Without Disclaimer, NYT Assails Generation Y

In yesterday's New York Times was a television review of the popular NBC show "Heroes" by critic Alessandra Stanley. In it, Stanley writes:

Generation Y has more special abilities than any previous one: these are people who came of age taking the Internet, BlackBerries, cash machines, Facebook and iPods for granted. They also take the taking for granted. They are the most coddled, indulged and overprotected generation ever. Swaddled in safety and self-esteem, they have all been assured that they are special. They don’t rebel against their parents or even seek independence; they welcome an electronic umbilical cord that stretches through high school and college and even the post-graduate return to the empty nest. On “Heroes” those filial bonds stretch beyond the grave: even after his father is dead, Hiro (Masi Oka) still receives his fatherly advice via prerecorded DVD.

If you read the review in its entirety, it's a great review. Stanley makes legit, specific connections between the writing of "Heroes" and Generation Y's habits.

Problem is, Stanley forgets to mention one thing: that she's a Baby Boomer, having graduated from Harvard in 1977, putting her birthdate roughly at 1955, smack dab in the center of her generation.

Suddenly, passages like the following seem less insightful and more vitriolic:

“Heroes” returns on NBC Monday night for a third season at an apt time — in the midst of an economic crisis that confirms the worst fears of Generation Y members, namely that their baby boomer parents are leaving them a world convulsed by war, drowning in debt and melting down under global warming.

The heroes in this science-fiction drama are a group of young people with special supernatural abilities who seek to save the world from a dark, high-level conspiracy, spawned by the Me Generation that is hellbent on annihilating humanity.

Critics are certainly allowed to take a side; that's what they're paid to do. But what a disgraceful lack of transparency by Stanley and the Times.