"Things are more like they are now than they ever were before."

DAN AYKROYD:  Thank you, Father.  Hello, I am Weekend Update station manager, Dan Aykroyd.  A couple of months ago, Louise Brown, the world's first test tube baby was born.  That is the topic of tonight's Point/Counter-Point.  Jane Curtain will take the pro test tube baby point, and I will take the anti test tube baby counter-point.  Jane.

JANE CURTIN:  Dan, there is no joy greater than that of motherhood.  No doubt, you can not understand this because your mother, obviously, regretted your birth, and refused to suckle you, thereby accounting for your fearful, frustrated personality.  

It is inconceivable that anyone other than a cold, pompous ass, such as yourself, would deny a woman a chance of bringing a baby in to the world just because she is unable to conceive otherwise.

What is this? Irrational fear of medical advances? Why not deny the nearsighted their eyeglasses? Why not deny the diabetic his insulin? Well, Dan, I just hope that you contract some disease for which they have no cure, and that you waste away and die.

(laughter and applause)

DAN:  Jane, you ignorant slut.

(laughter and applause)

The issue here is not "motherhood", "apple pie", nor, is it the traditional medical treatment of disease.  The issue here is genetic engineering.  Once science can make babies in a test tube, then what? Will science make intelligent babies? Pro-Socialist babies? Slave babies? And, who will play god in these decisions? The government, that's who.  Which is run by liberals like you, Jane.  Then the world will be inhabited by billions of laboratory perfected ignorant sluts like yourself.

(laughter and applause)

JANE:  That's the news.  Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.  

(applause)

************

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.  You would like to think that that were not the case, that the discussion in the TradMedia had evolved.  Perhaps, even gotten better.  Instead, this sketch from the 70s only shows itself as a blueprint for the amplified counterproductive discourse of our times now, a whole generation later.  

Michael David Spitler