This sort of journalistic sophistry has been popular since the end of World War Two and catered to the need for the Baby Boomers (the only group to which this sort of generalization can really be accurate) to justify their feelings of self-importance, as they knew they couldn't match the heroics of their warrior parentage. If you think this is bad, you should have seen what they wrote about Gen X.
Nobody but the Boomers really gives a shit about it, and once they're all gone, I predict this naming-and-shaming nonsense will go with them.
Well, sure, but there's a difference between the normal run-of-the-mill "kids think they invented sex"-type bitching and this naming-of-the-generations claptrap. Google up some of the old articles, they're the height of verbose, narcissistic inanity. It took a special kind of self-involvement to generate this crap.
Edit to add also that Horace wrote (in latin of course):
"And yet with crimes to us unknown, Our sons shall mark the coming age their own."
I remember a circa 1993 article about Gen-X (or whatever): about how they were lazy, grunge was just wanna-be 70's rock, they never did anything new and were just copying the Boomers.
I wish (WISH!) I'd kept it so I could have emailed the author to ask if they got in on the Netscape IPO.
Does every generation do this about its youngers? I've only lived through a few "named" generations but I feel like I didn't see nearly this much judgemental coverage about other ones. I know every generation thinks that they're the best and the others are all just old fogeys or youngin twerps but most editoral outlets don't seem to cover much else lately.