“The Rhoades are a somewhat incongruous mix of 1980s young urban professionals but also lingering 1970s cultural liberalism.”
That’s such an accurate description of what happened with me and many of my fellow Boomers. We protested against the Vietnam war and for women’s rights during our college-campus days, then we went out into the adult world and put our degrees to work and became yuppies. “Yippies to Yuppies” was how someone once put it. It took some of us time to regain our footing once the greed-is-good 1980s were finally over, and we did.
I’ve always been haunted by Glenn Close’s line in The Big Chill: Reflecting on their previous college-days activism, she says wistfully to her friends, “I’d hate to think it was all just … fashion.” (words to that effect)
Thanks for this thoughtful piece, Mr. Robinson. I honestly have little idea how we move forward, as a society, out of our weird American Sickness, but I do feel that these types of cultural/historical observations are more widely helpful than the election post-mortem model that has lately done an awful lot (disproportionately, in my opinion) of putting the losses of two profoundly qualified, passionate, and *com*passionate (women) Presidential candidates on their various “shortcomings.”
It's a really grim analysis that hits me in the heart. But Malevolent Al Bundy is president because there's millions more Al Bundys who blame minorities for why they peaked in high school. That's why they're cheering the (for now stopped) cessation of government payments. They believe it all goes to Black people.
I think even this show though doesn't capture the utter sadism of such people. There are millions though that want their disfavored groups eliminated from public life...from being able to earn a living. They want the "good ol' days" of the 1950s and before. And well they'll probably get the social order as more and more companies knuckle over, and media continues to fail us (largely because it's incorporated into the rightwing media human centipede).
Great analysis. I’m from a working class family (dad was an appliance salesman and mom became a teacher when we were adults). In spite of the cast, which was great all the way around, I hated this show. In 1987, I was 25 and recently married. It reminded me too much of the dads in my life— my dad, my father in law in particular- men who felt they were owed servitude simply because “man”.
But you’re right. This is the man of today. Might account for all my anger.
“Democrats have become a party of college-educated, upper middle class people. The Rhoades’ sneering derision of the ‘low-brow’ Bundys is also similar to how far-too-many liberals view the American working class, especially non-college educated whites.”
This, exactly. It’s one reason why the Democratic party is currently powerless in DC.
As...a college-educated, well...middle class person, I'll say why I hate the people who vote for Republicans and follow that branding: They carp on and on about 'elites,' but they continue voting for millionaires and billionaires. 'Elites' either just means The Jews™ or it means people who tell them the bigotries they visit upon vulnerable minorities aren't OK. They replace actual champions of labor with car dealers. They vote for venture capitalists who are the same ones that closed their factories.
Democrats actually spend enormous amounts of time kissing the ass of non-college (who also get the joy of being what people call "working class" - Black people don't get that) people. I'm sure there must be some sneering wealthy liberal somewhere saying this, though I guess those sneering wealthy liberals also are happy to withhold money unless Joe Biden is put on an ice floe. So what do I know?
I do find this funny though that THIS is what results in political consequences. It's OK for Republicans to cheer for death and destruction of people in states of people they don't like. We have umpteen million people scolding folks who castigate 'red' states. But Republicans can use entire states as epithets. They can call themselves and themselves only "Real America."
I guess my issue is this whole ass kissing thing is always one-way. And I think the real reason we'll find is that the Democratic Party is associated with disfavored groups, AND there's a rightwing media human centipede to spread agitprop to reinforce how bad that is. That's one reason why we get the outcomes we do.
Thanks for this and the follow up comment. It hasn't been two weeks yet and we see how the RW completely disregards the working class. Or anyone other than the oligarchs. The only thing the working class gets from this - and it's only the working class in the "Red" states - is that, for now, they are free of Trump's overwhelming vindictiveness. While I don't fully disagree with Mr. Robinson view of Democrats and the working class, they rolled over and allowed themselves to be deunionized, put out of decent-paying blue collar jobs, all for Reaganism, supply-side economics, Trumpism and because the rights of LBGTQ and minorities are actually important to Democrats. At least this one.
I think it’s less my view than how the public views them. Marcy and Steve would read as conventional Democrats today when they were actually Reaganites
As you point out, the public doesn’t associate billionaire loving with “elitism,” instead they consider elitism to be sneering at Trump voters for how they eat or dress, etc,
I’m not talking about “ass-kissing.” I’m talking about Stephen’s precise description of the Democratic party. A genuine respect for the “working-class” must be foundational for a political party to survive. The Democratic party does not have that, and it shows right now in their total lack of power in DC.
