Very interesting blog you've created here, Ron; I'll have to come back and visit. I was only five but vividly remember JFK's assasination.

Brokaw is deservedly a beloved icon. I really do like the guy and have an immense amount of respect for him. But he is nothing remotely approximating an expert in generations, and from what I’ve seen about his Boomer$ documentary, he is embarrassing himself with his lack of knowledge. For example, he uses that old widely-discredited 1946-1964 Boomer definition at a time when most actual experts now divide that demographic boom in births into two distinct generations: the real Boomer Generation and Generation Jones. Generations are a function of the common formative experiences of its members, not the fertility rates of its parents. And most analysts now see generations as getting shorter (usually 10-15 years now), partly because of the acceleration of culture. Many experts now believe that while there was certainly a demographic baby boom between ’46 and ’64, the actual cultural Boomer Generation was more like 1942-1953, while GenJones was born from around 1954 to 1965.

Google Generation Jones, and you’ll see it’s gotten lots of media attention, with many major mainstream media companies using this term. In fact, the Associated Press' annual Trend Report chose the Rise of Generation Jones as the #1 trend of 2009# There are many of us GenJonesers who are quite happy to see our long-ignored generation finally recognized, and who resent media companies like CNBC broadcasting out-of-date, badly-researched material like this Boomer$ show# We should speak out against companies like this, and do what we each can to help spread awareness of GenJones, so that our generation can finally have its collective voice fully heard#

Here are some good links about GenJones I found:
http://www#usatoday#com/printedition/news/20090127/column27_st#art#htm

http://www#youtube#com/watch?v=1Ta_Du5K0jk

http://generationjones.com/2009latest.html

GG500:
This was a really good post. I always saw a substantial difference between early boomers and later ones. But I did not know there were 2 categories though I completely agree with it. In fact, I would say, as your post seems to suggest, that 10 to 15 years might be more like 7 to 10 years. I saw a difference in each graduating school class from 74 to 81, tending toward less maturity with each successive class.

If you go to my site – truth1now.info/old –you can see classes from the same school from 65 to 72. Note the changes in clothes. Less affluence and lots of jeans, boots, railroad type shirts, long dresses, some very conservative and some more stylish. Then go to the main home page and look at classes 73 to 84. Much more affluence, and style, and less of the plain or work clothes or maybe rebellion. But things would change in the 70s. The 70s brought all sorts of changes, progressively, and I use that word more negative than positive.

But the 50s pics of classes 65 to 72 look far more different than those of the mid 60s classes of 73-84. Even photography and arrangement gets improved even as our world around us did. Every 10 years, they would look very different. I am going to check out those links you mention.

While Brokaw and Co. may not do justice to the Boomers, nevertheless, reviewing it all will be helpful and interesting to talk about. I see new things every time I watch a show on the 60s. So much happened through the late 50s to the 70s. We went from one extreme to another. This would never happen if there were not deliberate forces guiding it that way. History often goes unchanged or modified only very slightly over a few hundred years but in the 20th, things went nuts. Technology moved fast and so did everything else.

Forced mandatory schooling in late 19th is what enabled this all to be accomplished so easy. I recommend
JohnTaylorGatto.com and read his book “The Underground History of American Education.” The most important book of the last 300 hundred years if not al time, aside from my favorite, the Bible.