Those seemingly charmed years would be forever invoked as a time of peace, prosperity, security, and confidence. The ugly realities of the 1950s—the war in Korea, the shame of McCarthyism, the persistence of Jim Crow, the deadly CIA plots, the nuclear fears—drifted out of focus. Instead popular memory dwelled happily on kitschy ephemera like Father Knows Best, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and men in fedoras.
