When I Was Young

"In my lifetime, we've gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. We've gone from John F. Kennedy to Al Gore. If this is evolution, I believe that in twelve years, we'll be voting for plants." -- Lewis Black

I like Lewis Black, I'm always up for a good, over-the-top rant. However, in this particular case, putting the humor aside, I disagree with his observation.

Several years ago, I saw a video bit, probably on The Daily Show. There were clips of Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Cavuto, Bachmann and Palin; all delivering basically the same line:

"When I was young, America was a better place." Or a safer place, happier place, blah-blah place."

The last one to speak was Glenn Beck; he was, of course, in tears over the direction that his Amerika had taken since his youth.

The punchline, delivered by someone other than John Stewart was:

"Of course, you saw the world in a different way. 

You were NINE!"

How many (white, upper middleclass) children were aware of:

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The Vietnam War

The Oil Embargo

The Pentagon Papers

Bosnia

A Middle-East War

Watergate

The next Middle-East Crisis

Three Mile Island

The Middle-East Crisis after the last one

Iranian Hostages

Chernobyl

Tiananmen Square

The Persian Gulf War (Iraq)

Somalia

Rwanda

O.J. Simpson

The OJ trial was 21 years ago. Add 10 years to that, ten years of age being the limit I'm placing on childhood. This means once you reach the age of 31, you're an idiot if you begin any sentence with the words "When I was growing up, America was a better place . . ."

How do I know? Well, I don't really, it's subjective, but you are reading my thoughts on my blog on the internet. Try doing that when you were ten.