← History As It Happens
History As It Happens
Religious Right and Left: From Archie Bunker to Donald Trump
00:50:58
Let's talk religion and politics as if we were on the set of All in the Family, the smash 1970s sitcom designed to expose the problems of racism, sexism, and religious intolerance. In this episode, historian Louis Benjamin Rolsky traces the...
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- [00:00]
Martin DeCaro
History as it happens. December 20, 2024. Religious right and left. The word prolific more than applies to television legend Norman Lear, the visionary behind.
- [00:12]
Norman Lear
My name is Norman Lear.
- [00:19]
Martin DeCaro
Let me tell you something, Mr. Bunker.
- [00:21]
Archie Bunker
No, let me tell you something, Mr. Stivic. You are a meathead.
- [00:25]
Michael Stivic
That there's just one Christian position and implying, if we don't agree, we're not good Christians.
- [00:29]
Jerry Falwell
I really believe that the pagan and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle. The aclu, People for the American way, all of them.
- [00:43]
Martin DeCaro
What happened to the religious left was Norman Lear. Yeah. The famous TV sitcom producer, its champion before the rise of the religious rights. What can we learn from all in the Family about the weakness of the religious left today? Let's talk religion and politics. Why don't we. Next, as we report history as it happens.
- [01:03]
Norman Lear
Martin.
- [01:03]
Martin DeCaro
I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [01:04]
Archie Bunker
Yes, that's right. You don't believe me? Read your Bible. Read your story of Adam and Eve there.
- [01:09]
Norman Lear
When we're talking about religion, spirituality on the left, liberalism, religious liberalism. These kind of broad terms. Religious left. To me, we have to think a bit more broadly. Typically, we assume the religious right to be this monolithic Christian kind of entity that's imagined into this catastrophic force in the public square. Not wrong, I suppose, but at the same time, a lot of it is constructed.
- [01:32]
Pat Robertson
Father, I pray for my president and our president. I pray for you to give him boldness. I pray, Father, for him to defy and challenge giants in the world and defy and challenge the enemies in this nation.
- [01:51]
Martin DeCaro
About six months before the 2016 election, so about six months before evangelical Christians would help deliver the White House to Donald Trump, a professor by the name of Alec Ryrie delivered a lecture at Gresham College titled the Religious Left in America Invisible or Non Existent. We could ask that same question today. As Ryrie said, the religious left wasn't always in such disarray. They helped elect Jimmy Carter. But then 5 million evangelical voters switched from Carter to Ronald Reagan.
- [02:22]
Alec Ryrie
In 1980, the televangelist Pat Robertson had Carter as a guest on his show and later said that Carter was the one who activated me and a lot of others. And Carter's eventual election victory depended on the fact that unprecedentedly, for a Democrat, he'd won more than half of the evangelical vote. The new religious left was on the march. But as you may be aware, it hasn't worked out that way. In 1980, when he ran for re election, 5 million evangelical voters switched from Carter to the divorcee Ronald Reagan. Since then, there's been a lot of attention given in the United States to the religious right, but much less to an equally remarkable phenomenon, the absence, or rather the invisibility of the religious left. Despite the fact that many American Christians have political concerns traditionally associated with the left, repeated attempts to mould an organized, vocal religious left have run into the sand. The result has been a strong impression that as one junior Republican congressman bluntly put it in January of this year, we, the Republican Party, own the entire biblical tradition.
- [03:31]
Martin DeCaro
The shift in the religious vote did not escape Norman Lear, the ingenious, groundbreaking TV producer and writer behind all in the Family. In several hit spin offs, the way.
- [03:40]
Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller played songs that made the.
- [03:45]
Archie Bunker
Hip parade, Guys like us, we had it made.
- [03:50]
Martin DeCaro
In that election year of 1980, Lear produced a TV ad, a kind of warning about the danger posed by the religious right or moral majority televangelists like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, whose remarks after 911 were typical of his morally bankrupt worldview.
- [04:07]
Jerry Falwell
What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if in fact God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve. I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the aclu, People for the American Way, all of them who tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, you helped this happen.
- [04:43]
Martin DeCaro
So why don't we go back to that TV ad in 1980? It depicted not a liberal college professor ready to deliver a condescending lecture to help conservatives see the light, but a working class fella in a yellow hard hat operating a forklift at a construction site.
