I believe, and have believed for as long as I can remember—Shut up, I remember more than most people—that everyone in our society has an ethical obligation to know as much as possible about the society and culture we live in. This takes time and effort, as well as humility. For the young, it means showing an interest in what had transpired before they were born, if it had a significant effect on history and culture.
I have related here my interaction with a professional woman, ten years my junior, who revealed that she didn’t know who Jackie Robinson was. I told her that was inexcusable, and sent her to some sources. A lawyer I worked with at one point, even younger, couldn’t come within 70 years of the dates of the Civil War, despite graduating with honors from Cornell and being an associate at Skadden Arps.
The case was made powerfully in the Eighties by J.D. Hirsch in his best-seller “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know,” and he updated his book several times. His main declaration was that without a shared cultural knowledge, communication and understanding between generations becomes impossible, and society’s connective tissue is eventually degraded and destroyed. Analogies and metaphors no longer work; patterns are no longer detected; “presentism” becomes epidemic. Jackie Robinson was on Hirsch’s list; so were John Wayne, Charlie Chaplin, Sen. Joe McCarthy, Marilyn Monroe, James Watson, Will Rogers, Elvis Presley and Fred Astaire.
Older generations have obligations too. As a child who watched more television than anyone I know (or knew), I became convinced that TV was an essential cultural literacy tool. My parents, one a lawyer and Harvard College grad and the other a career Harvard administrator, had many friends who boasted of either never watching TV or only deigning to watch PBS. Even when I was ten, I regarded them as arrogant and foolish, which they were. They didn’t see the Sixties coming, or comprehend the culture that was its catalyst when it fell on then like a rock squishing Wile E. Coyote.
I acknowledge that keeping up with current culture, while in some respects easier than it used to be due to technology, is overwhelming, and to some extent even impossible. We have many parallel cultures trying to coexist today, and some are antithetical to each other. At very least, I believe, all of us have to try to keep abreast of popular culture, which includes important societal developments that drive that relentless engine.
Last week EA expressed disgust that Sen. Jim Clyburn had revealed that he only recently became aware of ChatGPT. He’s 80: it’s no excuse. It would be almost as inexcusable if Clyburn announced that he didn’t know who Taylor Swift is. President Trump was recently dragged in social media for apparently conflating a kids’ TV host from the Fifties with Eighties star Paul Reubens, aka. Peewee Herman. At least Trump is aware of Peewee’s existence; that fulfills his cultural literacy obligation.
Five years ago, I wrote a discouraged post about how my cultural literacy commitment was failing, Confession Of A Life Competence Failure. I am obviously over-due for an audit, so I went to the same source for a pop quiz: WeSmirch, a web aggregator of celebrity news. In 2021, I regarded my performance as a failure, writing in part,
“It was horrifying. I never heard of most of these people. Those I have heard of seem completely irrelevant to me. Almost all of the important people in these stories seem to be morons, famous for being famous, illiterate, notable mostly for being rich. The so-called “news,” breathlessly shouted from various headlines, seemed less than inconsequential. And yet this is what a rising generation cares about. Here is a typical headline from this morning: “Vanessa Morgan’s son is called River.” Who is Vanessa Morgan? Who cares what her son is named? It turns out that she is an actress on “Riverdale,” a TV show based on the comic book whose appeal I never understood (but I read the damn thing so I knew what my friends were reading). My score was 15 celebrity names recognized, with 17 complete mysteries. My conclusion: “When all the celebrities are strangers, I will have reached the dreaded stage of my uncle, who got the Beatles mixed up with the Rolling Stones, and the codgers today who talk about the internet like it’s some new-fangled fad. And at that point, I will be useless.”
Let’s see what my score is today. The “celebrities”…
Ethics Alarms 
Civic literacy is important, obviously, but ethical obligations are usually reserved for things whose neglect harms others or society in a meaningful way: voting responsibly, telling the truth, understanding basic civics before serving on a jury. Not knowing who Taylor Swift is may make you miss a joke, but it doesn’t make you a worse citizen. Her fans largely voted for Kamala, at least I know that much. So, if anything…
But, if you didn’t know who Taylor Swift was, you would’t have gotten one of the greatest snarks from the 2024 election: Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris and urged Swifties (of voting age) to vote for Harris. A wag asked whether the endorsement of a woman whose entire oeuvre revolved around repeated stories of girls making bad decisions and dealing with the consequences was really a plus for the Harris campaign.
My knowing who she is would have limited that understanding, true, and any appreciation of irony to be derived from it. But she deserves no space in my head regardless. By occupying any space at all she — in a small way — deprives me of better civic use of that space. Like understanding the ethics implications of AI, or thinking of new ways to annoy my pit-bull. Whereas my subconscious is unfathomable, by definition, my consciousness is a limited resource. So, I don’t agree with the blogger’s premise, at least not where Taylor Swift is concerned. (Or Britney Spears.)