What even does "genuine respect for the working-class" mean in a media environment like this? Time and time again Democrats have delivered better economies for a lot of these people. The policies have just been BETTER. Near as I can tell, all Republicans deliver for them are:
1. Telling them they're Real America as opposed to the people in the cities.
2. Waving a bloody shirt about fentanyl and blaming it on disfavored minorities who they allege took their jobs (by the way, notice that the Sacklers are absent from that bloody shirt?)
3. Giving the wealthy among them tax cuts so they can afford things like flying private aviation to DC to overthrow the government.
4. Busting their unions and arguing for paying them LESS.
5. Enacting conditions on disaster aid to states that have committed the crime of voting for Democrats
This is genuine respect? I think that genuine respect is just branding that they get to coast on because it was just willed into the consciousness by the right wing media human centipede.
Second you know what I am using as evidence that none of this is about the economy?
These people sat on their fucking hands and let their Haitian neighbors in Ohio be demonized and terrorized with blood libel. They CO-SIGNED that shit. So I want to know, what is a genuine respect for them? Because I'll also tell you this: After the shit Barack Obama got for "clinging to guns and God" no national Democrat has said anything like that. Are we going to go around policing randos on social media now to make sure they're showing the proper obesiance to their non-minority non-college betters?
And I'm going to say this again and again: We lost to fanfiction. There is NO Green New Deal. It doesn't exist! Meat is not going away! There are people who voted against the Democratic Party based on positions that *do not exist in reality!*
You’re not hearing me, and at any rate, I don’t enjoy long-winded arguments, especially in the comments section of a writer’s Substack. So let’s end this conversation now. Thanks.
Excellent essay and another cultural study showing how the limited imaginations of how post-Civil Rights America could face a destabilizing backlash, the excesses of humanizing bigotry, and the evolving classism of a changing economy led us to the dystopia of today.
I never really watched the show when it was on (I may have caught a bit of it here and there) but, last week, I saw one of our more obscure channels here in the UK has begun showing it in one-hour blocks every night. I thought, 'Oh, cool a bit of American nostalgic TV!' and tried watching an episode...ugh. I suppose it may have played well back then but to a bona fide lefty like me, it's aged as well as cottage cheese in the back of the 'fridge since last Easter. I gave it about 15 minutes before deciding there HAD to be something better on.
I'm glad Ed O'Neil moved on from being a young-ish ass to being a curmudgeon who is still open to change in "Modern Family."
Al Bundy is not Trump.
Also, Stephen, this observation:
“The Rhoades are a somewhat incongruous mix of 1980s young urban professionals but also lingering 1970s cultural liberalism.”
That’s such an accurate description of what happened with me and many of my fellow Boomers. We protested against the Vietnam war and for women’s rights during our college-campus days, then we went out into the adult world and put our degrees to work and became yuppies. “Yippies to Yuppies” was how someone once put it. It took some of us time to regain our footing once the greed-is-good 1980s were finally over, and we did.
I’ve always been haunted by Glenn Close’s line in The Big Chill: Reflecting on their previous college-days activism, she says wistfully to her friends, “I’d hate to think it was all just … fashion.” (words to that effect)
Thanks so much for this point and the Big Chill quote!
Thanks for this thoughtful piece, Mr. Robinson. I honestly have little idea how we move forward, as a society, out of our weird American Sickness, but I do feel that these types of cultural/historical observations are more widely helpful than the election post-mortem model that has lately done an awful lot (disproportionately, in my opinion) of putting the losses of two profoundly qualified, passionate, and *com*passionate (women) Presidential candidates on their various “shortcomings.”
Great analysis.
It's a really grim analysis that hits me in the heart. But Malevolent Al Bundy is president because there's millions more Al Bundys who blame minorities for why they peaked in high school. That's why they're cheering the (for now stopped) cessation of government payments. They believe it all goes to Black people.
I think even this show though doesn't capture the utter sadism of such people. There are millions though that want their disfavored groups eliminated from public life...from being able to earn a living. They want the "good ol' days" of the 1950s and before. And well they'll probably get the social order as more and more companies knuckle over, and media continues to fail us (largely because it's incorporated into the rightwing media human centipede).
Ha-ha!! *sniffle*
Great analysis. I’m from a working class family (dad was an appliance salesman and mom became a teacher when we were adults). In spite of the cast, which was great all the way around, I hated this show. In 1987, I was 25 and recently married. It reminded me too much of the dads in my life— my dad, my father in law in particular- men who felt they were owed servitude simply because “man”.
But you’re right. This is the man of today. Might account for all my anger.
“Democrats have become a party of college-educated, upper middle class people. The Rhoades’ sneering derision of the ‘low-brow’ Bundys is also similar to how far-too-many liberals view the American working class, especially non-college educated whites.”
This, exactly. It’s one reason why the Democratic party is currently powerless in DC.
