This week, the NatGeo channel broadcast a multi-part documentary “The ’80s: the Decade that Made Us.” You can still catch it as it repeats.

I suspect the producers were in high school in the 1980s. Thus everything that happened then is momentous. To them. (Not to say that a lot didn’t happen.)

So it is with some amusement that my wife and I have been watching this series. It’s a shallow gloss, but still has entertainment value.

Last night we watched the episode, Shop ’til You Drop, which noted the ’80s boom in consumption and dearth of personal savings.

Their talking heads explained that Americans spent wildly because we were afraid of nuclear Armageddon. In short, we spent like there was no tomorrow because we feared there actually was no tomorrow.

A more logical explanation is that the Baby Boomers reached their 30s about then. We were getting serious about careers and settling down. There are a lot of us, so whatever we do registers loudly.

Furthermore, after the dreary Jimmy Carter years, Reagan imposed bitter economic medicine on the economy that caused a deep, but short recession. Thereafter began an economic expansion that continued (with an 8 month dip that doomed George H. W. Bush) through the end of the Clinton presidency.

People spent because they had jobs and money.

Another amusing moment was the bit about Madonna. They showed her performance of “Like a Virgin” at some music awards show that launched her career. It was so musically weak and so obviously calculated to shock (and generate publicity) that it’s embarrassing to see how well it worked.

Soon teenage girls were dressing up like Madonna en mass. One clip shows a crowd of them, with one explaining that Madonna freed them to be themselves. No commentary noted the contradiction.

The talking heads include a couple of known leftists, socialist writer Barbara Ehrenreich and Salon’s David Sirota, who raised hackles on Tuesday with his piece, “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American.” It’s best to keep your BS detectors fully on when they start talking.

Or at least invented it.

Every color digital camera in use today works because of the invention of Bruce Bayer, who worked at Kodak at the time.

He died November 13. The video explains how Bayer’s invention works.

David B. Cohen in the Daily Caller:

Over the past five years, Gutfeld has parlayed his unique brand of off-the-wall political humor into a position of prominence. Some conservatives believe that Gutfeld is our answer to Jon Stewart. But I don’t see much similarity between Stewart’s heavily written, heavily produced corporate comedy and the free-flowing, unforced humor that springs organically from “Red Eye.” Stewart is the stodgy establishment to Gutfeld’s subversive counterculture. Gutfeld is loose, Stewart tightly wound. Stewart is hugely talented and very smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is. Gutfeld, on the other hand, is clearly smarter than the character he often plays on TV. Beneath his clown mask, Gutfeld is quite an insightful commentator who, in my biased conservative opinion, grasps the inherent contradictions of modern liberalism in a way that Stewart can’t.

But the comparison with Stewart is valid in one respect: Stewart has become an important player in the liberal movement, and I believe that Gutfeld is on his way to becoming an important player in the conservative movement. Gutfeld speaks to the dissonance of conservatives, especially young ones, who are avid fans of a popular culture shaped by people who despise conservatives. (That’s why the spectacle of Chris Christie pining after Bruce Springsteen, as pathetic as it is, is also poignant.) Gutfeld, who is as hip to pop culture as they come, uses his hipness and humor as weapons to fight back on our behalf. He turns the comedic tables on the intolerant bullies of the left, helping us laugh at them just as hard as they laugh at us. No one is better at skewering the overfed egos and undernourished intellects of liberal celebrities. In eschewing “coolness” as it’s defined by the guardians of our popular culture, Gutfeld makes it cool to be conservative.

But while Gutfeld has strong appeal with conservatives, his greatest upside lies in his potential to cross over. His irreverent style is pitch-perfect for a younger audience, combining a righteous judgmentalism about people’s hypocrisy with a refreshing lack of judgmentalism about their lifestyles. It’s a style that can resonate not only with (more…)

Longmire. Sundays on A&E.

I was living in Miami around 1985 when I wrangled an invitation to a fundraising event at a private home in Coconut Grove.

Norman Lear, the famed producer, the man who adapted a British sitcom into “All in the Family” for American TV, was on hand to raise money for People for the American Way. He spoke of being laid up with an illness that caused him to watch lots of TV. It was then that he discovered Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, et al.

Worried about the “Christian right,” he formed his political organization. Somebody had to stand up to the religious threat against democracy.

I was probably the only gentile in the room, which I note only because of what came after Lear finished. A second man stood and spoke about having recently visited the concentration camp at Dachau. He choked up when he mentioned a giant mound of hair and teeth, remains of Nazi victims.

I recall not making the connection between Falwell and Hitler, and I still don’t. But the audience was roused and soon people were calling out their pledges to Lear.

I jokingly refer to myself as a “secular Christian” — one who celebrates the holidays but hasn’t been to church in decades. So I am dispassionate about religious matters.

But I do hate bunk. And for all the warnings about the “coming theocracy” that I’ve heard for 30 years, I’ve seen no sign of it. Quite the opposite. Religion is openly mocked by the thoughtful and the crude (Bill Maher, for example.)

Pornography has become more or less normalized. Ten years ago I read an 8-page feature in Los Angeles magazine about Sasha Gray — an ambitious young girl who turned 18 and drove straight to LA to start her career as a porn star. There was no hint of controversy.

