June 5, 2011

Getting the date right

It's hard to pin down exactly when the United States passed the point of no return and fell into irremediable idiocy.

Was it the day someone first used "prank" as a verb? Did it happen when "I'm OK, You're Okay" hit the bookstores? Or the day we began to watch the Loud family on TV? Was it when the country voted Bush in for the second time? I want to know the exact date and time when we lost all our hopes and dreams. It seems we should note it down somewhere, maybe file it or put it in a history book or something. I could at least list it here on the blog.

But so many events could have begun the cascade. When do you think the collapse began in earnest?

2 comments:

cm said...

I'm going to treat this as a multiple choice question and go with d) when the country voted Bush in for the second time.

Anna Guess Pick said...

I'm going to pick 1946 - the year Network Television broadcasting began. It was followed by a rapid growth in American homes: 1949 - 2 million sets, 1950 5.3 million, 1951 13 million and by 1953 50% of American homes had television sets.

A new wave re-surged in 1972 when color sets out sold black & white TV's.

Technology delivered the goods and by 1963 the goods really began major influencing; 1963 began the rise in TV news broadcasts, 1973 brought you the Watergate Hearing, in 1980 Ted Turner turned the world on to CNN and by 1991 war became a TV show with the broadcasting of Desert Storm.

Somewhere over the years parents lost control of the off button, kids and parents jointly became memorized by the colorful flickering screen, at times even becoming frozen and unable to simply change the channels.

The next natural progression for the young and hip generation was to move smoothly to computers and the Internet offerings...

So that my two cents worth... and by the ,good question, Keith.