The Good Old Days?

 Ah, the good old days!

The squeeging nostalgia for a time when everything was so much better than now!

Recently, we rented a vrbo (vacation rental by owner) in Athens. Georgia.  It was a make-good for a weekend we had arranged in the spring, but the owner canceled an hour before we got there because of electrical problems.

These are furnished and often have books and board games and such left by the owner.  In the case of this rental, they left this old magazine, which, me being me, I, of course, zeroed in on.

Coronet Magazine from September 1950.  What a cute nostalgic cover!  This magazine promoted itself as a moral, family magazine.  It was an awful lot like Reader's Digest, a magazine that still exists today.

Below the cover picture was the searing headline - The New Moral Menace! I was lost.  Cowboys?  Cowboys were the new moral menace?  Maybe there was something I was missing in my historical knowledge of cowboys.

Advertising was interesting.  This ad was promoting a new, super-huge television with a whopping 16-inch TV screen.  

This ad promoted the overwhelming luxury of being able to retire on $200 a month!  What a plan!  How can I get in on it?

There were many other strange and wonderful products, including bright, blue plastic diapers that seemed to promote itself as nonstick and easy to clean.  I pray that wasn't an early Teflon.

Then there were the stories.

Oh, yeah!  Keep that marriage glamorous!  Because that's your number one concern in keeping your marriage strong - all that fabulous glamour.  This had many strange suggestions, like having the couple's parents watch the kids while you go to the fanciest hotel you can find, dressed to the nines, and dance and dine and drink, and pretend you have a room there, and just live it up until your budgeted ten dollars was used up.  Then you head home before the illusion disintegrates, like a duo's version of Cinderella. 

Then there were the jokes.

"Why do you always hire married men in preference to bachelors?" an employer was asked. "Because," he explained, "married men don't seem to get so upset when I yell at them."

Sexist much?  Trust me, that's just the tip of the iceberg of jokes throughout the magazine that are at the expense of women,  Family values, my golden tuchus.

And it gets worse.

There's an article about DeBeer and his South African diamond mines.  And no, it's not about how exploitative and cruel the mines were.  Instead, it wanted to reassure the reader that Debeer was in control and that diamonds would not be overproduced so that the cost of diamonds would stay high.  And are you worried about theft?  Have no fear!  DeBeer is here! Here's the magazine's comforting explanation -

The underground mining is done almost entirely by black miners. They pilfer surprisingly few stones, chiefly because DeBeer has made it extremely difficult to get away with that. The "boys" sign on for three months at a time., during which they live a celibate life in compounds. To discourage unnecessary activity after dark, the company uses packs of trained mastiffs.

See, Coronet diamond lovers?  No need to worry about diamond pilfering.  Not when you're treating your African workers like sub-human chattel.

And that New Moral Menace?

Unlike what the front cover accidentally implied, it ain't cowboys.

No.  It's homosexuals.

In a nasty, ignorant, and bigoted diatribe, it repeats tons of false and vindictive lies about gays.  They were all pedophiles.  It wasn't biology; it was choice, brought about a permissive society and bad parenting.  And how about the concept that this is a "new" phenomenon?  Sometimes our sexual diversity is driven underground, but it has always been there and always will be.

The good old days?

Eh, not so much if you're a woman, a person of color, part of the LGBTQ+ community, and well, anybody who exceeds the thinking ability of a box of rocks.

Now we find ourselves with a large group of parents and their political goaders who want to purify American History and keep it positive and upbeat.  Nothing should make our young think that there was ever exploitation and cruelty- we wouldn't want them to feel bad or responsible.

Those who remain ignorant of the truths of history are doomed to repeat them.

And I, for one, am tired of the repetition.