This instrument [television] can teach. It can
illuminate; yes, it can even inspire. But it can only do so to
the extent that human beings are determined to use it
to those ends. Otherwise, it’s nothing but wires and
lights in a box.
—Edward R. Murrow
My dad did not much care for the television set.
When I was nine years old, he and I watched the 1963
NFL championship game between the Chicago Bears
and the New York Giants. The Bears won the game
14-10. Another eight years would pass before we’d
watch another television show together but it was
worth the wait. It was the first episode of what would
become one of the most important and controversial
shows in television history, All in the Family.
Dad loved the show. So did Mom. So did most of the
country. I did, too, at least at the time.
In 1946 there were just over twenty thousand
television sets in the United States. By 1952, there
were over fifteen million. Substitute the words “television
sets” with “baby boomers” and the numbers
nearly match. Mine was the first generation in history
to be raised with the television and we began watching
at an early age.
Long before Sesame Street there was Romper Room.
This popular 1950s-1960s show featured a white female
teacher leading a group of white kindergartenaged
kids through a daily mix of lessons and fun.
A later show, The Mickey Mouse Club, replete
with an all-white cast wearing Mickey Mouse ears,
marketed the “wonderful world of Walt Disney” directly
to America’s youth. By the mid to late 1960s, when
most of us were in our teenage years, we were old
enough to watch more mature offerings but very few
were available.
The Beverly Hillbillies featured a collection of stereotypical
redneck Southerners loaded with unexpected
cash trying to negotiate life in ritzy Beverly Hills.
The far gentler Andy Griffith Show featured the
quiet Southern wisdom of Sheriff Andy Taylor as
he raises his inquisitive son,
Opie. The show did feature the requisite
dim-witted illiterate Southern hick, in this case, Gomer
Pyle. Eventually, Gomer left the show to star in his
own top-rated program.
Green Acres’ main story line revolved around a
New York City slicker who moved to a small rural
town named “Hooterville.” The country jokes were
many, as were the curvy women. A group of them left
Green Acres to star in Petticoat Junction.
These television series were among the most popular
shows in the late 1960s.
During the same time Arnold the talking pig was
cracking jokes on Green Acres and Aunt Bee and Andy
were fretting because Opie’s goldfish died, life outside
America’s living rooms was shockingly different.
Blacks were rioting in the streets, women were marching
for their equal rights, young men were dying in
Vietnam, war protestors were shot and killed on college
campuses, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther
King were assassinated, and millions of my generation
screamed “Make Love, Not War” and thought our
parents’ stupid and out of touch.
All of the television shows I just mentioned were
the property of broadcast giant CBS. But instead of
being ecstatic with their success, they were concerned.
Their shows were very popular in rural America,
but not so much among the more educated and prosperous
people who lived in our larger cities. Wishing to
tap into these more affluent audiences, CBS management
changed its programing. There would be no more
corny sitcoms and no more “know-it-all white television
dads and perfect families” from the 1950s. Enter
All in the Family.
The show was set in a blue-collar neighborhood in
Queens, New York. Archie Bunker, the show’s leading
character, is a know-it-all, sexist, racist bigot. His wife,
Edith, whom he calls “dingbat,” loves him despite his
obvious faults and does her best to keep her divided
family together. Daughter Gloria, a feminist, often yells
at her father, as does her long-haired liberal husband,
Michael, “Meathead” to Archie.
In Archie Bunker’s family, we see the fractures of
our own country. Never before had a television show
dared to so challenge our values.
Archie: Now wait a minute, Meathead, I never
said your black beauties [black Americans] was
lazy. You don’t believe me, look it up.
Gloria: He’s prejudiced, there’s no hope for
him at all.
Archie: I ain’t prejudiced, any man deserves
my respect and he’s gonna get it regardless of
his color.
Michael: Then why are you calling them
black beauties?
Archie: Now that’s where I got you, wise guy,
there’s a black guy who works down at the
building with me, he’s got a bumper sticker
on his car that says ‘Black is Beautiful’ so
what’s the matter with black beauties?
Edith: It’s nicer than when he called
them coons…
When the famous black performer, Sammy Davis
Jr. shows up at Archie’s home, he says,
“If you were prejudiced, Archie, when I came
into your house you woulda called me a ‘coon,’
or a ‘nigger.’ But you didn’t say that, I heard
you clear as a bell, right straight-out you
said ‘colored’!”
If Archie Bunker had truly been a hateful man, the
show would never have aired. Racist in his language,
most certainly, but mean-spirited, no. His “sin” was
identifying with an America that was rapidly disappearing,
and he was scared and confused. All he understood
was that the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
(“WASP”) world of the 1950s was under attack, by any
number of “radical groups.” Many of us identified with
him to at least a tiny degree, even as he espoused his
racist and sexist views. All in the Family dominated
television ratings for nearly a decade and Archie
Bunker became America’s “lovable bigot.”
The show’s producer, Norman Lear, and the actor
who played Archie Bunker, Carroll O’ Conner, were
both progressive in their views. But by creating a
lov-able bigot, they might have severely diluted the
strength of their message.
A study by Neil Vidmar and Milton Rokeach found
that nonbigots understood the intention of the series
and found confirmation of their views in the jokes.
Bigoted viewers, however, perceived the series in the
opposite way: it reaffirmed their bigotry. To them,
Archie Bunker was both funny and speaking truths,
according to their studies.
All too many viewers did not see the program
as a satire on bigotry, had identified with Archie
rather than Michael, saw Archie winning,
did not perceive Archie as the character who
was most ridiculed… and saw nothing wrong
with Archie’s use of racial and ethnic slurs.
Their research also found that persons ranking
higher on the “prejudice scale,” were also the show’s
more frequent viewers.
In response to whether All in the Family changed
television, O’Connor, who died in 2001 suggests: “No….
Television got right back into its old habits… the goal of
comedy, sitcom, was to make people feel good, get a lot
of laughs, and get the big ratings. Those were not really
our goals. The goals of all the shows that came after us
were that just.”
Norman Lear would go on to produce several
other award winning shows, including two spinoffs
from All in the Family. Maude, starring Bea Arthur,
presented America with its first strong feminist
character. Maude was as far removed from the acquiescing
women of the 1950s as those know-it-all
television dads were from the kitchen. The Jeffersons
featured a black couple who were “moving on up”
the economic ladder, much to the shock and chagrin
of their former neighbor, Archie Bunker.
In the early days of television, it was thought that
our citizens had a civic responsibility to watch news
and news-related shows, and for a time, we did. But our
country has turned away from such serious fare, and it
is there that I have my quibble with Norman Lear. He
popularized the loud-mouthed, domineering character,
at the expense of thoughtful and meaningful dialogue.
I’d rather watch the miniseries, Roots, a television
miniseries that covered slavery through the lives of
generations of slaves, then to hear George Jefferson
complain about “white honkies.”
Instead of Maude, give me Mary Tyler Moore. During
her long-running series that focused on her struggles
to find work-place acceptance in a male-dominated
world, she didn’t raise her voice or insult a soul.
But those are minor quibbles. Let us accord Archie
his due respect, as has the National Museum of
American History. Go there and you will see the threadbare
chair where Archie Bunker, one of the most
remarkable characters in television history, dispensed
his views as if sitting on a throne, and we laughed,
for better and worse.
Americana is a monthly column highlighting the
cultural and historical nuances of this land through
the rich storytelling of columnist Bill Fitzpatrick,
author of the books, Bottoms Up, America and
Destination: India, Destiny: Unknown.