Baby Boomers - The Absolutely Amazing Generation!

We're movin' on up! We started airing the show on a small station in Tampa Bay, WTAN; now we've been picked up by a much larger station, WGUL, the #2 talk radio station in Tampa, starting October! For those of you not in this area, we will be streamed on-line http://860wgul.townhall.com/

Every Saturday from 5-6, Boomer Nation! is THE place to go for understanding how the issues of the day impact us specifically, and to get all the information and inspiration you'll need to live, work, and play at your Boomer-best!
Add in some instigation so you can really feel that Boomer power that we all have but don't wield often enough (mostly because we don't realize just how much influence we have, or we don't know how to use it to its fullest advantage...).
Top it off with some fun & entertaining segments so we can have a laugh...mostly at ourselves to make sure all this greatness doesn't go to our heads...
And you have the perfect ingredients for one helluva great Boomer show!

That's Boomer Nation! on WGUL 860AM every Saturday from 5-6 starting in October, from Boomer Headquarters in Tampa Bay, FL!

Today's "In Perspective" takes a close look at advertiser pandering to the Boomer Consumer.

You know, we tell young people to not be saps and get sucked into what they see in commercials - well the same goes for we Boomers.

And, in our opinion here at Boomer Nation, the uncontested leader in Boomer advertising panderage is the hair coloring product "Touch of Gray"...in particular, the one with the surfer-man on the beach designed to convince Boomer men that with just one application of Touch of Gray, you'll never grow old and you'll be perpetually surrounded by beach babes - let's put this in "In Perspective"....

First, this commercial begins with this line: "For the generation that swore it would never grow old!" Well, we here at BN feel it's our duty to give our fellow Boomers this news flash - Unless your name begins with "Peter" and ends with "Pan", YOU'RE GETTING OLD... one sure sign....those radio stations that we used tune out because they would play "old people's music"? They're now playing our music.

Second, they use a guy who is slim & chiseled, muscular, handsome... in other words, he looks absolutely nothing like real Boomer men - and the three in the world who do look like that, are GAY...probably so is the actor in the commercial...

Third, as for needing a product to hide the gray in that Boomer man's full head of hair.... Boomer men generally don't have hair, and as for being slim, if any of you Boomer women have been dating as long as I have, you know that in fact the only thing about Boomer men that's slim are their chances of "getting lucky" on the first date, particularly after we just watched them scarf down dinner and then proposition us with spinach in their teeth...

We did, however, find another product that is right in perspective with our real lives - Gas-X.

So, Boomers, the next time you see that "Touch of Gray" commercial, look upon it with a renewed perspective!

Or just watch it with your Gas-X close at hand.

We have the most influence on goods/services of any group in the nation - no, the world. We have the most disposable income and we are very willing to buy what we want when we want it - it's not by accident that we regularly see commercials using our music to market their products...

We have in the past used our purchasing power to make monumental changes (think ending apartheid in South Africa because as a generation we refused to do business with the country until they put things right). If we do that again, we can make huges changes in anything we want, from ending animal cruelty to creating next level environmental improvements. This is a good place to get our mojo started - using our financial prowess to keep the best things going and put the bad guys out of business.

For example: Imagine the impact if even half of us bought only recycled paper from Staples or Office Depot - that would be about 35,000,000 people not buying paper that consumes more trees. I'm thinking that would help Staples and Office Depot decide which paper to stock more...

Let's go to a larger issue. What if we decide that the car we drive no longer needs to be a gas guzzling "status symbol" in order for us to feel good about ourselves, but instead we decide we want it to be a symbol of putting our money where our ecology is? Even if half of us did that, 35,000,000 fuel efficient vehicles would be purchased. Value added, our children and grandchildren would see very successful adults - like an extremely successful attorney acquaintence of mine - driving cars that make a clear statement about what must be done to clean up the earth (not to mention giving less fuel, pun intended, to nations that have shown their disregard for peace and human rights....)

Although this does take some concerted effort on our part, it is most definitely not as formidable a task as it seems it would be. I know because I do it regularly. It works, it's powerful, and only we are in the position to make this a full-fledged movement.

So, I invite each of my fellow Boomers to rethink what makes you feel good about yourself, moving away from the "who cares if my purchases actually harm the world so long as they make me look good" (a standard which we in fact created), and start spending your dollars in a way that makes our world cleaner, more humane, more peaceful - makes us look good in a whole different, and more profound way.

Stay tuned for the Step Two...

