OK, thanks virt --and good luck in 7th grade! Intellectual life starts to get more exciting now, and you'll find a lot more interest in your not terribly well-informed, often obnoxious but sometimes interesting and provocative attempts at learning more -- and obviously most important to you, getting attention!

Oh God, now I've done it: I've found "The New People" theme song, and I remembered it right - but out of sequence:

http://www.tvobscurities.com/2009/07/the-true-opening-theme-to-the-new-people/

Also, I'd never seen tvobscurities.com before. What a great site!

dwg, I remember the name of the "David Steinberg Show," but I really don't remember the show! When I look online, it says it aired about 2-3 years later than "The New People" -- and that it was a precurser to "Larry Sanders," one of the best shows ever. Still trying to figure this out...until I go to sleep in about 19 minutes...

dwg, don't make me censure you!

Yes, he was on the Smothers Brothers. What I think was really remarkable about the time was that you had fairly mainstream shows that were watched by the whole family pushing the envelope in different ways -- from The Mod Squad to The New People, The Courtship of Eddie's Father to Family Affair to The Brady Brunch, My Favorite Martian to I Dream of Jeannie to Bewitched. Lefty cultural historians have written about how such shows often reinforced conservative values (it's true all those supernatural chicks used their powers to be domestic goddesses, not to accumulate riches, fame or multiple boy-toys) but...jeez, I think lefty cultural analysis is usually a party-smothering wet blanket. Those shows show what a crazy, kaleidescopic time it was, where anything seemed possible.

Just take The Smothers Brothers, a variety show sort of known to be liberal, or maybe more accurately eccentric (Mom always liked you best!), and yet non-liberals watched it, and liked it (in my family) for the surprise value. There was a sense from Laugh In to Hee Haw that everyone wanted to break out of a certain kind of conformity, and push the limits of what was acceptable.

It actually makes me sad to try to think of any kind of modern-day comparison, because there isn't one. The right has birther, town hall, Obama wants our children hysteria; the left is trying to figure out how to cope with winning electorally in the last few years but still losing on some level culturally, and pop culture doesn't yet feel like an ally. But maybe it could be.

Timothy3, I'm thinking about this a lot: WHY is it so nasty and polarized today? One thing I've been thinking about lately: We had/have Republicans in our family. We love/d them, they love/d us. (There was no us or them, it was all WE.)

But I do think that something changed with the culture wars of the 60s and 70s. For sure, we became dirty godless hippies who wanted to stop the Vietnam War, destroy America, end white supremacy, kill babies, have premarital sex (preferably in public) and also with a) black people and b) people of our own sex and c) all of the above. But to be fair, we on the left also turned to personal attacks: The people we disagreed with were simply bad people, racist, sexist, classist, they wanted to destroy the environment, hurt children, hold back women, enslave minorities, etc. It stopped seeming like a disagreement over the pace of change or the route to progress -- with the prior agreement being we all wanted progress -- and became a disagreement about human nature, about good and evil.

OK, that's all for tonight. Thanks to those of you who keep this thread going on Fridays, and if I can't sleep for some reason, I know I'll be back!

AKA Smith, it's really nice to see you again. I honestly did have some problems with the Ed Dept's Obama lesson plans. And I really do want schools to teach kids to think for themselves, not venerate a leader. But that's not what they're protesting.

Where have you been, anyway? We've missed you.