For Throwback Thursday (1966): When I was in grade school, there was comedy/variety show called *Laugh In.* The name was a riff on the hippie movements group events that they called a Love In. Lily Tomlin was in the cast and she played a variety of characters -- including Ernestine, the telephone operator. In olden times (the 1960s), they actually had people called operators who could help with making phone calls. You didnt call a toll-free private service provider with a computer speech recognition system. You could actually call a real person. The regional phone companies were all puppets of the monolithic AT&T Bell System. This network of companies was collectively and humorously called Ma Bell. The format of *Laugh In* was to break the Ernestine skit into parts. Youll see the breaks have been imperfectly edited in this YouTube video. Its both funny and creepy to watch these old sketches poke fun at the invasion of privacy and abuse of technology even in 1966. In this sketch, Ernestine is trying to collect a phone bill from a customer she calls Mr. Veedle. At one point shes reciting his financial assets to prove that he can easily pay the bill. When he objects, Ernestine says: Privileged information? Oh, Mr. Veedle, that is so cute. No, Mr. Veedle, youre dealing with The Telephone Company. For instance, now, as I look over your income tax return for 1965 . . . youtube/watch?v=ZIOogEaO3Hc
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 14:39:37 +0000
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