The Revenge of Norman Lear
Though the millennials may not have a clue about the impact of Norman Lear, people of a certain age in this country remember him well – or at least his body of work. The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, Sanford and Son, and his best known work, All in the Family, all emanated from this one producer.
To say that Norman Lear had a certain world view would be quite the understatement. Barely a few years in which married couples could not be shown in bed together and African Americans were only shown in domestic roles, Lears shows had a singular propensity to knock down barriers, especially on the matter of race. Yet similar to the academy of today, his shows possessed diversity of color, but not that of ideology. Most of the opinions expressed on his shows, especially that of All in the Family, were of a progressive nature. Not to be mistaken there was certainly a conservative figure aboard. But Archie Bunker was at times bigoted, demeaning, chauvenistic in the extreme.
Of course Archie’s very presence was set up as foil so that more enlightened characters would have a backdrop to espouse their views. Yet when the initial surface of thought is broken on these shows, something interesting is found. Most of Lear’s shows had successful marriages. Of course One day at a Time was about a divorcee and Good Times seems to have misplaced the patriarchal James midway through the run. But with these exceptions, and especially in the case of Archie, the men stayed with their wives and families. Archie was always around for Edith and his daughter – if perhaps to their chagrin.
Even George Jefferson, a highly successful entrepreneur and businessman almost seems quaint today. Though Archie and George were considered And here is the interesting state of TV in 2013. There are shows starring African Americans, shows with liberal lawyers and of course gays who if we went with television would be far beyond the 10% of the population that they claim.
But where are the conservatives? In a country that voted 49% to remove Obama, there is less than 1% of characters who express a coherent conservative thought. And there is the latest Aaron Sorkin show that in this case, has the conservative news anchor rethinking his conservatism. (Of course there is more reality in Archie Bunker spending time with Sammy Davis Jr. then there ever will be in any non-Fox news anchor who is conservative.)
And of course here is Lear’s revenge. It is nearly impossible to watch non-politicized, TV without a few liberal nuggets popping up. Watch a cop drama and soon you will learn that government cutbacks were behind a crime. Watch a legal thriller and inevitably the greedy corporation was to blame. Even comedies today aim their barbs at dimwitted conservatives who do not see the wonders of progressivism. The reasons for this are fairly obvious. Sorkin is now on his second or third TV show but there is no Conservative writer evident in an industry as dominated by the liberal ethos as the academy. And that is a shame because it is the 49% of people who did not vote for Obama who pay for much of this either through ads or cable.
In the 1980s a very different type of TV show aired. The Cosby show portrayed an almost entirely black cast that featured a doctor and lawyer, husband and wife team who were certainly upper class. The fact that the show portrayed such a family, and routinely made reference to positive black culture was a wonder. Yet when Bill Cosby talks today of the destructiveness of single family homes and black on black crime he is ridiculed.
It is ironic that Norman Lear, who did much to enable a show such as the Cosby Show, would also be the one who set the tone for the lack of diverse thought on the TV today.