WAS ARCHIE BUNKER A HARBINGER?
By
Betty Freauf
July 12, 2011
NewsWithViews.com
Our culture has been steadily heading for the abyss. Author and journalist Cal Thomas once asked Norman Lear what he regarded as the primary causes of moral decline in America? He thinks it is the misuse of the free-enterprise system –profits at the expense of every other value.
A few weeks ago Norman Lear productions using the “free-enterprise system” had a “reunion” of the characters in “All In The Family” and for one solid hour ran hilarious clips of previous programs. When they were on during the Nixon era (latter 60s and early 70s), I had trouble watching it. This time I laughed at bigoted old Archie Bunker played by Carroll O’Connor and wondered if Archie wasn’t sort of a harbinger to “hate” legislation because everything he disliked is the “political correct” agenda today.
Norman Cousin, a New Age guru with the human potential movement believes laughter is the best medicine and in his 1999 book Fighting Cancer says some hospitals have put laughing rooms in the oncology department. In William M. Bowen, Jr.’s 1984 book Globalism – America’s Demise, he identified Cousins as a member of Norman Lear’s “People for the American Way.” I didn’t like obstinate Archie when the series first ran. The voice of Edith, his wife, played by Jean Stapleton was annoying. At the beginning of each program she is playing the piano and singing a duet with Archie, “Those Were The Days” when men were men and girls were girls (today we can’t tell the difference) and there was no welfare state and every body pulled their weight. Those were the days! Now TV Land is running three old programs each week day night so I’ve been watching and comparing what people may have said then as to what they say today.
POSSIBLE
1955 COMMENTS BY AMERICANS
(Sorry – Source Unknown)
I tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are, it’s going to be impossible to buy a week’s groceries for $10. Gas is .25 a gallon but it won’t be long before $1000 will only buy a used car. If cigarettes keep going up in price, I am going to quit - .20 cents a pack is ridiculous. Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging .07 cents just to mail a letter? If they raise the minimum wage to $1.00, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store.
I’m afraid to send my kids to the movies any more. Ever since they let Clark Gable get by with saying DAMN in GONE WITH THE WIND, it seems every new movie has either HELL or DAMN in it. In 1955 we could hear people remark that scientists think it is possible to put a man on the moon by the end of the century. They even have some fellows they call astronauts preparing for it. (July 8, 2011, the U.S. said farewell to the space shuttle program now, can we ask, are we better off with or without the space program? Our privacy has been sacrificed for convenience.)
And can you imagine athletes signing contracts for $50,000 a year to play ball? It wouldn’t surprise me if someday they’ll be making more than the President. I never thought I’d see the day all our kitchen appliances would be electric. They are even making electric typewriters now. Its too bad things are so tough nowadays. I see where a few married women have to work to make ends meet. It won’t be long before young couples are going to have to hire someone to watch their kids so they can both work.
I’m afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a lot of foreign business. The drive-in restaurant is convenient in nice weather but I seriously doubt they will ever catch on. There is no sense going on short trips anymore for a weekend. It costs nearly $2.00 a night to stay in a hotel. No one can afford to be sick any more. At $15 a day in the hospital, it’s too rich for my blood. If they think I’ll pay .30 for a hair cut, forget it! And last but not least, Thank Goodness I won’t live to see the day when the government takes half our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best people to government. Indeed, those were the good old days.
IS OUR DESTINY A GERMAN LIKE WEIMAR REPUBLIC?
America is on the brink of total financial collapse if our elected officials don’t get our government spending under control and our $14+ Trillion debt paid without the money-printing machine. It is no laughing matter. We are facing hyperinflation never ever dreamed before but similar to the Germany Weimar Republic that opened the door to Hitler. Read about America’s Creeping Revolution in my seven-part- series started in December 25, 2010. This process of printing money out of hot air and then borrowing it back from the Treasury can go on for only so long. At some point, soon the Fed and the Treasury will have to stop playing the game. And now we are up against an August 2nd deadline again and conservatives are holding their breath as they did in 1994 under GOP Gingrich and his Contract with America when Clinton out-foxed the Republicans and they compromised again. This happened because every four years the dumbed-down electorate didn’t recognize the two parties were almost identical. Voters must learn to pray for discernment and study to show themselves approved.
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One thing I notice about Edith on the reruns is how she was always in a dress and most of the time with an apron. She’d rush to the door every time old grumpy Archie walked in from work to embrace him. The meal was always on the table. While the program portrayed her as being a bit of a dingbat, her wisdom often exceeded Archie’s stupidity. She loved everybody from transvestites to her black neighbors and the old-folks in a nursing home where she volunteered and she was often the go-between Archie and his “meat head” Progressive son-in-law who married the daughter, Gloria, played by Sally Struthers.
