Kicking. Squealing.
I used to watch re-runs of Norman Lear’s creation, Good Times, back in my late teens and wonder if this episode (which I don’t remember seeing but probably did) impacted me in any way:
Obviously, young Michael wasn’t given the Raven’s Progressive Matrices.
This clip leads me to two thoughts: Norman Lear must have been the most powerful man in the world in the middle 1970s; related, I wonder just how many people’s beliefs on race and achievement and other social issues were effected by not just this one scene but the entire series and Lear’s entire slew of progressive sitcoms (All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Diff’rent Strokes). When I try to think of TV shows from that era, an era which looms to me as a turning point in TV history, Lear productions are most prominent in my mind. The ubiquity of the re-runs of these shows has a lot to do with that – M.A.S.H. is the only other show from that period that seems to be as widely syndicated, and really nobody of importance thinks that any other shows besides Lear productions had any long-lasting impact on society. So I wonder how much progressive thinking was shaped by the false dogma laid bare by Michael – that since the race IQ test gap was 15 points that the tests themselves must be biased in some way rather than other less comfortable explanations for the gap.
I guess since gay is the new black, the modern Norman Lear is Ryan Murphy of Glee and The New Normal fame.
Clip cribbed from an anti-IQ test post at HuffPo.
From Lear’s work, you left out the most evil one, Maude. Harridan feminist values served by the sackful, every week.
that’s the one show i never watched since it was rarely featured on Nick at Nite or TV Land.
It’s the most dated, perhaps, locked in to the male chauvanist pig rhetoric of 70s women’s consciousness-raising groups.
Good Times was hilarious, almost as good as Sanford and Son.
Morris Claiborne (Dallas Cowboys) made the same “didn’t finish” explanation after his super low score (6 out of 50) on the Wonderlic test before being drafted. He said that he didn’t bother to finish it, claiming he was told that performance on the test wouldn’t impact his draft status either way.
He was probably right about that since he was drafted slightly higher than projected even after his poor Wonderlic result.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/draft2012/story/_/id/7770388/2012-nfl-draft-morris-claiborne-top-cb-prospect-scored-4-wonderlic-sources-say
That was a big part of the “rural purge” of the early 70s, when TV moved away from traditional fare which appealed to the “greatest generation”, then middle aged, to more progressive fare like the Lear shows designed to appeal to boomers. It was a major turning point in the history of American pop culture. There were bigger issues in play than just ratings, of course; many of the cancelled “rural” shows were still getting very good ratings at time of their cancellation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge
It’s pretty amazing how brazenly propagandistic this is. You get more subtlety out of Leni Reifenstahl.
If black people want to stop taking IQ tests, I have no problem with that.
@C.R.,
You’re right in that those early-to-mid-70s sitcoms were a huge ‘turning point’ in mass media influence and consumption levels, and Lear himself was incredibly powerful and influential —— in a way one could convincingly argue isn’t even possible anymore with the atomization of today’s pop culture entertainment.
But —– not to nitpick —— I wouldn’t characterize “All in the Family” as a ‘progressive sitcom’; granted, “Meathead” was the political antidote and foil to ol’ lovable raycisst Archie; still, Archie was the bulk of appeal on the show.
But i get the point; the show sort of at once ‘legitimized’ and gave humanizing context to ‘racists’ like Arhchie, yet also expanded then-emerging and novel racial debates, via arguments between Meathead and Archie, etc.; truly revolutionary show in a lot of ways:
Remember this scene?
Classic stuff!
nikrit:
“All in the Family” was pretty progressive. We were supposed to not like Archie at worst or feel sympathy for him at best. It was those who felt sympathy for him that could still get away with liking him. Either way, we weren’t supposed to want to be him or anything like him, and we were all merely waiting for that generation to burn off so that multiculturalism, diversity, and liberalism could finally have its day.
Here’s the All in the Family episode I remember most:
Personally I never understood the whole race vs. IQ test, or any test question for that matter, issue.
A test is generally designed to “test” your knowledge of facts, skills, or information given during a lesson. The cup + saucer/table bit shown on that clip isn’t racist in the least, it may be classist, but even then certainly not directed toward any ethnicity. Assuming that same question were in tests today, how many of us here drank from cup’s and saucers, or know anybody who did? Nobody in my family did, but I know what a saucer is. These people are claiming these sorts of things are racist, or have a disparate impact, well if you never crack open a book and actually READ, your vocabulary is going to suffer, and you will fail these kinds of tests.
Some tests will be culturally bias, there is simply no way of getting around that. However, its is OUR collective culture… if you are from some other country and made little or no effort to assimilate, or purposely make a point to alienate yourself from your countries/area’s culture, you are simply not going to do as well.
