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?