"The internet came along decades later, and then social media. We have seen that each of these technologies can be put to destructive use — spreading lies, sowing hatred and creating the conditions for authoritarianism to take root. But that is not the whole story. Innovative technologies create new ways for us to express ourselves, and, I hope, will allow humanity to learn more about itself and better understand one another’s ideas, failures and achievements. These technologies have also been used to create connection, community and platforms for the kind of ideological sparring that might have drawn Archie [Bunker] to a keyboard.... Reaching this birthday with my health and wits mostly intact is a privilege.... Let us encourage one another with visions of a shared future. And let us bring all the grit and openheartedness and creative spirit we can muster to gather together and build that future."
Lear says Archie, if he were around today, would probably watch Fox News and vote for Trump. Probably?! He also imagines that Archie would have disapproved of the January 6th incursion on the Capitol. But why? Seems to me he'd approve, but Lear doesn't want him to, so okay.
I would give this my "civility bullshit" tag, but the man is 100 years old. That's got to count for something, so I will refrain from my usual practice.
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Seems like a decent guy, but anyone who can go 60-plus years without evolving and growing ideologically - perhaps even devolving - gets limited respect from me.
"Let us encourage one another with visions of a shared future. And let us bring all the grit and openheartedness and creative spirit we can muster to gather together and build that future."
No. Never again.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Fool me three times, I'm impressed you're still trying with my bayonet in your large intestine.
Compromise ended with the ascendant dick-chopping alphabet mafia. Fuck them. War.
"Lear says Archie, if he were around today, would probably watch Fox News and vote for Trump. Probably?! He also imagines that Archie would have disapproved of the January 6th incursion on the Capitol. But why? Seems to me he'd approve..."
That's a peculiar notion. Do you think most Trump voters approved of "the January 6th incursion"? What gave you that idea? The actual Trump supporters who entered the Capitol were mostly tricked into doing so by agents provacateurs who removed signage and fencing so that they did not know they were entering a restricted area.
I would guess, however, that many Biden voters approved of the numerous Leftie scum who conducted various outrages inside the Capitol during the Kavanaugh circus.
What would the Anti-Defamation League think of a Jew inventing a WASP hate figure... just one moment... let me re-phrase that. What would an honest Anti-Defamation League think of a Jew inventing a WASP hate figure?
Television may not have existed in 1922 as a medium for theatrical performance, but foundational research into transmittable images had been ongoing for twenty years before Norman Lear's birth. In 1923 Vladimir Zworkykin patented the iconoscope, a TV camera tube based on Swinton-Rosing electronic image scanning.
I'm with you on the civility BS. Once I saw the word authoritarian I instinctively knew he was referring to anyone to the right of Joe Stalin. Funny how lefty dictators are never called authoritarians.
I have been dismayed to see the spread of so many lies and the sowing of so much hatred about Donald Trump.
I have been dismayed also to see the creation of the conditions for the authoritarianism of Joe Biden.
Why do these wealthy assholes live forever? And never shut up.
Sorry, but when I think of Norman Lear I mostly remember the $100 million check he had to write when he divorced his wife...only to have her blow much of it on what seemed like a good idea but didn't have legs: a magazine for women of a certain age.
It was called, of course, Lear's.
Archie Bunker wouldn't have approved of Jan 6 because he would have had the street smarts to see that the people in the Capitol that day were almost all fringe-y, gullible, or fakers.
Can anybody make the case for me that Trump is authoritarian, or is it just a sufficiently repeated lie?
Norman Lear has been a lefty since puberty and thought Archie Bunker would be seen as a villain instead of a hero. It's a little like the clueless idiots who thought Forrest Gump would be a joke but he turned out another hero.
Civility bullshit bullshit. He’s earned the tag.
Lear is one of the ultra rare liberals clear-eyed enough to create an accurate conservative character, a believable one that seemed normal to Americans, not like characters that don't exist in the real world. And as we do, normal Americans fell in love with Archie for his normalness and his understandable reaction to the liberal nonsense as it existed in mid-1970s America. I'm surprised Lear will allow for the Trump vote. He didn't have to admit that. My mom's friend Marty worked for Lear's production company for years and said he was a pretty nice guy. My friend Vince grew up with Lenny Kravitz in the California Boys Choir, and Lenny's mom also worked for Norman playing the black lady married to a white man. (A roll she took on in real life too.) Again, she said he was great to work for.
Happy birthday Mr. Lear.