I wonder how well African Americans would do on a test that was produced and given in a country in Africa, one that was completely produced by the native educators of that country. I would assume that they wouldn’t do very well, and neither would I for that matter. I’m sure there are customs and ways of speech that would be alien to us both. Would the test be racist then?
How about the promotions test given during that firefighters exam many years ago, was it racist?
If it was, how? How is knowing how to lead a company of firefighters an alien concept to people who are themselves firefighters,and have the same resources to know the proper SOP.
weather or not these tests are racist, not knowing the material being tested isn’t excusable. If I take an African American studies class, and am tested and fail. Is it because of my ethnic background, my culture, or because I didn’t take the time to learn the material?
Chuck- I was a kid back then. There were three broadcast TV networks, no cable, and no internet. Everbody watched the same things and talked about it at work or school the next day. You didn’t necessarily agree with it, but you knew damn well what you were supposed to think.
There were progressive themes in almost every episode of All in the Family — indeed, in almost every episode of anything Lear ever produced.
The two that stand out in my mind are the episode in which Meathead and Gloria’s son wants to play with dolls instead of trucks, and the one where Edith questions the existence of God after the Bunkers’ drag queen friend “Beverly” is murdered.
Of course, it wasn’t the left leaning politics that made the show a hit; it was Carroll O’Connor’s brilliant portrayal of the Archie Bunker character. Put anyone else in that role and the show would’ve lasted two seasons, tops.
Good old Norman Lear! Yes, the 70s, when the WASP power structure handed the keys to the kingdom over to a new power structure, and the Cultural Acid Bath began in full earnest. Destroy! Destroy! Destroy! Once more unto the Nihilism! Out with the old and in with the blue! Flush them toilets! Show what a racist whitey is! Normalize perversity! Excuse depravity! Shame the religious! Mock the patriotic! Fetishize minorities! Shower contempt on masculinity! Smithers, unleash the bounds!
Danger, Will Robinson, danger! Oh wait, that wasn’t a culturally corrosive show. Though it did feature the first prominent gay character in television.
Everybody watched the same things and talked about it at work or school the next day. You didn’t necessarily agree with it, but you knew damn well what you were supposed to think.
Very good point. I was a kid too, and the reach of hit television shows back then was tremendous. Everybody, from kids to grandma, watched “All in the Family” and these other shows. And it was more than obvious at the time that this was very deliberately designed to shame all wrong-thinking people. Archie became a kind of anti-hero to some, and in retrospect more so, but at the time you knew — oh boy, did you know — that Archie was meant to be detestable. The fact that you thought just like he did wasn’t enough to withstand the tidal wave of propaganda. That show and all that followed changed the mental landscape of America forever and drove anyone with sane racial or gender opinions into the shadows. It was an astonishing propaganda victory for the Left.
Those questions asked of the character on Good Times sure didn’t appear on any IQ test I have seen or done. If they had of I would be considered a genius.
One unrealistic thing about All in the Family, is that all the African Americans were portrayed as intelligent, competent and solidly middle class. They were always proving Archie wrong.
I enjoyed the All in the Family Blockbuster episode above, which was reincarnated last year into :
Clybourne Park.
Jonah Goldberg weighs in:
“Despite Norman Lear’s liberal best efforts, many found Archie Bunker more persuasive than his “meathead” sociologist son-in-law.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg-politics-hollywood-20130219,0,5856755.column
“Despite Norman Lear’s liberal best efforts, many found Archie Bunker more persuasive than his “meathead” sociologist son-in-law.”
Immaterial. The show did it’s job, signalling to the culture at large that Archie’s opinions were officially considered disreputable and in poor taste. The truth or non-truth of those opinions meant nothing. If you expressed Archie-like opinions you were a social pariah, and everyone who agreed with Archie knew it and the vast majority kept their mouths shut.
The long-term purpose of propaganda is ultimately to change beliefs. The short-term purpose is to turn certain beliefs into crime-think. Mission accomplished.
Speaking of “Good Times,” let’s hear it for Bern Nadette Stanis, first black chick I ever “noticed,” if you know what I mean.
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lohiivHBye1qcr1qho1_500.jpg
I had no idea that “All in the Family” was intended to achieve such nefarious goals, I just thought it was a funny show. Must’ve been subliminal brain waves transmitted along with the telecast.
“That was a big part of the “rural purge” of the early 70s, when TV moved away from traditional fare which appealed to the “greatest generation”, then middle aged, to more progressive fare like the Lear shows designed to appeal to boomers. It was a major turning point in the history of American pop culture.”
Well, OK, I’ll grant you some logical conjecture there; still, keep in mind that while that may be true, the following was among the one or two shows of that same period that matched “All in the Family” in ratings popularity:
More things change, the more they stay the same, eh?
