I know exactly who Tom Bombadil is and I was absolutely DELIGHTED they left him out of the Lord of the Rings. I had to skip whole pages of the book every time he would obnoxiously sing all of his dialogue.
A big thing he left out....we are the last generation who grew up before political correctness. We remember when America was a happier, funnier, more relaxed and less divided place. We grew up with the Dukes of Hazard. Nobody found the Confederate flag “offensive” nor the fact that the General Lee had its name nor that its horn gloriously blared out Dixie. It was the most popular show on TV - network TV - for years. It was popular. Yes, even my Black friends liked it and didn’t see anything “hateful” about it...because there wasn’t anything hateful about it. Symbols of the South and its culture, history and heritage did not supposedly become “offensive” until some PC Revisionists in Academia started claiming it was...and started claiming the war was “all about slavery” - never mind that there was no new information to draw this conclusion from or that this was at odds with what most historians had thought for generations.
We laughed at the Naked Gun, Airplane, Bugs Bunny, Vacation, Trading Places, Caddyshack, Police Academy, History of the World Part I, Spaceballs, etc. We could laugh at stereotypes for various groups and the humor around them. Nobody felt picked on because everybody got made fun of. Anybody who cried about it would not be taken seriously and would be made fun of themselves.
We saw Reagan come along and lift the country out of the doldrums, depression and feeling of decline it was in when Jimmy Crater was president. We saw the economy boom, the military be rebuilt and pride in our country restored. We saw the Commies DEFEATED by the “stupid cowboy” and all of his so-called “sophisticated” critics be proven to be buffoons.
We rejoiced when the democratic revolutionaries of Eastern Europe - many of them our age - took to the streets and threw off the socialist shackles their countries had been suffering under for 44 years. We saw how much poorer and more polluted those countries were than the free market/democratic West.
We’re also the last generation to learn to drive a stick shift, know what the dewey decimal system is, learn how to write cursive, enjoy college and pro football before the pussification rules, grow up with rock n’ roll, listen to the radio, etc.
Things stayed OK through the 90s but the culture has really gone to crap in this century.
STOP, STOP!!!! You’re making me cry!
And yes, I do mean CRY -— mostly for my children and what they are heading into.... it’s nothing good!