What moment of the 80s epitomizes the decade for you?

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

I keep remembering Chernobyl and the Challenger disaster.

[Walt Starr]

1. The movie, "Wall Street"

and Gordon Gecko going on about how "Greed is good!"

[htuttle]

31. Yup

That movie about sums it up for me.

The other side of the 1980's (the side closer to my own personal experience, actually) would be 'Sid & Nancy', IMHO.

Kind of an updated Upstairs/Downstairs sort of view.

[davidinalameda]

2. Madonna and her music

for a teenaged gay boy, seeing her was just like WOW

3. Lennon's getting shot

a month after Reagan got elected was NOT a good sign.
& then Marley went up and died in May of 81...

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

5. Two of the greatest musicians and public figures for the left dead is

definately a bad sign!

[cheezus]

4. Challenger

I was little... maybe seven years old. I couldn't figure out why they interruped class so we could see the space shuttle blow up again and again and again. Weird.

Oh yeah. And Smurfs.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

6. I was in 5th grade. Our teacher brought us in front of a tv and said

"something has happened in the launch of the space shuttle" I, the class clown said "did it blow up?"

'nuff said

[HippieCowgirl]

16. Challenger here, too.

We were in science class, watching it live on TV when it happened. Our class clown burst out laughing because he thought it was a joke. The rest of us were pretty dazed.

It was something I'll never forget.

[redqueen]

7. No moment in particular for me

But watching as so many in this country - even if they did recognize how horridly dangerous and bad for the country his policies were - blindly worshipping someone because he had movie star charm almost convinced me that people are too stupid to self-govern.

[The Blue Knight]

8. Our victory over the USSR in hockey

I think it made people proud to be an American again.

[BigMcLargehuge]

9. Challenger explosion

[GainesT1958]

10. Ronald Reagan telling people suffering from unemployment...

In the 1982 recession: "Well...they can always vote with their feet!" Which meant "move to another place where the job opportunities are better". You know, like the "Okies" going to California during the Depression...I guess in Ronnie's already-clouded mind, desperate solutions to starvation from his youth were the ideal!x(

The only-known antidote to all this posthumous "Ronnie-worship" going on right now is seeing how royally Dub--and "Pickles"--is screwing it up!:eyes:

B-)

[NormanConquest]

11. My dad losing the farm/family business in December '89

Kind of a personal moment, but it summed up the decade for me. :grr:

[eyesroll]

12. Ask any Gen Xer and Challenger will be right up there

It's our generation's "where were you when" moment.

I think Nancy Reagan appearing on "Didf'rent Strokes" was a classic 80s moment -- you had Just Say No. You had the first lady. You had Gary Coleman. You had a "very special episode."

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

14. "what you talkin' 'bout Mrs Reagan?"

:puke:

[Sticky]

13. If we're talking fashion....

it had to be Flashdance. Throw in Pat Benatar and everyone was wearing spiked hair, off-the-shoulder torn shirts and leg warmers.

Jennifer Beals looks 100% better today than she did in the 80's.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

24. Agreed!

[mark414]

15. me being born

in '85

[LoZoccolo]

17. New Coke

Yeah I wasn't happy about it either, but it was interesting to see everyone following this big corporate blunder.

Then afterward they came up with the "Red, White and You" Coca-Cola Classic campaign as if they were acknowledging the old Coke as a longstanding tradition and soon everyone was wearing those Coke shirts. I had three Coke shirts and a Coke sweatshirt.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

28. Cocaine was around since before the 20s - the 80s only made it popular!

:)

[eleny]

18. When I got laid off from my job in social services

:(

[flakey_foont]

19. My two daughters were born

[stinkeefresh]

20. the moment my then girlfriend told me she loved Ollie North

and I made out with her anyway.

Were we not all culpable in some small way?

[mrboba1]

23. Oh yeah - Ollie

I remember watching him on TV and wondering why everyone was saying how he was such a great guy...

That damn libral media!

[newyawker99]

27. Hi mrboba1!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

30. Do you ever rest?

Man, I have never known anyone so vigilant!!!

:hi:

[mrboba1]

21. Challenger & Reagan shot

I came home from 1st or 2nd grade & found out he had been shot - and I said to my parents:
"Well, you did want him out of office, didn't you?"

[SiouxJ]

22. Live Aid, Farm Aid, all the other Aid concerts

It took pop stars to wake people up to what was going on in the world. Where are they now? I wish some of them would take a stand. I know some are trying but they aren't getting much coverage and the really big stars are too afraid that they'll get "Dixie Chicked."

[Mandate My Ass]

25. and Band Aid

still get the chills over that one. On the flip side
of your observation, Studio 54 sums up the glitzy,
shallow, vapid, coked up, self indulgent attitude of
the 80's for me.

[Cleita]

26. The eighties were kind of a lost decade for me.

I seriously don't remember much about them. I remember worrying about losing our apartment because rents were rapidly rising and our wages weren't. There was a big real estate boom going on after the passage of the Jarvis Ammendment. Apparently, I wasn't the only one because rent control was voted in soon after in my town.

I remember for the first time seeing so many homeless in the streets. Greedy landlords on my block were renting garages without plumbing to the poor. It was illegal, but no one stopped it. Even two salaries bought less because of inflation. I drove the same car for a decade because I couldn't afford a new one. Other than that I woke up one day and it was January 1, 1990. I had no idea where the decade had gone.

