One of the things I hate about this country is how, if you express familiarity with something from the past – and not ancient history, a period more than 50 years ago – you are not admired for your knowledge but mocked for being old. In the United States, it’s better to feign ignorance than to date yourself.
So I was pleased and surprised to see all the tributes to Tom Lehrer, the songwriter who made a name for himself in the ’60s by singing about Alma Mahler, Wernher von Braun, and Nikolai Lobachevsky. Clearly, knowledge of what came before was not the stigma in the ’60s that it is today. Lehrer’s broad learning – in culture, science, mathematics (his true love, which would eventually woo him away from the world of entertainment) – made him an unlikely star even back then and an unimaginable one today. One obit called him “popular and erudite,” making him probably the last American to be described with those two adjectives.
