I’ve watched that video so many times. Not a huge fan of Bush but his reaction speed was outstanding

Shhh you can't give away all your good ideas for free! Oh wait you can. Please do.

Or when the dad puked on the Japanese prime minister? 🤣

Haha. Top Notch suggestion.

That guy is the prime minster of a small Nordic nation now. Look it up.

Laugh-In was one of my favorite shows as a kid!

Took 30 seconds for me to read what this dude tried to get across in 9 minutes. Thank you!

I'm a Gen-X Republican - born after Laugh-In, and probably theoretically to the right of most of its cast and writers - but I watched Laugh-In later on with my parents and loved it, and respect Laugh-In and its creators for what it was able to do, and how it succeeded at it. Laugh-In was brilliant, subversive, eye-opening, game-changing, highly influential, and way ahead of its time - modern political entertainment is still trying to catch up to things that Laugh-In and its writers and cast somehow looked easy with. For me, discovering Laugh-In cast members like Arte Johnson, Ruth Buzzi, Jo-Ann Worley, Henry GIbson, and Goldie Hawn for the first time was like meeting long-lost relatives or family friends I didn't know existed, and so many Laugh-In gags just sort of ingrained themselves in my childhood without me even realizing it - "Here Come the Judge!", "One Ringy-Dingy", "Sock It to Me!", "The Flying, Fickle Finger of Fate", "You Bet Your Bippy!", "Verrrrry Interesting!", "Whatever Turns You On", "Look THAT Up in Your Funk & Wangalls'!" (my parents actually owned a set of Funk & Wagnalls', too, and I half suspect they bought them because of Laugh-In!) and so on, my parents and others from their generation quoted them so often! It was like discovering some sort of Fountain of Memes that my parents had been running on all through my childhood, and finally being in on the joke - arguably, Laugh-In catch-phrases were like internet memes, before there was even an internet. I'll risk claiming that surely there wasn't much that came close to the modern internet meme before Laugh-In, aside from "Kilroy Was Here" doodles and the ancient tradition of the political cartoon - Laugh-In really took meming to its modern level. The jump-cut editing technique as used in Laugh-In had become so ubiquitous by my time, I never realized how radical and influential it was when Laugh-In embraced it - if not pioneered it... I never really appreciated it when I watched Laugh-In for myself, I didn't notice until someone pointed it out to me later that Laugh-In did it first. I think a lot of younger folks have missed out by not experiencing Laugh-In, and would probably be surprised by it: there's a LOT of Laugh-In in the DNA of more modern political comedy that audiences today would more readily recognize, like Saturday Night Live, Colbert, and the rest, and a LOT more Laugh-In than many people would realize in modern counter-culture animated shows like South Park, Rick & Morty, or in the sort of surreal comedy you'd find on Adult Swim late at night thanks to Tim and Eric: for better or worse, I don't think these shows would have ever have existed or been given a chance, without the ground being broken long before (often with a lot more class and imagination, too!) by Rowen & Martin's Laugh-In! I'm not sure Laugh-In was the FIRST counter-culture TV show, but it was surely the most powerful, effective, and influential one, and probably deserves to be remembered as THE ORIGINAL counter-culture show to rule them all. And I loved and appreciated the Smothers Brothers in much the same way, though it was something of a different animal - they just don't make 'em like the Smothers Brothers or Laugh-In anymore! Anyway, Laugh-In really earned its place in TV history, and deserves more exposure with younger viewers. The show's creators, writers, and performers really brought something special to American TV with Laugh-In!

@@pietrayday9915… Why would you be ‘theoretically to the right’ of the staffers? What? You don’t know anything about the staff, or the cast or crew. You are just grandstanding and bragging about being some true, unadulterated right winger. It’s bizarre.