[WherestheOutrage]

29. Ketchup classified as a vegetable in the school lunch program n/t

[LiberalEconomist]

34. Gettin' laid for the first time.

Looking so damned young and hot I couldn't leave the mirror alone. The entire decade was one big sick joke. I call it the "Age of Perversion." There was no real production taking place as the wealthy became more wealthy through corporate raiding. Oh, and yes, the military budget went throught the ozone layer. It was a bizzaro world, where the working-class people allowed themselves into believing that they too can make it big. Maybe it should be called the "Matrix Decade."

[sangh0]

32. Iran/Contra

.

[CaptainClark23]

33. June 12, 1982 - 1m march in NYC for Peace and Justice

I was a sophmore in HS. Volunteered to help out the march. Help get visitors from their buses to the march, coordinate with NYPD, provide information and basically did whatever I could to help it come off right.

Close to a million people marched from the UN up to Sheep Meadow in Central Park. No violence, only passion.

Will never forget looking out over that throng marching, and thinking that the people DO have power. That we need not be hopelessly resigned to the fates others might design for us.

Rev. William Sloane Coffin, James Taylor, Pete Seeger, Meryl Streep, Rita Marley, Orson Welles, Ellen Burstyn, survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki...damn that was quite a day.

Thanks for helping me recall it.

[MisterP]

38. I was born midway through the decade,

but I remember one of the Japan nuclear bombers trying to salve his conscience by ravaging the freeze movement, saying we couldn't possibly understand the "inscrutable" Soviets and their nuclear plans...

[robertpaulsen]

35. My top 10 moments

1. Seeing the movie "Red Dawn".

2. Reagan's "Evil Empire" speech.

3. Berlin Wall comes down.

4. Challenger explosion.

5. Seeing "The Day After" on TV.

6. Chernobyl disaster.

7. Rock Hudson dies of AIDS.

8. "I have no recollection" re: Iran/Contra

9. Reagan gets shot.

10. Reagan bombs Libya.

[kcwayne]

36. Stings song about "Do the Russians love their children too"

It was refreshing to hear some sanity in the sea of mutually assured destruction proponents.

Sting was more responsible for the end of the cold war with this song that Reagan was with his teleprompter based speeches.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

37. I remember that. That was the first voice of sanity this kid at 11 heard

questioning that maybe the USSR had some humans in it

[Liberal Veteran]

39. The phrase "Silence=Death"....

When gay people took on the government because the government couldn't be bothered to take on the initiative to do something themselves.

[NATaylor]

40. Me being born!

1981 and proud to be so young and dumb and... well, you know the rest!

[Touchdown]

41. The Army....the Iron Curtain

I went in in 1984, sent to the border in Germany, and guarded the fence. I saw Russian, E German soldiers on a daily basis. A buddy of mine and I tried to teach them the "Time Warp", but they just stared at us...maybe if they followed along they'd get shot. It was kind of surreal. They had guns, we had guns. We watched them with binoculars, they took photos of us. The banality of it all was so strange, yet we were still "enemies", and my natural instinct to just go up and say "HI!" had to be suppressed. :shrug:

I often wondered what it would be like to have a beer with them. I put in a request to take a bus tour of Moscow, but my CO vetoed it, saying I have no business over there...I was being told every day that they were the enemy, and I saw them almost every day through that fence (the iron curtain), and just couldn't believe that they were some monolithic evil (I hadn't a grasp of politics back then, so communism's details, and why it was an ideological evil didn't enter my mind), and I just wanted to find out who these people that I'm supposed to be hating were all about. Alas, I never got there.

In 1991, I did go to Berlin, and walked around the East part of the city. Took pics of the wall's remains (there was only about a Kilometer left of it by the Hauptbahnhoff), and found a restaurant owner who trucked me around in his polish made car to some of the sites. His place was well into the eastern part of the city, but had decorated his restaurant with American license plates. I finally got to talk to a commie, and also found out that, like him, there was probably nothing wrong or evil with any of those E German and Russian soldiers that stared back at me through that fence 6 years earlier.

This went on since the 50s? What a waste of human interaction.

[JCMach1]

42. Realizing that 'Frankie Goes to Hollywood' was just asking

us to chill out and relax!

[muriel_volestrangler]

43. The Herald of Free Enterprise

189 people killed because an English Channel car ferry sailed with its bow doors still open. It turned out this was fairly typical, but no-one had really cared, and anyway, it saved time and money. The company got off scot-free. They were, of course, close friends of Margaret Thatcher. There were several other disasters in Britain in the seconds half of the 80s, which all seemed to indicate a 'never mind the safety, feel the profits' attitude. The final irony was the name of the ship.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Herald%20of%20Free%20Enterprise

[wuushew]

44. The Assassination of Optimus Prime

Truly the greatest leader of our generation.



"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."
-----Optimus Prime

[BlueStateGirl]

45. Challenger Explosion, Live Aid, and at the end of the decade

The Berlin Wall coming down.

[devilgrrl]

46. The Charles Stuart case in Boston.

This doesn't define the decade for me personally but serves as a decent illustration of the me me me 1980's.

A pretentious, young upwardly mobile wannabe can't deal with the fact that his pregnent wife makes more than he does and being a newfather. So he offs her after a birthing class, pins the blame on a "drug addicted black man" - then the police, media and community buy it hook, line and sinker.... typical!