Good Old Days?

People of a certain age can wax nostalgic for the good old days. The good old days of entertainment, or of politics, or of society. And they are right. And wrong.

Pick a decade, or a generation, and you can look back on it with nostalgia – while forgetting the disturbing stuff. Just like today. There is plenty to praise and some to condemn – as always.

Way back when we had Farfel the talking dog and Rowlf, another talking dog. And Charlie McCarthy. We had Uncle Miltie and The Perfect Fool – but they played on stereotypes for their humor. Red Skelton played Clem Kadiddlehopper for laughs – before many of the farmers he caricatured had TVs.

If you think that today’s harsh interview style (like maybe Bill Maher) is over the top you don’t remember the likes of Les Crane who sat on his stool on a bare stage, smoking cigarette after cigarette, goading and berating his audience who dared to step into his Bitch Box.

Speaking of cigarettes, the famed Edward R Morrow was wreathed in smoke when he did his interviews on TV. I can’t recall the interviews – just the smoke. Ha!

Wasn’t Bonanza the first TV show in color? Then The Wonderful World of Disney brought color TV to everybody – because it was the catalyst that made folks want a color TV. Has TV gotten better since then? Well, there are lots more shows and the TVs are bigger and bigger and thinner and thinner – but better?

Two personalities from the old days presage current times – and probably made current times possible. They are Ernie Kovacs who exploded what was possible on TV (live TV!) - visually and substantively; he was the Monty Python and Saturday Night Live of his time.

And then we had Lenny Bruce. The man who could say anything – and be funny about it. Sort of. He was scatalogical and antiestablishment. He led to Sam Kinnison. Neither Lenny nor Sam can be played today. But if you listen and don’t laugh, well, you may be too uptight.

We had the Defense Highway System, now the interstates. But we had the Cuban missile crisis, and Duck and Cover. And the House Unamerican Activities Commission. Now we have an increasingly pervasive Woke commission.

The good old days are the days when you grew up, when you can remember the good and forget the bad. But the days are always a mix of good and bad, the same today and then.

Bring back Dickens or Julius Caesar and I’ll bet they would make the same arguments. Times change?

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Vicky Chapman的更多文章

  • Farewell! To My Faithful Readers

    Farewell! To My Faithful Readers

    Thousands of you have read hundreds of my articles. Maybe I could be in the Guinness Book of Records as the only…

  • Housecleaning Supply Shortages? Ha!

    Housecleaning Supply Shortages? Ha!

    It is good to be an old timey housecleaner in this time of supply shortages. While chemically-infused floor cleaning…

    1 条评论
  • Lottery Excellence

    Lottery Excellence

    Everything should be as well run as the lottery. I’ve just learned (probably after all of you) that the state lottery…

  • Daylight Losing Time

    Daylight Losing Time

    It’s that time of year again when we fall back one hour. And the annual question is asked: Why? More and more…

  • Happy Halloween!

    Happy Halloween!

    Halloween is back. After being effectively canceled last year, it is back for 2021.

  • Lockdowns? Vaccines? Mandates?

    Lockdowns? Vaccines? Mandates?

    Two weeks to flatten the curve. Remember that? The whole country masked up and stayed home to prevent millions of…

  • Tax Time. Already?

    Tax Time. Already?

    It’s the middle of October, so it’s also time to consider this year’s and next year’s taxes. Sorry! If you pay…

  • Empathy

    Empathy

    There have been posts and articles about Empathy lately. An interesting coincidence.

  • A Texas Day Trip

    A Texas Day Trip

    Taking a day off from cleaning houses, I planned a pleasant drive from my suburb of Austin, TX, to Fredericksburg, TX…

  • Home Gyms

    Home Gyms

    As a housecleaner I have seen a resurgence in existing home gyms and an increasing number of new home gyms. That makes…

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了