Heeeere's...who?

I'm usually pretty annoyed by the annual Beloit College mindset list. I like the factual parts--things that have never existed or people who were never alive in the lives of current college freshmen, that's fine. Like the fact that they never heard "Here's Johnny!" live, that's kind of interesting.

But usually they just assume the college kids have never cracked a book (or surfed a history site!), and made no attempt to learn anything from before they were born. They say things like "have never listened to AM radio" or "have never turned a window crank on a car window" like they're gospel, when...if your family had an older car, you may very well have done both.

But this year's list, at least the bits excerpted by AP, isn't nearly so slap-inducing. It appears that the Class of 2013 list is not up on the official site yet, but the 2012 list does have some dumb ones. "Muscovites have always been able to buy Big Macs"? "Personal privacy has always been threatened." Who cares, and what the heck? So there was no threat to privacy before 1991? We were all living in perfectly protected Utopia? George Orwell might have a thing or two to say about that.

Actually, the list often makes me wonder more about the naivete of those who wrote it than those to whom it supposedly applies. "Iced tea has always come in cans and bottles"? Can't you just see Gomer Pyle saying "Gollll-ee Sarge, this heah iced tea comes in a CAN now."