Why do I miss the 80's?

by George Dienhart

Alot of good came from the 80's.  Most of it from Ronald Reagan. As I fondly recall my childhood, I remember "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" along with the success of the implementation of "Chicago School Economics" (Reaganomics, to the general public). I also think back to the way the liberal press and Hollywood whined their way through the decade. How did Hollywood amass this much power?

California is big. It's population is REAL big. The entertainment industry is based in this uber liberal environment. The press mostly comes from New York, another very liberal area. When I think back to the eighties, Hollywood wasn't as vocal about it's liberalism, and the press was at least coherent in their rants against President Reagan.

The web has changed all of this. Every week 10's of thousands read what I and my cohorts write here at Illinois Review. I am probably better read than the locally based columnists for small town papers. What I am saying is the web has given everyone a voice. If you are willing to read my incoherent ruminations, you are willing to give anyone a chance.

Back in the 70's and 80's Larry Gelbart was a producer on MASH, the popular Korean war sitcom starring Alan Alda. There was always a liberal slant to the writing on that show. Before the web, Larry and his team had to be clever and entertaining if he wanted to be a subversive. He had to be creative or people wouldn't watch.

What's Larry up to now? Larry blogs for the Huffington Post. I offer this except from his latest:

"I can no longer keep up, let alone follow the plots cooked up by the perpetrators of our new Pox Americana, the practitioners of dipstick diplomacy led by our chief denier and destroyer. (If it were not for Iraq, I do believe there is every chance we would never again see the letters "W" and "IQ" in the very same sentence.)"

This is neither funny, nor entertaining. It's not me reacting to the political content. I have seen every episode of MASH. I read every panel of Bloom County. I was able to laugh with the liberals in the 80's, even if I knew they were wrong. Liberal extremists were at least funny back then. Now they have all degenerated into a group of frothing at the mouth extremists, interested more in prolonging their fading vestiges of fame, than in the safety and protection of their family.

The liberals that respond to my musings here are often no better. It seems the left has forgotten that through humor we can open dialog. Better to rant and call the author an idiot than to crack a joke and state your point of view. Why is this?

I think you have to go back to the Clinton administration to find the beginning. It started with one simple, hip, and flippant phrase. "It's the economy, stupid". The phrase was squarely aimed at President Bush. It started an avalanche of foul language and accusations from paid staffers that set the tone. People had made fun of presidents in the past in stand up acts and late night TV. But before the Clinton administration, instances of paid staffers calling their opponent stupid were few and far between.

As they say, you can't close Pandora's box. We can, however, mourn the loss of civility in our culture. Conversations should not start with a punch in the throat, literal or otherwise.