"The present looks more like Wolfe’s 1976 than we care to admit. The engine of the ’70s was the failure of the ’60s."

"Fast-forward: The years from roughly 2016 through the early 2020s were America’s most feverishly political stretch in generations. On one flank stood a populist insurgency; on the other, the Great Awokening. Both failed to build the transformed society their rhetoric advertised. What does thwarted revolutionary energy do when it has nowhere durable to go? As it did after 1968, it goes toward the one realm that still seems transformable: the self. It splinters into private quests for meaning.... On the left in the late ’70s, disillusion flowed into the New Age. Today, it flows into 'self-care'.... It flows into astrology... and into the witch with the imagined power to 'hex' President Donald Trump.... The right in the ’70s had the cult of fitness. MAHA, the manosphere and Silicon Valley have looksmaxxing and testosterone infusions, ice baths and the carnivore diet, along with the tech billionaire Bryan Johnson spending millions to reverse his own aging and streaming his bloodwork to the world. It is the body as a project to be perfected, but with the promise cranked up from fitness to immortality...."

Writes Ryan Zickgraf, in "Tom Wolfe’s ‘Me Decade’: Still going strong 50 years later/The peerless social critic skewered a culture of self-absorption much like today's" (WaPo gift link).

And here's the August 1976 New York Magazine essay by Tom Wolfe, "The 'Me' Decade and the Third Great Awakening."

"The sense that the Dream is dying was reflected throughout the poll."

The London Times explains, in "The American Dream is dying, Times poll reveals."

Perhaps this graph will make the concept more concrete for you:

In case you're having trouble discerning the year when that peak of excellence occurred, the text pinpoints it at 1976. Perhaps you remember. It was 50 years ago. The Bicentennial. Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford. Karen Ann Quinlan was disconnected from her ventilator. A school bus full of children was buried in the ground but the kids dug themselves free, in 16 hours. Jenner won the Decathlon. Apple and Microsoft sprang into being. How could you not feel that happy days were here again?

"I was walking with my girlfriend when we saw him. Shirtless, in late-afternoon sunlight, J.F.K., Jr., was playing Frisbee, wearing nothing but black athletic shorts..."

"... tennis shoes, and droopy white socks. This was the Ivy League. Nobody worked out. (Nobody I knew, anyway.) And so I wasn’t prepared for the muscularity, the anachronistic virility, on display. John’s physique was so classically ideal he might’ve been throwing a discus instead of a Frisbee and been carved out of stone. You looked for the defect in him and you couldn’t find it. There had to be something wrong somewhere, but it would take a magnifying glass to detect. Most of his clan had inherited the freckled, rabbity Kennedy looks. John, lucky in everything, had received the enhancing admixture of dark, French Mediterranean, Bouvier blood. I mentioned it was 1979. Bisexuality was undergoing one of its periodic upticks. I’d fallen into some confusion on that score myself. But I had a girlfriend now. That wasn’t what was going on. The urge I felt wasn’t to possess. It wasn’t even to resemble. It was to draw near. To be allowed to draw near...."

Writes Jeffrey Eugenides, in "My Unrequited Love Story with J.F.K., Jr./I knew John F. Kennedy, Jr., not that well and not that long, but enough to have experienced the gravitational pull he exerted, like some great big moon"
 (The New Yorker).

"[Cesar] Chavez became infatuated with so-called Silva Mind Control meditation and what he believed was its power to influence events and people."

"Challenges to his authority, real or imagined, would prompt purges or mandates that one potential rival or another relocate. He taped meetings and dispatched union officials to root out what he called 'spies' and 'infiltrators.' He began managing according to the principles of Synanon, a drug-treatment program centered on verbal abuse, attack therapy and public humiliation...."

From "'The Cult of Cesar': Inside the Mountain Compound Led by Cesar Chavez/In his remote headquarters, the United Farm Workers leader began to see himself as not just a union leader, but a visionary healer" (NYT)(gift link).

Moby was "taken aback at how unevolved" The Kinks were.

Here's Moby (in The Guardian):

Lola by the Kinks came up on a Spotify playlist, and I thought the lyrics were gross and transphobic. I like their early music, but I was really taken aback at how unevolved the lyrics are.

