Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Liberals,” Then And Now

8 Comments

When did they become Archie Bunker?

Like Sotomayor, Archie is not propounding a theory of racial or ethnic supremacy but describing the world in terms of culturally contingent stereotypes. He is engaging in identity politics.
Podcast

James Taranto on Sotomayor and Archie Bunker.

What’s fascinating about this is that the Meathead (played by Rob Reiner) is a peer of La Jueza Empática: She was born in 1954; Reiner, in 1947. But the liberalism of “All in the Family” is not the liberalism of the baby boomers. It is that of an earlier generation–Archie Bunker’s generation. Series creator Norman Lear and Carroll O’Connor, who played Archie, were born in 1922 and 1924, respectively.

Today, you can easily imagine a conservative uttering the Meathead’s earnest query: “Why do you always have to label people by nationality?” But somewhere along the line, liberalism lost its ideals and adopted Archie Bunker’s theory of representative government.

Actually, I think they’ve just reverted to type from the early twentieth century, when “progressives” were all in favor of eugenics. In both cases, Lear and a “conservative” would be acting as the true liberals. The classical ones, before the word was hijacked by the left.

[Update in the early afternoon]

If I were a Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I’d have the All In The Family clip played in lieu of some of my time. It’s a lot more effective than most of Senatorial bloviating.

[Update a while later]

Would Sotomayor qualify as a juror?

8 thoughts on ““Liberals,” Then And Now”

  1. Well, the true liberals allowed the Left to hijack the word. All in the name of “party unity” and winning elections.

    Thanks, Democrat Party! Jefferson and Jackson are all really impressed, I can tell you.

  2. Gahhh. Archie Bunker! Sloooowly I turned! Step by step, inch by inch…

    Many of the essential details of Archie’s backstory are blatantly false anyway. A Depression-child, racially unenlightened New York union member who’s also a lifelong Republican? Puh-LEEZE.

    I suppose it could have happened, but the whole point of “All in the Family” was … well, stereotypes. Viewers had to buy Archie as stereotypical before they could buy the attacks on all the other stereotypes Lear wanted to undermine.

  3. You can add Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt to the list of “progressives” in favor of eugenics Rand. It used to be a fashion at the time (and a bad one at that).

  5. Actually I think they’re more like Bill Lann Lee. To quote my own analysis:

    What baffles me is how her personal background influenced her ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano. As reported by Mark Davis and Slate’s Emily Bazelon, the ruling upheld promotion policies that discriminate against whites and Hispanics in favor of blacks.

    …

    Actually I’m not really all that baffled. Long time ago an online acquaintance coined the term “PC points.” Political Correctness has a hierarchy; some ideals outrank others. I believe that to Sotomayor, as well as Bill Lann Lee, leftist forms of racial discrimination are too important for the civil rights of their respective ethnicities to get in the way. PC collateral damage, as it were.

    “Reverse discrimination” is a holy sacrament of the Left. Occasionally it will inflict friendly fire. The individual cannot be prioritized over the group, after all.

  7. “…before the word was hijacked by the left.”

    Is that what happened? I distinctly remember Bush the Elder lingering on the “L” in liberal whenever referring to Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign. I had the impression at the time that it was the Repubs who decided the “L” word would be an effective, voter-swaying albatross for the likes of Dukakis. I don’t have a bone to pick about your comment, but I don’t remember it that way. And wasn’t Reagan fond of casting that word about?

  8. Is that what happened? I distinctly remember Bush the Elder lingering on the “L” in liberal whenever referring to Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign.

    Yes. The left purloined the word for themselves at least as far back as the fifties, and unfortunately, true (classical) liberals let them get away with it. By the eighties, it had become the new meaning for the word, to the point that Reagan and Bush could use it as an epithet against them.

    Note that this is purely an American phenomenon — in Europe and Australia, the word still means what it originally did, and “liberals” are considered “right wing.”

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