Sometimes it takes years....... and you realise something was doing really different...

and it was SO on edge, and made you very uncomfortable. Feel like shit fried on the tarmac since yesterday, and just distracting myself over at YouTube. Looking at a lot of very old things, Dean Martin roasts in Las Vegas, among them Betty White, those will become legendary, but there were too many sexist things, homophobic things people 'thought' were funny, they were way on the edge. And about color. There was stuff in there a bout 'Roots' which was legendary here, and someone, I think it was Milton Berle said, 'oh they are gonna show it Africa. But they will run it backwards so it has a happy ending.' That is 'edge', pushing the envelope too far. For the time...

When I SEE that, good gawwd people were that naive...... But they pushed envelopes for that time. The Seventies. But they were moving forward to try to be postitive.... make things better. And then it got lost in greed.

Most of the names won't ring a bell with younger people today. For me it was relevatory, but it was interesting......, and then I found the following clip. I was very young, confused, and all of a sudden there was this clip. Flip Wilson.

I found his show very funny. EXCEPT... I hated him, HATED him when he slipped into his Geralinde character.

I don't think that ANYONE at that time really GOT what he did. That envelope went WAY over the desk.

This hot assed black chick with a friend named 'Killer' I so remember. That is pushing the envelope off the desk, and I saw it today with different eyes. He had a precedent... Milton Berle.

Probably, hardly anyone will remember his show on tee-vee. I didn't like him at the time. He would get in drag, come out smoking a cigar, and be outrageous. We are going a lonnng way back here, the beginning of television and there were only a coulple of channels, and THEY could be fuzzy.

And I hated him too.

So lets get off the track here. If you look back... there were some courageous people who were 'funny', but the intention wasn't 'fun'. It wasn't ABOUT some stupid skit, it was subliminal. Giving you a message.

Except: they weren't thinking about kids who were so frightened about who they are, they made them think is was the only alternative.

For them, they had no grasp on the subject... and certainly never meant to hurt anyone with it...

I hardly think they realised that with what they were doing with the trangender 'schtick' could mess some poor kids' and up and make them afraid. Ecept they did.

For those who did want to be transgender, they were supportive. It was the 50's to 70's.

For a confused kid in the boonies... well they didn't DO that.

This kid thought he had only two alternatives, 'pretend', or go off the charts wild and rebel so badly you end up in hospital. So you conform, y'know? Hard work.

I am just trying to say here..media influences you immensely, ok? But looking back at this, I finally understood what he was doing. But never had anything to to with me.

and today, I learned to look at it from a different perspective. Unca Miltie as well.

I doubt that they knew what they did for transgenger people...

Don't yell or hit, it was the times. 'Geraldine' and Joe Namath. The latter was a famous football player in Bawston. 'She' was outrageous.

l i LOVED SEEING HOW UNCOMFORTABLE HE FELT.

Because it was something I knew.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-355kMZxUN4&feature=related