Here's the Wikipedia article for "Lola" and here are the lyrics. You know them: "Girls will be boys and boys will be girls/It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world/Except for Lola," etc. etc. Video here.

Dave Davies deigned to respond: the X response from Dave Davies: "I am highly insulted that MOBY would accuse my brother of being ‘unevolved’ or transphobic in any way."

Unevolved!

I thought The Kinks wanted to be unevolved! 

That's "Apeman," my favorite track on the 1970 album, "Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One." That's also, obviously, where you'll find the more familiar track, "Lola."

What's so great about evolution?

The anachronistic yoga mat.

Via Instapundit, I'm reading this X post by John Ziegler, who makes many good criticpoints, and I'm only extracting one:

The @nytimes is being lavished with praise by the virtue-signaling brigade, but there are very basic problems with their Cesar Chavez story… 

One of the VERY few details in the two claims of child sex abuse from the early 1970s includes the key use of a 'yoga mat,' but yoga mats were not even a thing until at least 10 years, and possibly 20 years, later

Is it true there weren't things called yoga mats in the 1970s in California? I asked Grok. Answer:

Dr. Paul Erlich, author of "The Population Bomb," has died, so let's go back to 1970 and watch him on "The Tonight Show."

Johnny Carson has had Erlich as a guest before, and this time he has him on in a debate with Ben Wattenburg, author of "The Nonsense Explosion." I've cued the video to start at that point, but if you like Buddy Hackett, there's an hour of Buddy before the Erlich/Wattenberg debate begins.

Here's the NYT obituary: "Paul R. Ehrlich, Who Alarmed the World With ‘The Population Bomb,’ Dies at 93/His best-selling 1968 book, which forecast global famines, made him a leader of the environmental movement. But he faced criticism when his predictions proved premature."

Premature? You mean wrong? How wrong was he? He was so wrong that [insert Johnny Carson joke]...

And you can read Wattenberg's original 1970 essay here, at the American Enterprise Institute website: "The Nonsense Explosion." Excerpt:

The strong position on population control ultimately comes around to some form of government permission, or licensing, for babies....

"Free yourself of old-fashioned ideas."

That's not the L&M commercial I'm searching for. And neither is this, though it does have an amazing performance by Teri Garr:

That first video shows what it meant to "live modern" in the 1950s. The couple reminds me of my parents. The Teri Garr commercial shows the ordeal of living in the 1970s and the pathetic hope that cigarettes could bring 2 decent struggling humans together for a tiny moment.

But the one I was looking for is a 1960s commercial with a jingle singing "They said it couldn't be done." The thing that supposedly couldn't be done was to put a filter on a cigarette and have it still taste good. The ad began by showing a few things that "they" said couldn't be done that really were done. The only example I remember is showing Florida as a big swamp followed by images of glorious Florida real estate. The logic of the commercial was that if other supposedly impossible things happened, then this other one probably happened too. See how 1960s that was? 

What was so bad about 1976?

That's the teaser on the front page of the NYT for an article with a different headline, "The Conservative Conspiracy Against Women’s Progress Is Real" (by Jessica Grose).

The article says nothing about the 1970s. I do see a reference to the 1960s: "The report’s authors know they can’t tell all women to be stay-at-home mothers (returning the country to 1960s employment levels for women) because that would contradict their other goal, to dismantle the welfare state and put even more work conditions on parents receiving government aid." The 60s were 60 years ago, and the article does call the report "a curious set of guidelines for the future, since it seems mired in culture war battles from the 20th century, unable to face the past 60 years of change."

Usually the 1950s are selected as the era of the traditional wife and the 1960s represent the exciting period of changing gender roles. The 70s were the heyday of feminism. These decades feel quite distinct from each other to me, a person born in 1951. Jessica Grose was born... when? Maybe to millennials, the 50s, 60s, and 70s seem like one big chunk of boomer oldness. 

"[H]is policies ranged from ripping up the streets and replacing car transport with bicycles, to putting dishonest drug dealers in the stocks because 'no drug worth taking should be sold for money'..."

