Yep, that's it exactly. You can cherry pick your bitch du jours all you want and view the past with your rose colored glasses to your heart's content. I was there and yes, Leave it Beaver and all that misty familial normalcy and societal stability was TV man, not real life.
Our lives are infinitely better today than they were in the past, even with all the problems we have to deal with.
Live in the NOW...
Do you think it is really better that kids now come home to an empty house and instead of Leave it to Beaver to watch, they have complete filth to watch? The media reinforced family values in the 30-50's, but that all changed in the 60's and it has been downhill since then.