can text message, listen to their iPods and instant message on their laptops -- all at the same time. They are patriotic and relentlessly optimistic about the future.The smartest generation in U.S. History? Do you know any people who take no pleasure in reading, need to be constantly entertained by demotic IMs and crappy pop music, and never believe anything but the best about themselves and the place they happened to have been born in?
They rarely read books for fun and most likely aren't reading this newspaper.
They are the most diverse -- and perhaps the smartest -- generation in U.S. history...
I have. They're called morons. In fact I would say that such behaviors and beliefs are pretty much the definition of moronism.
To be fair to the kids, I do not for a second believe that they are as this article describes them -- else they would all be in special-needs facilities, instead of out there tearing up my lawn.
Rather I believe the "popular speaker on the academic lecture circuit" whose press release is breathlessly replicated in the Star-Ledger just seeks to portray them as such -- so that marketers, excited by hints that this latest generation is even dumber and riper for the picking than the last, will hire him as a consultant, hoping to learn the secret codes that will sever the idiot strings connecting the kids' wallets to their $100 jeans.
As for Jarvis, well, he's just interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. He'll probably remain equally enthusiastic about all things New and Happening even as President Jenna Bush is texting OMG I JUST BOMMED IRAN!!!! to her constituents and ROTFLHAO.
For more of my increasingly hoarse denunciations of the notion that one can be smart without knowin' nuthin' except the names of characters on "The Sopranos," see here.
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