Woody Allen, Dick Cavett...and the destruction of adulthood

The tools driving commerce, culture, connectivity, networking, transactions and media are widely available to children -- who intuit and leverage these tools better than us adults.

This is probably a good thing. After all, the planet's children are the most underutilized resource, the world's most marginalized group.

So I expect, after the destruction and change and fear, that life will get better.

But not everything. I happened to catch this interview on TMC of DIck Cavett and Woody Allen, from about 40 years ago. While I can't say it's terribly interesting, it's shocking in how adult the conversation is. Views on politics, religion, sex, fornification, culture, books, psychoanalysis. You get the picture.

This no longer exists. Not on broadcast television. Nor even on major cable networks. Nowhere, in fact, that I can find. And, trust me, I look. I suppose this explains why there are awful shows out there that use child characters, like on Family Guy and South Park, to make adult points, to engage in adult behavior. They, like us, are trying to re-learn what exactly it means to be a grown person; not repressed, not having to make jokes about sex, not having to rely on toddlers or tweens to express what we fear to think or say.

In this interview, Woody, who has til that point gone to Freudien psychoanlysis for 13 years, has had two failed marriages, enjoys sex with big, easy women, and appreciates really good music. And he was able to express these without a required fart joke, or silly sexual reference of our repressed generation.