The 1960s: There was quite a bit of mediocrity going on in the turbulent '60s. Continuing with situation-comedies, the borderline untraditional family of the sixties and seventies, "the Brady Bunch", seemed happy, normal and well-adjusted on screen. In real-life, the actor who played the patriarch of the family (Robert Reed) ended up dying of AIDS. Unless he was a hemophiliac, chances are he was not practicing the elitist, conservative version of 'Family Values'. Similarly, the actress who played the mom on the show (Florence Henderson) reportedly dated one of the young actors who played her stepson, once they grew up of course. Also, if I remember correctly, it was also reported that one of the actor(s) or actress(es) who played a few of the youngest stepchildren on the show were caught together in various states of undress.
Starting on November 23, 1963, we had the start of abysmal Presidents, from LBJ to George Bush [In retrospect, maybe LBJ and a few others weren't that bad after all.] There were also such things as polyester suits, bell-bottoms, the idea if you remember the sixties you really didn't live it. And, of course, Free Love, which is probably a major factor to do with our ultra-high divorce rate and why AIDS and HIV is such an international worry thirty-plus years later. (to be cont'd)
[Originally published in Eastern Connecticut State University's Campus Lantern student newspaper in the early 1990s and part of my unpublished manuscript "In Mediocrity We Trust... In Debt We Die And Other Essays".]
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