Review by Richard Wexler

(CNN) -- Remember that classic Monty Python sketch involving a customer who returns a dead parrot to a pet shop? The pet shop owner insists that the parrot is not really dead. "He's just resting" or "pinin' for the fjords."

I kept thinking of the "dead parrot sketch" as I read Michele Mitchell's "A New Kind of Party Animal". Mitchell, a 27-year-old former congressional staffer, sets out to persuade us that something really isn't dead -- in this case, activism, ideals, and concern for anyone but themselves among those commonly known at Generation X.

She's about as persuasive as that pet shop owner.

Though the book supposedly is about how Gen-X is reshaping American politics, it has no real theme or coherence. It's actually a tour of Mitchell's whine cellar -- a litany of grievances against anyone who is not a fellow X-er and a defense of anyone who is. But every time she seeks to shatter a stereotype about Gen-X, she reinforces it instead. She tells us that X-ers don't do public protests not because they don't care, but because they've realized that there are better ways to achieve social goals than taking to the streets. Too bad the book went to press before hundreds of college-age X-ers practically rioted in several college towns when authorities threatened to curb access to their drug of choice -- alcohol.

In the 60s, activists fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. Gen-X activists fight for the right to party.

In the 60s, young freedom riders, many of them white and middle class, put their lives on the line to integrate the South. They had nothing to gain for themselves.

But when Mitchell tries to present similar examples of idealism among her Gen-X peers, what does she come up with? A guy who organized a rent strike -- but only after the landlord cut the heat to his apartment in the dead of winter. Another Gen-X role model organized a neighborhood full of yuppies -- his neighborhood -- and another is considered a model citizen for putting a voter guide on the internet -- a worthy endeavor but one that primarily benefits middle class net-savvy young people -- like herself. (This particular shining star is described as "stepping over vagrants" on her way to work each morning). With just two exceptions, all Mitchell's exemplars of Gen-X social consciousness have one thing in common: their first question seems to be: What's in it for me?

Even if the anecdotes were persuasive, Mitchell offers little data to suggest they are anything but exceptions. And the data she does present are the result of some dubious number crunching. Mitchell finds it convenient to redefine the Baby Boom generation as 1943 to 1961 instead of the widely accepted '46 to '64, and makes a similar adjustment for Gen- X. All her subsequent statistical comparisons between the generations, therefore, are meaningless.

Even when Mitchell makes good points, it's hard to sympathize.

She's right to protest cutbacks in education funding that have left many schools decrepit. But while Jonathan Kozol, in his outstanding work "Savage Inequalities" zeroed in on what this means for inner city kids, some of whom literally must learn while jammed into bathrooms, Mitchell lumps real problems together with middle-class X-ers having to attend classes in schools with torn carpeting. Elsewhere, she devotes nearly an entire page to complaining about working conditions in congressional offices.

Amazingly, however, if Mitchell is to be believed, Gen-X has overcome such adversity to become the all 'round smartest bunch who ever lived. They're not ignorant about the world around them because they watch less network news than their elders, they make up for it by using as their primary source of information -- local TV news. Her proof that X-ers are too smart to be conned by advertising: "The most successful ad campaigns (for reaching X-ers) ... resemble the Nike magazine ad that read: 'Don't insult our intelligence. Tell us what it is. Tell us what it does. And don't play the national anthem while you do it.'" She does not explain why they then rush out and pay more than $100 for a pair of sneakers.

The book is filled with contradictions. She declares repeatedly that X-ers choose their candidates based on issues, not personality or character. But then she tells us that a fellow Gen-X congressional staffer resolved to run for office herself because the incumbent in her district wasn't nice to her when he passed her in the hall.

The other theme that runs through the book is generational warfare. Mitchell explicitly denies it, but it oozes from almost every page. She condemns the GI Bill, which created America's middle class and made possible millions of comfortable Boomer and Gen-X childhoods, as a way to "suck (today's seniors) into the goodie system." Jesse Jackson is dismissed as a "worn Democratic visage." She describes how appalled she and her fellow Gen-X congressional staffers were by President Clinton's health care plan -- because, heaven forfend, young, healthy people would have to pay more to help the old and the sick.

But perhaps most revealing is the way she describes people physically: If you're young, you're "tall and strapping" and "gush with ... charisma" or you have "fierce intensity that ... (lights) cerulean eyes with fire." If you're older than 35, however, the eyes are "folded behind puffs of skin" and your "face (is) mottled" or you're a "matron" with "pushed out front teeth and (a) pinched nose."

Of course there is a case to be made for things like means testing entitlements for all ages. But Mitchell doesn't make it. Instead, her message to her elders seems to be: Would you please go away and die?

It's also true that there was plenty of selfishness and arrogance among the boomers when they were young, and perhaps even more now. It was the boomers, after all, not Gen-X, who came up with "don't trust anyone over 30."

But it seems that Mitchell and her pals have managed to adopt all the worst of the 60s and none of the best -- all the arrogance, none of the ideals. For a truly honest look at Michele Mitchell's generation, try instead Peter Sacks' outstanding book, "Generation X Goes to College" (Open Court Press: 1996).

As for Mitchell: It's her "party" and she'll whine if she wants to.