I was thinking today of some of the favorite television shows of my childhood, and suddenly realized why I might be so messed up. Consider:
Petticoat Junction: A elderly madam and pimp (Uncle Joe) run a stable of Joe Ho's at the Shady Rest Motel. Betty Jo, Billie Jo and Bobby Jo attract customers by hanging their underwear from the water tower. This is a show young Elliott Spitzer also watched.
Family Affair: Bachelor engineer and his man ``servant'' live together in New York and suddenly acquire three chuildren. This was an early endorsement for gay marriage, with gay adoption thrown in! It led directly to Stonewall.
The Munsters: A veiled attempt by television to push for integrated neighborhoods. After all, who would mind a black or Mexican family moving in, if the alternative might be the Undead? Unfortunately, this prompted the urban riots of the late 1960s.
Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C.: This was an effort to make the Vietnam draft more popular by showing Americans what an all-volunteer military would look like.
Green Acres: The hallucinogenic fantasies of a drug-addled New York City attorney who, off-screen, drops LSD after work each day and imagines an alternative life as a marijuana grower in the country. This show spawned the widespread recreational drug use of the 1970s that led directly to Americans paying $4 for coffee at Starbucks.
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