Have Things Changed Much?

     Or at all?

     J. Algernon Hawthorne (played by Terry-Thomas): I must say, if I had the grievous misfortune to be a citizen of this benighted country, I should be most hesitant at offering any criticism whatever of any other.
     J. Russell Finch (played by Milton Berle): Wait a minute, are you knocking this country? Are you saying something against America?
     J. Algernon Hawthorne: Against it? I should be positively astounded to hear of anything that could be said for it. Why, the whole bloody place is the most unspeakable matriarchy in the whole history of civilization! Look at yourself, and the way your wife and her strumpet of a mother push you through the hoop! As far as I can see, American men have been totally emasculated. They're like slaves! They die like flies from coronary thrombosis, while their women sit under hairdryers, eating chocolates and arranging for every second Tuesday to be some sort of Mother's Day! And this positively infantile preoccupation with bosoms. In all my time in this wretched, godforsaken country, the one thing that has appalled me most of all is this preposterous preoccupation with bosoms. Don't you realize they have become the dominant theme in American culture: in literature, advertising and all fields of entertainment and everything? I'll wager you anything you like: if American women stopped wearing brassieres, your whole national economy would collapse overnight.

     It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was released in 1963, to the (predictable) dour dismissals of “critics” and the endless delight of ordinary American moviegoers. In that regard too, I’d say very little has changed.