THE 1970'S

Many people don't know that much about the 1970's. That's why I'm writing this blog post: To teach something to all those foolish young people who skip history class to browse the forums. Listen to me now, because I've seen a lot of movies and listened to a lot of music that's from the 70's. I wasn't born in the 70's, but my parents saw the 70's in their entirety, and they would tell me bedtime stories and campfire stories about the history of the 70's.

The 70's will always be most famous for one thing: Not bringing world peace. The 60's was eponymously known as the decade before the decade when world peace came; do the math. The hippies were pretty severely disappointed with the 70's. They're still bitter that the 70's beat the shit out of them (in the form of cops) and convinced most of them to grow up and get jobs. A hundred years from now, when schoolchildren ask their teachers what happened in the 1970's, they will shrug their shoulders and literally say, "I don't know, but you never read about the 1970's in the history books, so it must not have been world peace."

Until that rueful day, however, us 20th-century born folks will remember the 70's for other (more minor) things. The main thing (out of the minor things (making it 2nd-most important overall)) was Richard Nixon. He was famous in the 50's and 60's as well; but it was in the 70's where he really hit his stride. He was first introduced to the world in the late 1950's, an obscure senator from California who ran for president but lost because he sweated too much. In the 70's, he was very well-liked; he was known for his fingers, his secret tape recorder, his obsession with Asia, and the time he robbed a hotel and got impeached.

Speaking of Nixon, there was also the war with Vietnam, which a lot of people criticize today; but what people don't really remember is that it was extremely popular and successful at the time. However, it must be pointed out that although Nixon often gets the credit for the Vietnam War, he was a terrible president and had nothing to do with it at all; the credit for starting the war goes at least as far back as Harry Truman, who is often maligned in the history books for not getting into enough wars.

The 70's is also famous for inspiring the TV movie "The 1970's", made in the year 2000. It featured a dazzling collection of up-and-coming stars and writers (none of whom amounted to anything whatsoever - but at the time, they were somewhat dazzling, and extremely up-and-coming). The film is about four friends graduating in the year 1970 and getting caught up in all of the glory and misery of the decade. Sadly, not much more is said about the film in history books, other than that it was lousy.

Finally, the 70's is famous for giving us disco. Disco wasn't actually music, and everybody knew it at the time, but it has held up remarkably well over the years. The typical disco (the word "disco" is also a noun meaning a place where disco music is played, as in "He rolled on down to the disco") was a big hard floor on which people could perform a type of dance known as the "roller disco", which involved dancing while roller-skating. This form of dance is still very popular in Western and Central Asia.

Well, that pretty much sums up the entire decade of the 70's. If you have a history test coming up soon, you should print this blog post out on a white 6x8 sheet of paper and read it over and over so as you'll know all the answers to the test.