From an article in the
New York Times:
Suddenly, as you may have noticed, millennials are everywhere. Not that
this group of people born after 1980 and before 2000 — a giant cohort
now estimated to number at least 80 million Americans, more than the
baby boom generation — was ever invisible. What’s changed is their
status. Coddled and helicoptered, catered to by 24-hour TV cable
networks, fussed over by marketers and college recruiters, dissected by
psychologists, demographers and trend-spotters, the millennial
generation has come fully into its own. The word “millennial,” whether
as noun or adjective, has monopolized the nonstop cultural conversation,
invariably freighted with zeitgeisty import...
What Pew found was not an entitled generation but a complex and
introspective one — with a far higher proportion of nonwhites than its
predecessors as well as a greater number of people raised by a single
parent.
The
Pew study is here. And this is interesting:
Notice as they age they are going form liberal to conservative?
ReplyDelete“Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.” - Winston Churchill.
I wouldn't interpret it that way. The change from 2008 to 2009 could hardly be attributed to "aging," and would include one new cohort of newly-eligible voters who would be younger than those already in the group.
DeleteI Was joking, it was just a year.
DeleteAh... we'll consider it an emoticon deficiency. :.)
DeleteJDJarvis, perhaps you were just joking about the Churchill quote too, but you should know it's not something that he ever said. It's just a misattribution conservatives like to repeat.
DeleteJake - this article has a good discussion of the attribution of that sentiment:
Deletehttp://freakonomics.com/2011/08/25/john-adams-said-it-first/
This is the first time I've ever seen "millennial" defined as people born between 1980 and 2000. Wikipedia confirms it, and that it's synonymous with Generation Y, but I am very surprised. I've long understood that Generation Y denotes the 1980-2000 period while Millennial denotes people born after the millennium. Not once before now have I come across an article that lead me to question this.
ReplyDeleteAlso: I'm tired of people using the word "entitled" like it's a bad thing. A sense of entitlement can be good or bad, depending on (a) what you think you're entitled to, and (b) who else you think is also entitled to the same thing. Whenever I hear someone described as having a strong sense of entitlement, I take it to mean a belief that everyone is equally entitled to basic dignity, respect and rights. But cynics use it to mean an assumption that "I'm entitled and you're not".
What adjective would you suggest in place of saying "entitled" to refer to someone who thinks they're owed something they're not? I can't come up with any that work better.
DeleteI have no problem with 'entitled' if you make it clear from context what you mean and you acknowledge that the context is important ... I only have a problem when people use it as a lazy shorthand criticism packed with presuppositions.
DeleteSome time ago, I compiled an artistically-arranged compilation of words describing the values of the organisation I work for (see http://www.socialrolevalorization.com/ for some hints). I did not hesitate to include the word "entitlement" on the list.