Have We Come a Long Way From the 1960s? You Bet Your Bippy We Have!

By Jack Bagley

The farther along I get in my dotage, the more I yearn for the simpler pleasures of my youth, now so very long ago.
Regular readers know that I don’t watch television these days, and I pretty much think most of what passes for “entertainment” today is little more than garbage. At moments like these, however, the Internet comes through, with YouTube providing many hours of entertainment from my own personal days of yore.
The only problem I have with watching it again today is, it all seems so incredibly dated and out of touch with the modern world.
Recently, I stumbled upon a true love of mine from my childhood in the 1960s and early 1970s – Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Some wonderful soul has posted the first sixteen episodes of the show’s first season and it’s been a delight to watch it again, even though compared to today’s world, most of it no longer makes much sense.
For the uninitiated, Laugh-In was a pure product of its day. It was a full hour each week of what we call “hit and run comedy” with jokes and sight gags moving so fast it’s almost impossible to keep up.  If a joke or a gag didn’t strike you as particularly amusing, don’t worry; another will be along in less than five seconds.
Many episodes also featured a musical performance by one of the hot, hip groups of the day – groups now relegated to the “oldies” section of your local music store.
Laugh-In was a total product of its time period. As a retired history teacher, I have studied the late ‘60s and early ‘70s as well as taught those years, and I can tell you that the world was a vastly different place than today.
Setting the scene for you, the war in Vietnam was going full throttle, and the demonstrations against it back home were also going full speed ahead. The counter-culture had produced odd lifeforms called “hippies” who eschewed things like haircuts, clean clothing and baths, opting instead to be more “one with nature.”
And, no doubt, to enjoy the latest in designer pharmaceuticals as well.
Music was in the process of evolving from the rock-and-roll of Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Jerry Lee Lewis to the hard-rock of Three Dog Night, the Electric Light Orchestra and Pink Floyd.
Into this mix, nightclub comics Dan Rowan and Dick Martin dropped a variety show that lasted for five years, through the tumultuous times of 1968 until the calming (sort of) of 1973. Dan and Dick presided over a cast of actors who went on to some pretty stellar careers, including Goldie Hawn, Artie Johnson, Ruth Buzzi, Henry Gibson, and Joanne Worley, to name a few.
Laugh-In also gave us some catchphrases that, while not so popularly used today, were all over the place in those halcyon days gone by – the “Fickle Finger of Fate,” “You bet your sweet bippy,” “Sock it to me,” and “Mod, Mod World.”
The humor, as I said, was hit-and-run, with sight gags interspersed with silliness. One popular routine involved Buzzi as an old maid and Johnson as an old man who tried to hit on her amusingly while she sat on a park bench. The result was always her hitting him over the head with her purse, and him falling to the ground – and it was always funny.
Another popular routine was “News of the Past, Present and Future,” with Dan and Dick serving as anchormen. Dan’s “news of the future” was mostly amusing … when it wasn’t eerily accurate of how things would be.
While Laugh-In is very enjoyable to watch, and even very funny in its way, it’s so dated that most of the topical jokes fall flat on their faces. Nobody today cares about Lyndon Johnson dropping out of the 1968 presidential race, or eventual winner Richard Nixon doing a cameo and saying, “Sock it to … me?”
The “party” sequence at the start of each episode is also so badly out of date that it’s more painful to watch than it is amusing. The music, the costumes, the dancing, the one-liners … all of them are so out of place today that you want to skip that part of the show and get to the good stuff.
It’s always a mixed bag to watch something you loved so much way back then, and set it against the world of today. I can’t speak for you, but from my perspective, it’s great to see those wonderful performers at their prime, and to re-live some of the gags I loved back then.
But eventually, the show’s over, and we’re back in today’s world.
You bet your sweet bippy.