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Har. I haven’t read something so patently ridiculous since I read that The Other Fellow was getting a book published. Marian Salzman is a marketing person with a big company. She writes “Intelligent Dialogue.” Oops, she missed both - her post isn’t intelligent and it isn’t a dialogue.
It boggles. Here’s what she wrote…
Who’s to blame for the economy going into serious decline? The short and easy answer is: Greedy Boomers. (emphasis mine)
Short and easy? Is that what Marian Salzman gets paid big bucks to do? Come up with the short and easy answer? I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. That she was making such a wide-sweeping generalization and then would poo-poo the idea and offer some “intelligent” analysis.
She doesn’t.
Whatever history may decide, today’s commentators and pundits of all ages have decided that Boomers—the dominant cohort in many developed countries—are guilty. And whether or not they’re really to blame, what counts is that they look like they are. (emphasis mine)
Instead she uses this generalization to advance her personal agenda. She needs to get some traction for “her idea” that the younger boomers should be called something different from Boomers.
Cuspers, the age cohort that has been living in the shadow of the Boomers, now have even more reasons to stake out their own separate identity and values.
She looks like she would fit into the younger boomer age range. But more dastardly is the fact that she is laying the horrible, horrible, horrible condition of the United States at the feet of Boomers born between 1946 and 1953.
(Did I mention what horrible, horrible shape the U.S. is in? Do I have to let you know I’m being sarcastic?)
So Marian Salzman decides she will use a “new term” - and hopes it gets buzz. And then cash in her big bonus for her impact on the world of marketing. Which by the way, having an impact on the world of marketing is like having an impact on the world of Manga.
I wonder if she realizes she is using a word that is two years old? This “old idea” has real value and merit and makes sense.
…cusper has the benefit of more naturally identifying with multiple generations’ values, beliefs, and interests. They have the advantage of being considered “one of us” by each adjacent generation, while having enough distance from each to create perspective.
Marian Salzman says her group wants change.
Me too. I want Chief Marketing Officers to give it up and admit they really don’t earn the huge salaries and bonuses they get paid.
Marketing. C-level executives in charge of marketing. Dump ‘em. They create nothing. They are a drain on company assets. They add no wealth to the shareholders. Advertising pays. Marketing sucks.
Salzman also drags out the old (really, really old) “digital divide” agrument.
In fact, embracing digital technology is one of the telling dividers between Boomers and Cupsers. It’s no coincidence that leading-edge Cuspers such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Tim-Berners Lee (all born in 1955) helped create the digital universe that Cuspers and younger generations now inhabit as a matter of course.
Yes, Gates and Jobs created computers for the mass market. I’ll bet you a dozen donuts you never heard of Tim-Berners Lee. (hypenated first name? sissy.) People say he invented the internet. To put him with Gates and Jobs is like saying the chemist that discovered gasoline belongs with Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford. Gasoline didn’t mean much until cars came along. The internet didn’t need much until mass-market computers came along. She is just showing off. I hate show offs.
As with most people her age, she forgets that older boomers were the first to put those computers to work in the mass market. We were buying them for home use, we were the first to use them in the work place. The digital divide lies with “The Greatest Generation.” Not Boomers.
Then, to prove that her whole diatribe is simply to gain her buzz, she uses a line from John Fitzgerald Kennedy to get the Twitter community a blaze with “
Watch out for Tweets that proclaim “Ich bin ein Cusper.”
Hello? Marian Salzman? adapting a JFK quote and thinking it will catch?
Peroxide causes brain injury. I’ll notify the FDA right away.
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Here’s how she describes herself on her about page…
(Salzman is credited with popularizing “metrosexuality.”) w00t!
update: Here’s a woman, probably the same age as Salzman, that is adding real value to the world.
This is the kind of news that makes most boomer men sad and then pissed off. It most boomer men’s dream to find a very collectible car sitting in a barn someplace and be able to scarf it up from the owner for a mere pittance.
NEWCASTLE, England, Jan. 2 (UPI) — A 1937 Bugatti that an eccentric English doctor kept locked in a garage for half a century could bring his heirs millions of dollars.
Dr. Harold Carr owned a number of classic cars, including a Jaguar and an Aston Martin, The Times of London reported. But the Bugatti Type 57S Atalante, one of only 17 known to exist, is the pick of the collection.
People knew the car existed, people came from far and wide and tried to convince the now dead guy to sell the car. Surely many were motivated by pure greed, looking to snatch the car and resell it. Thats the sad part, they would have made a bundle and I didn’t.
The “mad” part is as many, if not more, wanted to get the car out of the barn before it was destroyed by vermin or disaster. But yet the old coot kept it to himself. He hoarded this great car. I hate it when people have classic cars and keep them locked up. A car is meant to be driven.
I scored some minor victories in my “barn finds”…
- 1937 Pontiac - resembled a 1940 Ford, which is a hot rodders classic. It really was behind a barn up on blocks. I pumped up the tires, added a battery, dumped some gas in the carbuerator an drove it home. It had a timing chain problem so it required a lot of nursing to run for more than a couple hundred yards at a time. I thought I would be cool and rather fix the flathead six, I jerked it out with plans to install a V8. Mother had the junk guy haul it away after I went to college.
- 1949 Studebaker - Land Cruiser. Not really a barn find because my Grandpa gave it to me in 1961. And it wasn’t a Studebaker Champion, the preferred “Studey” of the hot rodders. I literally ran it in circles in a field behind the house in the dirt, with no air cleaner (loved that sound) until it blew a head gasket.
- 1931 Plymouth three window coupe - another goodie that just never quite made it. Very classy, about in the same shape as this car, except I had the hood and full fenders. It ran, but poorly. I sold it for $600.
- 1958 Chevrolet Bel Air. Now this is a car I at least had some fun with. The only thing wrong with the car was a stuck brake pad, which came unstuck the first time I jammed on the brakes. I took off what little chrome there was, sanded and primed the body for a summer. In the fall, I took it to Earl Scheib for a $60 Air Force Blue paint job. Because my daughter was going to drive it to high school, and because it was just so plain-jane, I made it into a “Security Car.” I had a two big Mickey Mouse Club stickers for each door panel, and put some vinyl letters on the car with “Security” over Mickey, and my Social Security number on the front fenders. I sold that car for $500.
Part of the reason I love road trips is to get off the beaten path and rubber neck while I’m driving and look for barn finds.
In retrospect, I should have taken Nancy up when she told me to take some retirement money and get “an old car.” But that ship has sailed, the retirement fund is all but kaput. If only…
But in order to have “an old car” you should have 1. unlimited funds, or 2. mechanical knowledge, both of which I lack.
But I’m still looking behind those barns.
Vox Populi