological like boomers. "Boomers were flower children out changing the world. We Jonesers were wide-eyed, not tie-dyed."
And Obama, he says, is "a walking, living prime example of Generation Jones. He's a classic practical idealist. It's not the naive idealism of the '60s."
