Politics & Power Quote by Anna Quindlen

Quindlen turns a demographic fact into a small act of comic self-defense. The opening clause is all census, no soul: a cool statistic about the postwar cohort’s sheer mass. Then she pivots on a familiar complaint - everyone is tired of hearing about the Baby Boomers - and flips it with a punchline that’s both self-mocking and faintly accusatory: imagine the exhaustion of being inside the story you’re supposedly monopolizing.

The intent is less to demand sympathy than to expose the absurd bind of generational notoriety. Boomers are framed as overrepresented in media and politics, yet they’re also the people forced to watch their lives reduced to a single, overused archetype: entitled, nostalgic, out of touch. Quindlen’s joke carries a sting: if a cohort is “everywhere,” it’s partly because American institutions and markets have been built to track, flatter, and monetize them. The constant attention isn’t just their ego; it’s also the country’s fixation on a group large enough to tilt elections, define consumer trends, and set cultural norms.

Context matters: Quindlen writes as a journalist who came of age in the long shadow of the Boomers’ mythmaking - the 60s as brand, youth as moral authority, adulthood as perpetual spotlight. Her line acknowledges the backlash without capitulating to it. It’s a reminder that being culturally dominant can still feel like being trapped in an endless group project, where everyone resents your presence but also refuses to stop talking about you.