I recently wrote an article for a higher education site complaining that my just-out-of-their-teens students were lost when it came to the ability to analyze. But I had to concede in the middle of it that this wasn’t necessarily their fault: From the time they were born, their entire lives, up to the current second, have been analyzed for them.
Witness the proliferation of VH1’s “I Love” series (DISH 162, various times.) Originally released as “I Love the ‘80’s” in 2002, the series featured cultural commentators as well as actual participants in the decade’s most memorable moments. “Yeah, I was kind of everywhere, wasn’t I?” confessed a then-thirty four year old Mary Lou Retton. It was a fun program, with just the right mix of nostalgia and snark. Just enough time had passed between the Regan administration and the air date to gain the very first glimmers of historic perspective.
But then came “I Love the ‘90’s,” and… then… well… what happened two years ago. At that point, you’re just mocking last year’s jeans. Doubtless there will come a day when we as a country will snicker in utter embarrassment over our national obsession with American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, but that day has hardly landed within the calendar confine of 2009.
My generation—I’m thirty-two—was at the back edge of this. The first national event most of us could grasp was the loss of Challenger, and most of us didn’t witness the tragedy live. We saw it via Big Three replays, and replays, and replays. CNN was around, but the bottomless pit which is the cable news monster was just beginning to develop its appetite.
And so thanks to those of us in the media who provide instanalysis, many schoolchildren don’t necessarily have to provide their own, or they mirror what’s already out there 140 characters at a time. We’ll probably all laugh about it very hard on “Hey, Remember 2009?”, due out next January 1.
