Archie Bunker, Fifty Years Later

 

On January 12, 1971 – fifty years ago next week – Norman Lear’s revolutionary sitcom All In The Family debuted. There was literally nothing like it on American TV at the time, and it was quite a shocking departure from Green Acres or whatever family friendly show it replaced. I remember my family never missing an episode when I was a kid. I had cool parents.

 

I broke out my DVDs of the first season of All In The Family tonight and watched the series premiere. It’s been at least ten years since I watched that show, and given that we’ve had Archie Bunker’s more evil twin as President for the last four years, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it. Surprisingly, Carroll O’Connor and Norman Lear’s comedic genius is just as relevant now as it was fifty years ago. No two ways about it, Archie Bunker is a bigoted asshole, but he’s funny. In spite of myself, I laughed until I had tears in my eyes. The thing is, I was laughing AT Archie, not with him. Played to perfection by O’Connor, and based on Norman Lear’s own father, Archie is not a sympathetic character, and I hear echoes of Archie’s rhetoric in the worst of today’s political dialogue, especially on social media, where Trump supporting politicians and commentators bloviate, and anonymous incel keyboard warriors reign. Jean Stapleton is equally as funny as Archie’s long-suffering wife Edith, and – at least in this episode – she isn’t the pushover that I remembered her being later on in the series.

 

Archie represents the worst of the Nixon era – ignorant, uninformed, and bigoted. Lear never meant for Archie Bunker to be a role model (I hear sympathetic nonsense occasionally from people who seem to be nostalgic for Archie’s racial epithets, not realizing that Lear wrote them as ironic commentary on Archie’s ignorance), and Carroll O’Connor (who was politically liberal in real life) was just a really good actor who made Archie believable. The first few seasons of All In The Family hold up well both as comedy and social commentary, but neither Norman Lear nor Carroll O’Connor meant for Archie to be a modern day politically incorrect anti-hero, either. Archie Bunker is an ignorant bigot whose attitudes are sadly still with us today, fifty years later.

Acting Principal

When my boss is out of the building, I have the dubious honor of dealing with the discipline problems that can’t be handled in-class. The older students aren’t much fun under these circumstances; their issues most often involve threatening other students or actual fighting, along with defiance or disrespect to their teachers. Oh, and the girl fights. There's nothing quite like the animosity that can develop between sixth grade girls to keep life interesting.

On the other hand, the younger kids are usually a hoot when they get in trouble. Case in point: this morning the school secretary called me to the office because a kindergarten teacher had kicked a student out of her class, and the student was waiting for me in the time-out room. The time–out room is a small room across the hall from the principal’s office; the room is painted a soothing forest green and isn’t much bigger than a walk-in closet.

As I entered the office the secretary warned me, “She’s cute but don’t let that fool you.” When I walked into the time-out room I found that the secretary spoke the truth. Waiting for me was a little girl straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting: tiny, pigtails, freckles, an impish smile, and feet that didn’t quite touch the floor from the chair where she was sitting. I asked the miniature miscreant her name and what she had done to end up in the principal’s office. The diminutive delinquent – whom I’ll call Sarah, which isn’t her real name, of course – told me that she teased another little girl named Eve. Apparently Sarah thought the similarity between Eve’s name and Christmas Eve was pretty funny. Sarah had also refused to sit on the rug with the rest of her class when her teacher asked her to, which was the main reason she was no longer in class. I had a hard time keeping a straight face with this runty wrongdoer.

Sarah chattered away about various misdeeds she had perpetrated in class, and I began to sympathize with her teacher. I finally asked the tiny terror what her parents would do if they knew she was in trouble at school. Her eyes widened and she whispered, “They would be mad.” I told Sarah that we were going to call her parents. It sounded like there would be consequences at home for getting in trouble at school, which is a good thing. However, my calling her parents didn’t seem to faze Sarah, and I soon found out why: no one answered any of the numbers I dialed. This crooked cutie knew no one was home.

I gave Sarah the standard speech – obey your teacher, how would you feel if someone teased you, blah, blah, blah – but I could tell by the small smile on Sarah’s face that I wasn’t getting through. I took Sarah by the hand – mainly because I was afraid she might make a run for it in the other direction, and the last thing I needed today was to put out an APB on a fugitive kindergartner – and led her back to class.

When we arrived at Sarah’s classroom, I asked her teacher to come out into the hall for a private talk. I reassured the teacher that Sarah would behave (although I privately had grave doubts about the truthfulness of that assertion), and told the teacher to keep Sarah in from recess. The look on Sarah’s face told me that she was still bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and more than ready for round two with her teacher. Suddenly, inspiration struck and I uttered those same four simple words that weary parents have told their obnoxious offspring every December for hundreds of years: 

“Santa Claus is watching.”

Sarah’s face fell, and she quietly returned to class. I congratulated myself on my cleverness.

Sarah’s teacher told me later that my words of wisdom guided the bitty bandit’s behavior for all of five minutes.