PERSPECTIVE ON CULTURE : Unfair Play in the Generation Wars : Twentysomethings don’t deserve the negativity rap from their elders, the sell-out ‘60s crowd and the selfish boomers.

The recent spate of articles in the mainstream press about the so-called twentysomething generation is a con job. The articles themselves are basically thoughtless and obnoxious, but the phenomenon of this sudden, amazing “discovery” of 46 million Americans (you clever kids, where were you hiding!) is contemptible, an attempt at a massive cultural hijacking and a sweeping cover-up of crimes committed against the future by the fortysomething generation.

That the media should trip over themselves in a frothy rush to “discover” the youngest strata of adults in this country is not surprising. Originality is not the media’s strong point. So when one member reports something as juicy as the existence of an entire generation never before known to inhabit the planet, the rest turn like birds on the wing and follow the leader. Their reports generally are anthropological: the mating habits of the species, its strange costumes and grooming rituals. They discourse on the primitive music and it’s imagined meanings. Aspirations, fears, ideologies and discontents are charted in colored boxes. Some young people themselves are actually quoted!

These articles might be dismissed as pathetic examples of older people harrumphing at how empty younger people are, but a real danger lurks in this trend: that the myth of Generation X will become self-fulfilling reality.

The negative labels--the Blank Generation/Generation X, the Busters, twentysomethings/twentynothings, and so on--are not-so-subtle propaganda. They imply that young people regard themselves as hopeless, a doomed/lost/societally orphaned slab of history marking time (if bothering to do that much) at McJobs. What right-thinking, hard-working, over-30 person would want to hire them? This helps to preserve what limited opportunities are left for people over 30, who want to maintain the same luxuries of choice and career they enjoyed in the heady ‘80s.

In this generational debate, illusion is passed off as reality. But “Generation X” was a novel. “Slacker” was a movie. Works of fiction, tapping, of course, into a fiber-optic-thin sliver of universal truth, but hardly defining 46 million Americans, any more than James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause” defined the America that, with rock ‘n’ roll and Black Power, tore down and dismantled the self-righteous, unbearably pompous postwar ruling class. Or, for that matter, any more than “Hair” defined the peace and love generation that then went on to create the cold and calculating ‘80s, which undid in 10 years what this nation had built in 200: the tradition for each generation to be more prosperous than its parents.

There is also a nauseating conceit on the part of the baby boomers insisting on measuring today’s youth against the ‘60s and ‘70s. Those were tumultuous, important and revolutionary times. A lot of great civil-rights advancements were made, and a lot that fizzled out like dud fireworks were nonetheless great ideals. But the times were different. Comparing young people in college in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s to those in the ‘60s, and concluding that today’s students aren’t as socially conscious, is as valid as comparing ‘60s activists to the kids in 1776 who fought the British. Sadly, the youth movement of the ‘60s, which deserves its proud place in history, discredits itself by whining about how apathetic its children are. Apathetic? More young people turned out to vote in November ’92 than ever before in this democracy. As for the alleged lack of ideals, the ‘60s people should take a look at what became of their own.

Finally, the generation that rose up so gloriously in the ‘60s against so much that was wrong, against so much that was stacked in favor of an older generation trying to hold onto a world that was no longer theirs alone--just like the boomers now--did so from a platform of security and comfort. They could and did cut themselves a lifetime from the seemingly endless ribbon of possibility. Their rebellion was secured. This generation does not have that luxury.

The New Republic recently published a cover story titled “The 20 Something Myth,” underlining a lot of the hypocrisies of the boomers pooh-poohing the so-called busters, and elaborating on new advertising campaigns aimed at the now well-identified (at least for advertising purposes) demographic. But it missed the promise of its own title: that the twentysomething myth is myth because there is no story. Young people are essentially no different today than they have ever been. Only the conditions are different, as they always were. Young people are simply young and must go through what we people who are a little older had to go through: the process of learning about life. One would hope that older people would be grateful for their acquired wisdom and not resentful of younger people. But it rarely works that way. The ‘60s generation really should have clung to its ideal of making the world a better place for its children. Instead, they stopped when they got the world to just about where they liked it for themselves.

The important thing for this new generation is to reject attempts to categorize it and resist the easy trap of growing cynical. Adversity brings its own opportunity: The bankrupted American Dream may be the perfect beginning for a new and better world. And the 18-to-29ers will build it.