Bahhh -- rather than waste bandwidth in citing lines of quotations from your last couple of posts -- I'll just roll over some points of interest here:

You seem to be taking the position that most people living in the 1960's and earlier were a bunch of ignorant, uninformed provincial dunces: and that no one had an educated ear attuned to national -- or even to local -- news events.  And that the media of that day was so limited that the average person simply couldn't hope to grasp the magnitude of passing world events.  :rolleyes:  I have to admit that such attitudes are standard fodder for self-important snobs (who fancy themselves to be Great Intellectuals -- and so superior to all of the mere mortals below), but the realities were (and are) often quite different.

People -- including people living back in the day -- were as much of a mix of the informed and the uninformed as they are right now.  In spite of the famous 24-hour news cycle that we all have the joy of living in today: there are still plenty of people -- as in those that Howard Stern's man on the street reporter recently interviewed -- who when informed that Obama had picked Sarah Palin as his running mate: praised Obama for his wisdom and his foresight in making such a superb choice.  And that's another reason why they were voting for Obama, too..........

So, yes: ignorant people exist in spite of all that the 24-hour news cycle can do for (or perhaps to) them.

I'd take a look at the famous 8th-grade standardized test from 1895 (admittedly controversial as to precisely how we should interpret it in the light of today's 8th graders -- because some people don't like the implications):

http://people.moreheadstate.edu/fs/w.willis/eighthgrade.html

I can tell you something about the 60's - I was there.  Little boys in the 3rd grade even knew about LBJ and "what he was doing about LSD and dope and all that".  Some of them wee saddened that LBJ had chosen not to run again, too.  (shudder)  But after what had happened to him in New Hampshire, it probably couldn't be helped, you see......  We discussed Vietnam, the Soviet Union, Goldwater, WWII and Patton, the Civil War, NASA.......and so forth.  And I was raised in a small southern town.

Information was more than readily available for anyone who cared to casually look.

Attempt to deny the clear facts on their face as much as you like: we, as children, had no fear about going where we liked in those days.  And nothing ever happened to any of us as a result.  Or only fear was from the mean old man or old lady who lived down the street, and that everybody (meaning us kids) hated.  It's not like that today.

People didn't shoot up schools, restaurants, workplaces, shopping centers, etc. in that day, either.  Charles Whitman was the beginning of such: and at the time, he was so notable because he was so totally shocking, an abberation, a freak.  Today he'd be a minor blip in the 24-hour news cycle.  Just another one in a long list.

You know, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, which so galvanized the entire nation's attention in it's day -- and which so outraged the public at that time........to the public of that era: it was an unthinkable, horrific crime.  By contrast: today, a mere incident on the order of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre -- at least in terms of the number of people killed -- hits the news every couple of months or so, at least.  If not more often.  It's another temporary blip on cable.  "Hey, Ethel -- did you see that?  Another crazy killed 7 people because his girlfriend broke up with him.  yawn  Be sure to turn off the TV, will ya?"  One week after, that particular news story involving 7 dead teens-old folks-children-women-whoever will have been totally forgotten by most of the public.  If they ever learned of the incident in the first place.  The once-shocking has now become the everyday, the hum-drum.  So are things different now?  Nahhh.....they just can't be...........

In the 1950's, a divorce was a major cause of scandal for local neighborhoods at that time.  Today, it's nothing at all.

I could go on and on..........

Are things different today than they were a couple of generations ago?  Are people's attitudes different?  Is amorality on the move as a cultural wave in our times?  Yes, it is.  And it's not the ready availibility of the news cycle which has caused this state of affairs.  It's the tenor and the calling of our times: as expressed in the opinions, thoughts, desires, and the hearts of individuals.

No, we didn't get here overnight.  But -- as Rome's fall didn't happen because of the events of a single year: but the cracks in late Roman society grew over decades.........that single year of 410 AD was the result of a society in decline for some time before.  410 was merely the culmination of the effect.  Likewise, a decent structural engineer can see the same cracks forming in our own foundation today.  In fact, a sharp-sighted layman can spot the warning signs -- if he cares to see.

Something To Do At 3:00AM