Some theocracy. Meanwhile, in 2006 Yale University actively recruited as a student a man who had been propagandist for the Taliban. Now, there’s a theocracy.

In today’s LA Times, Norman Lear sounds as worried as ever.

Did you think, 30 years later, that there would still be a need for People For the American Way, or that it would instead be “mission accomplished”?

On the board at the time was a minister who would always say, “We want to be sure that we’re not an organization that overstays its usefulness.” We were always aware — and the country was not and is not — of how severely the religious right is determining so much of what is happening in America, politically, socially, in every direction. There’s never been a time in the 30 years when there wasn’t enough to rail against.

…

Do you watch Fox TV?

Oh sure, I watch Fox. I go back and forth between Fox and MSNBC. I often drive to work listening toRush Limbaugh. If I haven’t fully awakened, that will give me the kick in the ass I need.

What do Fox and Limbaugh mean to this country’s politics?

When I was a little boy, I used to love traveling carnivals. The barkers, they were liars and cheats, especially the ones who asked you to pay another quarter to “come [behind] the curtain and see the hermaphrodite.” I think of them when I listen to these guys. They’re carnival barkers. Who could have guessed they would move from the carnival to the public mall.

Lear made his billions mocking bigots. But he doesn’t recognize the bigot in himself. This is true of most progressives I’ve met.

The right and left agree on more things than the left can understand. We all want the best for the most people. We all understand that the nation is strongest when everyone succeeds.

The debate is how to achieve that.

Progressives believe they know what’s best for minorities, even as their welfare policies have undermined the family unit necessary for advancement. But to argue against their policy, in their mind, is to argue for hurting poor people.

Progressives won’t consider changing Social Security, when studies show that blacks get the rawest deal from Social Security because they typically start working earlier and die younger.

Someone could mint a fortune putting a show on television that satirized the self-righteous liberals among us, the Lefty Archie Bunkers. But it won’t be Norman Lear or anyone who thinks like him. They just can’t see it.

“Awake” on NBC seemed like a gimmick show that could not hold up past a few episodes. Creatively it sure did, adding layers of nuance and emotional depth each week.

Alas, it was cancelled. The premise might not have worked in a second season, but this one is worth it. You can watch the whole thing on Hulu or wait for it to come out on DVD.

It was a good ride.

“Birdsong,” currently playing on PBS Masterpiece Classic, is one of the best dramas of the year. The performance of Eddie Redmayne is something to watch. So much of the story is told just with his face.

…if it didn’t take decades to execute a murderer.

With her silk scarves and immaculate make-up, Ding Yu looks every inch the modern television presenter. Indeed, for the past five years she has hosted a hugely successful prime-time show in China which has a devoted following of 40 million viewers every Saturday night.

But while in Britain the weekend evening entertainment will be The X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing, Ms Ding’s show features harrowing – some would say voyeuristic – footage of prisoners confessing their crimes and begging forgiveness before being led away to their executions.

The scenes are recorded sometimes minutes before the prisoners are put to death, or in other cases when only days of their life remain.

This is very old television. I remember watching this with my older brother and wondering whether cats really could play the violin. And mice the drums.

Midnight the cat seemed to. The image quality is poor, but video recording didn’t exist back then — shows were captured by pointing a film camera at a TV.

Rescue Me is probably the least PC show on television. In this scene from season two, the entire fire house crew has been forced to take sensitivity training because and they’re not happy.

You can watch full episodes here.

Last year’s best new comedy/drama series was Terriers. Alas, it didn’t find an audience and is gone for good. (You can watch the whole season online here.)

A close second, very close, was Justified. If you like Elmore Leonard novels, you’ll like this series with its assortment of odd ball characters and dry humor.

It returns for its second season on Wednesday.

It stars Timothy Olyphant (the sheriff in Deadwood) as Raylan Givens, a federal marshal assigned to his native Kentucky.

Here’s what NPR had to say about it:

Here are a few things Raylan Givens definitely is not: Lazy. Insecure. Unsophisticated. Or stupid.

Instead, Givens is a modern-day U.S. marshal with the soul of a sheriff from the old west. He’s as crafty, streetwise and smart as you might imagine. Created by novelist Elmore Leonard, bred in eastern Kentucky, Givens represents an interesting trend on FX: smart, emotionally complex working-class heroes.

He’s the opposite of the stereotypes we’re often fed about working-class men on television. Sent to work his Kentucky hometown after killing one too many suspects in Miami, Givens kicks off this season struggling to rebuild his reputation with his work family and rekindle a relationship with his ex-wife.

In Givens’ world, catching the bad guys and winning shootouts is the easy part. Mastering his life and the unpredictable moves of those he loves most; that’s what keeps him up at night.

He’s not alone. Look across the wide range of dramas FX has offered recently and you see lots of similar shades: the wisecracking, self destructive fireman Tommy Gavin in Rescue Me; the crafty, streetwise second generation biker gang leader Jax Teller in Sons of Anarchy; the desperate, just-divorced stand up comic and dad in the gritty comedy Louie; and the overextended, desperate ex-heavyweight champ Lights Leary in Lights Out.