Back in engineering school there was this really tall, extremely pretty girl who was making straight As. (During this time, the numbers of men and women who signed up were comparable, but most of the women dropped out before finishing the program.) But this girl made it. Really attractive. Extremely sweet, too. One day some fellows are talking politics and she says, "Reagan ... he's a republican, right?" (This was back when he was running for his first term.) I thought maybe this was just another case of the pretty girl pretending to be stupid, but I think she was serious. (I'm not sure what I find more irritating: feigned stupidity or the genuine article.)
Problem is a lot of people have an overblown sense of the importance of what they know. I was once accused by a neighbor of lacking "common sense" because I didn't know that a person could drink 12 oz of wood alcohol with no ill effects. I need to send a nasty letter to my old teachers concerning this oversight in my education. OTOH, as I've ranted on numerous occasions, I don't believe common sense exists, or if it does exist, I don't think it's desirable. What is wanted is not common sense, but good sense, and the vast preponderance of my life's experiences have inured me to the inescapable conclusion that insofar as sense is common, it is seldom very good, and insofar as it it good, it is seldom very common.
Not that I entirely disagree with you, though. I guess there's some basic knowledge we ought all to have. But what? And who decides? And by what criteria? Whenever I pick up these books that purport to contain universally applicable knowledge, I inevitably discover I'm a lot stupider than I usually feel. (I know all the leaders you mention, and I've read Beowulf. But I only 'know' a trivial bit about Paradise Lost - it being far down on my list - and I'm sure I couldn't have a conversation about it.) This completely ignores all the crap that I've just plain forgotten over the years (I have a really bad memory and my friends and family even make fun of me - but it's not all that funny really - not to me).
Nor can I claim to compensate with an encyclopedic knowledge of popular culture. I'm familiar with some things and not with others. I've made a point of actually watching Howard Stern and Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey, so at least I know who the heck people are talking about. I also watched Rush Limbaugh (not a whole show, but at least I know what he looks like). I've never watched a whole episode of Seinfeld or Friends, but I've seen a lot of Star Trek and Simpsons. I don't have any idea who O'Reilly is but I know who Gerry Spence and Alan Dershowitz are, and I would recognize Ann Coulter's face.
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