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Great
Fun! Ron
Swanson has potential to become the new Archie Bunker. In his
heads-up, El Jefe said,
"Hard to believe he's on NBC." Maybe not. Two
of television's top pop icons of all time resulted from
left-winger miscalculations. First, Norman Lear's Archie Bunker
(All in the Family). Quoting from myself in 2005:
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Lear lifted, whole, the BBC television series Till Death Us Do
Part. Watch this clip and you'll see what I mean .
What
appealed to Lear was the Brit version of Archie Bunker who was, with his
conservative tirades, the perfect foil for the calm, reasoned
socialist clap-trap served back by what would become dotty daughter Gloria, and
son-in-law Michael 'Meathead' Stivic (Rob Reiner in a non-acting role).
[...]
Much to Lear's surprise (Liberals
are always surprised to discover that their ideas don't work as
planned), the American television viewing public saw in Archie
Bunker someone who manifested their own hopes and fears; and
validated
their own contempt for liberal ideas like "The Great Society." He
was the hero; Meathead was the fool. [continued]
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After a few years Lear
simply became heavy handed, and began to force his views in some very
unfunny episodes. In one, a war hero friend of Archie's, whose
son had been killed in Vietnam, sides with Meathead in an
anti-war diatribe, and wishes his son had fled to Canada to avoid the
draft. As noxious as the show's content would become, it's own
inertia carried it for another few years, but it was no longer
particularly funny (Like MASH, after Alan Alda took control)
. Nobody cared when the
show ended in a spectacularly crappy one-hour special in 1983.
Except to note how spectacularly
crappy the ending was.
Next, Hawkeye Pierce, the smart-ass hero of Mash. The
1970 film was written by Ring Lardner Jr, (joined the US Communist Party in 1936), and produced by fellow traveler, and uber
leftist Robert Altman. The film's anti-war, anti US message went mostly
unnoticed by moviegoers, who simply saw funny where they were supposed to
see tragedy. The television spin-off (1972 to 1983) started out funny,
and ended with leftist Alan Alda (the television Hawkeye) following
Lear's formula of writing preachy left-wing scripts, which he
then directed himself delivering. Nobody cared when the
show ended in a spectacularly crappy one-hour special in 1983.
Except to note how spectacularly
crappy the ending was.
So, who's writing Ron Swanson's stuff at NBC? Maybe the right
people haven't complained yet.
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