It's David Hoffman filmmaker, and this is a clip you're going to see by a comedian done in 1979 in interview with me talking about the 19 fifties when he grew up.

I'm doing this because so many of my subscribers are interested in the 19 fifties, either because you lived it or because you remember it or because your parents talked about it or because you're curious or because you're a millennial who's kind of trying to see our way advancing.

Where are we?

Are we worse off than we were back then?

Or are we better off than we are back then?

But there's a great conflict in this 19 fifties, the baby boomers and you're seeing it in my comments.

There are people who just hate the baby boomers.

They destroyed America.

It's never gonna be the same again because of baby boomers.

There are others who are baby boomers who are asking for sympathy on their selfish baby boomers and stupid baby boomers.

So what should take a look at this clip?

But before you do, I want to give you a little background.

First of all, the time is 1989.

Did I say 79 before?

If I did, I'm wrong 1989 And I'm doing a public television series called Making Sense of the Sixties about middle class, largely white, largely suburban kids.

There had been a great television series on PBS called Eyes on the Prize about the black experience.

So my Siri's making sense of the sixties is about the white experience, even when looking at the black community and what they were dealing with.

And so how am I gonna do this?

Well, I chose I was going to interview 200 ordinary people, largely ordinary, a few extraordinary, a few well known but mostly unknown.

So I hired some guys and girls they got on the phone.

They started calling thousands of people by asking local loose papers.

Well, who's interesting in your town?

Who's a good talker, et cetera.

And I had these people ask simple questions like, Do you like your work?

And some people answered, Oh, that's a tough question.

You're up.

Some people said, I'm gonna tell you exactly how I feel.

They were good.

They were likely to be in on.

They wanted people from all perspectives conservative, liberal, rich, poor, handsome, ugly north south.

And I did it in these 180 interviews.

So the interview you are about to see is with Robert Klein.

Robert Klein.

He grew up in Brooklyn, and he was a pretty much successful guy from the start.

He got into the Second City Club, which was a comedy club that traveled the country.

Brilliant.

He was the host of The Tonight Show.

He did five, I think, HBO comedy specials.

And in the early days of Saturday Night Live, he was one of the hosts.

So then he produced a record album, Child of the Fifties.

People compared him to George Carlin.

So I said, This guy's one of the guys.

Brooklyn, New York.

Successful.

Outrageous.

What do you think about the 19 fifties and how did you grow up?

And here's what he said.

Now I'm running the whole clip without editing out questions because subscribed have said to me a David in some cases, just run the whole thing.

Don't make any cuts, Okay?

We'll see how that goes.

You tell me what you think.

I'm hopeful that this enhances your awareness of the 19 fifties of the baby boomers good in bed.

I'm not making a lot of judgments about it, although I do agree with millennials.

Some fairly high percentage of what was done screwed things up.

I hope they get better when you were growing up in the fifties when you were growing up.

Um, what's the atmosphere like?

What is your junior?

Remember what it felt like to be a kid in the fifties?

How would you describe it?

Ping kid in the fifties shared something with every other area to that is, they couldn't wait to grow up.

You had no no say in your own destiny was in the hands of others.

I would say the thing that made growing up in the fifties a different experience than any other errors, that we were the first tohave the threat of complete annihilation in a milli second.

We were given details in school about how far you had to be from the ground zero and what would happen.

You know, they always presumed that the Soviets would have incredibly good aim, and that 42nd Street in Times Square would be the target so that oh, up to about the Triborough Bridge you were memory specks of dust up into Westchester.

We know here your shadow would appear on a wall where you were, and then Father back would take maybe several hours before you died, until you got up to about our monk north of the city.

Um, maybe your hair would fall out in a few days and suffer for a number of hours, and then I'd be all over.

He was safe.

If you were in Bali, that ISS for a few months, until the cloud floated and destroyed you, there was virtually no hope.

In addition to this, we came out of an era.

I, of course, don't remember World War Two as a contemporary observer because I was born in 1942.

We were victorious, We were righteous and we were alone standing in the world at the end of the Second World War and into the ear of the Cold War as the until the Cold War really took hold as the the only power that is we had the world's fate in our hands.

This, of course, by the time I began to grow up in the fifties became untrue.

We were impotent because the Soviets had the same weapons in the same means of delivering them as we did and they were evil and we were good.

And here we are again five years later, back into the same soup fighting a massive enemy.

Except that the stakes were all much higher.

We saw pictures of kids in the London blitz must have been terrifying, but at least it was a terror that could be grasped and, uh, somehow visualized that is bombs and destruction.

And you better watch your head and get under there underground.

But this was and it's over.

I think that, um, I don't know of one had to do with the other, but it was a Ziff.

Everyone had come down, but the soldiers had come back.

And now we're looking for the furthest thing from war family values.

Uh, the repressive part, I think, came there was there was a kind of little resurgence of Victorian ism or something.

They're showing these training films now is camp on various cable networks, maybe MTV and so forth.

Uh, dating the film was always bad alone.

Dating can be an enjoyable experience.

If you follow these simple rules, let your date in the door first.

Those kinds of, um and I guess we thought that was the way to do it.

But it must follow these rules.

