Former President Gerald Ford R.I.P.
Oldschoolspinna
311 Posts
I remeber him falling down comming off an airplane, and Chevy Chase doing him on SNL back in the day.From what I've heard of him, He was a Very nice man, caring and kind...no wonder he didnt make a good Prez.Rest in Peace
Comments
"Gerald Ford dead today, from an overdose of crack cocaine."
So I was talking to this 25 year old woman, a Berkeley grad, very late last night after the news broke.
I told her that Gerald Ford had died.
She was completely oblivious.
When I pressed the issue, she said, "you mean the guy that makes all those cars?".
She seriously had no idea who President Ford was.
By her own admission, her knowledge of past presidents stopped at Reagan.
She knew Washington was the first, but then cited Lincoln as second.
Again, this woman graduated from Berkeley (yes, the one in California).
Of course, I'm considerably older than her and was actually alive when Ford was Prez, but hell, not only did I never go to college, I never even graduated from high school and I know this stuff.
This is all basic shit as far as I'm concerned.
I just think that's pretty fucking sad.
Am I overreacting here?
Not all, it's the whole book smarts vs. street smarts debate. I've been friends with a lot honor roll types and the only thing that seperates them from others is their ability to study hard and retain facts.
AND YO PAULIE BOY, where's my cd's?
check yer pm homie...
p
an ex of mine went to school (and graduated) for foreign relations
we were watching some tv program one night and she asked why was America at war with Russia? and then I come to find out she had no idea what started Vietnam or that Kennedy or Johnson had anything to do with it, she thought it was all Nixon, I had to explain all of this, and I was the one who majored in philosophy and smoked weed all through college
some of the smartest people I know never set foot in a college
college is pretty much the new high school our expectations have been lowered dramatically
I think you're probably overreacting.
I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt in situations like this, not only b/c memory is largely idiosyncratic, but also because people experience the world in different ways. I figure that over a given amount of time and experience people absorb roughly the same amount of information. A student might spend 4 years studying exclusively particle physics and end up helpless in any social situation even tangentially related to pop culture, while a stay-home mom may not know an atom from a lepton, but could breakdown any prime time sitcom of the last 4 years in exquisite detail and successfully pull off a 15-person dinner party. It's all just a matter of what's important to you, and what information you attend to on a regular basis.
Think about it in terms of music. Would you expect an 18-year-old who's exclusively interested in Scandinavian black metal to know who the Impressions were? I certainly hope not. So why would you expect a person who doesn't give a fuck about history to make an effort to retain history-related information?
I'm 50, Eisenhower was pres when I was born, I remember Kennedy and every President after him. I grew up in DC and politics loomed large in everyday life.
Gerald Ford was pres 30 years ago. 30 years before I was born Hoover was president (I think). When I was 25 I knew there had been a President Hoover, and I knew he was blamed for the Great Depression. Couldn't have told you anything about Wilson (Accept his reelection slogan was Kept Us Out Of War.) When I was 25 I couldn't have told that there had been a Pres' Polk and Buchanan.
I never went college (accept trade school and later a few Jr college courses).
Anyway, it would be nice to cut her some slack, but college grads ought to be able to discuss history and world politics. They should know that Henry Ford died a long time ago, and some grand or great grand son is running things now.
I'm not sure i follow this. Most colleges don't have core class requirements that include history. If anything, my knowledge of US history decreased in college. It was pushed into the margins by classes on Indian poetry and race in film. Just sayin'.
I remember the Nixon pardon getting a very cold and negative reception.....certainly not the praise that it has received some 30 years later.
Amazing how time can change history.
Or has my memory just failed me??
My dads last and favorite job as a federal bureaucrat was working on the VietNam Draft amnesty that GF set up. My dad had a desk in the hall of the Old Executive Office building and loved it. Plus he got to pardon a lot of people.
Dan
No doubt. People are self educated, college or no. If you are a college grad or just a literate person you should educate yourself on basic stuff like history. On the other hand I hate people like my sister who is always saying "You don't know who _______ is!?!? Like your some idiot for not having the same knowledge set as she does.
You remember right. Today it is generally agreed that it was the right move. He announced his draft dodger pardon at a VFW convention. That went over like a lead zepplin.
like dan and breakself mentioned, it all comes down to this.
i went to college, studied history and paulnice still made me wear my ass for a hat when we had some argumentative debates where i tried to freestyle.
still, america has a famously weak grasp of its own history as well as current events. but why bother knowing all that when we're #1 ? (we are still number one right?)
