Tom Brokaw started it.

He had to go and call his 1998 book about the generation that fought in World War II, “America’s Greatest Generation.”

If you’re saying something is the “greatest” sooner or later somebody’s going to go looking for the “worst.” It’s surprising how little effort had to go into that search.

The generation right after the “greatest,” is largely deemed the worst. They are the Love Generation or Baby Boomers — those who were going to change the world and redefine freedom, yet have largely squandered everything.

This is the growing opinion of many members of what are known as Generations X and Y, the two generations coming after those in the Baby Boomer generation.

Consider this, an adult born in 1944 would have been 23 during the "Summer of Love." That same person would have entered their peak years as a wage earner roughly at age 40 in 1988 when the national debt was closing in on $3 trillion. Now as those Baby Boomers are turning 65 and entering retirement. This comes at the close of a period when wages for the middle class have been in a significant slide. The national debt is at $12 trillion and growing.

The Baby Boomers consumed what they inherited from their parents, while also digging a massive hole of national debt for their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

And those jobs they had that paid living wages? They’re gone. The Baby Boomers don’t even have their jobs to hand down to their children.

The growing disdain for the Baby Boomer generation can be seen on social networking sites such as Facebook, where followers of Fox News, who one would think would have more reverence for their elders, openly bash them.

In a thread of comments called "Baby Boomers: America’s Worst Generation" one blogger wrote, “I must say I hate baby boomers as a group... They are willing to destroy our entire nation to maintain their ’free money.’ Baby boomers are unworthy of their parents, unworthy of their children, and unworthy of this nation. I am ashamed of them.”

Meanwhile, in the July 21 edition of the Chicago Tribune, columnist David Byrne wrote: “...Someone who writes a book about (Baby Boomers) in another 40 or 50 years... will brand them as perhaps the most selfish generation in American history. That author would accurately nail them for their greedy, miserable selves because he and hundreds of millions of others will be living in the cesspool of debt that they leave behind.”

Meanwhile, even with all their failings, Byrne called Baby Boomers, “so loaded with smugness that it’s oozing out their ears.”

This sentiment has been growing for some time. Back in 2005, Paul Streitz, writing in the Arizona Republican said, “The valiant generation of Americans that fought World War II to preserve our liberty and western civilization was followed by the worst generation in the history of the country: the Baby Boomer generation born from 1946-1964.”

Streitz wrote that the Boomers, deconstructed U.S. industries and invited the invasion of millions of illegal aliens. Similarly, he said the Boomers “Derided the notion that the United States was a unique place among the nations of the world and declared that it was only the equal of other countries, if not worse. The Baby Boomers mocked the nation’s Christian heritage and forced ordinary citizens to fight to keep Christmas in public places.”

An example for Baby Boomers might be actor Dennis Hopper, who helped define the generation in 1969’s “Easy Rider,” as a drug-smuggling hippie, but signaled the beginning of the end with his 2007 “Boomer” heidonism Ameriprise commercials.

By the way, Hopper was born in 1936.

Every generation is led down a path. How will Generations X and Y respond to the lot that’s been handed them?

E-mail Matt Johnson at matt.johnson @lee.net.