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Bad Memers
It’s 10 pm. Do you know where the country is headed?
The 1960s television flickers. It’s 10 pm. The news is over, the sitcoms have ended, and somewhere between the static and the sign-off, a voice cuts through:
“It’s 10 pm. Do you know where your children are?”
No music. No graphics. Just that calm, vaguely judgmental baritone, as if God had gone into broadcasting.
The line lingers in the living room, hanging above the ashtray and half-empty highball glass. Every 1960s mother looks toward the window; every father shifts in his chair. The message isn’t subtle: your kids are out there, and something terrible might be happening to them…at this very moment.
The PSA was in response to parents ignoring city curfews. Unfortunately, most parents were too busy chain-smoking Pall Malls and watching Laugh-In to remember which cul-de-sac their kid’s Schwinn was parked on.
It was also a tad ridiculous.
Sure, crime in 1968 was rising, but not yet at the catastrophic levels the media implied. (Crime rates got scary in the late 1970s and 80s.)
What was rising was social upheaval. Civil rights marches, anti-war protests, and youth counterculture had exposed a deep national anxiety. The country was changing, and not everyone liked…
