God Bless Archie Bunker!

For those of us old enough to remember the show "All In The Family", featuring Archie Bunker, his wife the "Ding-Bat", his daughter Gloria a.k.a. "little goil", and the son-in-law Michael Stivic a.k.a. "the meat-head", some of us were deeply offended by it, while many more of us laughed at it like we have never laughed before. Admittedly, the show had a uniquely-cathartic effect on all of us: we were offended, we were outraged, we were provoked to side-splitting laughter for the exact same reason. THE SHOW HIT HOME, RIGHT WHERE WE ALL LIVE!

Who among us does not have any of the bigotries and prejudices displayed by Archie Bunker? There is a certain amount of "Archie Bunker" in all of us, insofar as we find it difficult to accept other people who, in one way or another, are not exactly like us, be the difference one of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or national origin. "Those people, those people; they, they, they...", Archie Bunker used to say. At the same time, his black African-American neighbor George Jefferson often expounded on his displeasure against white people as well. However, when on one episode it began to look like Puerto Ricans might move into the vacant house on the other side of the Bunkers, Archie Bunker and George Jefferson quickly became close allies to the common cause of keeping a third ethnicity out of their neighborhood. As it happened, that house became occupied by an Italian-Irish mixed-marriage couple who were both Catholics, and Archie Bunker had a real field-day with Catholics as well. "First there's Christians and then there's Catholics!"

Perhaps Archie Bunker was not as smooth, sophisticated and educated we might have wished him to be. But if we examine the extenuating circumstance that he was a child of America's 1930s Great Depression, we might view him with a little more compassion. Sure, he was rough-and-gruff. But the Great Depression forced him to leave school, and hustle to find a job to support his family when fully half of America's work-force was unemployed and jobs did not exist.

Who was the REAL bigot on that show? Arguably, it was the meat-head, Michael Stivic. Michael Stivic irresponsibly married a woman before he was finished with his schooling and well-settled into a career, by which he would maintain his financial independence. He felt himself at liberty to just drop in on the Bunker household and sponge off of that family, all the while frequently subjecting Archie to continuous ridicule with a most abject lack of gratitude for the latter's financial largesse to him. Michael Stivic was the product of far better economic times which afforded to him educational opportunities Archie Bunker never had. Some say Archie Bunker was not a good Christian, but I disagree! He would have been within his legal rights to expel Michael Stivic and his daughter Gloria from their home at any time, because Michael Stivic, not Archie Bunker, was responsible for the financial welfare of his wife Gloria. Instead, Archie Bunker bore up magnificently under the heavy cross of his son-in-law's self-righteous deprecations against him. Granting that it was insensitive of Archie to call his son-in-law "dumb Polack meat-head college student", do we not all have our "terms of endearment" for persons who by nationality are strange to us? We may not overtly enunciate them, but such thoughts still occupy the mind!

The music composer Aaron Copland wrote a magnificent trumpet fanfare called, "Fanfare for The Common Man". I would like to nick-name it, "Fanfare for Archie Bunker". It celebrates in music the real heroes of the American scene: the millions of average "Joe plumbers" among us who rise up early in the morning, faithfully going to work every day, work long hard hours through often-difficult and trying experiences on the job, and finally coming home tired in the evening. How rightful they are, to then plop themselves down in their easy-chairs, turn on the TV, and tell their "Edith"s to "get me a beer"! John Wayne once said of the women's movement: "Women can do anything they want to....as long as they have supper ready for us men when we get home from work." I agree: Without the "Joe plumbers", this nation would have no back-bone and no existence at all!

God bless America, God bless Archie Bunker! Forever may his cathartic service to our nation on TV be remembered! It also gave minority groups in our nation whom Archie Bunker ridiculed, a valuable lesson: Don't fight with the Archie Bunkers of this world, just play along with them! One time when Archie Bunker learned that a black woman nurse was going to donate blood to him during a surgical operation, he became all flustered. But the nurse just played along with him and said when he awakened from his surgery, he would "have a strange craving for watermelon!"

-Lawrence K. Marsh

-Lawrence K. Marsh