it wasn't that long ago that the GOP wanted us all to return to "the good old days." in their minds they were looking to return to the days before rock and roll, before the birth control pill, and before the damned hippies and their drug crazed ways made fighting the vietnam war such a drag. they used to pine for a simpler time when father knew best, mom was in the kitchen, the boy was reading "tom swift and his ultrasonic cycloplane," and the girl was in a prayer group at the local church.
ahh. those silly republicans.
well, here we are in the 21st century and i can't help but find some common ground with the GOP of old. i find myself longing nostalgically for the good old days myself. but, y'know, i'm not a republican so i find myself longing for a somewhat different time. the times i long for though are not so unusual. I think a broad swath of americans would join me in my longing for them. let's see.
i long for the gold old days when the evening news was sponsored by gas companies and soft drink companies and food companies and such. remember? remember the great coca-cola commercials? remember the esso tiger? remember betty crocker? now we have to man the remote just to skip past the cialus, and lavitra ads. we can't get through the evening news cast without being told to talk to our doctor at least five or six times. it seems the competition at the pharmacy must have really heated up since the regulations preventing prescription medication advertising were abolished. hmmm. and i guess the competition for soft drinks must have really cooled down since coca-cola and pepsi have steadily been buying up all of the smaller companies that troubled them. and of course it seems unnecessary for gas companies to advertise at all since... well, there only seems to be one gas company anymore. yes. i think the examination of advertising trends tells us a great deal about the nature of our society and the business competition landscape. but... anyway... i miss the old days when regulations kept some of the competition alive and kept the drug advertisements off the evening news.
but i also long for the old days of "point-counterpoint." remember that? remember how sixty minutes used to end with shana alexander and jack kirkpatrick trading barbs. yeah, this was before andy rooney started his rambling. yeah. "point-counterpoint" was cool. of course the reason they did that was that they were bound by the fairness doctrine. remember that? "the fairness doctrine" what a great idea. it stated that if a news program presented a point of view it had to present the opposing point of view as well. the news program had to grant "equal time." i don't remember when the fairness doctrine was abolished... but i like to imagine how that went down. i mean how do you vote to end something called "the fairness doctrine?" i imagine it was done quietly. i can't imagine anyone tried to pass anything as honest as "the unfairness doctrine." but that's sort of what we ended up with. wouldn't it be interesting if rush limbaugh had to be followed up by janeane garafolo... bill o'rielly by al franken. i mean THAT would be cool hunh? and if it wasn't cool it would do one thing that i think would be important... it would point out that they're ALL gasbags and nobody has a mortal lock on the truth. anyway, i miss "point-counterpoint." i miss the days when we had a fairness doctrine.
there's a lot of things i wish were like the old days. i wish we had the russians to fear instead of the terrorists. i mean say what you will about the soviet union they never flew planes into our skyscrapers or beheaded our businessmen. in reality the USSR was the perfect foe. they never invaded. we never fought them directly... just their weapons. and they got to fight against our weapons too. it was a great deal. we got to test our weapons out without starting world war three. and look at the space race. how could you beat the soviets for competition like that? space, subs, gymnastics, hockey (the whole olympic thing doesn't quite have that spark anymore since the berlin wall fell does it?). i don't imagine we'll ever have a space race with the terrorists. if we do i'd hate to see it. i bet it wouldn't be as fun as the one we had with the russians. no. i miss the fearing the russians. i mean i really hated the nightmares about mushroom clouds and fallout. but at least with those fears you could convince yourself that nobody was crazy enough to ever start a nuclear war. nowadays i have a much harder time convincing myself that there aren't a thousand starkly sane guys who want to walk into manhattan with a suitcase of c-4 and seek revenge for any of a million injustices. so... yeah... i miss the good old days when we had a cold war.
and finally i miss when we could be ourselves. i miss when we didn't all have a party line or an agenda or an axe to grind. i miss the good old days when there were democrats and there were republicans and there were catholics and baptists and jews and muslims and gays and lesbians and straights and bi's... and no one talked about it. people kept their personal views to themselves and their votes secret. i miss the good old days when maybe there were folks who discussed other people's ways but they were shushed up and told to stop gossiping. i miss when christians listened more to christ than they did to the latest elmer gantry preacher on the television. i miss when christians practiced charity and forgiveness and compassion instead of intolerance and xenophobia and hatred. i miss when i could sit down with a republican friend of mine and have a few beers and not have it get ugly... mostly i miss when the stakes weren't so unbelievably high.
so. there. those are the good old days that i miss. i think, maybe, the democrats could do well to start developing a platform to steer us back to some of those bygone ways. maybe. i dunno.