And for those of us in Canada: http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/#clip251960

Nail. Head. Awesome. :D

This was hilarious, especially the woman who represented the 1930's. "We would play games." "What games?" "Climbing poles." lolol :)

I loved seeing Clara show up on the Daily Show. Her cooking channel is great. The epiphany reached by John Oliver is a very astute one.

Brilliant and completely true.

this is absolutely hilarious. the only thing that i didn't like about it was the "cry like a little girl" comment. my 7 year old nephew cries if you merely say "it" (as in pennywise the clown). i'm just pretty darn tired of my gender being used as an insult. it's actually pretty f'ed up that half the population & it's stereotyped behavior is used as an insult.

I had just watched this the other day, such a very astute conclusion that Oliver made which helped put a whole lot in perspective of the "good old days". Also fun to notice how the people on the talk shows were all white males. Perhaps if they were a minority, those "good old days" might not have been as free and easy and simple. Glad it was posted here to share the wealth.

AHHHHHHHHH!!! This pisses me off so much: It's literally one of my pet peeves. The 'best' stuff: Conservatives claiming that 'the Western world' is deteriorating and families are in decline. The evidence? Abortions, women working and pedophilia...
Regarding pedophilia: Sexual child abuse is in reality only 'novel' in the sense that girls in the 1600s and 1700s who were raped were seen as the 'seductresses' and as the perpetrators.
I recently read a great article which compared constructions of 'family' and the historical reality. Here some great tidbits:

Construction: "People used to marry younger."
Reality: In Ancient Greece, the average marriage age for men was 30. In Middle Age and Renaissance Europe, the average marriage age was late 20s.

Construction: "Marriage used to be the rule. Singledom and remaining unmarried was rare."
Reality: Since one had to attain a certain material wealth in order to be allowed/able to marry, remaining unwed was very common. Example: In 19th century Carinthia (Austrian state), 40% of the adult population was unmarried.

Construction: "Many generations used to live under one roof."
Reality: In England, the average number of people living as a family under one roof from the 16th to the 19th century was 4,75. This includes adults, children and any servants, which used to be deemed part of the family.

Regarding social constructions ("lies") regarding abortion/ 'worth' of life:
Reality: It used to be absolutely 'normal' (as in: standard) to abandon children outside on the street, in the woods etc. In 1830 Florence e.g. 43% of all baptized babies were abandoned to die. In 19th century Italy, 90% of all children born out of wedlock were abandoned. In Ancient Rome, 20% to 40% of all children were abandoned.
Thus, it wasn't only 'life' after conception that did not used to be 'protected', but Life after birth.

The last myth enrages me the most.

All statistics are from Jack Goody's "The development of the family and marriage in Europe".

A terrific and very accessible book that addresses nostalgia is Otto Bettmann's (Of the Bettmann Archives) The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible!, which looks at late nineteenth century USA and peels away the nostalgia. The book uses accounts and images from the time period to look at urban crime, poor diet, devious capitalists, pollution, etc... Most of the things people complain about today were present then and in many cases were worse. The book is a great gift for an relative who believes things used to be better.

Jon Stewart himself commits a common error in reasoning when he says that America "used to make things." Rather than being nostalgic, this is simply wrong, as America makes more now than it ever has, and still more than any other nation.

This is because America has so much more capital, human and otherwise, than anyone else that we can be the world's leading manufacturer with only a very small part of our workforce. Basically, the same reason that we are the world's leading agricultural nation despite only a few percent of Americans working in agriculture.

You don't see a lot of it at retail stores, though. America now mostly makes extremely valuable things like airplanes, MRI machines, and things of that nature, having been able to trade for most low-tech manufacturing products from areas with a comparative advantage at it. Some people, amazingly, see the resulting loss of local manufacturing jobs as a bad thing, but really it only frees up American labor for more valuable things, like every other industrial advance.

troll.

Ditto, Ed. Every freakin' blog post.

"American Civil War, 1861 – 1865
Union blockade, 1861 – 1865
Eastern Theater, 1861 – 1865
Western Theater, 1861 – 1865
Lower Seaboard Theater, 1861 – 1865
Trans-Mississippi Theater, 1861 – 1865"
&
"Pacific Coast Theater, 1863" (LOL! What, the building of Ft. Stevens on the Oregon Coast? Shesh)

You cannot count campaigns as wars my friend. Can you even define Theaters? They are areas in which the army divides geography to better control armies and focus efforts.

As an example, we won World War 2, not the "European Theater"