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As a response to Glenn Beck’s yearning for another time, perhaps John Oliver has the answer.
Jon Stewart and John Oliver seek to find the good old days. They are trying to go back to those simpler times when life was good in American. Could it be that those days simply do not exist?
Stewart and Oliver both discover that the reason Americans have such nostalgia over the good old days is because they were children. Most children had much simpler lives. They remember the good and don’t dwell on the bad. Is this true for all children? No. But somehow most kids are resilient and seem to have good memories.
For those who thought the 50’s were happy days, they really weren’t in some respect. Your parents scared the crap out of you over polio for a while. Then came the cure which meant getting stuck with horse needles. Kids also had air raid drills still where you had to dive under a desk and duck and cover. The films about the A bomb weren’t so swift. But that stuff only took up a tiny sliver of your life as a kid. The rest of the time you could put on your zorro cape, Davy Crockett coon skin cap and have the time of your life.
America is still a good place. It might have its issues, its days, its not so bright spots, but it is still home and beats the hell out of all the other places.
Warning: Offensive language.
The 1970’s are “the good old days”?!!! Boy, Jon sure knows how to hurt us geezers!!
Freakin’ hilarious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BAWAHHHHHHHH!
Let’s not forget the 30’s and 40’s when Hitler was marching across Europe, hoping to exterminate and entire population and taking millions of others to their death.
I swear, Glenn Beck needs to up his Haldol or something, maybe try seroquil to change things up a bit. WHY is he always on the verge of tears?! What a meshugenah!
Those were happy days… if you happened to be white and male. If you were some shade of brown or a woman (job market, educational opportunities, equal pay, discrimination, et.al.), perhaps they weren’t so happy.
Of course, Glen Beck is a a great example of a typical white male wishing for the “good old days”.
It’s nice to start the day with a good cup of coffee and a Jon Stewart/John Oliver induced chuckle!
Of course those were the good old days for all those white males with priveleges and extra rights – ha ha. Now they have to share with the rest of us and they’re soooo nostalgic for the “good old days” when the rest of us were denied a fair share. (And, locally, you have to look no further than the BOCS and City Council to see that our representation is still white and male. So why are all these whiners still crying?)
Great question censored! So, have you joined the Coffee Party yet?
Segregation was in place in many parts of the South until the mid 60’s,
including Prince William County. Remember even in the late 70’s that
a local roller skate rink was managed by a guy who proudly showed
off a baseball bat called “Larry’s Little N—-r Beater”. A picture
of him and the labeled bat was in the MJM.
The “good old days” for many — but not all.
@Poor Richard
Even in the late 70’s? Wow, that is scary, thanks for sharing that information Poor Richard.
Elena, I hadn’t heard of the Coffee Party until very recently. I’m not much of a joiner, but I may check it out in the near future. The next month will probably be a busy one for me – after that I’ll have more time.
Poor Richard, there was a small lake somewhere near Oakton or Reston that was owned by some guy who tried to keep it “whites only” back in the late 60s. He tried to say it was private but as long as a person’s skin was white (and his hair was short!), he/she could “join the club” it seemed. I don’t know what ever happened to that issue and wish I could remember the name of the place.
All of us have gotten those internet emails that are fun. The ‘Do you remember’ emails that talk about wax teeth and lips for a penny, renting bowling shoes for a quarter, juke boxes at the table (go to AZ along old route 66 there is one on every block), ….those things that make your nostalgic for the past.
All of it was kid stuff. Our lives were simpler, not the worlds. And it was simpler because most kids have so little responsibility. Kids also do a pretty good job at blotting out that which is uncomfortable for them…like not having enough to eat. The old woman was right on…about her learning a good lesson from being hit for being up the pole. She laughed and smiled over it.
What is amazing is how far do we have to go back in time to find a decade that wasn’t rife with horror over something.
Now for the unthinkable…I am going to say that I feel like the least marred decades have been those recent ones. Not perfect but certainly not bearing some of the horror of those where this skit starts. What would Glensie boy say about that?
M-h, the last couple decades are interesting – we certainly get our news more quickly and from a larger number of sources. At the same time so much has been sanitized – we didn’t see the coffins arriving home from the war during the past decade. Censorship took care of that. Also, without the draft, not every family is impacted by having a member fighting overseas. The Iraq wars have been too easy to ignore.
I wonder if this decade and perhaps the last will be remembered as the decades that adults frittered away so much of their responsibilty to the nation as a whole. We (and I’m using “we” in a very general sense) had a wake-up call about oil in the 70s and then turned around and bought larger, less efficient cars. We went for maximum square footage in homes (more space to heat, more impact on the land). We stayed home with our computers and large screen tvs and let others take care of neighborhood issues that festered. Granite counter tops, jetted baths, hardwood floors became goals and Wii became our form of exercise. We could hide in our houses and escape over some poor farmer’s fields in our SUVs if some terrorist targetted DC. I’m not sure we got out of the greedy 80s. Our development patterns with the accompanying horrible traffic support a life of consumerism and not much else. Better to cocoon rather than get out in the ever expanding rush hour traffic. I wonder if today’s kiddos will long for the days of isolation (except arranged playdates) and gadgets when they get older. Haha.
“The Golden Age never was the present age.”
Benjamin Franklin
– Censored, don’t about that lake, but many places – housing, parks, restaurants,
schools, churches were segregated defacto until the 1970’s. Remember
whites blocking the doors to “white” churches when blacks attempted to
enter them to worship on Sunday morning. Even to a very young white kid
like me that seemed to run counter to what I knew of Christain teaching.
(Ironic that some of the same churches now seek black members – with only
limited success).
– The “soft landings”, even if incomplete, we have had in addressing
brutal communisim and rigid segregation would have surprised many
people three or four decades ago.
@Censored
You bring up some painful points for sure.
I am going to throw out that maybe kids aren’t kids any more. Maybe the video games and TV have taken over kiddom. Maybe there are too many perverts out there now with rights so people are afraid to turn their backs on their kids for 2 seconds.
I have said for several years now that if we want to fight childhood obesity, we need to start picking off perverts. I would be terrified to give any child as much freedom as mine were given when they were growing up back in the…well we don’t need to tell EVERYthing.
M-h, I think the pervs were always around but people are more aware of them now – and it’s easier to find them on the perv list. I know my sisters and I had a lot of leeway in visiting friends – often walked a mile to a buddy’s house or road our bikes for miles. We got the lecture about strangers, and because of my father’s job we were probably a bit more aware than some kids. I remember some perv at the Saturday matinee that tried to lure my sister and me into getting candy for him. He was decidedly creepy. We moved a few aisles back in the theatre to keep an eye on him. We should have told the manager.
It’s too bad that kids can’t spend more time outdoors doing other things than organized sports.
Poor Richard, when I was a kid, our church invited the choir from the African-American church to sing for the Sunday service – and then worried about where to seat their parents if they showed up. They didn’t. It was one of the incidences that prompted the minister to request a transfer. He spoke to my mother – a damn Yankee- about his frustration with the upstanding members of the congregation.
Funny video.
But, EVERYONE knows that the 80s were where the magic happened. Arcades, rubik cubes, big hair, Atari 2600s… Good times.
PR and M-h, I finally remembered the name of the lake – Timberlake – and found a reference to the lawsuit. Just a little more NoVa history.
http://cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F2/421/143/49495/
Marin, I am trying to remember big hair in the 80’s. on males or females? I remember rat tails. Those were 80s. And NO, I didn’t have one.