HBO’s “Girls,” an awful show about four awful millennial women created by the most awful millennial woman of them all, Lena Dunham, is about to end its run. No one can be happier than another millennial woman, Jennifer Wright, who writes in the New York Post how the show in her view maligned her generation. The characters of “Girls” drink, drug, and sex to excess while maintaining an entitled attitude that would have shocked a member of the Bourbon family. They are all pretty unattractive in every sense of the word. Wright pines for the ladies of “Sex and the City” who, while they lived dysfunctional lives, at least looked glamorous while doing so.
Wright maintains that her generation tends to work like beavers, mainly out of terror of being unemployed in the bad Obama economy, and are “socially active.” The latter, of course, means that millennials tend to be attracted to trendy, liberal causes like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, not exactly a selling point for wiser, older people who look down their noses at “young people today.” Wright admits that her peers are too addicted to their handheld devices and apps.
Still, Wright does have a point. The last generation to start with the good press was the well named “greatest generation” who filled up the armed forces and defense factories to put down a couple of evil empires. The baby boomers, Generation X, and now the Millennials have developed reputations of being too self-involved, self-righteous, and unwilling to work for a living.
Truth to tell more boomers fought in Vietnam that protested the war. They grew up from voting for McGovern to supporting Ronald Reagan. Gen Xers were surely not all stoner slackers, and many of them became tea party protestors once they started making enough to pay taxes. Millennials will eventually grow up, get good jobs as Trump fixes the economy, and start voting Republican.
The first people back to the moon and to set foot on Mars will likely be Millennials.
“Girls” has been, in effect, a hate letter to the younger generation perpetrated by one of their own, Lena Dunham, who combined hysteria, untruths, and purple prose to peg her as a public nuisance. She is the self-proclaimed voice of her generation, but she really ought not to be.
She has given Millennials a bad reputation that will be hard to overcome. Every person below the age of 35 is going to have to carry that burden for a greater part of their lives.
On the other hand, the next generation to come of age will no doubt do things that will cause the aging millennials to shake their heads and remark, “We were never like that.” Indeed.