Um, I had a bit years ago about, uh, dancing close to Johnny Mathis records and getting so excited having you respect me.

Yes, I respect you.

That syndrome, um, this extended right on into the sixties.

I suppose by the time I graduated from college, that, uh, most of the women seniors in college probably graduated most without their virginity, but it was still something.

Someone's virginity.

When's the last time you heard that?

Except in the Virginia gubernatorial election?

Uh, let me ask you that.

Let me ask you about school, you remembrances of school.

Because what's what happened in the fifties?

It seems that since that that school took over as the parents, you know, the parents were working at a job, had the American dream.

What was your school experience like?

Remember what your relationship to teachers did they take over with the authorities?

Basically, while I got a good education, I remember school is great drudgery.

I'm not sure that isn't universal toe all years, but the New York City point of education was chock full of these kind of child hating Spencer's, um, who went to normal school for two years, took religion and first aid.

Graduated 18 99 with shin unions and old lady shoes like Ms Grundy from Archie Comics.

And, um, corporal punishment was no longer allowed in schools.

You could not hit a child technical.

I didn't say anything about the push probe method.

Hole over.

Over.

Are you gonna do that again?

Really?

You know, they could tug on flesh, pretty much rip it from its mooring as long as you didn't hit you.

This was a technicality.

They were untouchable.

They were to see them outside of school.

Hours was a revelation.

Much like I think it best be symbolized by the fire drill.

Uh, fire drill was a great treat, was a break up from the school routine.

And, um, Children have a tendency to think that in school hours the rest of the world ceases to function.

So you're out on the street, but 10 after two.

Who?

Look at that.

A lady.

Look, a car thought they come out of three days.

Shut off.

Um, it was strict.

There were certain elements that were good, pure drudgery memory.

See, I don't believe that a date of history is so important.

It's only important if you go beyond the date toe.

Why?

It's important to know that which I think has been lost now.

But it was black and white.

Good, bad.

We will good.

Everyone else's bad.

We were virtuous, you know, in many ways this was there was some truth to that we had fought.

We seem to be idealistic.

We seem to be the most altruistic country have existed, the most gracious Victor's in history.

Uh, we poured millions and millions into the reconstruction of our enemies and got BMWs and Toyota's back.

Um, it is ironic that the victors, like the British making motorcycles it can't start on cars with the hood up on the side with people.

Some kits, you know, you can hold up a thumb, get a lift.

Um, I think that we were on overwhelming feeling that I heard as a child, and I didn't quite understand with Communists.

My mother was invited to a luncheon ones in Peekskill, New York, when I was about eight years old for nine Take cover House Communism presented to you.

Well, we were taught the part that we could not conceptualize at too young an age was the idea of community owning everything.

And they they certainly will light on the idealistic aspects of communism from each according to his ability to each according to his name and having on the totalitarian aspects.

In retrospect, that wasn't unfair either, because apologists for communism always said, But this is not the real Communist.

That's gonna happen somewhere in some abstract way.

Live the perfect companies.

But I remember my mother was invited to a luncheon and she was reasonably apolitical.

But she caught on fairly quickly.

And if she was terrified afterwards that she went to this, who's There were Communists, you know?

And then I remember, um, the arrest and trial and ultimate execution of the Rosenbergs having arguments, passionate arguments with friends at school.

My parents, in addition to being Americans with Jewish cause, Andi were very much shame.

That's all we need.

Right?

Things were that bad for the Jews.

I don't know these people, and I remember people arguing in school from more progressive families just is passionately the other way that these people either did nothing wrong or whether they did something wrong or not, was irrelevant.

That should not have been executed.

So it was.

I remember my cousin, a real siren.

She was going with a saxophone player and he gave her a Valentine's gift and it said, It's really not much, but what else gonna pull Communist?

Afford weapon where they went that relationship.

I haven't met the guy I met.

The guy seemed pretty cool to me.

It didn't did it.

And then suddenly I heard the international, you know, that's it.

They were There was sort of They were evil that there was.

I could find no justification for them believing that way, huh?

Of course, there were all kinds of justifications for them to believing that way, which which really began in the Depression.

And it can't be denied that the Communists we're in the van got against the fascists.

You have to take one enemy at a time.

Then we what we had been after all, allies of the Communists.

Can you can you tell me the story about when in school that the famous air raid drills that you have in school.

Right skin for remember kids watching this.

You don't understand.

Should I tell him?

Oh, we're good.

We, of course, had fire drills.

Like like any other school group.

We had to teach Children how to get out of the building and what to do in case of an emergency like that.

But we had the the added thrill of the take cover drills and the nuclear Holocaust drills.

First of all, each of us would dispensed a dog tag which we were told by this old teacher.

Somewhat, Tak Leslie could withstand the heat 1000 degrees centigrade made not to melt.

Unfortunately, our skin disintegrated about 900 degrees before, but Wei had the comfort of knowing we could be identified in the event we were burned beyond recognition.

Nuclear holocaust.

She actually put it that way.

I had my name, I think Klein, Robert Heeb something.

And, um, there were two kinds.

One if you got ample warning that the Soviets were somewhere over the end Tilly's center, where that is.

But it sounds like a good place.