The point of All in the Family was to make Archie a bafoon who was, at worst, to be held in contempt or, at best, held up to modest ridicule. However, they (especially Carroll O’Connor) were dismayed when they realized that a large segment of the audience was laughing “with him” and not “at him”, with sort of a “you tell ‘em, Arch” attitude. So they had to make the character “evolve”.
An interesting factoid about Good Times start Jimmie JJ Walker: “Walker appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on July 11, 2012. He stated that he did not vote for Barack Obama and that he would not vote for him in the 2012 election either.[4] In an interview with CNN, Walker described himself politically as a “realist independent” and stated that he opposed affirmative action, saying that it had outlived its usefulness.” Wikipedia.
Bern Nadette Stanis
Some of those women – ladies if you will – are hot.
And, those who are good looking rather than orcish, tend to please in their personality.
Speaking of black names – Bern ?
The dish under a tea cup called a saucer, in America, is a black word, not a white one.
What was Michael’s intelligence quotient ?
Interesting that he referenced the fifteen points, the one standard deviation. This boy be knowin his psychometrics !
He pussed out – take the test and fail if need be but there is a data point.
Speaking of black names – Bern ?
Wiki tells us her real name is Bernadette Stanislaus, with Bern Nadette being the stage name (rolls eyes). But Stanislaus as a last name? That and her white-ish features makes me think pappy or grand-pappy might have been a white dude. Ten seconds of looking can’t confirm it. Her daughters are named Dior and Brittany, which is pretty white too.
I think JJ’s retarded…
Are we hating Lear now? I need to keep notes.
[Chuck: For your upcoming e-book "Troll Notes".]
I remember that episode but I’m not sure if it was when it aired or a repeat because I came from divorced family that left us too poor to afford a television set for a period of time. Lear and his bunch were big on normalizing divorce as well. Course I had that structural white privilege thing goin for me, Dy-no-mite!
Makes me think how I can’t bear to watch Caddyshack any more.
Those Normal Lear shows were probably the most influential television in TV history. They were also some of the last shows that America watched together, before the proliferation of channels resulted in the TV audience breaking down into it’s various demographic niches. There really are no shows now that bring us all together like that.
And as propaganda, they were a fantastic success. Maude’s abortion probably did more to swing the abortion debate in this country than all of the hairy legged feminist marches put together.
wow, didn’t know about Maude’s abortion. 47 year-old granny getting knocked up? that’s funny.
American boys, some labelled “male chauvanist piglets” by their newly feministed mothers, could still find solace in Maude’s world, in the form of her sensible and comely daughter, played by Adrienne Barbeau. Sexiest sitcom girl til Valerie Bertinelli.
“Maude” was way more didactic than “All in the Family.” Overtly, nauseatingly so. Check out Maude pimpin’ the gays. Scintillating dialogue from Maude: “You see, I am a liberal. But my friend here is a…. oh what’s the word for non-liberal?…. BIGOT!”
Not that it has much to do with the clip. but Jimmy “J.J” Walker has been dating Ann Coulter for about three years now.
RE: Peterike’s “Maude” clip:
I forgot about that show pretty much; whoever said earlier that Maude sort-of escaped the syndicated re-run overload treatment was right, as I’d seen those other earlier shows endlessly between 4 and 7 p.m. on local non-affiliate stations when i was a kid.
Going by peterike’s clip and hte memories it jogged, “Maude” episodes were fairly risque and cuttind-edge by the standards of their debut in the late ’70s; some of the premises and dialogue are pretty funny too. As for the liberal indoctrination stuff in it: no doubt, but I do think some of you are overlooking the context, in which Maude is somewhat presented as absurd and over-the-top; it’s not purely one-sided in a liberal-leaning way, IMHO; lol!
BTW, In the above clip: who knew that David Axelrod got his start acting in 70s sit-coms!!
Jimmy Walker, who played JJ, is a conservative. I happened upon him once on tv recently and once about two months ago on the radio, in a fairly lengthy interviews. He spoke of how social programs are, in his opinion, the worst thing for the black community, but most interesting was that the interviewer asked him about the other comics who were and are his friends and how their schticks have changed over the years. That led to Walker not side-stepping the issue. He spoke of comics, former close friends of his such as George Lopez, who, once it became cool to bash whites, has changed his stand-up so that he plays to almost exclusively Hispanic audiences, blasting whites. Walker said it upset him that Lopez had adopted the caustic tone. I admired him for not avoiding the questions.
I know people who’ve seen Lopez’s stand-up (which differs, of course, from his tv show persona) and it’s brutal. Kudos for Walker for essentially calling him out on it.
Bern whatever her name is is givin me some jungle fever! Interesting that All In The Family would probably not work w/o the talents of the brilliant irishman Carrol O’Connor–ironic that he was endlessly fighting w/lear over being underpaid,lol,vat a shtereotype,OY!! Ya Nazi!!–but Good Times relied on the hilarious comic mastery of Walker. That kid was freaking FUNNY!!