{"id":13547,"date":"2016-03-02T17:51:29","date_gmt":"2016-03-02T22:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=13547"},"modified":"2016-03-09T17:54:35","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T22:54:35","slug":"brocks-banter-nostalgia-aint-what-it-used-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/brocks-banter-nostalgia-aint-what-it-used-to-be\/","title":{"rendered":"BROCK’S BANTER: Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nostalgia ain\u2019t what it used to be.
\nApparently attribution ain\u2019t either.
\nWhile it is a quote that has been attributed to several thinkers and speak-before-you-thinkers like musician Stan Kenton, late baseball great Yogi Berra, French actress Simone Signoret, and even American humourist Will Rogers, it is a quote that holds true.
\nNostalgia really ain\u2019t what it used to be \u2013 just ask Sylvester Stallone, who left the Dolby Theatre Oscarless on Sunday night, despite being the clear frontrunner in the race for the Best Supporting Actor trophy for breathing new life into 80s icon Rocky Balboa.
\nOr ask the people who Netflixed all through the weekend \u2013 without any chill whatsoever \u2013 binge-watching Fuller House, the follow-up that nobody asked for to the semi-hit 90s sitcom Full House.
\nTo hear the feedback from those who hunkered down to watch the entire season in one sitting, you could be mistaken for believing Full House was an opus of a television classic on par with the likes of I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, or even The Sopranos with inexplicably popular-yet-talentless twins in place of a crime family.
\nBut, they\u2019re talking about Full House, a sitcom which was almost universally compared unfavourably to a cheese platter by the time I was in elementary school. Over time, it has, apparently, become a conduit for people to recapture their lost \u2013 or what remains of their \u2013 youth.
\nI\u2019m not prepared though to leave the blame entirely on Bob Saget\u2019s doorstep. After all, we have recently had revivals of other shows from the relatively recent past, ranging from the great (Arrested Development), to the good (The X-Files), the meh\u2026 (Girl Meets World), and the bad (see above).
\nIt\u2019s a trend and we have to live
\nwith it.
\nI\u2019ve often wondered why certain things from the past, whatever the quality, seem to acquire a romantic patina over the years. People often claim to hunger for the \u201cgood old days\u201d, or \u201ca simpler time\u201d, but there was never an old day that was uniformly good or simple.
\nEach decade, almost from the dawn of time, has been punctured by racial strife, inequity, oppression, and unrest. Like death and taxes, they are inescapable factors. Life, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself, was never like the world of Ward and June Cleaver where mom was home all day with the kids, vacuuming in her heels, pearls and, to paraphrase the neighbour kid, a very lovely dress, just waiting for dad to come home with the proverbial bacon and a life lesson.
\nAnd yet, I too sometimes long for a simpler time \u2013 especially when I watch the U.S. Presidential Election unfold, despite my better judgement.
\nTaking the Democrats out of the equation for the moment, as they both have two solid, well-educated and well-meaning candidates vying for their attention, what we have on the other side is an endless cacophony of one man hogging all the oxygen in the room two runners-up left gasping for breath.
\nOver the last couple of weeks, we have had the front runner, Donald Trump, in an unlikely feud with Pope Francis, of all people, followed by an endorsement from the head of the Ku Klux Klan (which took him a good long while to denounce), a retweet of a quote from Benito Mussolini (for which, at press time, he remains unrepentant), and the masses are lapping it up.
\nAs quickly as the mases are lapping it up, the candidate is just as quick to keep ladling it on, creating an endless cycle of stupidity and nonsense with little regard to what would actually benefit the American people, those countries with whom the United States has closer relations, and indeed the world.
\nTo hear from those lapping it up, Donald Trump seems to have tapped into an unexpected thirst for nostalgia.
\nWhile he has yet to define just how he is going to do it, somehow he has convinced Republican voters that he is going to bring the United States back to its glory days \u2013 whatever that is, whenever that was \u2013 and restore the \u201cAmerican Dream\u201d, although he has yet to define what that actually means in this day and age.
\nIt doesn\u2019t matter.
\nDetails aren\u2019t needed.
\nThe United States was once the most influential player on the world stage (still is, but other countries are gaining on it) but, dammit, the star of The Celebrity Apprentice is just the guy to restore them to their rightful place in the world, just as he guided contestants Piers Morgan, Bret Michaels, Arsenio Hall, and Leeza Gibbons to the top of the Fortune rankings and Vanity Fair\u2019s annual list of the \u201cNew Establishment.\u201d Oh, wait\u2026
\nIt will be interesting to see if this sense of nostalgia hops their northern frontier in Canada.
\nOf course, those bleeding blue in these parts might argue it already has, as of last October, with the election of Justin Trudeau to lead the nation, but the proper litmus test might come in the replacement of the leader Trudeau the Younger sent packing back to Alberta.
\nTelevision personality Kevin O\u2019Leary has sent up balloons to gauge the weather in throwing himself into the ring to fill the void left by Stephen Harper.
\nIn fact, he is also hedging his bets by throwing his name into the mix to replace Justin Trudeau, even though he is not even six months into his majority debate.
\nBy his own admission, he is an \u201copportunist\u201d and has burst on the scene with as much bluster and bravado as Trump, his fellow reality TV personality from another network.
\nThreatening to be the \u201cthorn\u201d in side of Finance Minister Bill Morneau in the years ahead, he basically stopped one step short of calling him a \u201closer\u201d, but one can only assume it is only a matter of time.
\nPersonally, I think it is simple \u201copportunism\u201d at play here rather than any serious intention to be a voice for the Canadian taxpayer. Perhaps I am a bit na\u00efve, but I like to believe Canadian voters are more in tune with the world and are less likely to pick up the spoon and binge on Trump-brand Pablum.
\nIf anything, I am nostalgic for the days when people entered the race for our top public jobs with a platform, a sound plan, and a vision \u2013 whether you agreed with it or not \u2013 for a better world rather than self-aggrandizement at the expense of diplomacy and people as a whole.
\nThen again, did we ever have those days?
\nIs nostalgia ever what it once was?<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Nostalgia ain\u2019t what it used to be. Apparently attribution ain\u2019t either. While it is a quote that has been attributed to several thinkers and speak-before-you-thinkers like musician Stan Kenton, late baseball great Yogi Berra, French actress Simone Signoret, and even American humourist Will Rogers, it is a quote that holds true. Nostalgia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3wv","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-03 23:18:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}