Son of the Jetsons

Happy Birthday, George Jetson? The internet thinks he was born on July 31, 2022    ~ headline

Reruns watched from hospital beds

Carried everything you hated

About the world. Laugh tracks, dumb jokes,

Inscrutable stupidity.

At home, TV was the boob tube,

Supposed to rot the moral mind

And kept off in favor of hymns

Wailed from Bible Belt radio.

But who could help the hospital?

What was there but broadcast TV

For a broken kid in traction?

Hated the Jetsons. Hated them,

But recalled the touchstones, later,

Especially the flying cars.

It was supposed to be your world,

Your family as it was then,

Technologies as would be yours.

At both ends now, opinions say

It rotted the expectations.

That the technology would change,

Dominant mores stay frozen—

Nuclear whiteness, flying cars,

Homemakers carefree with robots?

Did you really expect such rot?

You did not.