re: how did this stuff feel in the 90s and before?

I was 14-years-old when the 90s began. While some folks I knew were somewhat engaged in politics, it didn't approach the spectacle it is now, and we were better for it.

Today, you must identify as a flaming liberal or MAGA to the core; there's no in-between. People root for their favorite political party like they used to cheer for sports teams. Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Lindsay Graham and their ilk are modern day celebrities. Back then, you knew the president and vice president. To know a senator's name from a state you didn't live in was highly unusual.

In the 90s, it was cool not to care, cool not to engage. Today, people think you're nuts if you don't read political headlines every day. Back then, it was considered in bad taste to say who you voted for. Today, people scream it aloud.

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I'd venture to say it felt more peaceful because we were all blissfully ignorant to what all was happening behind the curtain and society couldn't air its every grievance with the world via social media.

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Violent crime was far more prevalent then compared to now.

As for political turmoil, nothing we're experiencing now compares to the 10-15 year period that began in 1960. 60 years ago, shooters didn't miss and there were more of them. Even the BLM summer of love was rookie level compared to the race riots back in the day.

Social media, 24/7 news/opinion coverage and a chronic "self-absorbed" culture today make it seem worse than it is. Not that it's not contentious, but comparatively it was more "testosterone-fueled" in the 60's and 70's.

Young people seem to have a hard time believing me when I mention that during the whole four years I spent in college, I almost never heard anyone discussing politics. And on the extremely rare cases I did hear it, it was just in the most rudimentary, matter-of-fact, 'current events' prism.

The whole 'tone' of day-to-day life was so different, before the 24-hour news, 24-hour media cycle. People just weren't 'wired in' to every little national news item, and were more concerned with more local, more down-to-earth, more personal, affairs. Different folks might have different pinpoints as to when everything seemed to change. For me, it seemed to rear up a bit when Clinton was first elected, and then ramped up massively with the mid-1990s combo of the OJ Simpson trial and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. The media, the public, and pop-culture, all seemed to inflate together into some kind of gagging, noxious mixture that suffocated away the longstanding normalcy of earlier times. Then, on the immediate heels of this, the internet came along and increased it tenfold!

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Democrats were good people with bad ideas.

Either way, people just went about their lives.

Now, Democrats are lead by the fringe events of society, and DC Republicans are either spineless, or complicit.

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Now the dems are the Little Red Book thumping Maoists who were demonstrating outside of the 1968 dem convention. They and their college brainwashed progeny.

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I’ve long felt that politics is just professional wrestling for white collar set

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You got part of that right, it's always been class warfare post French Revolution. It doesn't matter who is in power, there is a class of people that believe things just happen to them, and it's someone else's fault. These are the people that never improve their lot in life, and vote for sugar highs. This isn't just blue collar, a lot of white collar folks believe this too.

China is building islands, we build a pier that lasts what, 20 days? Strategery vs. sugar high.

In the 90s, we had the newspaper and books (technically, we could GOPHER, or download HTML pages to view locally, but not the same). Now, you have 50+ year old women that get their information from whomever they follow on TikTok. Echo chambers to the 100th power.

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The news cycle was much slower, and journalism schools and most media placed emphasis on accuracy and objectivity. Now that doesn't mean there wasn't bias, but it was less overt.

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The worst thing about the death of print media is that now you can play fast and loose with the facts. With magazines and newspapers, once you printed a hundred thousand copies and sent them out, you had better have all your i's dotted and t's crossed. You could slip up in radio, tv, and now online, but you damn sure didn't slip up in print or there'd be consequences. Publishers were very careful about what they put in print. Even though there was still bias, like you said, it was much more subtle. Also, the editorial pages were clearly marked so you knew if you were reading news or reading opinion. To say that line is now blurred is an understatement. There is no line anymore.

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The worst thing about the death of print media is that now you can play fast and loose with the facts. With magazines and newspapers, once you printed a hundred thousand copies and sent them out, you had better have all your i's dotted and t's crossed. You could slip up in radio, tv, and now online, but you damn sure didn't slip up in print or there'd be consequences. Publishers were very careful about what they put in print. Even though there was still bias, like you said, it was much more subtle. Also, the editorial pages were clearly marked so you knew if you were reading news or reading opinion. To say that line is now blurred is an understatement. There is no line anymore.

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Adding to this...


Newpapers and magazines were also very profitable from advertising. They were advertising vehicles. Magazines were 80% advertising. I'm not making that up, it was called the 80/20 rule and was taught in UGA's journalism school in which I matriculated. The publications were well staffed with talented writers, investigators, editors, copy editors, and so forth. Even they guys in circulation made good money. I dated a girl in the 90's whose dad made $80k a year (damn good money in 1990's) running routes for USA Today around Atlanta. He had employees, he wasn't a paper boy, but you get the picture. There was enough budget and demand and money really, these print outfits were doing very well. Once the internet dried all that up, mainly the adverti$ing, that's when it all went down the drain.

We got the who what why when and how

No opinions on what someone said 20 years ago and how it affected the perp

Journalist callis it a day -- Bee