While the nation celebrated, while the world cheered nearly no one noticed the passing of the Baby Boomers. Spilling through the intimidating streets of Washington DC, filling the intersections of San Francisco, fuck frozen and standing in the center of Big Apple’s Time Square, hope and change was welcomed like the first fair child of a barren Amazon village. They spoke of the history, they spoke of the magic, they spoke of the struggle before that day, the perseverance that led them to it and the intoxicating taste of victory.

And while they cheered and heralded dreams fulfilled, the final resignation of an empty promise was finally sealed. The heady expectation of an entire generation; a lie they dosed with mescaline and LSD finally faded unremarked or noted. Only Tom Brokaw before NBC broke to a rare inauguration commercial made the observation.

“George W. Bush was the last of the boomers,” he mused. “They said they were going to change the world. They promised us that. And they only gave us Clinton and Bush.”

With Barack Obama’s inauguration, the post-Great Generation saw their last shot of salvaging the claims of their youth sail past as a strike unswung. With the first of Generation X ascending to a nearly assured two-term reign, Obama assured any who would win the White House after him will fall after the baby boom. He cemented the legacy of their lie.

Nearly as soon as they were born the Boomers claimed they were different from their parents. Suffering Korea, Vietnam and a long, cold winter, they said that the last thing they would ever become was their parents. They were going to do things differently from their folks. The world they would create – they told us with their joints hoisted into an upstate New York summer sky – would know none of the conflict of their fathers and none of the judgment of their mothers. It would be the end of tradition, of institution, of falsehood and of faith. The best minds of their generation would not be starving and hysterical; they would be the barons and dukes and earls of the first society without aristocrats. They would change this fucked up world.

On Tuesday, those promises blew finally into the wind. The children of war gave us the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Gaza. The spawn of the Defense/Industrial Complex gave us WorldCom, Enron, AIG, Fannie, and Freddie. The generation of love gave us the drive-thru divorce, Defense of Marriage Act, and Proposition 8. The parents of hash gave us crack, ecstasy and crystal meth.

They who grew up with Johnson and Nixon elected Reagan and Bush. Those fucked by the priests gave us Rick Warren and Joel Osteen. Those who learned life from the Brady Bunch taught us through Married With Children. For all the fun they made of Archie Bunker, their satire levied to their sort paled with Homer Simpson.

In every manner and degree, the Baby Boomers ended up giving much of what they had been getting, screened on IMAX perverted through a prism of sex, drugs and rock and roll. They changed the world alright. They made it so our generation can never hope to advance. The best we can do is repair.

When the moment of their passing finally came, all their machines of change barely noticed their passing. On cable and the Internet, no one mentioned the passing of this torch. None but one, on the analog broadcast that bore them. Only Brokaw – born a hair before the Boomers – made mention that their time had come and gone without any good.

Only one thought their end merited attention.

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