By Burt Ross, Columnist
I was waiting in a reception room when I began conversing with a fellow patient around my age. We were reminiscing about Milton Berle when I noticed a blank expression on the receptionist’s face. I asked the young lady (my guess is she was around 21) whether she had ever heard of Milton Berle. “No,” she replied. Then I threw at her Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland, but all I got back was, “No, no, no, no.” I finally asked her if she had ever heard of Harry Truman, but, of course, I got the same answer.
Then, I decided to take a different approach by inquiring about a current celebrity, “Have you ever heard of Gigi Hadid?” I asked. The receptionist started to scream with glee, “Oh my God, she is my favorite.” For those of you who are in the dark, Gigi is one of the world’s top models, with 80 or 90 million followers (whatever that means). I finally found somebody who the young lady had heard of.
Now, lest I appear too arrogant, let me assure you that I have never heard of most of today’s celebrities. Several years ago, I was eating at a local restaurant when an attractive woman sat next to us, holding an infant. I kept looking at the infant (that shows you how old I am) when one of the people I was dining with told me to stop staring. When they left, the person asked me if I knew who the mother of the baby was. “No, I don’t have a clue,” I responded. “That was Gwen Stefani,” I was told. I had never heard of this Stefani lady, but was told she was major league.
On another occasion, I was sitting poolside at a hotel in LA. There was a man with an entourage doing exercises in the pool, and when he got out, he came over to my group and mistakenly thought he knew one of my friends. When he left, there was genuine excitement. “That was Usher,” they exclaimed. I had never heard of this Usher person. As far as I was concerned, an usher is somebody with a flashlight who shows me where to sit in a movie theater.
My guess is that those people who were excited to see Stefani or Usher (Usher must be big time if he only has one name) will be totally aghast when the next generation draws a complete blank because the youngsters of tomorrow will not only have never heard of Stefani or Usher, but will have never even heard of Taylor Swift. Oh Lord, tell me it isn’t so!