They lived with the Bunkers while Polish Michael Stivic, Robert Reiner, the son of T.V. pioneer Carl Reiner, finished his college – a constant contention between Archie and his Vietnam war-protester Progressive son-in-law who thought the rich folks should pay more taxes. After graduation, the “meat head” landed a job as a college professor on the West coast in California what Archie called the “state of fruits & nuts and a big earthquake was going to come along and wipe out Washington, Oregon and California.” An earthquake hasn’t hit recently but cash-strapped and debt-ridden California and an economic crisis ever as devastating has and the California liberal talk show hosts are crying big crocodile tears because the well has run dry; California is bankrupt and people are exiting the state as fast they can get their U-Haul trailers packed. All these talk-show folks, so-called liberal pundits have to do is look in the mirror to find the problem and yet most say they’ll vote again for Obama (anyone except a Republican) who has been AWOL until it’s time to tax the rich which means the middle class because the very rich have their money in tax-exempt foundations.
Archie wrapped himself in the American flag. He claimed to be a Christian but only went to church on Easter. He often misquoted Bible verses and mutilated the English language. When he went to the polls to vote in one election to counter the “meat head’s” vote for some Progressive for whom he was delivering literature, Archie’s name wasn’t on the voting register. Why? Because Edith reminded him he had been too busy at Kelsey’s Bar to vote so his name had been removed from the list and Edith went into the booth and later revealed she voted for the Progressive that Archie wanted to oppose.
In a recent episode Edith reminded Archie that he once called Walter Cronkite a Communist. On October 7, 2005 conservative radio talk show hostess Laura Ingraham played sound bites in which Cronkite said voters today are too stupid to make educated choices on election day and that worried him but “between the years 1991 and 2000”, Laura said, “when voters put Clinton in office twice, he didn’t feel that way. It’s only now that Bush, Jr. is in office that he thinks ‘We are an ignorant nation…I think we are in serious danger…and we’re not really capable….’ of voting intelligently Cronkite implied. Laura is also concerned about the August 2nd debt -ceiling deadline and the possibility of the GOP leaders once again collapsing like a cheap accordion.
Cronkite died July 17, 2009 but his legacy lives on. Cliff Kincaid’s article "Cronkite Named As Soviet Target by FBI" dated as recent as May 18, 2010, An article in the 12/7/2009 New American noted PREDICTIONS BECOME “PREDICTIONS.” “Experts on (Orwell’s) 1984 book proclaim that few predictions can be found in the book. Since Walter Cronkite wrote the preface to the Signet 1984 paperback edition, scholars can cite his preface to debunk the idea of predictions. Cronkite stated, “George Orwell was no prophet and those who busy themselves keeping score of his predictions and grading his use of the crystal ball miss the point.” What Orwell did was write a novelistic essay on “power, how it is acquired and maintained, how those who seek it or seek to keep it.” Therefore, an executor of the Orwell estate suggested using the word “predictions” – in quotes- when referring to alleged future events. Cronkite did acknowledge that the book is “a warning: a warning about the future of human freedom in a world where political organization and technology can manufacture power in dimensions that would have stunned the imaginations of earlier ages.” Orwell, therefore, was less a prophet than the satirist who established benchmarks for arrival of a totalitarian society, said the article.
Kincaid also had another article dated 7/23/2009 about “Fox News Lies About Cronkite” I was also troubled about Glenn Beck’s T.V. show when he denigrated Senator Joe McCarthy’s chasing communists while praising the likes of Walter Cronkite. Later he seemed to acknowledge his errors and towards the end seemed to be trying to expose the Communist infiltration into our Republican form of government.
And then on October 28, 2009 Cliff Kincaid had an article “The Terrible Truth About Walter Cronkite”
What was the purpose of such sitcoms as “All In The Family” by producers in the sixties? Were they trying to send us a message using bigoted Archie Bunker to tell us that Walter Cronkite was promoting the communist-controlled U.N. “democratic” world government and preparing us for such a dismal event or subliminally brainwashing us to accept it? Read Cronkite’s speech when he received the World Federalist Association’s Norman Cousins Global Governance Award on October 19, 1999.
The communist talk about “peaceful co-existence” and gullible Western Theorists want to believe that implies living side by side and minding one’s own business but the communist intention of world dominion has not changed. “A fight is in progress,” Khrushchev averred,” between these two systems, a life and death combat. But we communists want to win this struggle with the least losses and there is no doubt whatsoever that we shall win.” That, in essence, is the meaning of “peaceful coex1istence.”[1]
And then there was the very successful black business owner and neighbor of many dry cleaning establishments named Jefferson, who could be as obstinate as Archie. While Archie remained a blue-collar worker (maybe even union) the Jefferson neighbors soon “moved on up” into a big high rise in the city in a later sitcom. In a recent episode, Archie’s fire insurance was cancelled because the insurance company and its rich CEOs determined his home was in a high-risk neighborhood.
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People from all ethnic backgrounds came to America for freedom. They respected the American flag, appreciated our sovereignty and studied to become American citizens. They assimilated by learning English and made no “special rights” demands. Because some succeeded and others didn’t depended on individual ambitions. Some woke up and said, “Good Morning, Lord” while others woke up and said, “Good Lord, Morning? Must I go to work?” Isn’t it time we all put our hand in the hand of the man from Galilee and turn our country back to the principles on which it was initially founded?
Footnotes:
1- The Politics of Surrender ©1966 by M. Stanton Evans (P. 37)
� 2011 Betty Freauf - All Rights Reserved
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