If Jesus made a sitcom it would be All In The Family.

I'd like to say a few words about Norman Lear, who's mostly famous nowadays (if he is famous nowadays) as the founder of The People For The American Way, which is a First Amendment advocacy group that's big enough to get onto Free Republic's list of scary left-lib organizations, but not to get mentioned by Glenn Beck: Every generation has its wunderkinder, its reputed super-geniuses, who can't seem to touch anything without it's turning into gold ...until suddenly it doesn't any more. The Eighties had Matt Groening; the Nineties had Klasky-Csupo; the Two-Thousandsies have Trey Parker and Matt Stone; and the Seventies had Norman Lear.

His breakout hit was All In The Family, which aired on Tuesday nights on CBS, from 1971 through 1979. He was 28 years old, and his skit-based comedy program, Turn On, had just been canceled (after just one episode) by ABC. After that debacle, ABC was not enthusiastic about taking on another Lear series, especially not one with a main character who was a "foul-mouthed bigot". CBS, on the other hand, was looking to update their image, after a decade of specializing in hayseed comedies like The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction. Something edgy like All In The Family suited them right down to the ground.

They were careful though. They knew the series broke new ground, in terms of language and subject matter, and they prepared as best as they could to handle any objections. Before the first episode, they ran a disclaimer, which read: "The program you are about to see is All in the Family. It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter, we hope to show -- in a mature fashion -- just how absurd they are.". And they opened several extra telephone switchboards to handle the calls of complaint that they expected would come pouring in.

As it happened, it took a full season for All In The Family to get off the ground, but once it did, it was a phenomenon. Audiences loved the show about Archie and Edith, and their kids Mike and Gloria. Young people rooted for the kids, because they were liberal, idealistic (and in Gloria's case, cute as a button as well, and with a super-mega awesome wardrobe my friends and I would have killed for). Older people rooted for Archie and Edith, who had at least been able to hold things together, through good times and bad, and stayed together with most of their love intact. Angry conservatives rooted for Archie, who said in public what they only said in private (even if he did get slapped down by someone, by the end of every episode). And he was considered such an accurate portrait of his type of uneducated, bigoted working man, that by the Presidential election season of 1972, commentators were talking about "The Archie Bunker vote."


All In The Family drew objections from both sides. Many complained that it was too noisy, full of slamming doors and arguments that ended in shouting, too vulgar with its too-audible "terlet", the flushing of which was a recurring joke throughout the series. They complained that it was offensive, because of the way Archie talked, constantly making remarks about spades, Polacks, spooks, chinks, Yids, fairies, fruits, pansies, four-eyes, jungle bunnies, and fags. On the other hand, in a piece that has become one of the most famous pieces of television criticism ever, “As I Listened to Archie Say Hebe," Laura Z. Hobson argued that All In The Family was dangerously sanitized. Instead of using semi-offensive words like "hebe" and "jungle bunny", she said, Archie should have been portrayed honestly, using the truly offensive words, "kike" and "nigger", that a real racist would use.

I don't think her interpretation is entirely fair. Certainly Archie's language is prettied up a little bit over what it might have been in real life, but Norman Lear was already fighting CBS to keep it as raw as it was. Furthermore, having grown up with a family much like the Bunkers myself, I question just how much prettying up Lear actually did. My father was a bigot much like Archie, full of beer-fueled anger for most of my childhood, and always ready with the derogatory term whenever he heard mention of any kind of minority, but in all the time I lived with him, I never heard him use the word "kike", and I only heard him say the n-word once.  Certainly it is true that Archie was lovable as well as being a bigot, but I don't think it's fair to blame him for making bigotry lovable (even if he did look and sound just like Rush Limbaugh); America's history of racism goes back a lot further than one fat loudmouth in a Seventies TV show.

Rather, when I look back at All In The Family now, thirty years after it went off the air, what I notice most is how none of the characters come across as anywhere near perfect. Archie is hateful, yes, but he is not the only character with flaws. Edith's ignorant, and perfectly comfortable in her ignorance. Meathead loves arguing with Archie, whether or not he's in the right, as much as he loves his liberal idealism. Gloria's a spoiled brat, who throws tantrums when she runs out of arguments for getting her way. And yet it's not just Archie who's lovable despite his bigotry; the others are lovable despite their weaknesses as well.

