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So funny, this gen sits on their butts and critizes the world they have made....the hippie infulence has been gone for a long time and its the gen after us who raised this lazy bunch.

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"They better hope to hell I die before I hit eighteen, HOPE TO HELL!, because if I don't *hissss* it's payback time, I don't care if it takes a hundred years and I'm an old lady stabbing them with crochet needles!"

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You know, I hadn't even thought of that. I'm 60 and was a "hippie" So WE can't be blamed for spawning this generation, or even completely for the last...if I had a kid at 20, then she had a kid at 20, that generation would be 20 now. So you're right...why are they still blaming US? Thanx--I'm so used to hearing that kind ot twaddle and defending myself against it, I've lost track of time.

When do you think they WILL stop blaming us for their ills? Ever? We sure as heck didn't START global warming, or pollution, or all the other things that will kill this pretty blue planet...

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I'll never forget it: On July 13th, 1985, folk legend Joan Baez walked onto the stage at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium -- site of the U.S. half of that day's massive Live Aid concert -- looked out over the crowd of rowdy kids, lifted up her voice as if she were a pastor at a revival and said triumphantly, "Children of the 80s, this is your Woodstock and it's long overdue."

I'll also never forget my reaction as I sat on a couch with my teenage friends, all of us watching the show live on MTV:

"Piss off, hippie."

At first glance, my swift and admittedly crude dismissal of an icon of 1960s counter-culture might seem the product of my youth, immaturity and overall lack of ability at the time to appreciate the positive impact that Joan Baez and those like her had on the generation that followed them. You know something though? I'm now almost 40, and although there are those who would tell you that my level of maturity remains that of a teenager, I gotta say -- I don't give any more of a crap about Joan Baez today than I did in 1985. Looking back on it, I still consider her little more than a silly, pompous 60s cliché.

It's standard operating procedure, practically a rite of passage, for each new generation to fiercely rebel against the one that preceded it -- regardless of the optimistic nonsense that Pepsi's highly paid ad agency would have you believe. But for anyone unlucky enough to follow those who came of age in the 1960s, defiance to some extent has felt all but impossible. This is because, quite frankly, the 60s marked a high point in the evolution of American society as a whole and set an inapproachable standard across so many aspects of our culture -- music, art, political activism, even the act of defiance itself -- and it did this despite being one of the most turbulent periods in our nation's history.

And how do we know this?

Because for 40-some-odd years, the fucking Baby Boomers have never stopped reminding us.

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