references to well known entities which are slowly more antiquated than previously

I’m talking with this guy, a few years younger than I, who I will just say for good or ill (good and ill?) whose worldview has been influenced by a bit of recreational drug use. I have seen that this both helps and hinders a coherent and cognent view of the world — if at once it clears away some artifice of how we organize society, it also leads to sophomoric insights half-baked (better than not baked at all, I suppose) posited as PURE GENIUS. (It also, in some people, leads to being well-read in certain aspects of history and culture, in certain predilications of a conspiratorial view of history — again — good or bad, good and bad. This is more than can be said for much of — my generation or maybe any generation, case in point the current popular game show: Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?)

Come to think of it, none of that digression mattered one iota, because I can strip away all descriptive accounts of it and it will come out as General Bland. So forget I typed any of that.

I think he posited that he’s always believed that the the war in Iraq was all a precursor to Iran, the unmovable and creeping on military bases permanent by design, except anytime that he has thought that, the circumstances never come together into fruition. I mentioned the habit of Fox News to intermittently go on for day or so where they drum on about the “Threat from Iran”, and then move on without a trace. Obligatorily, I referenced Fox News as “essentially Pravda”. He nodded, though somehow a lack of recognition pervaded which I couldn’t put my finger on because he clearly knew what I just said.

Then it hit me. Pravda. There is no real reason he should understand that reference. Come to think of it, despite the fact that I will make the reference as second-handedly as anyone, there is no real reason that I should understand the reference– though I think there is no reason that I should not understand it either. I can’t assuage that for him, but he’s reasonably well read. At any rate, there’s no reason for an eleven year old — fifth grader — to understand the reference to “Pravda”.

Thinking about this dropped reference that I make without a second’s hesitation, a remnant from a world order that I did not quite come of age in, one which Condi Rice is an expert on…

I suddenly feel strangely… young.

And disoriented, slightly off from my generation.  Every June (or May), there is this asinine list sent around (since the advent of the Internet, chain-emailed — before that, we just had to do with USA Today and before that Reader’s Digest for quick dissemination on morning radio “relatables”) — of “Things the current graduating class never knew”.  It is tedious, and I remember my graduating class said something to the effect of relating the difference of what ‘Morning After’ conjures up — along with a long list of items I did indeed remember or had an intellectual awareness of.
But my question for the peanut gallery: at what point does a reference fall into the realm of needing a footnote?

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