​@pietrayday9915 At least politicians talked back then. Now it's becoming so polarized, & w one side controlling the media, the WH, the Senate, comprised to the hilt w our enemies including communist mainland China, Islamic terrorists, etc, which has been hellbent on not just attacking 1 man, violating our God-given, Constitutionally protected rights & freedoms in doing so & not caring 1 iota bc they believe the majority of hardworking, law-abiding, taxpaying American citizens are too stupid & cowardly to stand up to them, as evidenced by their unconstitutional shutdown of our Constitutional Republic, but attacking what former Pres Trump represents: an independent who couldn't be bought & controlled, someone whom they were buddies with previously... that's why both sides assaulted him, bc he represented a threat to their little kingdom, without paying dues, without compromising what's right for money & power. That's why the GOP establishment attacked all the grassroots conservative Republicans who tried running for office by trying to keep them off the ballots across the country. But it's worse than that. It's a nation that stopped seeking the truth for themselves. Instead they became totally dependent on media outlets which were simply mouthpieces for the DNC. It was almost like watching a Twilight Zone episode. You clicked on 1 station, heard the party line for the day, run thru the others & it was like someone pulled the string on a Chatty Cathy (sorry Cathy, i meant no disrespect) & they all just repeated the same line. Or Schiff on night after night saying "we nownhave undeniable proof, evidenceof Trump colluding w the Russians...", only to find out time & time again that it was all smoke... their own smoke it turned out as the evidence clearly showed it was in fact Hillary & the DNC doing the collusion, as well as Biden on tape who was doing the Ukrainian coercion but... hey, that's just those inconvenient truths. And it would be easy to blame this politician or that administration or party. But the onus is on us. I'll explain in a moment. The other side split between Constitutional conservatives & wishy washy fence riders w no solid leader. The onus on us. When Israel demanded a king so they could be "like other nations...", the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob told the prophet Samuel "they have not rejected you, but Me... this will be the manner of king they will get. If they follow my ways, I will give them wise kings. But if they rebel & turn away from my ways, I will give them foolish kings." Benjamin Franklin said "we have given you a Republic (NOT a democracy which, if people went back to actually read our Founding Fathers own words, they would know this. But our public brainwashing I mean re-education camps I mean education system isn't geared toward the truth, facts, actual history but instead are bent on rewriting or revising real history in order to fit their agenda... but alas, I digress...) "Let's see if you can keep it." And if it keeps going its current route that answer will be a resounding "NO!" "NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME TO THE AID OF THEIR COUNTRY!" May God have mercy on us yet once more. I can't give up hope. Oh yeah. I loved Laugh-In. It may not have always agreed w my mores or politics, but we could still laugh at ourselves back then. Today, there's no humor, no free speech ("hate speech" was just a crack in the door... people today either don't know or don't remember the Atheist Communist Leftist Union (ACLU) & Skokie, IL. Don't get me wrong. I have absolutely NO love for nazis, for many reasons. However, the aclu defended their right to free speech. I bet they try to 4get that bc it definitely doesn't fit in their agenda today.

thanks for this additional info!

Another noteworthy related anecdote is that Richard Nixon hired Roger Ailes as his media manager and executive television producer in 1967, the same Roger Ailes that Rupert Murdoch would hire to run Fox News in 1996.

Well, he had Roger Ailes in charge of producing his campaign commercials, the town halls and other media relations. Safe to say it was a symbiosis that aggrandized both men’s careers, fraught with long-term effects on American politics, media, and history.

I watched them, they are on the Nixon Foundation channel. His advisors do say that his use of television was marvellous compared to 1960.

Bingo.

Back then the 7:00pm hour was considered part of the prime time schedule but over the years since it has stopped being considered part of the prime time schedule to where it’s now 8-11pm my all time favorite television series Batman aired at 7:30 pm Wednesday and Thursday night with it getting the earlier air so kids could watch before going to bed between 8&9

Spot on. Out of context the comedy can't age well and this was the anti-dote for challenging times. Folks today would miss cultural references. The jokes often missed may seem silly and many were, they worked perfectly.

Loved this show when I was a kid (pre-SNL, obviously), because it was wacky and fast-paced. I didn't get any of the Vietnam references, or even much of the post-WWII references. Then tried to watch a re-run in my 20s or so (post- a decade or more of SNL) and thought it was the dumbest, weirdest thing I'd ever seen. Recently started watching on streaming somewhere (post Trump-etc) and it's hilarious again! Which I find really fascinating. Not nostalgia: The political and social subtexts work better for me now than they did 20 or 30 years ago, and the energy of cast and crew are evident.