Asha Banks, yup I know who she is!
She looks like an identical twin of a girl I dated the latter half of my senior year in High School and the whole summer after I graduated. We sadly parted ways because I moved out of state a few months after I graduated and there was no way she could go with me because she was a year behind me. The resemblance was so close and the fact that my old girl friend was also a really good singer caught my attention, I had to ask my old girlfriend if she was related – no relation.
Much to my surprise, I scored a thirteen! The ones I knew seemed easy. The ones I don’t know seem really obscure.
There is real problem of “opportunity cost” as the economists call it.
Every minute I spend paying attention to pop culture and celebrities is a minute I don’t allocate to something either productive or more culturally “highbrow.”
Here’s the entire paragraph from “A world split apart” delivered by Solzhenitsyn on 8 June 1978–48 years ago.
“A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human personality in the West while in the East it has become firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. The complex and deadly crush of life has produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting personalities than those generated by standardized Western well-being. Therefore, if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant points. Of course, a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to stay on such a soulless and smooth plane of legalism, as is the case in yours. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced as by a calling card by the revolting invasion of commercial advertising, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.”
The quote was lodged in my head like this:
“the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced as by a calling card by the revolting invasion of commercial advertising, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.”
Not like we need to be effete snobs or pretentious, preening scolds.
But life is short.
charles w abbott
rochester NY
Glenn Loury and John McWhorter discuss the low relative numbers of Black students at the NYC “exam schools.”
If you can’t see it now, it may be paywalled until next week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzglfwSC9fI&t=381s
Loury is a well respected econometrician, so he knows what math is.
= – = – = – =
BTW, I have been thinking about Jack’s call to “Ban Test Prep” and the more I think about it the more perverse it sounds.
1. You are banning teaching.
2. Those in the know will figure out how to get test prep from those in their networks anyway. it just drives it underground, where some people can find it and others cannot.
3. Those without helpful people in their networks will find it easier to remain ignorant that test prep is a thing, and that others are doing it.
Making it harder to find out about test prep would be good if test prep was a bad thing. Lots of things are bad–you are going to have to work real hard to convince me that studying hard and exercising foresight is bad.
Thanks for reading!
charles w abbott
rochester NY
oops–I was trying to put my second post at the thread of about 15 July that discussed the exam schools. My bad.
I scored knowing only 8 unless the Donna Mills who was on several series back in the eighties is one in the same. Do I care that I am not that cultural literate? Not really unless someone can tell me how they are as individuals actually effecting the American culture.
Many of those on the list I expect are in sports or entertainment. I can also bet that if you named anyone from the band Nirvana I would not know them from Adam either. I did not see young Anika Niles name on the list so I guess the idea that she had large shoes to fill and has done so with astonishing success through hard work is not important enough such that she allowed a great band of “old codgers” to continue playing into their eighties.
I can name the entire Orioles roster from 1966-1972 from memory but don’t ask me to do it now because baseball for me has become nothing more than a business. It is not like our home town team who are also our neighbors. Those days are gone and the big money contracts have made it so that any sense of a real neighborhood connection to the players can only be felt in the rarified air of multi-million dollar neighborhoods.
Indeed, cultural literacy is something that creates a sense of common purpose. Having a general understanding of the Black experience in the arts, society, and history is warranted but knowing that the blue haired pony tail wearing rapper is the off spring of the great narcissist Kanye West is really not that important. Moreover, if you spend your time obsessed with the latest trendy ideas spouted by influencers and celebutants who are paid handsomely by the greedy capitalists to get you to like taking their favorite Cod Liver Oil then I don’t believe you will come away with a real understanding of the changing culture.
Like it or not the culture moving toward an ideocracy in which propaganda is considered undeniable truth and immediate gratification must be rewarded or protests will emerge. The Babylon Bee has several exceptional videos on You Tube that would be amusing if they were not so prescient.
Addendum: The Babylon Bee has its finger on the pulse of contemporary culture
https://www.facebook.com/reel/2469483006806085
Kudos for the Rush reference. She has dine a greater job playing Peart’s role, adding some of her own flair to Rush’s canon.
jvb
I saw Rush in Fort Worth and Madison Square Garden on this tour. Frankly, Anika has performed masterfully sitting in for The Professor on the Drum Kit. In the month or so between Fort Worth and MSG, there is a remarkable growth in her playing, having learned the songs and become comfortable with them.
We, the Rushinati, are a tough crowd and don’t give much slack for mistakes. We have been impressed by her skills and her ability to weather our overly critical tendencies. I mean, there are online fora that discuss whether Lifeson missed the F# in the second line of the fourth measure, or if Geddy still hits the high E above middel C on “Natural Science.” Yeah, we are that tough of a crowd. Anika, though, waved hello, hit the skins, and moved right on to the friction of the day! That is the hallmark of a consummate professional.
jvb