Americans, the People Without History

And American forgetfulness reaches new heights: In honor of 9/11, I reproduce here the month-old story...

According to the Paris pan-African weekly Jeune Afrique, a Washington Post poll found that 30 percent of Americans have forgotten the year in which the Twin Towers fell. It appears that, like computer hardware, recent political history also goes obsolete after three years.

Ninety-five percent of those polled knew that the events happened on “Nine-Eleven,” but

16 percent said they couldn’t remember the year at all,
6 percent gave a year prior to 2001, and
8 percent gave a year after 2001.

The poll was conducted to coincide with the release of Oliver Stone’s film World Trade Center, which I’m looking forth to getting on DVD within the next few days. I hope that somehow Stone managed to get in somewhere the year in which the events took place, since it appears that Americans really only pay attention to entertainment anymore...

(The bright side? Hey, at least we still have the highly respected Prof. Letterman and Dr. Leno to analyze important world events!)