Posted on 02/03/2020 11:41:58 AM PST by joma89
For people of a certain advanced age, the first openly Republican or conservative fictional character they can remember is Alex P. Keaton from the NBC sitcom “Family Ties.” The role launched Michael J. Fox’s career, but it did something else, too: in many ways, Alex Keaton predicted the conservative movement that we see emerging today. Energetic and aggressive, Keaton was an unapologetic conservative character at a time conservatism was in many ways an apologetic underdog.
It is important to note that Alex P. Keaton was born in 1965, the very first year of Generation X. The comic tension he provided was his rejection of the 1960s hippie ethos of his progressive parents. He is arguably the first manifestation of something that is now a staple of our society, the countercultural conservative. Conservatism as counter culture has reached an apex in the age of Trump. But its seeds can be seen in this old NBC sitcom. Keaton might as well have said, “Okay, Boomer.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
JoMa
Likewise!
And Jethro Bodine saw that impeachment coming...
I have never been able to find it, but there was a New Yorker cartoon decades ago of two hippie parents and a son dressed in a three-piece suit, with the caption being something like, “Oh no, he’s become a Presbyterian!” It seemed prescient at the time.
... and his mother on the show, the formerly hot Meredith Baxter, is now a raging lesbian.
Bump for later.
I tremble with anticipation to read the full article. I hope the author’s thesis doesn’t turn out to be shaky.
I think he did a good job. I suspect a fair number of Alex P. Keatons out there put President Trump into office.
JoMa
There was another one, also in the New Yorker, that showed a broken-hearted clown mom and clown dad, backstage in a circus tent, with their young son facing them in a three-piece suit and carrying a briefcase, saying "mom, dad, I'm running away to Wall Street to become an investment banker."
I liked that show. I believed the Keaton’s “lived” in Columbus OH which is 25 miles from me.
IIRC correctly, there was an episode where Alex was asking if there was a cigarette lighter in the house. His parents wanted to know what the heck he needed that for:
“Well, Dad, I need to be prepared. There’s no doubt there’ll be an encore at the Milton Freidman concert I’m going to.”
(Yes...before the days of cell phones, cigarette lighters were used to signal for an encore at concerts.)
Who knew Alex’s dad would become the ultimate survivalist as one Burt Gummer?
“The pugnacious nature of the former latchkey kids, the last generation to play outside without a cell phone, lies at the heart of Trumpism. “
The world is different in ways that astonish.
Is it just me, or did she not say it very convincingly the first time around?
I’m not sure Archie Bunker would have been a Republican.
Once upon a time, there were a lot of blue-collar Archies who were staunch union guys and voted Democrat.
Maybe once he opened a bar, but old habits die hard.
Yes, she was once quite the dish.
Back in the 80s, I had a younger cousin who acted a lot like Alex.
Became a hard core socialist in his later 20s.
Yup. He went from liberal working at PBS to a gun toting survivalist.
Now that’s funny. I always found it funny when he would wear a 3-piece suit to high school.
Now we have Nick Fuentes to lead us all the way to true conservatism.
As a GenXer myself, I can indeed say that the show quite correctly predicted that Gen-X would skew more conservative, and generally see through a lot of our Boomer parents’ belief systems as the giant crock of shit that they are.
We were also right there on the ground to see (as the latchkey kids so many of us were), them gradually trade all their “peace and love” for a loathsome FYIGM attitude.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother, simply because she’s my mother, but it still doesn’t change the fact that once I got old enough, I realised that at least half of what comes out of her mouth is a total crock, and I have to make decisions on the fly, whilst dealing with her about just how much of what she says I’m actually going to listen to and take seriously. :P
I think Hollyweird intended Alex P. Keaton to be the “bad guy”, the heartless sibling that viewers were supposed to shake their finder at. Its like the Ron Swanson character in “Parks & Recreation”. He was supposed to be the “weird guy” where the viewer was supposed to go “ewww”. Instead he ended up the heart of the show & quite the one sensible pragmatic character. Yes I know Swanson was a libertarian but his “freedom & individuality” message backfired on them.
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