Misanthrope's Corner.(culturally and historically illiterate college graduates)(Brief Article)

Back in February I wrote a column about the "Duhs," those human postholes in the barren landscape of Customer Service who mangle mail orders and can't spell King. Now I bring you even worse tidings. This column is about the Ignos.

An Igno is a Duh with a college education. There's nothing wrong with their gray matter, it's just that it remains virgin soil. They sow it not, and neither do they reap it. It just lies there undisturbed, as fallow as the day it was born, until at last, like other overdue virginities, it loses all capacity for response and you can't do a thing with it.

Ignos are the chief crop of Diversity Ed, what sprouts when Western Civ's Dead White Males are eliminated from college curricula and replaced with African oral historians, Aztec vivisectionists, and the diaries of Anais Nin.

Columnists have made hay with dumbed-down curricula. I've written my share of polemics, but I made the mistake of confining myself to arguments against multiculturalism per se. The narrower but more intriguing subject of Igno psychology is one that I left unexplored until two recent incidents convinced me that we are witnessing the spread of a new kind of stupidity that developed nations have never before had to deal with.

The first incident came about when I had to correct a public record involving my Social Security number. I dealt with an administrative assistant, a cordial, seemingly competent woman in her early thirties. She assured me that my problem was all straightened out, but given my natural pessimism, I automatically said, "I can see the handwriting on the wall." That's when she looked at the wall. Turned around and gave it the old up-and-down once-over. Looked back at me with eyes as big as saucers. "It's just a figure of speech," I mumbled.

The second incident involved a group of Gen-Xers who moved into, and then out of, my apartment complex. I never talked to them and I'm not even sure how many there were, but I do know one thing about them-the whole place knew it: They had a red light over their door. Each apartment has a faux Gay Nineties gas lantern for use as an entry light and they put a red bulb in theirs. It was not why they moved out; that had to do with unforeseen financial problems when one of the group lost her job. They weren't really operating a brothel, so all was innocent.

Was it ever. After they left, a neighbor told me that they didn't know what a red light over a door meant. "I told them and they were dumbfounded," she said. "I don't think they believed me."