So it seems as if a goodly number of teenagers don’t know who Osama bin Laden is. Gadzooks! But let’s put this into a little perspective.
We’re talking about 16-year-olds here. I was 16 years old in 1974. So let’s try to think of someone who was quite famous in the late 60s but who had largely dropped off the front page from 1970-74. How about Daniel Ellsberg? Or William Calley? Maybe Moshe Dayan?
None of these are perfect subsititutes. But how shocked would you be if I told you that I hadn’t heard of William Calley until some teacher of mine mentioned him in a class in 1974? Probably not very. I was only 12 when he was most famous and not paying much attention to the news. And it’s not as if no teens under the age of 17 have ever heard of bin Laden. Just some of them. Probably the same ones who haven’t heard of much of anyone outside the usual teen circle of pop stars and TV celebrities. This isn’t exactly a feather in the cap of American teendom, but it’s not a sign of the Apocalypse either. It’s just kids not knowing or caring about some of the things their elders take for granted. Nothing much new about that.