"...to disarming police because street violence was usually down to 'some trigger-happy cop in a fear frenzy.' He also cut his hair off so he could refer to his Democratic rival in debates as 'my long-haired opponent.' This might have seemed a satire of politics, populism as a joke, but Thompson was very serious. 'There is common sense in the apparent madness of my campaign,' he told an audience ahead of polling day. 'I am not running for sheriff in the traditional sense, but to help get hold of our destiny and begin controlling development.' He wouldn’t try to force changes, but encourage referendums and create a legal advisory board of lawyers to sit with select citizens to consult with the sheriff’s department. 'We either have a participating democracy or a police state.'... To Thompson, a 'freak' was 'not a beast roaming the streets chewing drugs, but someone who is spiritually disenfranchised, who has not wanted to participate in government.'... Thompson’s individualism... feels at odds with the community spirit and citizen participation required to realise the ascendancy of the collective good.... 'Unfortunately,' Thompson said in his 1970 concession speech, 'I proved what I set out to prove… that the American Dream really is fucked.'..."

From "Hunter S Thompson’s freaks have overrun America/The pioneer of gonzo chronicled his people’s wild descent – and saw what his country has now become" by. Barney Horner (New Statesman).

The boldface is my nudging to tell you that I see what maybe you see: "We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism."

"Plenty of Jews Love Zohran Mamdani."

The headline for a Michelle Goldberg column. Excerpt:

“His campaign has attracted Jewish New Yorkers of all types,” wrote Jay Michaelson, a columnist at the Jewish newspaper The Forward. The rabbi who runs my son’s Hebrew school put Mamdani on his ballot, though he didn’t rank him first. And while Mamdani undoubtedly did best among left-leaning and largely secular Jews, he made a point of reaching out to others....

So it has been maddening to see people claim that Mamdani’s win was a victory for antisemitism.... Ultimately.... New York’s Democratic primary wasn’t about Israel.... 

The attacks on Mamdani during the primary were brutal, but now that he’s a national figure, those coming his way will be worse. His foes will try to leverage Jewish anxieties to smash the Democratic coalition.... But don’t forget that the vision of this city at the heart of Mamdani’s campaign — a city that embraces immigrants and hates autocrats, that’s at once earthy and cosmopolitan — is one that many Jews, myself included, find inspiring....

Earthy.  

I was moved to unearth every "earthy" in the 21-year archive of this blog. They're all quotes of other people. I've never once used the word (except for one instance, now corrected, where I clearly meant to type "earthly" ("I didn't think you would be terribly sad to see that Robert Blake has left the earthy scene")).

"We're not gonna make t-shirts in this country again."

That line stuck in my head. It's from yesterday's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast yesterday, "Why a Worrisome Economy Doesn’t Seem to Worry Trump." (That's a Podscribe link with transcript and audio.)

The speaker is NYT economics reporter Ben Casselman. Context:

There are a lot of economists who reject the very idea that we need to re-industrialize the country in some way, right? They argue that over the decades, free trade has left Americans better off on the whole. That even if it has hurt some people, that on average it has been beneficial. I think most economists would make that point. But there's certainly been a lot of rethinking among at least some economists over the past couple of decades about the way that free trade has played out. Again, complicated subject, but I think the thing that there's pretty broad based agreement about is we can't just turn the clock back. We're not gonna make t-shirts in this country again.

"In September 1970, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, in a speech in Las Vegas, warned that drug use was threatening 'to sap our national strength'..."

"... and called out a number of pop songs, including the Beatles’ 'With a Little Help From My Friends' and the Byrds’ 'Eight Miles High,' as 'latent drug culture propaganda.' Within a year, under the Nixon administration, the Federal Communications Commission warned broadcasters about playing songs with lyrics that might promote drug use. As a result, 'One Toke Over the Line' was banned by radio stations in Buffalo, Miami, Houston, Washington, Chicago, Dallas and New York. Brewer & Shipley, Mr. Brewer said, came to embrace the crackdown as 'a badge of honor.'"

From "Michael Brewer, Whose 'One Toke' Was a Big Hit, Is Dead at 80/The duo Brewer & Shipley reached the Top 10 in 1970 with 'One Toke Over the Line,' a ditty about marijuana that ran afoul of Nixon-era censors" (NYT).

Brewer lived to be 80 and that was half a century after he expressed this conception of how he wanted to die: "My last wish will be just one thing/Be smilin' when I die/I wanna be one toke over the line, sweet Jesus/One toke over the line..."

