It never ceases to amaze me that some people never “GOT” that Norman Lear is an arch manipulator. His Archie Bunker intended to demean Americans, to slap them down for their Archie-ness.
Many people liked Archie.....they figured Archie did and said the things that needed to be said and done.
Go figure.
I agree.
Archie was supposed to the enemy.
Instead - he turned into a folk hero.
I have a Liberal neighbor who once made some disparaging comment about Archie Bunker and I didn't even think about it, I just said: "I liked Archie. Most people did, really. He was right about almost everything. It was Meathead who was the schmuck."
My neighbor about had a cow. She had clearly never heard anyone support Archie before. This is in MA so not too surprising.
You’re correct, but evidently Meathead was not convincing enough, or defeated the effort.
Archie was obviously a made-up character and his lines were scripted to shock and offend. But most viewers realized that Archie was over-the-top and that normal Americans didn't really speak or act that way. But Meathead was a dead-ringer for a virtue-signaling (decades before the term was coined) college-educated liberal with a head full of mush.
It was not lost on me, as a growing boy, that this deadbeat had to live with his in-laws because despite his college education, he couldn't afford a place of his own, while his supposedly ignorant blue collar father-in-law worked every day and got all the bills paid.
For the rest of my childhood, I vowed not to end up like Meathead!
You know, Liz, that’s probably why I could never watch that show...It seemed over the top demeaning to a certain class..at the time I was not sure of my own status in the world (I was young and am female)...but the show just was weird to me.