Letters to the Editor
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‘Assessing the Boomers’
My book, “The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy,” obviously hit a nerve in your reviewer, Russ Smith – so much so that his anger, no doubt driven by his well-known conservatism, kept him from writing accurately about the book.
He write [“Assessing the Boomers, 60 Years On,” Arts & Letters, January 17, 2006] that I “demean” Branson, Mo., as a vacation spot – and uses that to throw the well-worn accusation of “elitism” my way.
Were Mr. Smith not wearing his own conservative blinders, he might have read the words I actually wrote. What I said was that conservatives accuse Boomers of elitism for “traveling abroad rather than to Branson, Missouri,” which is no dig at Branson but rather a critique of conservatives who use the elitist label to bash Boomers.
Mr. Smith tries to trivialize Boomer accomplishments by attributing them to a vague force he calls “cultural evolution,” which he never explains. To him, Boomers had nothing to do with effecting equality at home or ending the shame minorities feel simply for sounding or looking different. Okay, I get it: Social movements are not driven by people but by evolution. Thanks for that history lesson.
Mr. Smith gets so bollixed up that he also writes incoherently about the World War II generation, suggesting they weren’t battling fascism overseas but rather “reacting against the threat to their way of life,” which he never explains.
Mr. Smith is a perfect example of what I write about in the book: a snarky Boomer journalist who feels the need to prove his own moral superiority over other Boomers. It’s because of people like him that a book like mine had to be written.
LEONARD STEINHORN
School of Communication
American University
Washington, D.C.
‘Once in a Generation’
Send along my congratulations to Jay Nordlinger on his memoriam to Birgit Nilsson [“A Once-in-a-Generation Voice,” Arts & Letters, January 13, 2006].
MILES GROTH
Manhattan
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