The singer was "sitting downtown in a railway station" and "just waitin' for the train that goes home, sweet Mary." 

Even if the song originated from an exclamation about smoking marijuana, it seems that the substance of the song is religious. The metaphor of the train is seen in other songs, such as "People Get Ready (There's a train a-coming....") and "This Train (Is Bound for Glory)."

I wouldn't brush off "One Toke Over the Line" as a "ditty."

And by the way, screw Agnew. Back in 1970, young people easily opposed censorship. Who would have thought that in 50 years, the tables would be turned and the young would embrace it?

"Ms. Marshack’s self-written obituary disclosed some previously unreported details about her association with [Nelson] Rockefeller but did not mention a romance..."

"... although it ended suggestively, quoting from the 1975 musical 'A Chorus Line.' Ms. Marshack wrote that she 'won’t forget, can’t regret what I did for love.' The initial account [was]... that Mr. Rockefeller had died instantly... while he was in his office, alone with a bodyguard, 'having a wonderful time' working on an art book he was writing. The next day, The Times began deconstructing the official story.... A drip-drip of revelations ensued.... The circumstances of Mr. Rockefeller’s death remain mysterious. One account said that he was found dead wearing a suit and tie and surrounded by working papers; another said that he was nude, amid containers of Chinese food...." 

From "Megan Marshack Dies at 70; Was With Nelson Rockefeller at His Death/She was at the center of rumors about the former vice president’s last moments, but she remained silent about their association until she wrote her own obituary" (NYT)(noting that Marshack's brother said she'd signed a nondisclosure agreement).

"In interviews [for a] book, Rockefeller associates said it was an open secret that Mr. Rockefeller and Ms. Marshack were having an affair. He was married at the time to Margaretta Rockefeller, who was known as Happy...."

Who cares about Vice Presidents? The only thing interesting at this point is the irony of the nickname of the wife he cheated on. And the odd detail of the Chinese food containers. And the resurrection of the "Chorus Line" lyric...

I don't even have a tag for Nelson Rockefeller. I only started this blog in 2004, but there was a time — and I guess it was more than 20 years ago — when "Rockefeller Republican" was shorthand for... oh, who cares anymore? Kiss that day goodbye.

"When Southwest launched in 1971, it specifically claimed the moral high ground. The company was consciously selling the American ideal of egalitarianism..."

"... saying its purpose was to 'democratize the sky.'... Over the last few decades, we’ve pivoted from the ideal of egalitarian fairness (first-come, first-served) to the ideal of 'pay more, get treated better.' This is evident not only in commerce, but in politics: Both Democrats and Republicans have moved from having government regulation assure fairness toward using market solutions to ration goods and happiness. Examples: Lexus lanes, deregulated airfares, phone service.... But maybe Southwest is embracing a new American way. In the country where efficiency became a science, we’ve been bamboozled into accepting the idea that you have to pay extra to get the basics. How sad."

"Why Southwest’s seating switcheroo is un-American/The move spurns egalitarianism and pushes the idea that only the affluent deserve decent service," writes Marc Fisher (at WaPo).

Here's a Southwest ad from the early 70s. I watched it twice and I really couldn't pick up the "democratize" message:

"Duvall dancing at Studio 54. She lived the life of a celebrity in the 1970s and 1980s, dating Paul Simon and Ringo Starr...."

"The film critic Pauline Kael called her the 'female Buster Keaton.' On casting Duvall in 'The Shining,' Stanley Kubrick told her, 'I like the way you cry.'... Sitting between Paul Simon and James Taylor, Duvall greets Arnold Schwarzenegger at a screening in 1977."

From the captions at "Shelley Duvall: A Life in Pictures/With her gossamer frame and toothy smile, she was one of the biggest film stars of the 1970s" (NYT)(free-access link).

"This is not the first midcentury, middle-America food craze to find new life online: Jell-O molds, 1970s-era desserts and 1970s-themed dinner parties..."

"... have all made unexpected comebacks. That’s all 'packaged-food cuisine' born of the hyper-consumerism of the 1950s.... For some, the box mixes and cans — triumphs of postwar prosperity — are a rosy portal to an imagined 'simpler time' of family dinners and easy living. 'That is nostalgia for America,' she said. 'That is our national comfort food.'"

