Mindset List

Beloit College recently released its annual Mindset List - a list of generational 'facts of life' for the entering freshman class, meant as a guide for the faculty and staff to help understand where those crazy kids are coming from. As usual, the list is as much a generational statement about the faculty and staff as it as about the students.

2. Desi Arnaz, Orson Welles, Roy Orbison, Ted Bundy, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Cary Grant have always been dead.
3. “Heeeere’s Johnny!” is a scary greeting from Jack Nicholson, not a warm welcome from Ed McMahon.
14. They never saw Roseanne Roseannadanna live on Saturday Night Live.

I mean, Desi Arnaz and Orson Welles? Surely there are more recent dead celebrities to use as cultural reference points. There ought to be junior professors about my age and I've only seen Roseanne Roseannadanna in reruns. And The Shining came out in 1980. Johnny Carson retired form the Tonight Show in 1992.