# Craig Ferguson: "Why Everything Sucks"



## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

Hello all, I came across this (short) video recently and I'd like to get your thoughts on it, especially since I think it has a lot of relevance to this particular forum.

Craig Ferguson, my favorite late night talk show host, opened his show with this 3-minute speech a few years back. It's partly meant to be funny, of course, but at the same time he's being dead serious. Basically, he blames the television advertising agencies of the late 50s/early 60s as the ones who started the "deification" of youth, which started the trend of overvaluing youth and undervaluing wisdom and experience. Other types of media latched onto the idea, and eventually that idea has spread into all of popular culture. That is the reason why these days, in the social realm at least it's better to be young, pretty and stupid than older and experienced, which is why everything sucks nowadays (and along those lines, why modern people in general prefer pop/rap/rock/etc. to classical or jazz).

Obviously he's oversimplifying things, but for some reason his theory strikes me as incredibly true. Agree/disagree?


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I didn't watch the video, but I can agree with your synopsis. Young people buy more; advertising dictates trends. Craig is not the first to expose the 'dumbing down' of contemporary society and the deification of youth. With the size of the boomer bulge, it is possible that we might see or are already seeing a slight reversal of the youth cult dominance... but boomers grew up in a time when youth was supreme and have a strong drive to maintain and regain it at any cost.


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

Yes, I'm sure it's not a new idea, but it's good to be aware of it. Do you or anyone else perhaps have examples of some writings on the subject, or other speeches, etc.? I'd be very interested in researching this topic.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Peter and the Commisar*

Check out Alan Sherman's _Peter and the Commisar_ with the Boston Pops:


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

There's certainly been a change in our attitude to ageing. I remember in the 1990s, a piece about an old woman was set in an English exam for A-level students and the teacher marking it remarked how lacking in sympathy most of the students were. So it's been around for twenty years, this attitude, and it may well be down to my generation, the Baby Boomers, for whom it was hip to be irreverent and mocking of authority, especially of conventional older people: 'Do you think you will be happy buttering the toast of your semi-detached suburban Mr James?' as the Manfred Mann song puts it.

The heinous crime of growing older for people nowadays is the idea of not being 'a babe' or 'hot' any more; I think that along with the deification of the young has come the placing of sex on a pedestal higher than love, friendship, your relations, reading a book, etc. And again, it's we Baby Boomers who are responsible!

I'm talking about m-my generation!


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Ingenue said:


> There's certainly been a change in our attitude to ageing. I remember in the 1990s, a piece about an old woman was set in an English exam for A-level students and the teacher marking it remarked how lacking in sympathy most of the students were. So it's been around for twenty years, this attitude, and it may well be down to my generation, the Baby Boomers, for whom it was hip to be irreverent and mocking of authority, especially of conventional older people: 'Do you think you will be happy buttering the toast of your semi-detached suburban Mr James?' as the Manfred Mann song puts it.
> 
> The heinous crime of growing older for people nowadays is the idea of not being 'a babe' or 'hot' any more; I think that along with the deification of the young has come the placing of sex on a pedestal higher than love, friendship, your relations, reading a book, etc. And again, it's we Baby Boomers who are responsible!
> 
> I'm talking about m-my generation!


It's okay, I forgive you for ruining everything.


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## niv (Apr 9, 2013)

I think most of what all you've already said is spot on, although I do think that sometimes older people also miss the value in what the young people are doing.

I recommend the film Idiocracy, which although being a supposedly just a comedy, I think it's a scathing critique of the culture of anti-intellectualism, advertising, the worship of the fun & irresponsable youth, etc.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

Young people having opinions on anything should be punishable by imprisonment or mandatory Mars colonization.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

niv said:


> I think most of what all you've already said is spot on, although I do think that sometimes older people also miss the value in what the young people are doing.
> 
> I recommend the film Idiocracy, which although being a supposedly just a comedy, I think it's a scathing critique of the culture of anti-intellectualism, advertising, the worship of the fun & irresponsable youth, etc.


Hehe, that film was a bit too true to be good. 

Two entirely untested ideas that just occurred to me and that I haven't really thought through yet:

1. The world of the past century has been one of constant, unprecedented change. The wisdom of older people was probably more valuable in the more distant past than it is today. As I grow older myself, I can see how I too, in at least some respects, a becoming ever more out of touch and irrelevant to modern society.

2. The above does not mean the youth is always right. A new phenomenon in the deification of youth is the almost catastrophic mollycoddling of the youth, which I observe every day in my job as school teacher. I have had ten year-old kids in my class whose mommies, quite literally, still bath them and help them in the toilet.

So what's the result of all this?

The following: 
Show of hands: How many of the folks here who are over forty need a teenager's help to operate a modern TV remote? :lol:

And yet, when I tell those same teens that when I was their age, I regularly helped my father to both milk and slaughter cows on the farm, and that we used to play the equivalent of dodgeball with fresh cow dung, they shudder and turn green in the face. When I tell them that we didn't even have a TV, or electricity for that matter, they almost faint with horror at the very thought, or they frankly disbelieve me.

They are intelligent, highly educated, technically very accomplished - and a bunch of completely limp-wristed mama's boys. But I still have very little relevance in their world, because there simply isn't anything in the modern world that I can teach them anything useful about.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

I didn't watch the video. That dude's like 150 years old. Who cares what he says?

:devil:


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## niv (Apr 9, 2013)

brianvds said:


> They are intelligent, highly educated, technically very accomplished - and a bunch of completely limp-wristed mama's boys. But I still have very little relevance in their world, because there simply isn't anything in the modern world that I can teach them anything useful about.


Really? I think some things are timeless, or rather, I think that there is some past wisdom that hasn't caught yet with everybody. Perhaps what you can teach them about is something less permanent, non-technical stuff, the things that don't change that much.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

niv said:


> Really? I think some things are timeless, or rather, I think that there is some past wisdom that hasn't caught yet with everybody. Perhaps what you can teach them about is something less permanent, non-technical stuff, the things that don't change that much.


Basic wisdom, one would hope, will remain the same. Such things as good manners and a work ethic are presumably timeless. But it is something one's parents should really be teaching. I have noticed that kids who did not learn those things at home cannot really make use of even very good schools.

Here in South Africa, our public education system is a total disaster; our parenting is even worse.

Still, the youth of today really does come in very handy when one is struggling with the TV remote, or a recalcitrant cell phone.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

I was tired.. Let's reduce my post to a simple quote from Anthony Powell:

_It is better to remain calm; try to remember that all epochs have had to suffer assaults on commonsense and common decency, art and letters, honor and wit, courage and order, good manners and free speech, privacy and scholarship; even if sworn enemies of these abstractions (quite often wearing the disguise of their friends) seem unduly numerous in contemporary society._


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Of course, _never in the history of mankind until now_ has a generation of middle-aged and older people found fault with the younger generation.

O tempora o mores!


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## Ralfy (Jul 19, 2010)

I recall some essays argue that it began earlier, i.e., with Frank Sinatra and the teeny boppers, followed by CA professors wearing T-shirts and jeans to work during the early '60s, which college students began to copy.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

But I thought every sucks now because of the Jews, Homosexuals, Blacks, Feminists, Democrats, Republicans, Muslims, Christians, Atheists, Unions, Lawyers, Lobbyists, Socialists, Corporations, Wall Street, Private Healthcare, Public Healthcare, Reganomics, Keynesian Economics, Bush, and Obama?


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