Textbook Time Capsule

Noam Chomsky reads the Wall Street Journal because it is a trade newspaper and is therefore more likely to be accurate than other mainstream newspapers (at least until it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch) which exist to entertain.  People generally read the New York Times to be amused.  They read the Wall Street Journal for information which they then use to make money.  Hence the accuracy of that information: the profit motive. 

The same logic tentatively applies to English textbooks.  They are designed to convey information for travelors to use (at least most of them).  I generally don't like textbooks, but one I do use occasioally is called "New American Streamline" from Oxford University Press.  One of my students described it as "furukusai" which I'll translate as "reeks of old" but note, this phrase connotes fecal matter.  Sure enough, New American Streamline dates from 1995, and it is the most quintessential picture of the nineties I've come across anywhere - more than Zach Morris himself:

...racially segregated, yet equally represented couples, that is to say, very consciously and carefully selected representatives of as many races as is possible; dialing "0" for operator; women called Paula; "touch tone" phones; New England Telephone; African-American men wearing pastel sweaters over collared shirts; black leather vests; Apple IICs with neon text on a black screen; payphones; Brand X Laundry Detergent; slicked-back, oily haired gameshow hosts; 75 cent sodas; brown suits; Olympic athletes in tight short shorts; people not arriving when they said they would and the panic that ensues; house husbands as a controversial topic; brown suits for women with shoulder pads; Madonna, Janet Jackson, Stephen Speilberg; women called Tania; full beards; moustaches meant to be taken seriously; shirts tucked into jeans; cashing checks; big, portable televisions so "I can watch the game" at some other commitment; handwritten resumes; writing people letters; reasonable airport security; women called Yolanda; Concordes; phonecall surveys; margarine being healthy; windbreakers as fashion; new cars for $10,000; language learning cassettes; American cars; smoking inside convenience stores; widespread UFO abductions with dubious eye-witness accounts; CD or cassette?; jean jackets; jean suits; jean shirts (worn with ties); flat tops; heavy metal hair bands; designated stops for school buses; endangered condors; broadway musicals not based on Disney movies; the Irish actually discovered America; classifieds; getting mugged; hijackings being fair game for jestful mirth-making; expensive special effects movies that cost 80 million dollars to make; slackers who like playing frisbee... 

(What hasn't changed in fifteen years: oil spills, arguments for and against offshore drilling.)

This ridiculously outdated textbook serves as a sobering reminder of where we came from.  Some things, like smoking inside convenience stores and jean shirts worn with ties, we're better off without; but some things, like women called Yolanda and reasonable airport security, we sorely miss.