Right. I got the Salk vaccine in kindergarten, about 1957, and I remember no polio scares. My mother told me about them from the time I was born, but they were a thing of the past - at least in New York - by then.
Not in the elementary school across the street from me. The play area is surface with bark and not concrete, and the slide is plastic, not metal, but it is there. In fact the play equipment today is a lot more interesting than the stuff I used in 1957.
In 1957 there was no Star Trek.
Why don’t you post the original email so we can debunk it with a little fact checking instead of just pointing out what was shitty in 1957?
Yeah, but Forbidden Planet was brand new.
So was Anne Francis. 
Okay, here’s the original list.
I would take it for satire if it weren’t for the commands at the end to send it “to everyone to show how stupid we’ve become… etc.”
SCHOOL – 1957 vs. 2007
Scenario:
Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking
lot with shotgun in gun rack.
1957
- Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack’s shotgun, goes to
his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.
2007
- School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to
jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in
for
traumatized students and teachers.
Scenario:
Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.
1957
- Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end
up buddies.
2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and
Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started
it.
Scenario:
Jeffrey won't be still in class, disrupts other students.
1957
- Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by the
Principal. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class
again.
2007 - Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie.
Tested for ADD. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a
disability.
Scenario:
Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives
him a whipping with his belt.
1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to
college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 - Billy’s dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed
to foster care and joins a gang. State psychologist tells Billy’s
sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to
prison. Billy’s mom has affair with psychologist.
Scenario:
Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.
1957 - Mark shares aspirin with Principal out on the smoking
dock.
2007 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug
violations. Car searched for drugs and weapons.
Scenario:
Pedro fails high school English.
1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to
college.
2007 - Pedro’s cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles
appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for
graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state
school system and Pedro’s English teacher. English banned from core
curriculum. Pedro given diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a
living because he cannot speak English.
Scenario:
Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from 4th of July, puts
them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.
1957 - Ants die.
2007- BATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with
domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from
home, computers confiscated, Johnny’s Dad goes on a terror watch list
and is never allowed to fly again.
Scenario:
Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee.
He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.
1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her
job. She faces 3 years in State Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of
therapy.
This should hit every e-mail to show how stupid we have become!
And if we do not wake up & take our Country back, we will not
have a Country nor a society to grow old in or for our children to grow
up in.
Think about it !Think about what?
A post that is 50%+ B.S.? :dubious: :rolleyes:
Wow, you pitted a joke. What a fucking idiot.
Um, joke or not, the person sending it actually agrees with the joke’s sentiments and is taking it seriously and not only that, but her whole family is taking it seriously and actually agrees with the sentiments in the list. Which is why I am pitting it. See, it may have been done as a joke and an exaggeration, but the person who sent it to me is not taking it that way. I’m sorry Cisco, maybe it’s over your head to see why I am pitting this.
I don’t see anything wrong with agreeing with most of the general sentiment, but it is blindingly obvious that it is a joke and believe me, the person who sent it gets it. You apparently don’t.
To the OP: sadly, you could garner all the evidence you want, but if someone actually believes in the BS spewed in that email, you are not convince them otherwise.
It’s so stupid, it’s not even a joke. I see nothing remotely funny about any of it, really. It’s factually incorrect, sentimentalized tosh–and I know people who are fervent in this type of thinking. Stupid is everywhere.
Shawn 1767,
Have you ever heard of the term hyperbole? Sometimes it’s used to make a point. The fact is that many people think that change has wrought some undesirable consequences. You don’t, I guess. I guess you think that because we eliminated the bad from 1957 that there was no good back then. And no bad today, because we’ve rid ourselves of old thinking.
And you actually pitted this, mischaracterizing it in the process?
As has pointed out, you are an idiot.
It had to be Pedro who failed English? What, no Jimmy ever failed English? Or Betsy, even?
It had to be Pedro who failed English? What, no Jimmy ever failed English? Or Betsy, even?
Okay, here’s a start to “refuting” this:
1957 v. 2007
A Visit to Grandma’s
1957
The family piles into the station wagon, mom and dad on the bench seat in front with mom holding the baby. Susie, Patty, and Bill loose in the back. Dad’s driving with a beer in one hand and the rest of the sixpack near to hand. He runs a stopsign and t-bones another family car. Some are killed instantly, some are flung into trees, one is flung into the lake.
2007
The family piles into the car, everyone wearing a seatbelt, and the baby’s in a car seat. Dad’s drinking a bottle of water. They arrive at grandma’s safely.
I’m not saying it’s good, I’m just saying the quality is about equal to the stupid email you received.
Dealing with a Nice Stranger
1957
Bobby is walking home from school when a middle-aged man asks him if he’ll help him look for his lost puppy. Bobby eagerly agrees. Man lures him into the woods and sexually abuses him. Bobby is mortified and never, ever tells his parents. As an adult, he climbs into a clock tower with several loaded weapons and fires into a crowd of church-goers, killing a dozen.
2007
Bobby is walking home from school when a middle-aged man asks him if he’ll help him look for his lost puppy. Bobby recognizes this as a ploy, refuses, heads home and tells his parents.
I could do this all day. Since it’s not really about facts, it’s really easy.
The problem here is that many of the very things that eliminated the bad from 1957 also eliminated the good. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have clean water and air unless you have environmental safeguards, for example. If you doubt me, look at the most unbridledly capitalistic country in the world, China.