Yeah, that shit is terrible. NAGL at all.
"well what did you go to college for then?"
Don't you ever wanna say some shit like, "Yeah, well, what records you holdin' ma?"
Rock, literature states that people "weren't feelin'" the Ford pardon of Nixon. Nixon broke the law, fuck this kudos bs of Ford. If I broke into the Watergate and ransacked a room looking for something/burgled a room, my broke ass would be in jail for 20 jillion years.
But a fact is a fact.
Sorry, but all brains are not the same.
You can give me 10 times the amount of "time and experience" and there's still no way you're going to cram as much information in my head as there was in Einstein's.
"Why would I expect a person who doesn't give a fuck about history to make an effort to retain history-related information?"
Maybe because it's fucking important?
That being said, 25 year-old homegirl I was referring to in my initial post should have learned about Ford long before she even stepped foot onto the Berkeley campus.
As far as I'm concerned, this isn't even high school shit. It's junior high school shit.
But then again, I recall seeing Jay Leno go up to someone on the street who identified herself as a junior high school teacher...
Basic question: "Who was Harry Truman?"
Junior high school teacher: "Wasn't he President during the Civil War?"
No wonder kids don't know shit.
And they don't think it's important because they're not made to think it's important.
The only thing that's important is the environment, diversity and self-esteem.
They don't know shit about math, history, english, writing, geography or science.
The basic fundamentals of an educated person.
Which is really what I'm talking about here.
My friend could tell you all about the social and political importance of Tupac Shakur or about the history of oppressed indigenous peoples throughout the world.
But really, why should she be expected to know that someone named Gerald Ford was once the President of the United States?
I mean, really?
You're right.
Kids should know this kind of basic, fundamental shit well before they even apply to college.
Maybe not. There's a famous quote when somebody asked Einstein about a phone number "Why should I fill my head with information that can be easily looked up". Or something like that the great man answered. Kind of a tangent, but I just wanted to say his genius came not from what he knew, but his ability to see the universe in new ways.
If you want to locate some of the more contemporary reasons for American student ignorance, you might want to consider that it's actually BECAUSE there's been a focus on 3 R fundamentals but mandated through a ridiculous amount of testing in an effort to establish myopic "standards" around performance that encourage very little learning and instead, a lot of rote memorizing (none of which is likely to include lessons on U.S. Presidents, let alone someone like Ford who served a decade before most of these kids were born).
I mean, isn't that what "No Child Left Behind" was supposed to do? You think a bunch of hippies are actually running public school curriculum in most places around the country? C'mon man, please be serious.
My students in the CSU system don't know much about history, this much is true. However, they also don't know much about writing either despite the mandates that have been handed down through federal, state and local school policy. Esp in California, with poor funding, overcrowded classrooms and a host of other, basic problems in the simple ability to educate students on ANY topic, believe me, it's not because they're too busy sitting around in "personal fulfillment" classes and taking pilates instead of P.E.
But hey, Motown actually teaches high school history - let's see what he has to say.
(By the way, just to add, as someone who went to Berkeley for 12.5 years b/t undergrad and grad school, I can say that you have a far too generous an impression of the kind of political climate that exists there. The 60s ended back in the 60s. Berkeley otherwise is a far more conservative environment than many realize, especially amongst the students).
Paul's female friend probably doesn't remember him because she wasn't alive while he was president, which is probably true for the vast majority of Americans outside of a very few presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc.)
Traditional history in America has been taught based upon 2 foundations: 1) Everything always gets better over time = progress 2) Great men make history = individualism. Ford doesn't really meet either of those criteria, which is why he doesn't really get taught in schools nor is remembered for much. Hell, I would say more people probably know him from the Chevy Chase skits on SNL already mentioned, then what he actually did as president.
Just my 2 cents.
I'm with you Joel. Not to mention he wasn't even elected VP. It's funny to watch certain news networks who constantly slam Jimmy Carter try to put Ford off as some greatness. God bless the man and his family, but individuallty he was barely a blip on the prez map--unfortunatley primarily associated with the most shameful executive branch in our history. But with 2 years to go, I think Bush2 will take that crown.
As far as Paul's anecdote... Americans don't even know basic geography and demographics let alone political leaders and their policies. And that's a SHAME!
You can have your Watergate, just gimme some bucks and I'll be straight![/b]
Ford's Chief of Staff
Ford's Secretary of Defense
recycled in 2001 for your pleasure.