I really can't get enough of this kind of thing

[james_davis_nicoll]

Shorter Doonesbury: wow, the younger generation sucks!

If only they had the drive of a Zonker or the academic brilliance of a BD.

Comments

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

You can't argue with BD's work ethic check out his bio; 3 wars, police officer, football coach:

B.D.
College football star, Vietnam Vet, third-string quarterback for the Rams, Gulf War reservist, California Highway Patrol officer -- B.D. has worn many helmets o ver the years. He and his wife, starlet Barbara Ann Boopstein, share many memories of the 70s and their years at Walden Commune -- she posing for Playboy , he volunteering for Vietnam to get out of writing a term paper. Though captured by a Vietcong terrorist named Phred and wounded by a beer can, B.D. left the Nam relatively unscathed.

In his subsequent role as Boopsie's hardheaded Hollywood manager, B.D. exhibited minor skills and major attitude, a combination that did not help extend her list of credits. Their main production was Samantha, born in 1992. Better suited to life in uniform, B.D. was called to serve in Desert Storm, and later as a CHIP officer, but a diagnosis of Gulf War Syndrome left him sidelined and bitter.

A return to Vietnam helped him bury old demons and dig up several old war buddies - including Phred, now a mover and shaker in the new Vietnam. Hired by his alma mater to coach the football team he once quarterbacked, B.D. has come full circle, he and Boopsie once again living in the house at Walden where they first met.

Reactivated for a second Gulf War, B.D. was shipped out to Kuwait, leaving the Fighting Swooshes in Acting-Coach Boopsie's care. He serves as a public affairs officer at Camp Blowback, embedding journalists in frontline army combat units.

And you can't say that Zonker Harris lacks drive and ambition, it his goals that are offbeat:

ZONKER HARRIS
Few young Americans have so thoroughly savored the joys of college -- which he once referred to as "the best nine years of my life" -- as Californian-American Zonker Harris. Known for his wheat patch and his explorations of Walden Puddle, Harris was a founding member of Walden Commune. Following graduation Harris swiftly rose to national prominence on the professional tanning circuit. Two-time Grand National Tanning Champion, he also won the Jack Ford Medal for Best Tan at the l980 Gerald R. Ford Pro-Am Summer Biathlon and the bronze medal at the Sonny Bono Indoor Tan Fest. Retiring from competition in l98l, Harris reversed field and appeared in an influential series of public service ads on skin cancer.

Although he may not have been aware of it, he was briefly involved romantically with a woman (Marcia Feinbloom) during the late 80s. In recent years, when not living with his parents, Harris has devoted himself to the field of professional childcare, nannying and surf-mentoring Boopsie and B.D.'s daughter Samantha.

During an election-year sabbatical, Zonker moved to Coon Rapids, MN and served as spin doctor on the unsuccessful Duke2000 presidential campaign. Today, when not caring for his young charge, he commutes to Malibu to work with his longtime mentor, Old Surfer Dude, in the campaign to maintain public access to California's beaches. When no one else is using the oven, he bakes and delivers marijuana brownies to AIDS patients.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

But all that is after he dropped out of university (to avoid writing a term paper). I like the way BD has developed over the decades but he was a terrible student.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

I think in BD and Zonker's case you have to argue did Walden give them the skills that they needed to survive and thrive in the world after college and in this I would say yes unlike the poor recent grad.

In their day the emphasis was still on class work not socializing even if they did more of the latter. Also the society they graduated into relied less on academic credentials for personal success.

I think Trudeau's argument is that college has explicitly become an extension of the baby sitting service that high school has become, that in BD's and Zonker's day there was an attempt to make the students adhere to an academic standard that BD ultimately failed only to face and survive greater challenges in Viet Nam and that Zonker did conquer after nine years.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Zonker's survival skills since uni mainly involve using his nine (!) years of undergrad university to convince his university pals to hire him as a nanny.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

And in BD's case I'd be inclined to credit the military.

[bethzebra.livejournal.com]

I've heard a lot of my mother's and father's college stories (they both graduated in the early '60s) and neither sets of tales is overly burdened by studying. It could all be in the way they tell it, of course, and they did both go on to be quite successful, but "emphasis on class work not socializing" is not at all the way their college experience comes across.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

When I get together with university classmates it's not the classes we talk about, even though classes and studying occupied more time than socializing. It's just the crazy social stuff is more interesting.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I really should write that tell-all: The Endive: How a Misfit Group of Dropouts, Dishwashers, Liquor Store Clerks and Bedpan Attendants Smartened Up American Comedy and Brought Down A President. As it is, I'm just going to wait for the oral history people and lie my ass off.

[(Anonymous)]

I was talking yesterday with a friend who teaches in a two year college in the US. No, not about how horrible his students are, but about how recent financial stresses are affecting the college. Owing to lack of money, remedial math classes have been cancelled. So if you went to a poor high school and lack the math skills you need to get through university, tough luck. An "online training" substitute is provided which apparently is even less useful than it sounds.

At the other end the four year colleges are stealing their courses. The local university's engineering department as reclassified linear algebra as a third year course, which under the terms of their agreement means that the two year school cannot teach it. They've lost several courses this way, and the accompanying revenue (he hasn't had a raise since 2005) but as a side effect the quality of the university degree drops. Linear algebra is by no means a third year course.

My own mathematical training was ill-considered in the other direction, but if I had to err, that's the way I'd like it to be. I feel sorry for the kids in that system.

William Hyde

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I think you're being rather hard on Mr. Trudeau here. As a baby Boomer, he has two basic instincts: a) screw up everything around him, and b) hold the later generations in utter contempt. You can't really hold the man at fault for considering current college kids to be far inferior to those of his day- he can't help himself.

[kraig.livejournal.com]

"hold the later generations in utter contempt"

Why, back in my day, we held ALL generations in contempt, not just the later ones! Except our own of course, things were so much better in my day that we didn't have to.

Lazy so and sos.

[ilya187.livejournal.com]

Agree. But that begs the question -- why would anyone who is not a boomer bother to read Trudeau?

I think Trudeau ran out of humor in mid-90's, and has been getting more and more embittered as the world moves farther and farther away from what boomers expected to see in their old age.

[uglychicken.livejournal.com]

I read it as saying the current generation is being let down by falling academic standards.

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

This.

The emphasis is on the side of what the universities are offering, and the cynicism underlying their motives.