Lefty Lear created characters who’s purpose was to convey the stupidity of ‘all’ conservatives.
He failed as the message was misinterpreted and the conservative characters were loved and the meathead liberal characters(for the most part) were reviled.
Even when Archie appeared real stupid, the conservative message got through and people felt sorry for the character for not being able to voice it with a smooth cogent argument.
Good analysis.
I can’t tell you how many hundreds of times I’ve seen the “Archie Bunker for President” slogan in society. And always proclaimed proudly.
I remember one scene when two black guys broke into Archie’s house and then decided to stay while the police left the neighborhood. The scene was the four members of the house in addition to the two thieves. The conversation of course was about race and Archie was portrayed in the typical method of the show. However, Mike (Meathead) sided with the black guys (one was played by Fred Sanford’s son as I recall) and told them that he understood their plight since he studied it in his sociology class. They both mocked him as a “lib-er-AL.” If anything, that is the ideal definition of liberal thinking and can be equated to many issues today. Liberal are naive.