A woman? Never mind

Further illustration of how out of it I am is that not only had I not heard of the woman who butchered the national anthem (Christina Aguilera), the next day the news was dominated by two earthshattering events: the protests in Egypt and A-Rod being fed popcorn at the Super Bowl by someone named Cameron Diaz. I thought the uproar was because this Diaz person was a man. But when it turned out that Diaz was a woman I wondered – in the words of Stevie Wonder – “what the fuss?” Maybe she hadn’t washed her hands and the state nanny police were upset.

Further evidence that I am out of it is that I do not have a Facebook profile (I don’t even know what Facebook is and am not curious enough to find out). I am not on Twitter and do not Twit. I later found out that a twit was actually a tweet, but real men don’t tweet. Personally I would rather not know of Aguilera and Diaz or Facebook and Twitter than on my first test, of the 49 students 15 could not identify Ben Bernanke and 23 could not identify Timothy Geithner. And these are seniors majoring in Finance! In fact, four students identified Geithner as a senator from Tennessee. What an insult to the state. As I told them, if it were up to me I would not allow them to graduate from the university, not because of their lack of knowledge of Finance but because of their lack of knowledge period. My students are less able with each new generation. This group does not know geography, politics, English, spelling or mathematics. I wonder what are they being taught before I see them? As I tell them, in thirty years when they come to power and run the world, I have the solace of knowing that I will be dead.