MIAMI (CBS4) – There’s stuff you just don’t mess with.

Senator Marco Rubio found that out in a recent speech to a friendly Republican audience in St. Petersburg.

He was giving a serious speech about the challenges faced by the U.S. in different decades of the Twentieth Century.  Then he got to the seventies:  ”The seventies were a very frightening time. Jimmy Carter was President.” The crowd loved that.

He then deadpanned: ”Most troubling of all, we had to overcome disco, bell bottoms…” The crowd was still roaring with laughter.

But then he added ”and the Bee Gees.”  Oops.  The good-natured booing started.

Senator… You can mess with Jimmy Carter, bell bottoms and disco, but when it comes to the Bee Gees… watch out.

We baby boomers love the Bee Gees… not the later Saturday Night Fever, disco version… we love the sappier-than-but-similar-to-the-Beatles group that sang “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” “Massachusetts,” “Run to Me,” and “To Love Somebody.”

The Senator was still in diapers when all those songs topped the charts.

Watergate and Carter… leisure suits and polyester… “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island”… and, yes, Senator Rubio, disco… the seventies were atrocious.  Just don’t mess with the Bee Gees.