You bet your sweet bippy it was!

President Harry Truman also played piano. Both Nixon and Truman felt like, it helped them politically by making them seem less stiff. Although they were both pianists, Truman hated Nixon's guts.

even more impressive what a massive moment it was!

It was actually prerecorded. They actually cut up the tapes to make these cutaways. This had the unintended side effect of making the tapes unsuitable for erasure and reuse, meaning every episode was preserved.

@@ryanortega1511 there was no home video.

@@jpc2470 but the fact that the studios used video tape doesn't mean people at home had any options besides watching live TV.

It's a matter of opportunity cost.

i totally forgot that's where i noted it first too!

Jimmy Carter's parents were both real partiers, so even though Jimmy was a square, he was accustomed to people from "life's otherside".

That arguably hurt him but then again he won the Presidency.

Playboy wasn't just a nudie magazine. It had some pretensions to intellectual respectability, alongside the "tasteful" nudes. It did publish some decent articles and fiction. That was kind of a cliche joke ("I read it for the articles"), but it was true.

@@sparky6086 His brother might be why he lost 1980.

@@meh8982 I agree that Playboy wasn't just some skin mag! For 1976 to have a serious Presidential candidate interviewed by them did raise some eyebrows among the pearl-clutching set.

You bet your sweet bippy.

"Laugh In" came from love-in and sit-in and be-in

@@hyzercreek and "teach-in", etc. All these forms of protests that developed over the previous ten years became satirized.

The catch phrase "Sock It To Me" was primarily invented by black people and could be heard as early as late 1965 in big cities like Detroit and Chicago. Mitch Ryder was one of the few white people to latch on to the phrase, but Aretha franklin was the one that made the phrase hit the big time in 1967.

Nixon/Norm MacDonald Nexus

@@PhilEdwardsInc "The only country I'm afraid of isn't Iran, it's the country of Germany. I'm not sure if you guys history buffs or not, but..."

I first was exposed to it on Nick At Nite like you. My perspective on it changed as I grew older as well. One of the freakiest memories was when Dan Rowen predicted Ronald Reagan would be president in 1988. That was around the time I saw the particular episode.

The show pushed so many boundaries my parents wouldn't let me watch it. I was eight years old when the first show aired, and most of that stuff would have gone straight over my head. Regardless, it was verboten. My friends could watch it, so I sneaked in episodes at their houses during sleepovers. The memes were all over school. "Sock it to me" was a biggie, Lily Tomlin's phone lady schtick ("One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy -- SNORT"), and Arte Johnson's N.az.i in the weeds ("Verrrrrry in-ter-est-ing... but SHTUPID!")

@@hollerinwoman You bet yer sweet bippy!

Yeah, Phil, how did you do that?

they really had their own...twist on it

I was a kid at the time, but I think there was a sexual suggestion to it as well. That is why it shows up in Aretha Franklin's Respect. The backup singers sing it after the "Taking care...TCB" part.

@@palmercolson7037 Franklin's on record saying that her and her girls were just singing slang that they heard in their neighborhoods as filler and it stuck. They claim at the time they didnt know what it meant either. Take that as you may.

Your first assumption is correct(and the original meaning) You are not 'totally wrong.' Laugh-In altered it. I am old enough to know.😐

@@michaelinminn, I agree. It was a “multi-faceted” expression - people used it in a lot of different contexts, whenever it seemed to fit the moment. Thus, there was no one “proper” usage. The sixties (& seventies) were a freewheeling time. To confine it to one use would be contrary to that whole era’s attitude & credo.

it's on "Decades" channel now at 7 a.m.

Goldie "broke" a lot! Very interesting to see for somebody who knew her mostly from the 80s.

Especially someone with gray hair.

not just Goldie, but also Barbara Feldon (aka Agent 99). yum!

@@PhilEdwardsInc She was in character as the ditzy blonde girl. She already had the acting chops to convince people that her fumbling delivery was real. 😎

Yes, Goldie did the airhead blonde very well, but she had plenty of help from Lily Tomlin, Arte Johnson ("Very Interesting"), Ruth Buzzi, Judy Carne, Jo Anne Worley, and many others.

