When the words “Reagan” and “fool” are typed into the google, there is hope that this post will be the chosen one to click.

If your point is human nature has somehow changed with your generation, then I disagree. When I was in High School SNL debuted. (I know, I’m old.) Every Saturday night everyone in the country watched Chevy Chase stumble and fall as Gerald Ford. Ipso facto, President Ford was an uncoordinated buffoon. Ask me or any of my peers in High School and that’s about all we knew of the President. Turns out he is probably the best athlete who has ever held the office.

Uncle Sam can put his head between his legs and kiss his ass goodbye.

There was this weird kind of attitude that came into British comedy at the very tail end of the Seventies — right as punk rock hit its peak and then began to decline, not coincidentally — that anything that didn’t involve politics or massive amounts of bile (or preferably both) just wasn’t funny, period. Sort of the Antonio Gramsci approach to entertainment, really. It continued going strong right up until Spitting Image went off the air; traces of it are still to be found in British comedy to this day.

My parents were just as celebrity obsessed as people today when they were younger. They bought the magazines and went to the movies and talked about which stars they liked, but they never discussed those stars politics. Even if they did, it wasn’t something they would seriously consider when making their own decisions. Today though, in my experience there are more people willing to consider entertainment as more than just entertainment, especially if it reinforces their opinions. Back when people were buying the true hollywood magazines they didn’t read them to find out who a celebrity was endorsing (some did, I’m sure, but not to the extent they would today) they read them to see what movie they were doing next and/or who they were marrying/divorcing this week. Combine that with the ADD MTV-addled culture that has taken hold of most people my age (and probably a few generations before me) and it is much easier for simple-minded people to just think about something they saw in a movie rather than something they read in the Wall Street Journal. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had that go exactly like this “But [insert leftist enemy here] are all [insert leftist generalization here], remember, just like that movie we saw.”

I am aware that this is generalizing, maybe overly so, but it is pretty clear that today people are much more likely to allow entertainment to bleed into their politics.

Within a few blocks of my house there was a store front that served as the meeting place for an Aryan group. They were constantly handing out pamphlets and literature promoting their organization.

I’ve said this before, but I honestly don’t think people understand the significance. Charles Lindbergh, Charles Freakin’ Lindbergh! went on a national speaking tour to sold out auditoriums in the 30′s, promoting Hitler’s cause and attacking FDR, the President of the United States. Imagine Tiger Woods pre-scandal. Lindbergh was ten times more revered in this country. Charlie Chaplin was a socialist, probably a communist. Was anyone more famous in the movies in the ’20′s than Charlie Chaplin? This is not new. It’s not old. It just is.