"The world" is happy, I'm grumpy

[thistlechaser]

It really annoys me that America is so obsessed with "the royal baby". This is a silly question, but: Have they all forgotten history? The whole revolution we had so that we wouldn't have royalty? I bet most of these people would gleefully put themselves back under royal rule.

The evening news, a 30 minute show. Ten full minutes was spent on the baby. Next story? Plane crash on a NY runway. Got 30 seconds of airtime.

Sigh.

I feel the same way about celebrity babies (and relationships). Why do people care? Do they consider these people better than them, thus they want to know everything about them? I suspect/worry that's the case. Talk about bad judgement... How about wanting to know more about scientists? Why fawn over someone who can throw a football far, instead of over the guy who is working on a cure for cancer?

I know these aren't original questions or unique grumpiness, it's just this whole darned baby thing that set it off. They had a healthy baby? Great! But so did hundreds of other people today.

Comments

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Trust me: Billy the Kid was no hero. He was a sociopathic killer and really stupid.

Signed, Former New Mexican

It really puzzles me though that we know so little about our own history. As an historian I am constantly made breathless by the depth and scope of our history and the vast parade of fascinating figures. Our history is even better than an historical novel. But instead we prefer to make and watch miniseries of faux upper class, badly written bs like Downton Abbey.

On the other hand, recall that a large number of people did not want a War for Independence, either because they were out-and-out Tory Loyalists, or because they were neutral in the matter. But you were not allowed by the fomenters' Founding Fathers' organizations to remain neutral. It really was "with us or against us." If against us you suffered and were punished by our mobs. Some managed to ride it out without losing their property or being mobbed and were able to stay. They still felt fondly about England. English migration to the new U.S. continued too -- your family is an example. I have friends in Maryland whose family came here during and after WWII.

Love, C.

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

I'll have to double-check the definition of culture-hero, but I'm pretty sure it has more to do with mythic status than reality. Christopher Columbus, culture hero, intrepid explorer and blah blah blah... one of dozens in the search for a profitable (read: no Muslims no taxes) route to Asia, blindly convinced the world was half its centuries-calculated size, completely lucked out that the Americas were where he thought Japan was, died still refusing to believe that he hadn't reached Asia.

Considering the way we teach history in schools, unless they've changed drastically in the years since I've graduated -- which doesn't seem likely, given how much has been crushed under standardized testing, STEM-is-best, and budget-cut the arts -- I'm not surprised people 1. have the impression that history begins and ends with white America circa 1500, and 2. can't remember much more than two Presidents and Ben Franklin. I remember sitting in 11th grade history thinking that if I heard the line about Ben Franklin's @#$% chair one more time, I was going to scream.

I mean GEEZ. My dad is still consistently surprised when he mentions anything Roman and I don't have a clue, because by the time I took history all we got of Rome was "they had pretty much the same gods as the Greeks, here are the lists of names and a couple expurgiated myths" and "Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar". My mom didn't know Timbuktu was a real place. Approximately half of all recorded history is Chinese, in terms of deciphered and undestroyed written information, but American students get none of it. My 7th-grade history book had a unit on the Indus Valley, but the actual class did not. No one mentions the African kingdoms, India, Arabia, Oceania, or Asia as anything other than a spice route target and Pearl Harbor... rrgh!

Now I'm not saying that American kids need to know, much less memorize, 10,000+ years and six continents' worth of events. There wouldn't be enough time even without other courses. However, reaching adulthood with the impression that people other than white Abrahamic men did more than sit in huts waiting for European colonization to come enlighten them? IS something that needs to happen.

Er, /rant. ^^()