Meathead
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
To quote Bugs Bunny….what a maroon…
Rob Reiner made a comment about 20 years ago (“those people should be marginalized”) indicating the irony incorporated into All in the Family was something he never appreciated. Here’s Archie Bunker, wage earner, union member, loading dock foreman, moonlighting cab driver, WWii veteran. He’s earned well enough to make mortgage payments on a bungalow and to furnish it properly, even though his wife hasn’t had paid employment in > 20 years. For the love of his daughter, he puts up with the presence of his son-in-law, a ‘college student’ who earns nothing and grants him no gratitude, affection, or respect (and, in the end, cheats on his daughter). The way the plots are constructed and the dialogue written, we’re supposed to see Archie as a buffoon and a heel, even though every agreeable thing the family has was provided by his labor. Rob Reiner never got it.
Steve Sailer has some fun at Reiner’s expense. Reiner lives in Malibu, California, a place where land use regulations have sent real estate prices through the roof. Everything the man advocates ends up being an imposition on people who cannot afford to live in Malibu.
You almost wanna check to make sure it’s the same person from the show, really, bc of the irony. There is no guarantee he was present, not doing narcotics tho.
While we’ve been on our Get Trump tour the CCP have set up offices in CA and NY. They also used FBI man power to censor the narrative on social media (in addition to trying to make them out to be terrorists) in order for this Get Trump tour to survive. Fabricated. Manipulated.
He was well chosen for the part. Meathead indeed.
His type is the first to be sent to the wall after the revolution. Can’t have the nut jobs actually running the show, you know.
The way the plots are constructed and the dialogue written, we’re supposed to see Archie as a buffoon and a heel, even though every agreeable thing the family has was provided by his labor. Rob Reiner never got it.
Like Lucifer in Paradise Lost the Bunker character got away from the author. He was quite popular at the time and even though Norman Lear and Carol O’Connor were liberals, Bunker came out ahead in his exchanges on the show in a surprising number of them. Bunker was intended to be a stick figure and instead he became a fully fleshed out character.
Boy, the way Glenn Miller played
songs that made the hit parade
Guys like me we had it made
Those were the days
Didn’t need no welfare state
ev’rybody pulled his weight
gee our old LaSalle ran great
Those were the days
And you knew who you were then
girls were girls and men were men
Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again
People seemed to be content
fifty dollars paid the rent
freaks were in a circus tent
Those were the days
Take a little Sunday spin
go to watch the Dodgers win
Have yourself a dandy day
that cost you under a fin
Hair was short and skirts were long
Kate Smith really sold a song
I don’t know just what went wrong
those were the days
“Bunker was supposed to be a stick figure and instead he became a fully fleshed out character”
What blows my mind to this day is that Archie and Edith, the “old fogies” of the show, are only in their early-to-mid 50s — younger than my husband and I are now. You will recall that Edith was at one point going through menopause, which would make her around 50-ish, and Archie is still working full time and not retired. Archie is fleshed out further in the successor series “Archie Bunker’s Place” (1979-83), in which Edith died of a stroke at the beginning of season 2 (because Jean Stapleton no longer wanted to continue with the character), and Gloria returned home with little Joey after divorcing Meathead in season 4.
Bunker would have been in his early twenties when he served in the War from comments about his service on the show. Let’s say he was born in 23. He would have been 47 when the show opened in 70. I will be 66 next month. Yeah, I thought that Archie and Edith looked pretty old when I was watching the show in 70. Of course I was 13 at the time. In 70 World War II ending was only 25 years in the past. 70 is now 53 years in the past.
I thought that Archie and Edith looked pretty old when I was watching the show in 70.
The actors playing them were 46 and 47 years old when the series went on the air. People of given ages looked older in that era than they do today, which is curious when you think about it as they were less likely to be obese and diabetic.
Smoking and drinking add years to people Art.
Cigarette consumption was a great deal more common in those cohorts than among those a generation younger. Don’t believe their liquor consumption was. (My guess would be that liquor consumption has declined among fancy bourgeois, not the rest of the population). Men had more physically taxing jobs in those days, which may have kept them fit but also worn them out at the same time.