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Comment count is 38
Gmork - 2015-08-24

Wholesome family bigotry.


Mr. Purple Cat Esq. - 2015-08-24

So *this* is the wellspring of US culture.


Hegemony Cricket - 2015-08-24

Of all the things to point at as a problem, this is most definitely not it.

This show was one of the popular culture artifacts that helped get the US's head partially out of its ass when it came to recognizing the unspoken racism/sexism/general bigotry that permeates our nation and was at a particularly high boil following the radical advances of the 1960s.

Norman Lear was and is a fucking genius.


Bort - 2015-08-24

"... and you Polacks are meatheads! And someday, you're going to make 'North'!"


Xenocide - 2015-08-24

One day I'm going to invent a portal gun like the one Rick Sanchez has. And wherever I go I'll introduce myself by saying, "Greetings. I hail from the universe where they made 'North.'"


infinite zest - 2015-08-24

Hey now, that's the same universe that This Is Spinal Tap came from, just like how Happy Feet and Mad Max exist in the same one.. how exactly does this happen?


The Mothership - 2015-08-24

This was an extremely popular show at the time.


yogarfield - 2015-08-24

This was, and still is a great show.


garcet71283 - 2015-08-24

No offense meant to those above this post, but saying this show is racist or bigoted is the same as claiming Blazing Saddles is or that Beavis and Butthead glorified delinquent behavior.

The show was intended as satire and regularly had Archie learning his lesson at the end or his racism putting him into funny predicaments.

Carroll O'Connor himself was a pretty hardcore democrat that really got pissed off when people thought his character was somehow glorifying the bad behavior.


Albuquerque Halsey - 2015-08-24

This. Watched it as a kid and got the point of the show. Pretty much everywhere, it's gonna be problematic.


Xenocide - 2015-08-24

Although ironically a lot of the folks who were in on the joke 40 years ago grew up to basically hold the same views, while patting themselves on the back for not being quite as cartoonishly racist as Archie Bunker.

In other news, Archie ended up going into real estate, getting rich, and now he's the Republican frontrunner.


John Holmes Motherfucker - 2015-08-24

Norman Lear, the producer, went on to found the liberal advocacy group People For The American Way.

Archie had his bigoted fans who loved him unironically, and I'm sure Lear was happy to bring them to the conversation. Maybe they learned something.

This episode was one of first times anyone ever discussed homosexuality on TV, and it was preempted from a lot of stations. Where I lived in upstate New York, we saw a short documentary on race car drivers,

Eventually, I got to see the episode, where Archie finds out one of his macho drinking buddies is gay,


infinite zest - 2015-08-24

I was too young for All in the Family, and for whatever reason it wasn't put into syndication like Cheers, Night Court, etc. etc. but I've caught a few episodes here and there. I don't watch a lot of TV, but besides maybe Chapelle's Chow, and the episodes of Family Guy which basically plagiarize AITF purposefully, I can't think of too many shows that covered the racial/ideological/sexual divide like AITF did, and that was like 40 years ago!


Old_Zircon - 2015-08-24

Beavis and Butthead kind of started to turn in to the thing it was satirizing around season 6, maybe late season 5.


Old_Zircon - 2015-08-24

IZ, you could probably add Soap to that list, too. I was a little too young to catch it but from what I've seen of it, Billy Crystal's character was more human and real than most gay characters on network TV even today, unless the handful of episodes I've seen were uncharacteristic.


That guy - 2015-08-24

garcet, you do realize that given how the site's going lately, this should devolve into a 50/50 flame war for like a week, right?


John Holmes Motherfucker - 2015-08-24

>> I can't think of too many shows that covered the racial/ideological/sexual divide like AITF did, and that was like 40 years ago!