All Ihe Family shows a side of reality that is almost never shown on television, not because of the lower middle-class setting, or Archie's abrasive language, but because it's "good guy" characters, Meathead and Gloria, weren't always right. Meathead's holier-than-thou attitude comes across in episodes like "Edith Writes a Song" (Season 2) and "Everybody Tells the Truth" (Season 3), while episodes such as "Mike and Gloria Mix it Up" (Season 4), "Mike and Gloria Split" (Season 7), show him to be arrogant, and patronizing toward people with less education than he has (including his wife) as well.  Gloria for her part, throws regular tantrums throughout the series, and whenever things get too hard with Mike, she's all-too ready to go running back to Daddy for protection.

The problem with most TV shows is that they pretty up reality. We may want to be as cute as Carly and Sam, or as cool as the Fonz, or as wise as Stan Marsh and Kyle Broflovski. We may want parents who are as wealthy and cultured as the Huxtables, and as supportive as Carol Brady. Deep down, we know that life isn't that simple. There will be times when we're as dorky as Gibby (or Lenny and Squiggy), as vulgar and uncaring as Cartman, and as pathetic as Kenny. Our parents will have times when they make Homer Simpson look smart, when they make Pam Puckett look caring, and Liane Cartman look competent. The truth is, we still have to live with them, as we have to live with ourselves. Sanity lies in finding a way to accept ourselves and our families, in our weak as well as our not-so-weak moments, not just without anger, but with love.

The Christian theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of "Cheap Grace": "Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate." In other words, it is saying everything is just fine as it is, ignoring the weaknesses that are in all of us, pretending that we don't see anyplace where we could use some growth. Cheap grace is static, it freezes people as they are, then puts a pretty gloss of "acceptance" over the situation. It ignores the fact that all of us have places where we could use some growth, and, in doing so, denies us the chance of growing.

Most TV shows, now as in the 1970's, give us cheap grace. They give static characters, and flattened situations that owe more to other television shows than they do to reality. There is an episode on the Nickelodeon series iCarly, where a TV producer sees the main characters' webcast and, charmed by its fresh, real feel, tries to create a series that will duplicate it, only to fail in the end, because he's too dependent on TV formula to drop it, and create something new. At the beginning of the episode, a clip from one of his usual series is shown, with this dialogue:

TV Dad: "But Michelle, why would you accept two dates to the prom but not tell either boy one about the other?"
Michelle: "Because, Daddy. Luke is so sweet, but Brandon is so hot!"
TV Dad: "Aw, Noodles!"

Then at the end of the episode, a clip from the new series, supposedly inspired by iCarly, and it includes the exact same dialogue, to show the extent of the producer's failure.

Well, most television shows are full of Aw, Noodles, moments.  Most of them rely on the cliche and the formula, even the really "groundbreaking", and "exciting" ones.  What's special about All In The Family, is that it did not. It gave us characters that had real faults, and real weaknesses. Sometimes they were able to overcome them, sometimes they were overcome by them, not just the "bad" character Archie, but the supposedly "better" ones like Gloria and the Meathead as well. Laura Z. Hobson was right, All In The Family did make its bigot character lovable, not by whitewashing his bigoted qualities, but by showing that he had good ones as well.

If Jesus made a sitcom, it would be All In The Family. Like the show, Jesus did not whitewash peoples' weaknesses. In John 4:17-18, when the Samaritan woman tells Jesus that she is not married, he responds that he already knows the worst about her situation. She's had five husbands already, and is now living with someone who is not her husband. And yet he takes the time to sit with her and talk. He welcomes the sinful woman who has come to him to repent, in Luke 7:37-49, and in Mark 2:13-17, he explains his rationale for spending time with sinners this way: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Jesus' message is the opposite of cheap grace. It does not involve ignoring our weaknesses, but
accepting them, learning to live with ourselves as we are, while still taking steps toward more maturity. It involves learning to love ourselves, and others, as we all are, in our current weak and broken condition, the way Jesus loved the sinners of his day. It is the message of All In The Family: Yes, there are lovable bigots out there, as there are lovable self-righteous asshole-pricks, and lovable spoiled brats, and lovable dingbats. We do not become lovable when we overcome our weaknesses, we are lovable now, as we are.


HyperSmash