Ed Sullivan

DAVID Halberstam's new book about the 1950s -- titled "Th Fifties," believe it or not -- makes them feel heavier with significance than they felt to me while they were still in progress. This shows once again how hard it is to see the forest when you spend 10 years up to your eyeballs in trees.From his commanding vantage high upon a peak in the faraway 1990s, Mr. Halberstam can see, for instance, that Elvis Presley was one of the most important phenomena of the 1950s, in a class with the invention of the hydrogen bomb.

NEW YORK -- On a cold February afternoon in 1964, Linda Plotnikoff, a lovesick 12-year-old from Sheepshead Bay, got her first glimpse of the mop-topped men of her dreams. She had been standing for hours outside the Plaza Hotel, clutching a record album and eagerly waiting for the opportunity to be transformed into a shaking, sobbing mess.And then, suddenly, in a window high in the hotel, the curtains parted. The Beatles were looking down at the crowd! Pandemonium in the streets! Dozens of police officers had to restrain the hundreds of John-Paul-George-and-Ringo-crazed teen-age girls who tried to rush the doors of the hotel to get to their idols.

LAST WEEKEND it was Lucy and Ricky. This weekend, it's Archie Bunker, Ed Sullivan and Mary Richards. No wonder they used to call CBS the Tiffany's of the networks.Unable to generate many destined-to-be-classic shows these days -- "Murphy Brown," maybe "Designing Women," but can you really see "Murder, She Wrote" getting enough votes for the Hall of Fame? -- CBS is dipping into its impressive past in search of viewers.Two are 20th anniversary specials, marking two decades since a pair of CBS' best comedies went on the air. Tomorrow night at 8 o'clock, it's 90 minutes of "All in the Family."

Never underestimate the archaeological prowess of the folks at Nick-at-Nite.Just when you thought they'd brought back to television just about everything there was to be brought back, they dig up another relic. This time, it's one of the most popular shows of the early '70s, a comedy/variety half-hour that spent two seasons as the No. 2-rated show on television before both it and its star faded from view.Remember Geraldine and Killer? The Rev. Leroy Jones of the Church of What's Happenin' Now?

AS AMERICANS, we do not censor. But as parents, we should. Why should our children endure the fast-paced, sexually overt, dancing bellybuttons of today's pop culture? Should an art form presented to children include images of violence against women? Why promote the oxymoronic notion of the empowered video babe? How do we counter, for our daughters, the seductress figure who chants about a jerky boy treating her badly? The entertainment industry has occasionally acquiesced to moral concern.

VIDEOCast of thousands"It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" isn't the comedy classic some believe it is, but the 1963 film does have an abundant collection of names, among them Spencer Tracy, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Buddy Hackett, Dick Shawn and Jimmy Durante. The film, done by Stanley Kramer, runs some three hours (it comes in two cassettes) and has all these people looking for a buried treasure -- the sum is $350,000, so you know how old this film is. No rating. ** The Margolis/Brown Adaptors are staging two new zany multimedia movement theater pieces at the Theatre Project -- "Decodanz: The Dilemma of Demodus and Diphylla" and "Koppelvision and Other Digital Deities."

The term I keep hearing is . . . hold on a sec, just saw it in the paper . . . "late-night wars," which apparently refers to the battle for ratings between Dave, Jay, Arsenio, Chevy, Conan and any other poor fool they trot out for the cameras after 11 p.m.The term is strangely riveting. Late-night wars! It conjures up images of David Letterman in full camouflage gear scrambling into a foxhole while lobbing hand-grenades at Jay Leno; a sneering Conan O'Brien strafing Chevy Chase in an F-10 Tomcat while screaming "Die, die, die!"

Has any generation been so enamoured with its past as the baby boomers? Has any generation been so courted by advertisers through a television industry that seems to be continually celebrating that past?Those are the kinds of questions some viewers may be asking themselves after the 1960s-and-'70s-nostalgia-rama CBS is serving up in prime time the next few days.Saturday night at 8, it's the "All in the Family 20th Anniversary Special." Sunday at 9, it's the "Very Best of the Ed Sullivan Show" with Carol Burnett as host.

Detroit -- Mick Jagger is, I think, 14 years older than I am, yet he is a symbol of enduring youth and I'm trying to figure out why AARP keeps sending me those Medicare supplement brochures. Doesn't seem fair. I was a little kid when the Rolling Stones went on The Ed Sullivan Show and were asked to tone down their racy hit "Let's Spend the Night Together" for a 1960s national television audience, but they're still rocking and I'm barely still walking. Maybe they made a deal with the devil - perhaps a little sympathy in exchange for a slower aging process, though Keith Richards must have been out of the room at the time.

Long, long ago -- in the 1950s, actually -- pop music had a different sound. These were the days when guys wore cardigans and crew cuts and gals wore poodle skirts and bobby socks, and their music reflected the perceived spirit of the times -- that is to say, harmony."