Constable: Generational label confusion is one for the ages
I'm not sure the "old skool" halftime show at the Super Bowl was aimed at me, but the legends of hip-hop connected with me on a generational level.
For starters, I knew the names of every one of the performers, which is a huge ego boost for a guy who often sees the musical guests on "Saturday Night Live" and cocks his head as if he were a dog trying to solve Wordle.
Dr. Dre, the performer, producer and businessman behind those Beats by Dr. Dre earbuds, is 56 and probably gets a lot of the same AARP pamphlets in the mail as I do.
Snoop Dogg, 50, coaches youth football and hangs out with 80-year-old felon Martha Stewart.
Mary J. Blige, the queen of hip-hop, is 51.
Oscar-winner Eminem, 49, performed a 2002 song that is older than some of the neckties I used to wear back in the era where nerdy guys wore neckties. And he felt the need to drop to one knee after standing on stage for so long, which is the way I feel after waiting in line at the Costco checkout.
The 46-year-old 50 Cent, whom I still think of as Fiddy Cent, sang one of his hits from 2003.
The youngest performer of the group, Kendrick Lamar, sang the Black Lives Matter anthem, "Alright," and seems older than 34, probably because he won a Pulitzer Prize, which impresses people of my generation.
But generation is a tricky label. According to the Pew Research Center, Dr. Dre and the rest of the halftime performers are members of Generation X, except for Lamar, who is a millennial. As a baby boomer, I am supposed to resent and mock both of those generations, but I don't. Nor do I think my parents and their contemporaries deserve the Greatest Generation title for raising a generation that embraced sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll and gave us boomer presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Like Barack Obama, I reject my boomer label because I feel I was too young to experience those things boomers ramble on and on about.
When Woodstock became a defining moment for boomers dropping acid, grooving to Jimi Hendrix and rolling around in the mud having sex, I was a cooties-free 11-year-old boy playing second base for the Goodland Little League team in small-town Indiana. If it rained and I had to slide into third, I got a little muddy, but that is where the Little League/Woodstock similarities ended.
The Vietnam War is another touchstone for baby boomers. Not only did I spend my late teens and early 20s on a comfy college campus, I couldn't have burned my draft card because I am in that small fraternity of American males, born in 1957-59, who never were required to register with the Selective Service System.
My wife, who is too young to have owned a bra when burning them was a thing, also is considered a boomer. But we're not boomers.
"I identify with this generation between the baby boomers and Generation X. My mother was a baby boomer, but I'm part of Generation Jones," Barack Obama once said, using a term coined by social commentator Jonathan Pontell, who saw "keeping up with the Joneses" as an expectation (often left unfilled) for people too young to be boomers and too old to be Xers.
None of it rings true for everybody. Our twin sons were born at the tail end of millennials, and their younger brother is one of the older Generation Z members. I can't see where that means much.
The soon-to-be-named Pan Generation - those whose childhood, adolescence and early adulthood has been interrupted by the pandemic and all the social changes that accompanied the deadly coronavirus - should be a thing.
But labels don't mean much. I still feel as if I'm a 12-year-old boy some days. Whenever I walk through a doorway, I want to hop up and touch the top of the door frame. Then my 64-year-old brain says that my 80-year-old knees don't want to absorb that shock, and I resist the urge.
Music should bridge all our generational divides. I like listening to the artists my kids play. And their collections include music by The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Prince, David Bowie, Miles Davis and other artists from other generations.
Super Bowl halftimes can bridge gaps, open ears and make connections. They are far from perfect, but NFL officials seem to be trying harder to connect to the audience than they did back when the Chicago Bears won Super Bowl XX and the halftime act was "Up With People."