Our host is too gracious with Norman.
m
"creating the conditions for authoritarianism to take root"
So true. Centralizing and controlling the means of mass communication became a prime tool of prog authoritarianism, imposing the correct line. Over the past century, first "liberals," then progs got so used to their hegemony that they had to attack or try to suppress any heresies--talk radio, Fox News, the occasional un-PC comment on Twitter, and so on. Banning Trump from Twitter was just one authoritarian step among many, but in some ways the most telling.
If I recall correctly, I read in the book “Influencer” that Norman Mailer and his crew were felt to be so successful at propagandizing pro-abortion with their Maude episode that they were hired by other countries to do propaganda. The book presents it in a positive light, but it made me think differently about television sitcoms. As it turns out, the episode was inspired by a contest by an activist group that offered cash for television sitcom episodes that encouraged population control. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude%27s_Dilemma) Today, Planned Parenthood has a liaison that works to make sure abortion is portrayed favorable in the media. https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/09/24/planned-parenthood-advised-hollywood-over-150-movies-shows-since-2014-director-says/
Archie Bunker would not have approved of an "insurrection" that Lear and silly others think occurred. Archie would have been fine with what in reality was a protest that got out of hand.
I have to agree with Jupiter and Lear. I don't agree with the Jan. 6th incursion on the Capitol, and I doubt many do. Disagreement with the action doesn't mean in any way that I think it was an Insurrection. Incursion is the correct term. I don't agree with the takeover of the Wisconsin capital building either, but I don't think it was insurrection. Should those that participated be punished. Yes. However, I'm not seeing fair punishment. BTW, there are a lot of people who went to the rally then back to their hotels that were shocked by what happened at the Capitol.
As for Lear, Happy Birthday and long life, but while I hope you get more years, your 15 minutes are up.
New Yorkers look at Trump differently.
He's a commie but he's also a genius.
Give the devil his due...
"People for the American way"
I'm so old I can remember when they ran TV ads with the tagline
"the right to have and express your own opinions. Freedom of thought. That's the American way."
https://youtu.be/ZX1sRdfQ8Uo
Ahhhh... The good old days.
PS: they never really meant it, though.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
That's a peculiar notion. Do you think most Trump voters approved of "the January 6th incursion"? What gave you that idea? The actual Trump supporters who entered the Capitol were mostly tricked into doing so by agents provacateurs who removed signage and fencing so that they did not know they were entering a restricted area.
If I had been anywhere nearby there I would have stayed far away as it was an obvious setup.
Ray Epps and the thugs who pulled down the barriers and the chain link fencing are not in Garland's archipelago. I suspect the FBI types neared the number of Trump supporters. We may never know unless the GOP grows a pair next year.
if (IF!) Archie Bunker was a real person, it would be interesting to hear his take on
* The Lincoln Man/Boy Love Association
* The Patriot Front
* Mitt Romney
* Liz Cheney
Two things that I can say for sure:
Archie voted for Ronald Reagan.
Archie idolized FDR, not Herbert Hoover.
Lear might concede the first but would deny the second. Part of the unwillingness to see below the surface of politics that has limited his thinking to this day.
Lear was older than sliced bread which was not commercially available until 1925.
Lear seems like an OK guy. Gunner on a B 17. He was a child of Eastern European immigrants, so prone to the left. His problem with Archie Bunker is general with art. You create it, but the public interprets it.
It was the conceit of the show that Archie Bunker was some kind of WASP Republican when it was obvious that he was an Irish-Catholic New Dealer. Carroll O'Connor didn't even try to approximate a WASP character. There's no was Archie Bunker yearned for Herbert Hoover. ....I suppose Lear is a decent guy. If there was any dirt, it would have come out by now. He really was a true believer. Can anyone name one part of the liberal agenda that he was ever out of step with or even dubious of. Well, anyway congratulations on breaking a hundred. He outlived Betty White and Jack LaLane. There is no easy moral to be drawn from this.
The story is that Lear based Archie on his father. I would have swapped some of later seasons of "All in the Family" to see a show based more closely on that.
Lear's first cousin, David Susskind, was more of television revolutionary, and was more honest about it, but he didn't make the big money and died a lot younger.
As I recall, Archie vilified FDR.
The man loosed Jimmy “JJ” Walker on the nation. That is a debt that Lear will never pay.
Readering: "New Yorkers look at Trump differently."
New Yorkers look at a lot of things differently....
https://brilliantmaps.com/new-yorkers-world/
For me, the older I get the more bizarre the world seems.
I would like to know Lear's thoughts on what a woman is.
Right now I'm just an old white man sitting in front of a computer with a blue shirt on.
Television, the internet and social media allow for authoritarianism? We had more authoritarian governments historically right up to the development of mass media, and current authoritarian governments suppress such media significantly because the open spread of information leads to their downfall.
"You create it, but the public interprets it."
