Just plain stupid by design

I’m stupid.
It’s nice to know that for a documented fact. I learned that on two different fronts last weekend (and it had nothing to do with being the father of two teenagers).
The first indication of my stupidity came in a story I read (or dare I say, had my wife read to me) in the Sunday edition of the Houston Chronicle. It was headlined “Dumbest generation? Not who you think it is.”
The story, written by author Neil Howe for the Washington Post, basically said that the least-educated and poorest performing generation of our time is not the one in school now, but their 40-something parents, particularly those born in the late 1950s to the mid 1960s.
I was born in 1965. I am 43. I was in the class of 1983. According to Howe and a political consultant named Jonathan Pontell, I am part of the “early Xers,” or “Generation Jones.” I’m in that sliver group not fortunate enough to be a baby boomer or young enough to be in generation X.
To be honest, I’m more than happy to not be in either generation. One is identified as self-serving overachievers and the other as self-serving slackers. I can take pride in being from a generation of self-serving morons.
According to Howe, “Early Xers are the least bookish CEOs and legislators the United States has seen in a long while. They prefer sound bites over seminars, video clips over articles, street smarts over lofty diplomas. They are impatient with syntax and punctuation and citations — and all the other brainy stuff they were never taught.”
Golly!
He continues: “Want proof? Start with the long-term results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress … On both the reading and the math tests, and at all three tested ages (9, 13 and 17), the lowest-ever scores in the history of the NAEP were recorded by children born between 1961 and 1965.
“The same pattern shows up in SAT scores. The SAT reached its all-time high in 1963, when it tested the 1946 birth cohort. Then it fell steeply for 17 straight years, hitting its all-time low in 1980, when it tested the 1963 cohort.
“Ever since, the SAT has been gradually if haltingly on the rise, paralleling improvements in the NAEP. In 2005, teens born in 1988 scored better on the combined SAT than any teens born since 1956 — and better on the math SAT than any teens born since 1951.”
The story is long and it goes into detail offering theories and statistics to show how me and my ilk were basically neglected (can you say latchkey?) and put down by our superior boomer intellectuals.
We early Xers are the first generation to not exceed the financial and social success of our parents. At least that’s what Howe says. And he should know. He’s a baby boomer who has co-written several books about American generations.
Of course, TV newsman Tom Brokaw wrote “The Greatest Generation” about the generation that pulled itself up by its bootstraps during the depression of the ’30s, saved the world in the ’40s and parented the baby boomers in the ’50s and ’60s.
As much as I love, respect and honor my elders, I submit to you that this “Greatest Generation” is the one that moved women out of the home and into the workplace and allowed their unsupervised children to leave the church, experiment with drugs and have their every wish given to them on a silver platter.
This was the generation that tired of working jobs outside the home and parenting, so left us early Xers to our own devices and the boob tube. Rather than raising the bar for us, it lowered it in hopes of boosting our self-esteem.
Of course, what this all means is my generation now has an excuse for our stupidity. We’re victims! Bring on the entitlements! Woo-hoo! Homer Simpson, you’re my hero!
Of course, having the Lone Ranger and Tonto as my role models didn’t help. That is where the second dose of stupidity hit me last weekend. My wife’s grandfather (who is from the Greatest Generation) loaned me his copy of “Cosbyology” by that great philosopher Bill Cosby.
The last chapter details how he discovered that the word “Tonto” means “stupid” in Spanish. That led him on a quest to find out what Kemosabe – the name Tonto called the Lone Ranger – means. While the legend says it means “trusty scout” or “trusted friend,” Cosby was unable to find an Indian definition for it.
So he broke it down into parts and, with help, came up with a translation that means “Who no know,” or “He who knows nothing.”
So there you have it, as an early Xer and president of the Lone Ranger Fan Club, I am truly Kemosabe.