Boomer bashing, always a fun activity for some, could become an extreme sport this year now that the generation has officially hit Medicare age. Instead of just going after boomers as self important bores the trend is to paint boomers as burdens.

And who benefits from this new round of boomer bashing, we might wonder,  as we see headlines like:

Squeeze from retiring boomers starts now

Big demanding generation.. expected to strain resources

Baby boomers may bust plans

While it is true that the boomer generation has come up with a lot to change society, like pushing to end racism, sexism and ageism, Medicare and Social Security are not boomer inventions. Social Security, a government run insurance program funded by payroll taxes, was started in 1935. Medicare and Medicaid were added in 1965.

Boomers have been paying into both ever since we looked at our first paycheck and wondered “what’s FICA.” Medicare began just as the oldest boomers started working, meaning that boomers have paid more into Medicare than any other generation.

But instead of being considered big contributors we’re now considered a liability.

The deal was we paid then so the government would deliver it when we need it, now.

It’s not that boomers aren’t aware of concerns over risks to funding Medicare and Social Security. The math is there. There are more older workers ready to make claims than younger workers paying into the system. Some say fix the system. Some say scrap it. In any case, boomers are made out as the big burden. The big drain.

Some even suggest boomers are asking for some fat allowance that we don’t deserve. That’s bunk. The average monthly Social Security benefit in 2010 was $1,158, an essential safety net if you’re in the struggling class. If you’re rich, the cost of a couple pair of kick-butt shoes. Medicare does not cover lip plumping.

It’s not like boomers are a bunch of newcomers asking for special privileges.

We’re the parents and grandparents and older siblings of the younger generation. Most people probably had at least one boomer at their table over the holidays. We’re not aliens who just walked in the door demanding all the good wine.

And we’re not cavalier about threats to Social Security and Medicare. Polls show that boomers are, in large part, willing to make some sacrifices by raising the eligibility age and/or paying higher Medicare taxes rather than slicing benefits. We’re as worried for the younger generation as ourselves.

No self respecting boomer should let the propagandists get away with implying that older people want it all now, the future be damned.

Who does it benefit to convince young workers that Medicare and Social Security are doomed, rather than engaging them as advocates in coming up with ways to make the system sound and fair for everyone? Who stands to gain from creating a generation war over Social Security and Medicare?

Critics say leave health care for older people to the insurance companies. Dump Social Security and let people invest in their retirement.

This would take away the government’s responsibility to its older citizens and turn it over to the private sector which some consider a one way ticket to an ice floe.

The best alternative would be to insure meaningful, well paid jobs for as long as you want to work and then to age without ever getting sick. But no one, not even a boomer, has figured out how to do that.

The last time I stared at the ocean with fear and awe from one of my favorite beaches was after the tsunami struck in the Indian Ocean in 2004. What if this pretty piece of the Pacific suddenly turned violent? What would happen to the beach-goers, the homes on the bluff, the town behind it and the campground on the bay? Why would Mother Nature show California any more mercy?

Now I go to the beach and worry not about a mean trick of Mother Nature but one caused by humans. And not just BP.

We take our dog to a beach in Marin County where she can run off leash. We get up early, swing by the bakery for coffee and a scone and head over the hills to Dillon Beach.

Rain or shine, we go. We’re not looking for a beach blanket day. We just want to make the dog happy and besides you never know what weather you’ll get at the beach.

One recent morning we found the beach eerily altered by a spectacular minus low tide. Hard white sand stretched out farther than we’ve ever seen. A group of people with British accents took off their shoes, rolled up their pants and waded right in, undaunted by the icy water.

Regardless of the weather, it’s worth the $7 they charge here for beach parking. They make their money on us because we rarely stay for more than a couple hours, by which time we’ve finished the coffee and the dog has had at least $7 worth of running her heart out after tennis balls.

Our beaches are pretty raw and open. They draw joggers and walkers, dreamers and shivering tourists. It is where the fog lives but also where the sun can make a final grand curtsy in a swirl of gold and pink.

So far there are no tar balls here. Our pelicans are safe. Nobody’s nervous about eating our oysters.

In 1989 the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground up in Alaska and dumped oil into the clear and beautiful Prince William Sound. Alaskans called it “the day the water died.”
There were awful pictures then, too, of dead otters and birds. The Press Democrat, my former newspaper, examined the Alaska tragedy to consider what would happen if a similar spill occurred in our waters. If a tanker ran aground at Point Arena up in Mendocino County, within five days the slick would spread south to the Sonoma beaches and into Point Reyes in Marin. Within a month, it would reach all the way to Santa Barbara.

The report concluded we were not prepared, and the results would be devastating. Now the ugly toxins rage through the Gulf, and clearly no one there was prepared.

You don’t have to live along the ocean to consider the beach part of your back yard. It’s everyone’s natural habitat, but how many more chances do we get to save the water from dying? You look at those giant boulders that hunker in the water off our beaches and wonder how you’d ever get them cleaned of gunk.

We’ve been saying for a long time that we have to get over our dependence on oil. But we’re all addicts and nobody believes that we have the will or courage to do it. We have two cars in front of our house. But we only need one to get us to the beach and back.

It was no surprise that a San Francisco audience for the play “A Round Heeled Woman” appeared to be mostly women of a certain age. Women old enough to remember when women didn’t talk about their sex lives. Old enough to remember when women were thought to give it up after oh, age 50 or so. And old enough to appreciate the difference between then and now.

We were also old enough to remember Sharon Gless as the clever, smart-talking, sometimes grumpy cop Christine Cagney in Cagney and Lacey. And now here she was on stage playing Jane Juska, the 66-year-old English teacher from Berkeley who went looking for sex in a personal ad in the New York Review of Books. It read: “Before I turn 67 –next March – I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.” Anthony Trollope being her favorite writer.

Juska wrote a best-seller sharing her results – she got over 60 replies from men as young as her son and older than her ex-husband and hooked up with a few. Some were cads, some near-creepy, some quite interesting who did, indeed, want to talk first.

The play, which premiered at Z Space theater in San Francisco in January, was adapted from her book of the same name. Early reviews of the play were not real positive and it closed in early February. But it had sell-out crowds and I hope it tours because there is definitely an audience ripe for the message that not only can the earth move at any age. But, more important, if you’re missing something in your life, stop waiting for it to knock on your door. Go get it.

I met Juska several years ago when she did an author reading at the Sonoma County Book Festival. There, too, her audience was Boomer women and beyond, who roundly cheered Juska’s bravado. One woman told Juska she as much envied her lively conversations with men as she did her orgasms.

Her book came out in 2003, before the cougar phenom. Before online dating became a routine way of meeting a life partner. And before nightly Viagra ads showed older couples chasing each other down the beach.

About that same time “Something’s Gotta Give” put Diane Keaton under the covers with Jack Nicholson and Hollywood started warming up to mature sex. Last year “It’s Complicated,” touted as a middle aged sex comedy, provided 60-year-old Meryl Streep with two lovers.

Ads for “The Last Station,” a movie based on the last year of Leo Tolstoy’s life show Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren romping in bed. More evidence that sex is not just for the young and nubile.

Sharon Gless was plenty nubile in her role as a passionate, vulnerable, complex woman and the audience gave her a standing ovation. As to what’s happened since then to the real Jane Juska, the woman sitting next to me had an answer. Juska, she’d read, had settled down happily with one man. But he’s married.

That was a surprise because in the play she vows to never go out with a married man or a Republican. Well, at least we can assume he knows his Trollope.

Photo of Sharon Gless in “A Round-Heeled Woman.”