Excerpt: “It was a weird time to be a college student — the late 1970s and early 1980s. Our Generation Jones — people like me and Kagan, the Class of ’81 — arrived on campus half wanting to relive the 1960s and half embarassed by them, which is probably why Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello felt the need by 1979 to ask what was so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding…Jump ahead 30 years and right on schedule, Generation Jones is taking over. Kagan (b. 1960)…appointed by the first Generation Jones president, Barack Obama (b. 1961), advised by his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel (b. 1959). In Obama’s White House, they worry about their deadly Generation Jones adversaries on the other side of the planet, people like Osama bin Laden (b. 1957) and Mahmoud Amhadinejad (b. 1956), or the political opposition of the far-right backlashers, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck (both b. 1964). Generations Jones runs the business world, too, in person of Bill Gates (b. 1955) and Steve Jobs (also b. 1955). (And let’s not forget Michael Jordan and Prince, Madonna, and Michael Jackson.)…Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter described us as “the perennial swing voters, with residual ’60s idealism mixed with the pragmatism and materialism of the ’80s.” He’s right — except that the pragmatism won out years ago… Generation Jones also dominates the profession that I and thousands of other young people pledged allegiance to in the heady days following Watergate and “All the President’s Men,” which is journalism.”