Bless his heart, he made reactionaries fun. It was in that era I met a retired officer and hus grown kids. Though he was more elegant than Archie he was just as bigoted, and said outrageous things for effect and we just laughed at him.
He loved Archie Bunker too.
@Two Eyed Jack. I remember Archie hating FDR.
In the episode that introduced Edith’s cousin Maude, he deliberately provoked her by saying “This country was ruined by Franklin Delano Roosevelt”.
I think the more interesting thought experiment is to send Jan 6 back to 1972. I would guess that Archie would have voted for Nixon/against McGovern. (I think William is correct in characterizing Archie as a new dealer who left the Democrats when the meatheads took over. I wonder when the switch would have been made: '64? '68? definitely by '72.) How would Archie have reacted if Nixon had lost and claimed the election was stolen? (What the Hell? Twice?) Lots of interesting ways to write that story.
Archie Bunker was the only person in the household to bring in money to support it.
Lear is NOT an "OK Guy". He's a leftwing asshole Hollyweirdo who got rich by stealing plots/characters from British sitcoms and turning them into bad American ones. Vulgar and unfunny - except for AIF. But somehow people want to believe he's a good guy. Go read Carroll O'Connor or Redd Foxx on Lear being an "OK guy".
Lear's a perfect example of the old age: "No one went broke underestimating the taste of the american people".
It is interesting that Lear has outlived most of the casts of the shows for which he is famous.
I don't know if I really want to live to be hundred given how awful getting that old probably is, but if I do by some chance make it, I want to keep my wits about me the way Lear has and Betty White did.
"New Yorkers look at Trump differently."
Especially the ones who vault over subway turnstiles.
Lest anyone think Archie Bunker is a parody, I knew Archie personally. He was exactly as on the show.
Actually, not "Archie", he was an Electrician 2nd named Duke M who I worked with in the Navy from 71-73. If Carroll O'Connor had bowed out, Duke could have stepped in with no prep.
Sort of short and dumpy like Archie, similar views to Archie. Most amazing was that he sounded exactly like Archie vocabulary, pronunciation, cadence, the whole package.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
"New Yorkers look at Trump differently."
Do tell. Prima facie evidence of their anthropoid idiocy. Revising their view of Trump and his politics would go a long way to returning New York City to the realm of civilization.
Lear is correct, he is after all the character’s creator. How can he be wrong?
As an old union guy, I can see Archie Bunker voting for Joe Biden, if he could look past his Catholicism, but more likely for Donald Trump. And Donald Trump himself said he disapproved of the heinous January 6 attack on the Capitol and that no true supporter of his would have approved of it. That was bullshit but Archie may very well have believed it.
Readering @2:31 "New Yorkers look at Trump differently."
An absolute truth. Used to read Spy in the late '80s where the NY smartboys invented 'short-fingered vulgarian' just for him.
But come on, New York (a town I like) produces a ton of aggressive assholes with big money and big mouths competing with each other. It's the nature of the place. Trump's just a product of his class, set and environment.
Lear gave us Gloria's husband. F**khead I believe he was called. Lear is unforgiven by me.
CapitalistRoader said...
Archie Bunker was the only person in the household to bring in money to support it.
And if I remember correctly, no one in the house really gave Archie much respect.
FTR, Lear didn't create Archie Bunker or All In The Family. He adapted it from a BBC sitcom called Till Death Us Do Part. Archie was loosely based on the lead character Alf Garnett, who was much more of a bigot. Archie was really more of an old school guy who was having problems adjusting to newer times. Only some one fully invested in leftism, like Lear, would have considered him a villain.
"Lear says Archie, if he were around today, would probably watch Fox News and vote for Trump. Probably?! He also imagines that Archie would have disapproved of the January 6th incursion on the Capitol. But why? Seems to me he'd approve..."
Donald Trump IS Archie Bunker, writ large. But Archie Bunker isn't the antithesis of Norman Lear; rather, he's Lear's mirror image, just with biases against the opposing end of the political spectrum. If you've ever listened to progressives talk trash about conservatives, including the name-calling and straw man arguments, you know what I mean.
I thought Lear seemed like a pretty talented guys back in the day.
But here's a news flash: Archie Bunker was a fictional character! He didn't do then and he wouldn't do now, anything not scripted for him by his writer(s). Not. One. Damn. Thing. So, it kinda doesn't matter what anyone thinks he'd do. He did (and would do) what he was told - by definition.
You're welcome.
Edith: His whole family was for Roosevelt.
Archie: That was for two terms, but that was it! We didn't know the guy was gonna hang on to the job like a pope!
