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."