Return With Us Now To Those Forgotten Days of Yester-Year

A newscaster of my acquaintance, a veteran of 50-plus years in broadcasting, one day came across a piece of copy from the entertainment wire in his line-up. “I’ve fixed the typo,” he told the editor. He had helpfully changed the first name of a singer to “Alex.”

The singer was Axl Rose.

That’s right. He had no idea who Axl Rose was.

I thought of that story when all the ridicule broke out over some Kanye West fan(s) being completely oblivious about who Paul McCartney is.

And I thought about it some more when I read this recent post on Martin Gram’s blog quizzing young people about pop culture icons from a day that, in some cases, isn’t in the past.

I suppose you can shake your head after reading it, but ignorance isn’t restricted to a certain age group. And if someone doesn’t have an interest in something, they probably can’t be blamed for not knowing about it.

But when you’re on social media, it’s pretty easy to use the same computer you’re on to look up a little bit of information before rushing to post that All-Important Opinion That Everyone Must Know About.