Archie’s demographic construct was pure fantasy. There was nothing Anglo-WASP about him, and yet that is what Lear figured he had to make him — sort of. The only other American “type” who would fit the Archie mold and not be an ethnic Catholic would be Scotch-Irish. While NYC was a big enough place to contain some such people, it was an absurdity, since Archie was intended to be typical working class New Yorker.

Which begs the question, what represents the enveloping malaise that we are now experiencing? Where in the media can we find examples of Obama’s gathering influence?

Perhaps it is the cheerfulness of the tea party rallies, much to the consternation of the political and media elite.

Except, you forget… George Jefferson was portrayed as a black Republican .

Yeah… the ’70s were a depressing time.

Some have nostalgia for that era, but I just keep remembering it was the decade the left made us disgracefully abandon South Vietnam and Cambodia to the Communists… and then gave the Communists about five more years of running rampant before Reagan finally saved the day.

strcpy, yes, the ’70s were a depressing time. Bad hair, bad music, bad clothes, bad movies, bad economics, bad presidents, bad politics and bad hygiene. At least from the perspective of someone who experienced it from 3rd grade to graduation. Really, Star Wars was such a major change, and relief, from the swill of movies of that decade. Ronald Reagan was such a breath of fresh air bringing and delivering both hope and change.

On the other hand, the experience gives perspective that eventually these negative nabobs will be replace and good times will return.

How can anyone have a _right_ to something that _must_ be provided by someone else? Health care may be an entitlement stemming from enacted laws, but it’s hardly a right.

Given the age of the character, you could guess he’d been in the service during World War II and probably in something like the infantry. I’d also bet that it never would have occurred to Meathead to cut him a little slack on that account.

Given who produced the show, it was one of the many times I figured out that most liberals love the people in the abstract; it’s just actual people for whom they have disdain.

Even that has become more complicated, with the discovery of objects like Chiron, Sedna, Quaoar, Eris, etc. Now some say that Pluto really shouldn’t be considered a planet at all!

I’m glad you liked my use of How Green Was My Valley, but Wretchard deserves credit for bringing it up in connection with how we remember. I’m not that creative.

AITF is part of a time when things were a little simpler, when you could be liberal or progressive without hating Archie, even if you thought he was dumb or uncouth. It was a time when the young still believed that liberal changes would make things better and when our shared memories of Glenn Miller (in my case they came from watching old movies) could be enjoyed without guilt. It was a time when it was OK to be silly, even as we protested Viet Nam and racism. It was a time when the negative effects of achieving all our demands were still partly hidden.

And today it seems that very many want to substitute masochism for joy. Too many don’t even want to allow children a time to enjoy being kids, but instead try to saddle them with the job of saving the planet. As kids we were only expected to name the planets in order of their distance from the sun. We grew up catching lightening bugs on summer evenings as the Archie Bunkers we knew sat on the porch watching over us. Archie didn’t warn us that they might become extinct. He let us be kids, but he fully expected us to grow up. It took some of us a very long time.