There were only three networks, so you had a good shot at being number one.

@@DiogenesOfCa Not if you were ABC. Perpetually behind in the network ratings of the time, they were derisively described in the industry as the "Almost Broadcasting Company" ABC may have had the occasional hit, but in the 1960s and early '70s, the ratings race was basically a two way competition between CBS and NBC.

@@mrbn2022 But they had the Wide world of Sports; who can forget "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat."

what?

Yeah there is SO MUCH coverup on this crucial moment in history.

Hey! 17 year old Laugh-In obsessive here! I’ve watched most of the series and have read both of the books mentioned in this video and I can confidently say that yes, a lot of the material used on Laugh-In is, in fact, dated and relies on tokenism. However, that doesn’t mean that the younger generation can’t watch and enjoy the show from an analytical perspective. You are LUCKY that Laugh-In has been widely preserved and is accessible in full form on this very website. Why? Only because there’s enough young people who care enough about the show to see it properly archived. Why insist on gatekeeping when there’s a whole new generation who would prefer to enjoy it with you?

He's a very fine Orthodox rabbi.

What streaming services on or did you pirate it or did it was it the DVD?

@@nitrosherbert888 I just watched all the clips that are on KZfaq from the official Laugh-In channel and lamented the fact that the box set is so incredibly expensive xD

I think Shout Factory has a site where you can watch all the episodes.

@@ryanortega1511 ooh thanks!

Laughter is the best medicine!

The same.

i'm not 72!!

Sixty two, watched 'em new.

@@-oiiio-3993 You've got me by a few, so good on you! ;) tavi.

I'm a bit too young to have seen it until I saw it later as a teen with my parents in reruns in the '80s or '90s, but my parents were pretty conservative by that time too, but we all watched Laugh-In and the Smothers Brothers and enjoyed them together... I think our conservative parents' generations had a lot more open-minded flexibility and faith than we give them credit for in our ability to be exposed to different points of view, appreciate new or different ideas for what they are, and come around to making the right choices when contradictions arise between what other people tell us, and what our parents instilled in us. And, after all, Laugh-In and the Smothers Brothers generally played fairly with our parents and with us: they give a conservative point of view a benefit of doubt that maybe not all their cast or writers were naturally inclined to give, and I for one never felt like these shows were insulting, smug, patronizing, or condescending to conservatives the way that a paler imitation might be, and I think the show's creators and casts were introspective enough to realize that they weren't perfect either, and many of the criticisms that they might level against conservatives could very easily apply to the counter-culture as well, with much of the more pointed and effective political commentary from these shows, it seems to me, being designed to work both ways. As a result, I for one have always felt felt fond and protective of these shows, even if I might not always see eye-to-eye with '60s counter-culture politics in general - I can't always say that about the modern counterparts to these shows (in fact, I'm not sure I could say that about many modern shows at all!) If I were to somehow be entrusted to make a modern conservative counter-culture comedy show in a progressive "mainstream" environment, I would hope I would be able to successfully do much the same that the creative team from Laugh-In or the Smothers Brothers did, and be able to at least invite "the other side" to sit down together with us and laugh at ourselves a little as a family, rather than declaring each other irreconcilable enemies and ripping each other apart - I still like to think that we're all capable of doing that today, if we were able to do so back when these shows first aired!

This! I was nine years old when the series began, and even with all its innuendo, body-paint, and skimpy bikinis, I was allowed to watch it along with my very traditional parents and my older siblings. We also watched the Smothers Brothers.

Thanks Jayk!

Def needs more views bro

legend

The Overton Window is the dumbest Libertarian concept ever conceived.

You forgot about tribal sovereignty. The Nixon administration more or less resolved the legal status of indigenous peoples more than 50 years ago and Canadian politicians are spitefully refusing to learn from Americans' example.

I love your points! I'm from a pretty conservative background, but still only heard/saw Nixon as the scary boogey-man. Reading 'All the President's Men' in High School probably sent me down that path. Seeing what the individuals *did* work on reveals the complexity to the stories. Thanks for sharing!