Yes, we have many, many over-precautions today. Do you know why? Because individuals kept suing. Do you know why? Two reasons. In some cases, because the platintiffs were greedy jerks. But in other cases, because the companies were negligent or even abusive, especially when it came to their employees or the land/water/air they were working on. Sorry about that, but you can’t get the benefits of regulations without the regulations and the nuisance that goes with them. And guess what else? You can’t get them without paying for their enforcement. That means - ooga-booga! taxes! 
It’s the same thing with the other items on the list. Yes, we want to protect people’s rights. We do that for a reason. Yes, sometimes it seems a little ridiculous. Personally, I think the American way of life is worth a little inconvenience. Maybe you disagree.
Things change over time. Our concept of what rights encompass changes. Back when the constitution was drafted, women had little or no rights. People of no property had no rights. Things change. So of course we’ve changed. If your friends want to go back to 1957, they have only to get a majority to vote with them and agree with them, and they can get society to move with them back to the '50s, when we had just gotten past McCarthy, we still practiced “duck and cover” in school, “Negroes” still knew their “place,” and “I Like Ike” was a viable political slogan. Good luck with that.
1957: Not only did we trust our institutions, we trusted them unquestioningly, to the point where criticizing any established authority, even with the best of intentions, was unlikely to have any positive effect and could seriously fuck up your life.
2007: It may not always have any effect, but people are at least much freer to question institutions and authority, especially through the relative anonymity of the internet.
1957: Goober composes an idiotic list and mails out a bunch of copies to people who don’t care. His relatives and co-workers discard his letters immediately without opening them, and Goober eventually runs out of money for postage.
2007: Goober’s retarded e-mails are forwarded endlessly, attracting the attention of an army of insane internet deviants, who track the messages back to Goober’s location, then travel to his house and rape his many orifices.
Didn’t need to be near those three cities. In Toronto, we had six available channels; and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Buffalo NY had the same (elmwood?):
– Channel 2 (NBC, Buffalo)
– Channel 4 (CBS, Buffalo)
– Channel 6 (CBC, Toronto)
– Channel 7 (ABC, Buffalo)
– Channel 9 (CTV, Toronto)
– Channel 11 (Independent, Hamilton)
I’m unsure if these were all available in 1957, but they sure were in the early 1960s.
While imho the mere word “segregation” should be enough to short circuit the glories of 1957 in and of itself (though to most who love that email I suspect it’s an ummentioned bonus*), I’ll add
In 1957- that year exactly- my father’s father had a heart attack and survived. His doctors, using the best knowledge of the day, told him to lie in bed on his back and do as little as possible for the next several months. During that time he had another heart attack and died. (Today we know that inactivity [after the immediate recuperation of course] is almost the worst thing you can do after a heart attack.)
In 1957 the threat that the USSR would bomb the hell out of us was very very very real.
In 1957 bipolars were known as high strung or just plain crazy in most cases, and if they weren’t the only treatment was hospitalization (which was such a stigma it was to be avoided at all cost).
In 1957 WW2 and Korea veterans (or WW1 veterans in lesser numbers) who suffered from extreme panic disorders and flashbacks were at best said to have “shell shock” and at worst just regarded as big pussies. Except in its extreme cases (when it resulted in hospitalization) PTSD just was not seen as a real and legitimate condition. (It wasn’t until Audie Murphy, one of the most decorated and lauded and “most all American boy” of veterans, came forward with the near suicidal depression and near homicidal rages he’d experienced with what’s now called PTSD that most Americans began to take it seriously.)
A specific integration/segregation point: In 1957 Rosa Parks was working for minimum wage as a registration clerk in a black owned and operated motel in Hampton, Virginia. The reason was because she was not only unable to find work in Montgomery and not only living on handouts, but was afraid for her life (no matter how many times her number was changed the first day’s calls usually had death threats). At the time she was seen far more as a troublemaker than as a living icon.
Anecdotal: my parents were both teachers in 1957. Both told me that if kids came to school with black eyes, broken arms, visible scars, and even if the siblings they came to school with or the mother who dropped them off had also obviously been battered, there was no point in reporting it to authorities. Oh, they’d open a case file, but the chances of anything at all being done were almost non-existent and would probably just piss off their abuser (and if he was arrested, the family instantly went on welfare because not only did most women lack the education and experience and skills necessary for decent paying jobs, it was perfectly legal to not hire them because they were a woman and it was perfectly legal to hire them at half the rate you’d pay a man doing the same job (and to say “Yeah, you’d make twice as much but you’re a gal”).
The ads from 1957- not talking about the chic car and cool vintage clothing ads- are hysterical but maddening. “Give the girls in your office a treat with the new Smith Corona automatic typewriter”, or “Doctors recommend Lark cigarettes!” The comics pages still contained bug-eyed/white lipped black people and I’ve actually seen comics from that era where mercilessly taunting the sissy boys was seen as a good thing.
I’d love for Stephanie Coontz to write a response to this. I wonder if she knows about it (for it’d be great publicity for her book).
*I’ve posted before that I think a lot of southern conservative politicians, who can no longer say “nigger” or be openly racist in their campaigns, choose to harp on “when we had prayer in school” because prayer left at about the same time schools were integrated and thus it’s a subconscious “back when the schools and most businesses were all white”.