"The liberals who long to return to the Midcentury Moment seem to forget that it was a time of enormous cultural uniformity that stigmatized being unmarried or unchurched or gay."

Observes Michael Barone, explaining "liberal nostalgia" for what he calls "America's Midcentury Moment":

The huge menu of lifestyle choices from which we can choose today was a very short menu with very few choices then. It could not last. Baby-boom children, raised in prosperity, were not content with being small units in large machines....

Vietnam, urban riots, Watergate, stagflation—all undermined confidence in big government, big business and big labor, and by the late 1970s the Midcentury Moment was long gone....

So the Obama Democrats, partially successful in expanding the size and scope of government, largely unsuccessful in reviving private-sector unions, are on the defensive politically. As Mr. Levison and other liberals recognize, most Americans don't accept Keynesian economics and don't favor expansion of government as they did during the Midcentury Moment....

[T]he Midcentury Moment's confidence in big institutions was inextricably connected with an acceptance of a cultural uniformity that almost all of today's liberals, and probably most non-liberals, would find unacceptable.

Read the whole thing. There's much about the unifying effect of WWII and the military draft. Do you buy this — the notion that belief in big government depends on cultural uniformity?

"The bridge between Donna Summer and the Human League..."

The song that got us from 1979 to 1980 was....

Paul Soglin over Mayor Dave Cieslewicz in the Madison mayoral primary.

It's a big deal around here:

In a remarkable comeback, former Mayor Paul Soglin won the Madison mayoral primary by a narrow margin over two-term incumbent Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, assuring a general election for the record books on April 5....

Cieslewicz is seeking a third four-year term. Soglin, who to the mayor's surprise entered the race late on Dec. 22, held the office longer than anyone in two stints in the 1970s, '80s and '90s.

Back to the 70s!

The mayor ran on his record — a top bond rating, more cops and fire stations, rebuilding the Central Library, automated trash collection, his vision for a new economy and challenges presented by Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled state Legislature.

Of Soglin, [UW polisci prof Charles] Franklin, said, "He's maintained a political base in the city that's truly remarkable when you consider how long his career has spanned. And of Cieslewicz, Franklin said, "with two terms in office has failed to make the office securely his own."

I happened to get a picture of Soglin the other day when I went down to the demonstration:



Somehow this song plays in my head....

A little bit of courage is all we lack
So catch me if you can, I'm goin' back

"And that was when he discovered he had a special kinda way with animals."

"They just come right up to him like he was a natural part of the wilderness."



Have you been living free in harmony and majesty like we did back in the 1970s?

***

Charles Sellier Jr., the man who created "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams,” has died at the age of 67.

Loosely based on an actual person who escaped into the wilderness in 1853 after being accused of a murder he didn’t commit, Grizzly Adams is a bearded, barrel-chested man (played by Dan Haggerty) who counts among his friends raccoons, skunks, ferrets, deer, coyotes, porcupines, an eagle and, of course, the abandoned grizzly bear cub who matures into a powerful companion named Ben.

ADDED: Did you have the same question I had?: Is Ben the same Ben as "Gentle Ben"? The answer is no: "there is no connection between the bears."



Wow! The 60s were so different from the 70s. The 60s had a lot of 50s in them, and the 70s had a lot of 60s, but not the part of the 60s that was leftover from the 50s. If you're not old like me, maybe those distinctions sound meaningless, but if you are, I bet you know exactly what I mean.

"An Unmarried Woman" — the most annoyingly 1970s movie I can name.

Really, it pains me to watch this clip. I remember exactly how this felt at the time and how important this portrayal of womanhood was imagined to be:



The actress is Jill Clayburgh, who died today — after 21 years of chronic leukemia — at the age of 66. Her husband was the playwright David Rabe.

If this inspired you to go to law school...

... would you admit it now? Would you smile inwardly at your long-lost naivete?

"Women wanted to remove their support from men, the ‘enemy’ in a movement for reform, power and self-determination."

"Once I understood the feminist doctrines, a lesbian separatist position seemed the commonsensical position, especially since, conveniently, I was an L-person.”

Jill Johnston, the staunchly radical feminist, has died. She was 81. In the 1970s, she was the radical feminist, and we read her every week in The Village Voice.

