Unlike Gen X or Gen Y or the Millennials or the Lost Generation or the Greatest Generation, all of whom sport perfectly classy, tasteful, albeit synthetic, market-researched nicknames, baby boomers are shackled with one of the most ignominious, mortifying sobriquets in the history of the word. Not since the French middle class anointed the poorer classes "les sans-culottes" during the French Revolution has one social group suffered such outright mockery from another. But at least "sans culottes," if only because it is French, sounds kind of flashy. "Baby boomer," a weird mélange of the prepubescent and the guttural, sounds juvenile. Especially when you're collecting Social Security.
Seemingly harmless, yet ultimately pejorative, "baby boomer" is one of the most surreptitiously contemptuous nicknames ever devised. Unlike "trailer trash" or "pond scum" or even "the Great Unwashed," the term "baby boomer" seems innocent and good-natured on the surface, but it is actually diabolically cruel.
It is not a nickname; it is an epithet. It takes a generation that thinks of itself as being perpetually youthful and turns its members into pre-geriatric toddlers. And while the term "baby boomer" may mean different things to different people, all of them are horrible.