A vile man. His vicious, defamatory depiction of white people, epitomized by Archie Bunker, is what made him famous. This slander was published a handful of years after the same America, the same white people, caused the civil rights act in the voting rights act to be enacted. Leftists saw that black people weren’t instantly turning into white suburbanites in terms of wealth and success. They saw that white people overwhelmingly hoped for the success of black people after the civil rights movement, if only to restore civil peace. So the left needed to create a mythology of permanent white racism to justify the failure of their dreams. The ongoing program of cultural genocide begin at that time, largely with him. I’m sure he’s well pleased with his work. Few people have intentionally caused more unjustified division and hatred and confusion. I thought he was dead. Malevolent people are sometimes oddly long lived.
Old white man. Ergo: he is disqualified from having a say.
Whoa, Left Bank at 7:08! Was Archie anti-Catholic? I don't recall, honestly, how religion was treated in the show.
I also find the notion of anti-Catholic because of union membership puzzling too.
Breaks into two questions--what was the treatment of religion (if any) on the series, and how common is the equation of union members with any particular religious faith?
Cool your jets, Lex. Archie wasn't all W/white people . . . and for that matter how much attention did young people of any color pay to AITF?
"Archie was loosely based on the lead character Alf Garnett, who was much more of a bigot."
The Mike character was a socialist lunkhead rather than a student. He and Alf could actually hang out together.
It's interesting that when they spun off Maude they made the conservative villain a doctor who was seldon seen in anything but a suit.
Answered my own question--Archie was a passive Episcopalian.
Shows how much attention I paid. Still wondering about the union vs Catholic part.
Lear never understood his creation, Archie. Did Shakespeare understand Hamlet? Did Milton understand Satan?
The joke is that Ole Arch was proven right and Meathead was proven wrong.
Iman - Jimmy JJ Walker does a great job hosting as a 70s DJ on a radio station I listen to. Don't know anything else about him.
Lexington - I could be wrong, but I think there is a very good reason malevolent people are often long-lived. And it is not because those long decades of decrepitude and the knowledge that one is not a good person and never has been a good person are meant as years of blessings. Some old people do experience their old age as a blessing, and often their family and loved ones are very happy for those extra years. But there are many malevolent people in the world, and when such people live to a 100, those extra decades are not a blessing for them, not in a direct sense, anyway.
Jimmy JJ Walker isn't my cup of tea, but he wasn't another celebrity with cookie-cutter Hollywood opinions.
Arthur was the foil, but he wasn't the villain. The comedy demanded that Maude or Archie or George Jefferson or Fred Sanford would do or think something wrong or stupid or crazy, and Arthur or Walter or Carol (or the corresponding characters in the other shows) would tell the lead that it wouldn't work.
Come to think of it All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons, and Sanford and Son followed the same pattern: a wrong-headed lead ignoring wiser people and getting into trouble. But maybe most comedies could be reduced to a similar formula.
I loved Til Death Us Do Part, which started soon after I moved to UK, and gave me one sense of Brits, the Avengers giving me another. And Una Stubbs played a dishier, non-annoying version of the Sally Struthers character.
Statists complaining about authoritarianism . . . priceless.
Some old people are pickled in hatred and spite and go on forever. Others cherish politics as an outlet or a focus for their malice and animosity. It's purgative. It gets out the spite and allows them to live the rest of their life more lightly and freely. Lear may be like that. It helped that he was living in a bubble of people who agreed with him and admired him. It's not hard to see the sunny side of things when you live in that kind of cocoon.
Everyone paid attention to AITF. Everyone watched it. It was a shock when it came on. I remember it well.
Archie wasn’t meant to represent all white people. He was meant to represent all non-progressive white people, the trash white people, the garbage whites, the racist trash, the people who voted for Nixon, the people who would vote for Reagan, the people who would vote for Trump, those white people people. The ones you know are out there, the ones you can smell at Walmart.
Lear knew exactly what he was doing. He did have a sort of genius, he gave a very influential segment of America an image that made them feel really good about themselves, and really powerful, and really morally right. he fed their smugness. He gave them an ideological crack pipe.
It’s interesting that the show is not popular in reruns. It’s dated. It was political propaganda, and that does not age well.
His father, Herman "King" Lear, a salesman, was supposed to have been a real tyrant and bigot. Norman didn't want to go over the same territory as Arthur Miller or Philip Roth or Franz Kafka, so he turned him into Archie, with help from the British original series.
"Everyone paid attention to AITF"
For some values of 'everyone' and 'attention.'
Was the original "Irish" Archie intended to be Catholic?
Carroll O'Connor put a lot of his Irish-American self into Archie, but making Archie Catholic and Irish would have meant giving up on a lot of easy jokes.
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