Tiny houses.

You know I'm fascinated by them — check out the video at this link. But, as tiny houses go, isn't this one a tad twee?

Is the "shabby chic" trend coming back? Because I lived through that in the 1970s — and stayed clear of it myself — and it goes to a terrible place where you do not want to go.

ADDED: Ironically, in the the old post of mine (at the first link), I raised the question of the difference between living in a tiny house and living in a trailer, and in the new material (at the third link), the owner of the twee tiny house also lives in a trailer. The twee tiny house is kind of the woman's playhouse, and the main house really is a trailer. There's also a man who lives with her and he's got his own playhouse, so — don't worry — he's not de-balled by that little dollhouse. He retreats to his mancave, "a truck-size shed covered by an enormous tarp...  furnished with a big-screen TV, lots of videotapes, cooking equipment and two lamp-warmed cages for the chicks and pheasants." The husband is "a great bear of man." The woman "is 42, a size zero and wears pink wellies, black tights and a paint-spattered Irish knit sweater over a brown jersey." Oh, lord! The couples that get themselves written up in the New York Times!

"The people who grew up afraid to go in parks at night now supervise their own children with fanatical attention..."

"... even though crime rates have plummeted. It’s as if they’re responding to the sense of menace they felt while young, not the actual conditions of today."

"Super Entertainment Guaranteed."

One of the many things — former bookmarks? — tacked to the bookcases at a used bookstore in Madison:



I love the drawing... and the way it makes a collage with the postcard behind it. The discotheque, we're told, is "on the harbour's right dock" — in Crete, I assume — and there is the sailboat, which seems to be somewhere else, maybe China, maybe in search of dock. Look at these people who supposedly create a "friendly atmosphere," in a place with the deliberately — though unconvincingly — elitist name "VIP's."



Those spindly legs! Those extravagant hand gestures! A pant-suited woman is sandwiched between traditionally masculine and feminine dance partners. There's a thigh in every crotch. Shoes fall off. A mustachio'd man flings the 2 women's hands triumphantly into the air. Surely, this is super entertainment... somewhere in Crete, long ago.

ADDED: Enlarge and see that the boat is not in China. It's in Japan: "The fresh sight of Lake Chuzenji with a refrection (sic) of the setting sun on its surface...."

"Preservationists say the building... is a classic example of Brutalist architecture that should be maintained for future generations."

It's the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, in Washington, D.C., a couple blocks from the White House.


(Photo by kimberlyfaye.)

Should we preserve historically significant ugliness? Because we need negative examples, to know what to avoid? For contrast? Because history matters? Even the 1970s?

But the church won in the end:

"Historic preservation was never meant to be more important than the very people or purposes that buildings were meant to serve... This 1970s Brutalist-designed building ... would have bankrupted this congregation and forced it out of downtown where it had been for 100 years. That makes no sense."

Sense! Should we make sense? How much more of history, art, and architecture would be lost to us now if we'd been making sense all these millennia?

Are you more convinced by the "make sense" argument — this place is bankrupting them — or by the passionate desire to demolish what is indisputably ugly?

Do you not worry that perhaps it is not ugly, not permanently ugly, and you are blinded by the aesthetics of our time? I remember, after graduating from art school in 1973, feeling quite sure the ornamentation on buildings like this was a hideous mistake and our cities needed to be stripped clean of it. Thank God I was powerless.

"I was already 50 years old. I had done so much off-Broadway, on Broadway, but they said, 'Who is that girl? Let's give her her own series.'"

The "girl" was Bea Arthur. The show was "Maude."

Bea Arthur, dead at 86.

This is probably the most famous clip from the show: Maude thinking about getting an abortion.



Added personal note: I saw Bea Arthur on Broadway in the 1960s in "Mame." I remember her sitting on a big crescent moon singing "The Man in the Moon Is a Miss." Here she is reminiscing about that scene and performing the song. [CORRECTION: Bea was singing the song, and Angela Lansbury was sitting on the moon. Sorry. It was 40 years ago. I really did see it though.]

And more generally, "everybody today is turning on":



TV in the 70s. Bizarre. That's Rock Hudson with the mustache.

"1970s lifestyle 'protects planet.'"

A headline.