That also means ignoring arguably Nixon's biggest political legacy, the Southern Strategy. The long-term effects of that are probably a lot worse than any of the good he did.

Yeah I wish I could figure out exactly what all changed.

much as I love 60s/70s aesthetics I’m very glad I was born in the early 00s and not back then

Actually, R&M borrowed heavily from a first-generation TV comic named Ernie Kovacs (who died in a car crash just as he was hitting his stride). Kovacs was the one who perfected "blackout" sketch humor for TV -- short visual bits that lasted only a few seconds. His most famous was a used car salesman who slaps the top of a car...only to see the entire vehicle collapse to the ground. (It was a hugely expensive joke that lasted only 2 seconds.) Rowan & Martin acknowledged their debt to Kovacs, once doing an extensive tribute to the man on their own show.

my father in law quotes this all the time and my wife and i had no idea until i started researching this video

That was kind of the point. I think the Smothers Brothers show was even more on the edge in that they were heavy with double entendre and just saying normal mundane things with a wink and a nudge.

thanks mr n!

Are you still in a jar on Futurama?

Are the rumors of you two being gay lovers true?

It was probably Jo Anne Worley.

Joanne Worley?

Laugh In was an experiment in a lot of things.

you bet your bippy.....

You could say they created the first "memes."

@@AllenUry - exactly what I was just saying: the Laugh-In running gags were very much precedents for modern internet memes! I don't think they were the first - I mentioned the "Kilroy Was Here" doodles and old-fashioned political cartoons as being even earlier examples. Or, rather, the modern Internet meme is actually the modern incarnation of the old political cartoons, flavored by a sort of Laugh-In style counter-culture aesthetic! But, I don't think you can point to much before Laugh-In that looked so much like a modern internet meme! I was just a bit too young to have seen Laugh-in until later reruns in the '80s and '90s, but I grew up hearing my parents and their friends and family saying weird and mysterious things like "You Bet Your Bippy!", "Find THAT in your Funk & Wagnalls!", "Here Come the Judge!", "Verrrrrry Ineresting!", "Sock It To Me!", "The Flying Fickle Finger Finger of Fate!", and so on, like a nation-wide in-joke for their generation... when I saw Laugh-In with them at last, it was like suddenly being in on the jokes and (more or less) getting it at last! I think that post-Meme generations would be in much the same boat, without the help of "The Urban Dictionary" or "Know Your Memes" to bail them out on unfamiliar Memes! (That's a benefit that we wouldn't have had in a pre-internet world where Laugh-In went off the air, time went on, and the gags still kept making the rounds without younger people having been there to see the memes evolve naturally in context!) Anyway, I think that memes are a great comparison to what Laugh-In gags were all about!

True

That was it! And fair enough!

i work over at vox (they cover a wide range of stuff)

Totally!

It's literally just that he's worried they will sock it to him. It's...something.

@@PhilEdwardsInc Is that it? I just watched your video (and I LOVE your videos!) 2x and still couldn't see that you explained your thesis: the 'truth' behind Nixon's sock-it-to-me!

@@pameladaley955 Same.

It inadvertently highlighted his starchy stiffness even further.

Born under the 49 star flag. We had it in 'living color'. Dad was an electronic engineer and would build Heathkits (DIY TV kits) and hotrod them.

@@-oiiio-3993 I built a HeathKit radio 👍 I can remember the day we replaced our black and white TV with a color Zenith console TV. 1970 or 1971. The first thing that came up when we turned it on was “Godzilla vs King Kong”, playing probably on NYC channel 9. As the color tubes were warming up and coalescing, the narration “oooh - Godzirra is roasting King Kong” was the first sound out of the Zenith (“the quality goes in before the name goes on!”). That’s one of our family memories we chuckle about to this day. Laugh In was way better in color.

@@brianfergus839 The first thing we microwaved was a hot dog. Hot in seconds - it was _magic._

Fair enough! Thanks for taking the time to write!

@@PhilEdwardsInc Thanks for understanding, you do great work and there wasn't a drip of malice in my comment!