The Beatles. Ringo Starr. John Lennon. George Harrison Paul McCartney. Wait a minute, who?
This is sure to make most of feel really, really old.
According to a news article by CBS Sports, NBA star DeMarcus Cousins has no idea who Paul McCartney is. He was asked last week if he had attended a Paul McCartney concert that took place at the Golden 1 Center. You can check out the tweet below.
DeMarcus Cousins was asked if he attended the Paul McCartney concert that opened Golden 1 Center last week. “I don’t even know who that is.”
— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) 11 de octubre de 2016
Cousins’s career has been marked with huge successes. In 2013, he signed a four-year, $62 million contract with the Sacramento Kings. Also, back in 2014, he was part of the national basketball team that won the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup. Just recently, he won a gold medal along with Team USA at the Summery Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This year, he earned his second invitation to be an All-Star Reserve for the NBA All Star Games.
It’s not surprising that Cousins doesn’t know who McCartney is. He was born in 1990, way after The Beatles came out and subsequently disbanded. McCartney’s group, Wings, had also banded and disbanded as well.
The news of DeMarcus Cousins not knowing who Paul McCartney became a trending topic yesterday. Several news sites also covered the story as well. This isn’t the first time Cousins left reporters wondering what had happened. In the Summer Olympics, he was asked by a reporter,
“If you had one question to ask yourself, and you were standing down here, what would you ask?”
Check out his very straightforward yet ironic response in the following tweet below, which left the reporter perplexed.
.@boogiecousins leaving a reporter flummoxed at @usabasketball media availability. pic.twitter.com/FWeuZeEyNM
— Jai Bednall (@jaibednall) 4 de agosto de 2016
DeMarcus Cousins isn’t letting the news faze him, however. Based on a recent tweet, it looks like this NBA star is having the last laugh.
I know who Chuck Berry is ?
— DeMarcus Cousins (@boogiecousins) 11 de octubre de 2016
Most basketball players don’t know jack about anything. The average IQ for these guys is probably, what, 1, maybe 2 !
Several other things we know. McCartney has no idea who Cousins is. McCartney is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly a billion or more. More people in the US know who McCartney is vs. Cousins, much less the world & McCartney is a not even a US citizen. More people see McCartney perform per year than Cousins & those people are coming just to see McCartney – not a team. More people will remember McCartney than remember Cousins after they both die. Pretty sure that McCartney can spell Cat – not so sure about Cousins.
I’d say the biggest takeaway for me is that everything eventually fades, the sands of time washes it all away. There are of course exceptions to this — Julius Caesar, George Washington, Napoleon, etc. — but for the most part, no one, including figures and groups, survive the test of time. Sure, the Beatles name may still be important 50 years from now, but fewer people will know the group, or even be able to name one song. The same is true for the band’s biggest living ambassador, Paul McCartney.
Interesting in an article about who knows whose name…that Paul’s band after the Beatles is referred to as “The Wings”.
It was just “Wings”.
Yeah.
The only weird thing is that people being surprised. You don’t need brain or education to play sports! It doesn’t matter how much money you make, you can be a total idiot with all the money in the world. It really surprises me how people don’t know this fact.
I wouldn’t single out just NBA players.
What this amnesia points to however is that the popular song as an industry and social guide really doesn’t exist anymore. What we have now is a derivative, reductive residual outcome of a burnt out cultural paradigm. What we have now is a very un-homogeneous cultural society and I did not say diverse society (they do not function BTW), because there is no grounded center to it anymore. There is no more collective center to it.
As a consequence no one buys music anymore in any real quantity, concerts are too expensive, there are less and less regular venues in towns and cities, the average person does not value music as a cultural guide anymore; now it is just another distraction.
The baby-boom is over.