Our parents may be members of the "greatest generation," but at the very least, we Baby-boomers are members of the "pretty-damned-good generation." After all, we have done some truly amazing, socially ground-breaking things.

Our generation gave America civil rights, and the world human rights; we gave women liberation, and brought all things sexual out of the closet. We are responsible for bringing computers into people's homes and offices and wireless communications into our cars and hands, and hey, let's not forget Velcro! We have given ourselves permission to leave bad marriages, were the first to embrace the importance of self-fulfillment, and made the work place employee-friendly. We made environmental-health a priority, recognized that mental health is as relevant as (and a correlative to) physical health, and explored space, not to mention the Titanic. We refused to fight a trumped up "war" and gave the world Star Trek, The Force, and the tobacco settlement.

We are a phenomenon to be reckoned with!

So, why are we as a generation so insecure (we are the progenitors and major consumers of more self-help books and quick-fix elixirs than there are pork-barrel projects in Congress); why are so many of us and our children so dissatisfied and lost? Where is our ability to save the planet's health and society's humanity, two of the most important things to us in our youth?

The first reason: We stopped living our social revolution - the important changes in human behavior and awareness that we made a part of the collective consciousness back in the '60's & '70's.

These most significant changes that we introduced, you may recall, were primarily our response to the our parent's seemingly archaic notions like:

- their bizarre attachment to boot straps (you know, the ones you pull yourself up...) - instead we lived the principle that not all problems (such as major depression) can be fixed by sheer determination, but require understanding and assistance;

- structure that was often rigid - instead we became more flexible and willing to listen, assessing each situation on its own merit;

- respect for authority regardless of how badly that authority behaves - instead we believed that respect must be earned by one's actions;

- a level of sacrifice that seemed rather unnecessary to us (come on, guys, saving money is one thing, but hanging on to the black and white Magnavox until 1988? Who knew that Oz was in color?) - instead we lived more for the moment, knowing the importance of enjoying life throughout the journey rather than waiting until the end.

We didn't just rebel, we literally and permanently changed society!

However, that leads to the second reason: In our determination to "not do what our parents did," we overreacted to the extreme. So, in essence, we've been living a kind of "extremes dysfunction" - our "tunnel" - a combination of:
1). taking to unhealthy extremes the great things we introduced to the world, thus turning them from helpful to harmful, and;
2). rejecting all of our parents' teachings, even the healthy and useful parts.

No doubt you have heard of the proverbial 'pendulum swing' that adjusts, starting at the other extreme, to the extreme to which it is reacting. Well, as Boomers, we certainly did our share of extreme swinging (pun intended) as we conducted our own "Extreme Make-over" of our parents' ways - unfortunately, sometimes to our detriment and the detriment of our children and world.

To substantiate this assertion, let's consider, in juxtaposition to all those accomplishments listed earlier, some of our many excesses.

We are also the first generation to:

- Consider high levels of debt to be a normal part of 'getting ahead' as we continue our quest for "self-actualization";

- Appreciate and utilize divorce - again and again - as a normal part of a relationship cycle;

- Live so entirely "for the moment" and self-aggrandizement that we regularly put on our designer blinders to the immensely negative impact our habits and behaviors are having on everything large (the planet) and small (which for too many of us, wouldn't include our waists....);

- Elevate celebrity to new heights, going beyond the movie stars and scattered sports figures of our parents' day to a plethora of trades that do even less to advance/improve our world (fashion models, reality TV anybody, home improvement felons..uh..I mean gurus etc.), all of whom we believe to also be "self-actualized" because they make lots of money;

- Embrace quick-fix drugs and "enhancement" procedures as a respectable if not needed part of every-day life, bringing full circle our generation's love of pharmaceuticals (from LSD to Libido lifters; Bennies to Brain enhancers).

And here's another really interesting extreme, brought to us by the iconic Washington Post Writers' Group syndicated columnist George Will. He has labeled an eighth deadly sin he calls "schadenfreude" or enjoyment of others' misfortune. He's found this has come to be "almost the national pastime." You must admit, this has been made clearly visible through just the tv shows alone that our generation, and our children, have popularized (Jerry Springer; many "reality" series; even Dr. Phil, perhaps against his own better judgment, now has shows that are more sensationalizing of folks' bad behavior than helpful on-air problem solving). We've even taken "misery loves company" to an extreme.

So, that's the bad news. The good news is that as the pendulum continues to swing, it moves ever closer to the center, the middle ground, that engenders the best of both ends of the spectrum.

This is where our light - and our capacity to once again come to the world's rescue - will ultimately be found.