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Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Well, now we know who Hillary Clinton will back if she doesn't get the Democratic nod
Posted by Jill | 6:43 AM
And it isn't Barack Obama:





First of all, what "lifetime of experience" does Hillary Clinton bring? Is she saying she really WAS a kind of co-president, despite having no security clearance? And if so, doesn't that play into every right-wing nightmare about her? Second of all, she has two years more in the Senate than Barack Obama has. What "lifetime of experience" does that represent?

You know, I'm a baby boomer. I'm a later one than the Clintons; I'm kind of a mid-boomer -- too young to have been an activist beyond stuffing envelopes for Democratic candidates after school and cutting class to go to marches. According to the "strict definition" of the baby boom, which went until 1964, so is Barack Obama. But I'm not interested in any more of those Chris in Paris At Americablog screeds about how evil the baby boomers are and how wonderful and virtuous everyone younger is and because they like Obama, they'll decide that the baby boom ended the year BEFORE he was born.

I work alongside a woman who is 38 years old. That's a pretty sizable difference, and a generational worldview one as well. There are things she does better than I do; there are things I do better than she does. And what we've found is that when we work together on designing a user interface, or the way a system should flow, it usually ends up being better than what either of us does on our own. I have more "experience" developing user interfaces, but much of that experience is based on PC-based, client-side Visual Basic applications. I have more "experience" with day-to-day Web site usage because of the ridiculous amount of time I spend online. That doesn't make me an expert on how, say, teenagers use the Web.

Experience isn't the same as longevity. There are people younger than I am who have the kind of experience I will never have. Kyle de Breusset, the young man from the MTV street team that I interviewed here a few weeks ago is better-travelled than I am, and has more "experience" in what people who try to get into this country by any means necessary go through. I'm going to discuss immigration with him, when my experience with Latin American immigrants is limited to the guys who replaced my roof ini 2004? Hardly.

To someone who's twenty, 1992 is so far back s/he probably doesn't even remember it. But I do remember what it was like to FINALLY have someone who didn't see the world through the prism of World War II in the White House. I'm not convinced that the Clintons were ever the kind of 1960's idealists they wanted us to believe they were -- and their membership in the DLC and the policies they enacted showed they weren't.

I've talked many times about the various kinds of people with whom I went to high school in order to demonstrate that "the baby boomers" are not the monolithic image that advertisers and Tom Brokaw use to sell us products and books. Sure, there were the idealists who wanted to change the world; but even they weren't monolithic. Some were the radical types who thought only violent revolution would create change, others thought that advocacy of peace and love was enough. And there were still others; the guys in their Izod shirts and plaid pants; the ones who canvassed for Democratic candidates who believed that you had to work within the system to change it. THOSE are the guys who grew up to become the Clintons.

It may be the curse of every generation to become its own parents. I remember the time, twenty-plus years ago already, when I was leafing through posters in a mall store with a friend. In those days, posters of heavy metal hair bands were in vogue. I heard the following words come out of my own mouth: "But they're all so UGLY!" I whipped around and said, "Who said that?" -- expecting to see either my mother or someone else's mother behind me. That moment horrifies me to this day. Of course the flip side of that is being a fifty-year-old going out to buy a copy of American Idiot, which I'm smart enough to realize doesn't make you cool, it makes you pathetic. But then, I didn't used to be the First Lady in an administration that was all about Putting the Sixties To Work for Change. So to hear Hillary Clinton behaving like as much a spoiled brat as George W. Bush, joining the You Goddamn Kids Get The Hell Off My Lawn caucus, tacitly endorsing a guy whose life's mission is to once and for all win the Vietnam War is particularly distressing.

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4 Comments:
Blogger adam k. said...
Well, just for accuracy's sake, Hillary has 4 more years in the Senate than Obama (you said 2). 2000. 2004.

But yeah, this is still totally outrageous, and I've lost all respect for her. I'm trying to think of a context in which these comments might not have been meant to sound how they sound. But I can't think of any. Do you know where she was/what speech she was giving when she said this? I'd be curious to know.

Anyway, I hope Texas and Ohio put her to rest for good. Any more out of her now is just damaging to everyone, most of all herself. All the polls are close and totally inconclusive, so I'm pretty nervous/excited.
3/4/08, 11:24 AM  
Blogger Mauigirl said...
Well said and great analysis of us Baby Boomers.

I feel sad that we've had two Baby Boomer presidents, and one is Clinton (who had his good points but also bad ones) and the other is W. Surely we had better examples of our generation!
3/4/08, 3:28 PM  
Blogger Porlock Junior said...
"Until this moment, senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness....Have you no sense of decency..., at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

I guess that with her little outburst in favor of the opposition party's candidate compared to the trifler who's in her own party, I can wave away as youthful folly the things I was saying a few weeks ago about supporting whoever the candidate may be.

One thing is for sure. No, two: first, that the Obama3-AM counter-commercial really stung deeply, which we should not rejoice at but just note; second, that all the stuff about how she's been attacked before, so she can take it, unlike poor little Baby Bammy, is bullshit.
3/5/08, 1:44 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
You make some solid points here, but when it comes to Obama's generational identity, it must be pointed out that a consensus seems to be emerging that Obama is not a Boomer, nor is he a GenXer, but instead he is a member of Generation Jones--the long lost generation between the Boomers and Xers. Several major media outlets, including the New York Times, NBC, and Newsweek Magazine, have all recently made this argument that Obama is part of Generation Jones. As a Joneser myself, I'm proud to finally see someone of my generation finally stepping out of the shadow of the Boom.
3/5/08, 11:25 AM  
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