Still Stuck in the 1970s, Part Two

The 1970s returned to the news recently as older Americans wondered why the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding did not generate the same national pride as the Bicentennial in 1976.A YouTube video entitled “The 12 Things That Made Americans Happier in the 1970s (That We Destroyed)” provides some insightful answers into how the country has changed in the last 50 years. The first six of those things, and how many of them were connected to television or were reflected in the shows of that decade, were covered last week (just scroll down to read that post).We left off on a particularly salient point related to Comfort TV: “Entertainment was shared.” It relates how, on a single evening in 1972, more than half the people in the United States were watching shows on one of the handful of channels available. Then, the next day at work and school and at the grocery store there was something to talk about: “a common thread running through the entire country."Now, of course we consume…