And then there's Maude! I saw a clip from "Maude" on youtube a while ago, and I realized that you still don't see middle-aged people being sexual like that on TV very much. Maude and Walter were kissing!


boner - 2015-08-24

All in the Family is based on a british show that had the exact same thing happen (half the show's fans unironically agreeing with the racist character)


fluffy - 2015-08-24

Cheers is an odd case study regarding 80s portrayal of homosexuality. In early seasons, pretty much everyone was a gay-bashing bigot, but towards the end they were all pretty accepting of queer folk and mostly laughed at homophobia.

On the other hand they were really, really behind the times regarding racial issues.


Bort - 2015-08-24

About "Cheers" and race, are you thinking of Louis, the "rather large black man" that Cliff accidentally got fired? That was pretty openly racist of Norm -- he wasn't scary because he was large, but because he was large and black.


infinite zest - 2015-08-24

Man.. I don't remember any of these things about Cheers. Then again I watched it because I was a 13-year-old with insomnia and Cheers came on the one other network besides PBS that we could pick up at around midnight. Who knew that for all the zany bar antics I'd one day wind up a weird combination of Norm and Frasier..


garcet71283 - 2015-08-24

Yes, That Guy, I know :)


fluffy - 2015-08-24

My criticism of Cheers regarding race is more that they went 11 seasons and only had like two black people in the background ever. Hell, there were probably more black people in the old-timey artwork in the intro than there were in the show itself.


fluffy - 2015-08-24

Oh wait, the delivery guy was black. And he even had a speaking line! In 1991.


cognitivedissonance - 2015-08-24

And then there's Maude.


Old_Zircon - 2015-08-25

To be fair, Fluffy, that was probably a pretty accurate portrayal of the ethnic profile of a townie bar in downtown Boston in the late 80s. Boston was and is segregated as fuck.


Prickly Pete - 2015-08-24

What's funny is that they aren't offended that Archie is gay bashing, they're offended that he's profiling this guy as gay because he's sensitive, wears glasses, and from England. If anything, they're just as bigoted as he is.


John Holmes Motherfucker - 2015-08-24

Well, not quite, but I see your point. The episode itself was more enlightened than Mike.


il fiore bel - 2015-08-24

So they smoke like chimneys over there. What's the big deal?


TeenerTot - 2015-08-24

Shhh. Nobody tell him.


John Holmes Motherfucker - 2015-08-24

"England is a fag country" is exactly the kind of thing that AITF did so well, something that people actually believed that suddenly seemed ridiculous when somebody said it out loud on TV.


Rodents of Unusual Size - 2015-08-24

Classic comedy about how it used to be illegal for people to have gay sex. Good times.


That guy - 2015-08-24

please tell me you understand the tone of the show and what it did for American television.....


John Holmes Motherfucker - 2015-08-24

I repeat, at the time, affiliates all over the country, including my hometown in upstate new york, refused to air this episode. simply because they talked about homosexuality. In 1970, simply acknowledging the existence of homosexuality was violating a major social taboo, AND THEY VIOLATED IT! And the thing is, even if they refused to air the episode in your town, that made it a topic of conversation. Not long afterword, it became something people talked about on tv.

I think this was huge step toward getting to where we are, Someone was going to make it sooner or later. All in the Family made it.


Rodents of Unusual Size - 2015-08-24

I do understand the time they were living in but I can't really laugh at this. I mean at the time what they were doing was considerably brave in discussing it but considering how gays were basically jailed at every opportunity I can't really find it humorous. I'll never really be able to laugh at this show. It just depresses me if anything.


infinite zest - 2015-08-24

I can't remember if I read this or if someone just told me this, but I guess AITF was originally conceived without the laugh tracks (or live studio audience whichever it was) but that wouldn't sell like a regular sitcom. I guess people needed to know what and when to laugh. I mostly remember the show as the first to have a toilet flushing sound, which was like two people in the same bed.


Hazelnut - 2015-08-26

I guess in 30 years people like ROUS are going to be really offended by clips from the Colbert Report.


chumbucket - 2015-08-25

This was a beautifully done comedy. What's kind of sad about it is that likely 70-80% of all American households from this or a generation before were in many ways like this.


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