From "Watergate Salad Makes a Comeback/The 1970s-era dish made with pistachio pudding mix, canned pineapple and mini marshmallows has caught the curious eye of the TikTok generation" (NYT).

It's absurd that something embodying nostalgia for a lost culture should bear the name "Watergate." But the nostalgia is felt by young people today, who don't mind mixing the 50s, 60s, and 70s together, not like us Boomers who think the early 60s, mid-60s, and late 60s were distinctly different eras and have long indulged in the deep, mystic belief that the first few years of the 70s were the real 60s.

And maybe there is nostalgia for the Watergate scandal. Maybe it seems poignant and delicate compared to the scandals of today... and even for Nixon. My son Chris — who is reading a biography of each American President — texted me about Nixon recently — somewhat jocosely — "Nixon is underrated. He was liberal!/Got more done for progressive causes than democrats do today." 

Anyway, the nostalgia for lost mid-century America is about far more than food. There's a sense that people lived more rewarding, warm, and loving lives back then. Here's something I saw on TikTok the other day. Let me know how it made you feel or, better yet, if you are not young, show it to someone young and ask them how it makes them feel:

"My family ate Pop Tarts washed down with Carnation Instant Breakfast every morning for years..."

"...mainly because my mother hated cooking. We thought we were the Jetsons."

That's the top-rated comment on "Confessions of a Pop-Tarts Taste Tester/When my family was enlisted nearly 60 years ago, little did we suspect that the pastry would become a pop-culture phenomenon and inspire a Seinfeld movie" (NYT)("Kellogg’s considered calling them 'fruit scones' — was changed to reflect the sensibilities of the ’60s, when Pop Art was ascendant").

This got us talking about "pocket porridge" — a product a family member had encountered on a recent trip to Germany. And I reminisced about when granola bars were new... and then when "granola" itself was a new word.

Here are 10 TikToks that jumped out at me in the last 24 hours. Let me know what you like best.

1. We seem to have found the kid in the world who is the happiest about going to school.

2. Meanwhile, Baby Trump has some problems with school.

3. Ricky Gourmet hits a mysterious vibe.

4. An impression of the vocal stylings of liberal podcasters.

5. Looking through a book of photographs by Joel Sternfeld.

6. The church with 2 mailboxes.

7. How to use the magic phrase "Some people love it."

8. All the things from the 90s this teenager cannot understand.

9. A 1-minute review of 70s fashion.

10. Epic adulting life hack: Accept mediocrity!

"Doing a set at Summerfest on July 21, 1972" — 50 years ago today — "[George] Carlin went through much of the material on his latest album, 'Class Clown,' including 'Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.'"

"... The [new HBO] documentary shows the comedian bantering about it with Johnny Carson on 'The Tonight Show' a couple of months later. 'What did they do to you in Milwaukee?' Carson asks Carlin. 'Well, what did they try to do to me … ?' Carlin replies, going into the old Blatz Beer jingle, 'I’m from Milwaukee, and I ought to know … The routine worked everywhere, really, very well … Except in Milwaukee, where they must really be bad words. One policeman took exception … apparently he hadn’t been listening in the locker room.' Carlin was arrested by a Milwaukee police officer who happened to be at Summerfest with his family.... The promoter rushed over to [Carlin's wife] Brenda, telling her that the police were going to arrest the comedian....  'My mom knows that my dad is carrying weed and coke in his pockets,' [Carlin's daughter] Kelly remembers.... 'She grabbed a glass of water and walked out on to the stage, whispering in his ear, "Cops are here, exit Stage Left."' Carlin left the stage, Kelly says, emptying his pocket as he went.... Tom Schneider, then a young assistant district attorney, had been at Carlin's show....  Schneider's boss, who knew he'd been at the show, asked him if Carlin had disturbed the peace; Schneider told him Carlin received a standing ovation. The charges were dismissed in December 1972."

From "George Carlin documentary shines a light on his breakthrough moments at Milwaukee's Summerfest and Lake Geneva's Playboy Club" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). 

You might think "Exit stage left" was a potentially confusing way to aim Carlin toward an escape route, but "Exit stage left" was a catchphrase of the time. Popularized by this: