3/3/08: The Wit & Wisdom of Archie Bunker (1971)

We’re not about to say anything new here. It’s just something that seems important to remember right now—specifically, that Archie Bunker was the most influential conservative of the 1970s. Things were looking grim at the time. Peter Boyle’s homicidal hardhat in Joe had become the popular shorthand for the uneducated Republican masses. The other extreme was personified by a snobbish intellectual who might as well have strolled off the box of a Monopoly game.

It all went wrong when Norman Lear got too cocky. He created All In The Family—adapted from a British sitcom—as a comedy where Archie Bunker was meant to be a sad clown. Instead, Lear put a human face on The Silent Majority—the same Silent Majority that the media had neatly pigeonholed into those previous two extremes.

Lear’s propaganda was doomed once he cast Carroll O’Connor in a contemporary setting. O’Connor created a character so realistic that Archie Bunker had to be placed in honest situations. That’s how Archie Bunker became a heroic Everyman. Just look at his freeloading son-in-law Michael Stivic. Rob Reiner deserves credit for playing Stivic as such a total creep. It was no surprise when his character became a college professor who’d leave Archie’s daughter Gloria for one of his students.

The Wit & Wisdom of Archie Bunker was released early in the series’ run, and reveals how quickly Archie Bunker betrayed his creators. The book’s a lot more fun than watching the show—especially since Lear was a hack at heart, and often undermined All in the Family’s greatness with forced gags. Just enjoy these quotes, and wish that Archie Bunker was blogging today:

“It’s a proven fact that Capital Punishment is a known detergent for crime.”

“If society is at fault that we got killers running around and murdering innocent people, then it’s simple. We turn the killer loose, give him a pension for life, and shoot the rest of the city.”

“I don’t like the idea of giving blood without knowin’ who’s on the receiving end…The difference is—some radical gets shot while he’s trying to blow up a building, an’ he needs a transfusion, he ain’t gonna wind up with any of Archie Bunker’s blood in him!”

[discussing God with Mike and Gloria] “He gave you the world and everything in it. All the kind of food you like to eat. He put them there for ya. Like your cows which turn themselves into your beef, and then your pig and your lamb. The thing I don’t get is—what could you two possibly have against Him?”

“When I wanna learn about pollution, it won’t be from some millionaire actor who’s got nothin’ to do but sit on his duff and dream up causes. If he wants to unpollute something, let him unpollute the movies.”

“This here country was ruined by Franklin Delano Roosevelt! That guy was hangin’ on like a Pope.”

“When I was a kid, we didn’t have no race trouble—an’ you know why? Nobody called themselves Chicanos. Or Mexican-Americans, or Afro-Americans. We was all American…Then, after that, if a guy was a Spic of a Jig, it was his business. I mean, it was his business if he wanted to cling with his own kind. Which most of them did. That’s how you get your Harlem and your Chinatown and your Little Italy.”

“I didn’t insult the Defense Attorney. I just told him what I thought of pinko, bleeding-heart lawyers who get sentimental over killers.”

And, just to be perfectly clear, Archie Bunker was a big fan of William Buckley—or, as his wife Edith once called him, William Berkeley. Archie corrected her, and Edith asked, “What is Berkeley, anyhow?”

“Used to be a steak sauce. Now it’s a college where they make trouble.”

Make it your own: This book must’ve been more popular than we remembered. Used copies are cheap and plentiful. Buy an extra copy and leave it in a motel drawer somewhere.

 

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