As usual when explaining the origins of the Age of Stupidity, one answer is secularism.
At my older son's graduation from a religious Jewish high school a few years ago, every single man in the audience wore a jacket and tie and the women were similarly formally dressed. Secularism not only induces stupidity ("Wisdom begins with awe of God," the Psalmist correctly noted), it also de-sanctifies almost everything. In the radically secular age in which we live, nothing is holy. Not even schools.
Liberal secular society has two primary concerns before wisdom -- health and equality.
Health: It was a non-issue to most everyone at the graduation that people came in shorts and T-shirts. But imagine the reaction if one person had lit up a cigarette. Panic and screams of hatred would have been unleashed. The poor soul would have been rushed out of the building as if he were a terrorist -- which is precisely how the smoker would have been viewed thanks to the mind-numbing propaganda of how fatal a whiff of secondhand smoke is. In every preceding generation, however, when wisdom was valued, a man or woman who wore shorts to a graduation would have been regarded as out of place as a smoker would today.
Equality: A word that is often used to describe formal clothing is "classy," a word which itself derives from "class." Because of its derivation, however, the word is rarely used today -- it conflicts with one of our era's dominant values, egalitarianism. Therefore more and more people dress and act . . . classless, such as when they all wear T-shirts. That is also why so many teachers don't dress up to teach -- the egalitarians who run American education don't want students to regard teachers as being of a higher class than students.
My producer, however, is a classy guy. And for that reason, he was quite out of place at his niece's high school graduation.
But at least his niece was appropriately honored.