As...a college-educated, well...middle class person, I'll say why I hate the people who vote for Republicans and follow that branding: They carp on and on about 'elites,' but they continue voting for millionaires and billionaires. 'Elites' either just means The Jews™ or it means people who tell them the bigotries they visit upon vulnerable minorities aren't OK. They replace actual champions of labor with car dealers. They vote for venture capitalists who are the same ones that closed their factories.
Democrats actually spend enormous amounts of time kissing the ass of non-college (who also get the joy of being what people call "working class" - Black people don't get that) people. I'm sure there must be some sneering wealthy liberal somewhere saying this, though I guess those sneering wealthy liberals also are happy to withhold money unless Joe Biden is put on an ice floe. So what do I know?
I do find this funny though that THIS is what results in political consequences. It's OK for Republicans to cheer for death and destruction of people in states of people they don't like. We have umpteen million people scolding folks who castigate 'red' states. But Republicans can use entire states as epithets. They can call themselves and themselves only "Real America."
I guess my issue is this whole ass kissing thing is always one-way. And I think the real reason we'll find is that the Democratic Party is associated with disfavored groups, AND there's a rightwing media human centipede to spread agitprop to reinforce how bad that is. That's one reason why we get the outcomes we do.
Thanks for this and the follow up comment. It hasn't been two weeks yet and we see how the RW completely disregards the working class. Or anyone other than the oligarchs. The only thing the working class gets from this - and it's only the working class in the "Red" states - is that, for now, they are free of Trump's overwhelming vindictiveness. While I don't fully disagree with Mr. Robinson view of Democrats and the working class, they rolled over and allowed themselves to be deunionized, put out of decent-paying blue collar jobs, all for Reaganism, supply-side economics, Trumpism and because the rights of LBGTQ and minorities are actually important to Democrats. At least this one.
I think it’s less my view than how the public views them. Marcy and Steve would read as conventional Democrats today when they were actually Reaganites
As you point out, the public doesn’t associate billionaire loving with “elitism,” instead they consider elitism to be sneering at Trump voters for how they eat or dress, etc,
I’m not talking about “ass-kissing.” I’m talking about Stephen’s precise description of the Democratic party. A genuine respect for the “working-class” must be foundational for a political party to survive. The Democratic party does not have that, and it shows right now in their total lack of power in DC.
What even does "genuine respect for the working-class" mean in a media environment like this? Time and time again Democrats have delivered better economies for a lot of these people. The policies have just been BETTER. Near as I can tell, all Republicans deliver for them are:
1. Telling them they're Real America as opposed to the people in the cities.
2. Waving a bloody shirt about fentanyl and blaming it on disfavored minorities who they allege took their jobs (by the way, notice that the Sacklers are absent from that bloody shirt?)
3. Giving the wealthy among them tax cuts so they can afford things like flying private aviation to DC to overthrow the government.
4. Busting their unions and arguing for paying them LESS.
5. Enacting conditions on disaster aid to states that have committed the crime of voting for Democrats
This is genuine respect? I think that genuine respect is just branding that they get to coast on because it was just willed into the consciousness by the right wing media human centipede.
Second you know what I am using as evidence that none of this is about the economy?
These people sat on their fucking hands and let their Haitian neighbors in Ohio be demonized and terrorized with blood libel. They CO-SIGNED that shit. So I want to know, what is a genuine respect for them? Because I'll also tell you this: After the shit Barack Obama got for "clinging to guns and God" no national Democrat has said anything like that. Are we going to go around policing randos on social media now to make sure they're showing the proper obesiance to their non-minority non-college betters?
And I'm going to say this again and again: We lost to fanfiction. There is NO Green New Deal. It doesn't exist! Meat is not going away! There are people who voted against the Democratic Party based on positions that *do not exist in reality!*
You’re not hearing me, and at any rate, I don’t enjoy long-winded arguments, especially in the comments section of a writer’s Substack. So let’s end this conversation now. Thanks.
Alright fine. I'm just tired.
Good. We’re done.
Excellent essay and another cultural study showing how the limited imaginations of how post-Civil Rights America could face a destabilizing backlash, the excesses of humanizing bigotry, and the evolving classism of a changing economy led us to the dystopia of today.
I never really watched the show when it was on (I may have caught a bit of it here and there) but, last week, I saw one of our more obscure channels here in the UK has begun showing it in one-hour blocks every night. I thought, 'Oh, cool a bit of American nostalgic TV!' and tried watching an episode...ugh. I suppose it may have played well back then but to a bona fide lefty like me, it's aged as well as cottage cheese in the back of the 'fridge since last Easter. I gave it about 15 minutes before deciding there HAD to be something better on.
I'm glad Ed O'Neil moved on from being a young-ish ass to being a curmudgeon who is still open to change in "Modern Family."