My humor posts tend to rank among the highest on the blog, but I’ve been lax about including humor regularly.
No more.
In the next few months I’ll add a bit of humor to your Fridays!
If you have the time, drop by and see what’s going on, or add a link with something that amused you recently.
Today’s feature wasn’t originally meant to be funny at all.
BACKGROUND:
This video is part of an extended series of educational videos from Mississippi State University in the early 1950s. Parts of them of still useful today, but only if you can get over the heavy-hand teaching method and the very antiquated feel. I can, but only barely.
Upside:
The goals should still be taught today: good manners, consideration of others, and socially pleasant behavior. It’s crazy though because it’s so far removed from our own time and ways of interacting that it seems like satire, (that’s why it’s a Funny Friday feature.)
• But seriously, it made me stop to consider how I might be more polite. (Gosh, Beaver, maybe good manners are important!)
• Most of these actors would have turned into anti-establishment, long-haired, sexually uninhibited hippies about a decade later. (So much for a cutting edge education delivery method with expected outcomes. HA!)
Downside:
• The angle seems poorly positioned at the beginning as “a way to get what you what” instead of how to be mature or enjoyable to be around.
• It has nothing about texting etiquette. Major oversight! ;)
• Is it about practicing pretenses and inauthenticity? A bit. BLECKkk!
VIEWING TIP:
Try to not be cynical when you watch this. It’s easy sometimes to disparage things from other eras. We live in a cynical time! if you can manage it, try to appreciate this as a “time-capsule” of another time and a culture removed from ours today (for better and for worse).
The next post will go live on Sunday. It starts a series I’m really interested in and, golly, I hope to see you soon! That would be swell!
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