Breakfast of Champions

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

This was because their English teachers would wince and cover their ears and give them flunking grades and so on whenever they failed to speak like English aristocrats before the First World War. Also: they were told that they were unworthy to speak or write their language if they couldn’t love or understand incomprehensible novels and poems and plays about people long ago and far away, such as Ivanhoe.

Milo now used a line from a television show which had been popular a few years back. The show wasn’t on the air anymore, but most people still remembered the line. Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both present and past.