The 8 Most Overrated Things About the Eighties

Two months ago, I presented a slideshow exposing The Most Overrated Things about the Sixties. I now offer the most overrated things about a decade that I can actually remember...

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Comments

[RedneckSamurai]

06:55 AM on 11/13/2011

What about parachute pants and bright colourful Bill Cosby sweaters?

[TINKER6]

01:14 AM on 11/12/2011

Big hair, spandex,Faulkner,don't ship to this country or this one ectect,did I say Faulkner, reverse meaning of macho. Good side Gilda Radner,AC/DC,RUSH, funny star reporters and of course the weather man never gets it right.

[sue1mar3]

10:06 PM on 11/11/2011

Funny they should mention "phoney celebrities" in the 80's when they were almost non-existent. Now is the time when we are bombarded by hundreds of talentless reality TV "celebrities".

[trustycaptain]

04:17 PM on 11/11/2011

Xanadu was epic; Gene Kelly dancing with Olivia Newton-John = Great. Soundtrack by Jeff Lynne = excellent. a Magical place filled with Roller skating, dancing, singing, smoke and mirrors = childhood fantasy.

[Amber Troska]

10:09 AM on 11/11/2011

Xanadu is a Xana-don't. (Sorry, I had to do it).

[grazer333]

05:27 AM on 11/11/2011

I remember non-stop recession and the decline of the middle-class. I remember the cities of the eighties filled with people in poverty, junkies, and disaster. I remember the rich getting richer, and the middle and working classes struggling to stay in their position. There were some fun times in the eighties, but the economy and our government did not share in them.

[sue1mar3]

10:08 PM on 11/11/2011

Some would say you are describing this decade and every one of the last several.

[twfslc]

01:07 AM on 11/11/2011

Here's why I hate CDs. Now, my CDs from the late 80s and early 90s are in great shape. I never used them as frisbees. But, you normally can't fast forward with a CD the way you could with a tape, or simply set the tone arm in the middle of a track with an LP.

And the pictures on LP jackets were much bigger, and the notes were much easier to read.

Frankly, I can't tell the difference in sound quality between a CD, an LP, and a tape.

[mathme]

04:10 PM on 11/11/2011

That sounds like a problem with your CD player. My CD player scans very, very quickly. I still think they're a pretty ideal format. Definitely sound better than lossy compressed formats.

[teddyray1]

05:33 PM on 11/11/2011

You sound old.

[twfslc]

01:02 AM on 11/11/2011

You know who first pushed the idea of greed being good? Milton Friedman. He explained on Phil Donahue that much of what humans do is because of greed. If a person wants a promotion for more responsibility and bigger paychecks, it's due to greed.

If a kid busts his butt to get the grades to get into an elite college or graduate school, it's because of greed (both the concept of better opportunities and education with a better school, and simply being able to tell people that he got into a good school).

Why did Steve Jobs invent the Apple II and Bill Gates invent software for the PC during the 80s? It wasn't because they felt that they could make the lives of people easier. It's because they could make a lot of money making the lives of people easier.

[sue1mar3]

10:14 PM on 11/11/2011

I think you have over-simplified Bill Gates and Steve Jobs' ambitions. They were smart guys who liked to tinker and problem-solve. They loved the field and felt they had something to offer. I really don't think when Bill Gates was in the computer lab in Jr. High that he was dreaming of inventing a product that would make him a billionaire. He had skills that almost no one else in the world had and ambitious enough to use them. No one had any idea the leaps and bounds computers could make in that amount of time. Or how truly important they would become in our lives.

[twfslc]

12:58 AM on 11/11/2011

First, I voted for Ronald Reagan twice. I don't know what the Australian economy had done during the 70s, but the U.S. economy had been stuck in stagflation. The Reagan tax cuts helped create a lot of jobs, while other policies wrung inflation out of the system.

If you're going to give credit to Gorbachev for ending the Cold War, then what about Boris Yeltsin? Gorbachev wanted to preserve the USSR as a communist country, while Yeltsin set things in motion that led to the break-up. And certainly, Gorbachev wasn't all that happy that the Soviet Bloc fell apart.

[mathme]

04:09 PM on 11/11/2011

Reagan raised taxes 11 times.

[aforesti]

05:03 PM on 11/11/2011

That's right, Reagan enacted the tax cuts early on, then figured he messed up and started increasing taxes in 1982. That's when the economy started getting better.

[lvgrannie]

05:20 PM on 11/11/2011

OOOH! and I bet you ride a donkey around all over because it doesn't use gasoline or electricity. Do you really have a better life under Obama than you did under Reagan. Oh I'm sorry, you don't look old enough to have even been alive during the 80s. So what if he raised taxes, we weren't in the depression we're in now. All I know is that 3 months ago, I had $400 left over after I paid ALL my bills and today I am running a negative balance. I haven't raised my standard of living or my spending habits. In fact, I have been even more careful about how I spend my money. My retirement doesn't cover all that much and I have NO money for recreational items. My only expenditure for amusement is my cable TV and the internet. We can't even go for "Sunday" drives any more because of the price of gas. In those days, we were good. So, as far as I'm concerned, I wish we could bring back President Reagan.

[rcampbell]

10:05 AM on 11/10/2011

How can they confine "Phony Celebrities" to the 80's when it took 'til the '00's to inflict Paris Hilton and the Kardasians on us?

[TheIpsoFactory]

02:28 PM on 10/12/2011

Thought I saw Will Smith in the thumbnail...? He's a perfect fit in that list.

[USHistoryMan]

08:55 AM on 10/12/2011

My kids were born in the 80's. Other than that, nuthin'.

[Trilby]

10:55 AM on 11/10/2011

Mine too. Maybe that's why I don't remember much about it. I was going to say, Shoulder pads.

[USHistoryMan]

10:52 PM on 11/11/2011

Yeah, the entire decade was pretty much a blur of formula and diapers.

[Emy Freeland]

03:10 PM on 10/11/2011

That is the creepiest photo overlay of regan i have ever seen, its like he's trying to teleport into the capitol dome...

[wtm2144]

02:35 PM on 10/10/2011

Even though you can't die from Genital Herpes, all the statistics alarm me.
1 in 5 Americans have it. 1 in 312 have HIV/AIDS

[bahkey]

05:57 PM on 10/08/2011

Hands down Ronald Reagan. Then REM,84,85,86 corvette,Arimus cologne,and the first Air jordan BB. shoes,very uncomfortable for hard court.

[sifc33]

09:07 AM on 11/13/2011

You aren't supposed to play BB in Jordans.. that's pretty much common knowledge...

[bahkey]

01:07 PM on 11/13/2011

The first pair yes, but after that a pretty good bb shoe. I wore out at least a pair per year, my fav. 1991.