- [04:58]
Michael Stivic
Hi, I have a problem. I'm religious. We're a religious family, but that don't mean we see things the same way politically. Now here comes certain preachers on radio and TV and in the mail telling us on a bunch of political issues that there's just one Christian position and implying if we don't agree, we're not good Christians. So my son is a bad Christian on two issues. My wife is a good Christian on those issues, but she's a bad Christian on two others. Lucky me, I'm 100% Christian because I agree with the preacher on all of it. Now, my problem is I know my boy is as good a Christian as me. My wife, she's better. So maybe there's something wrong when people, even preachers, suggest that other people are good Christians or bad Christians, depending on their political views.
- [05:44]
Archie Bunker
If you oppose religious tests for political office, call 1-8-1.
- [05:48]
Martin DeCaro
And so was born people for the American Way, the subject of historian Louis Benjamin Rolsky's fascinating study the rise and Fall of the Religious Left, politics, television and popular culture in the 1970s and beyond. If Norman Lear could be considered a religious leader, TV was his church and his scripts for all in the Family were his gospel. Through the character of Archie Bunker, who incessantly argues with his wife, daughter and son in law, Lear hoped to expose racism, sexism and religious bigotry with satire.
- [06:21]
Archie Bunker
You see how it is talking to you. That's you all over. That's your, what do you call, attitude. See, you're prejudiced against Tommy Macklin because you know he's a wanker. I don't know anything about him. I just told you he was a white guy. So that's why you hate him. You are prejudice against white people. I know Tommy Knox is. I ain't crazy. If I told you that Tommy Macklin was a black guy, you'd be crying tears and saying, ah, give the poor ex con a chance. But you know he's a white guy, so you're against him. Well, I ain't prejudiced that way. I ain't prejudiced against no man just because his skin is the same color as my own.
- [06:58]
Martin DeCaro
Well, as Ralston Trowski contends, Lear and like minded religious liberals attain social influence, but not ultimately political power or not the same level of political power achieved by the religious right, which is now a dominant force in the Republican Party. You might remember this disturbing scene four years ago. Evangelical Christian leaders placing their hands on Donald Trump, a man who doesn't know the Bible from a cookbook, to pray for him and our country.
- [07:25]
Norman Lear
Lord, I thank you that America didn't need a preacher in the Oval Office, it did not need a professional politician in the Oval Office, but it needed a fighter and a champion for freedom. And Lord, that's exactly what we have now.
- [07:41]
Martin DeCaro
Could you imagine that happening in a Democratic White House? So what happened to the so called religious left? How should we define it? If it won the most important culture wars of the 1970s, the wars fought on network television, why did its influence wane? Lewis Benjamin Rolsky is an affiliated fellow at the center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University and he is the author of the aforementioned the Rise and Fall of the Religious Left published by Columbia University Press. Welcome to the show.
- [08:12]
Norman Lear
Thank you very much for having me. I can't wait.
- [08:15]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah. You are a listener, a dedicated listener. Now you get a chance to listen to yourself. I hope you enjoy that. Some people don't like to listen to how they sound.
- [08:23]
Norman Lear
Understandable.
- [08:24]
Martin DeCaro
So this is your very first time on the show. Tell us a little bit about your background as a scholar. What brought you to the subject of religion and politics, which I must say I need to spend more time discussing. And I think people, Americans in general, have to focus on a little bit more.
- [08:40]
Norman Lear
Oh, well, thanks. Yeah. I mean, these questions have been sort of at the forefront of what I've been doing for a while. And I started as a historian and decided to take a class one day on religion of the world and college, and in many ways the rest is history. I go on to different sort of graduate degrees and start exploring, like you said, the relationship between religion and politics, religion and public life. And in many ways it's part of, I suppose, who I am. My family's always been debating such things. The popular culture we consume is always sort of interacting and exchanging and engaging such things. So in many ways it's a professional commitment and also sort of a biographical one, a vocation I take into the classroom and try and communicate the best I can. A very complex and nuanced subject, especially now.
- [09:31]
Martin DeCaro
Nuance? What's that? Well, you know, I know, right? Religion and politics, they say those are the two subjects you're not supposed to discuss. But if you're not discussing those things, then what are you talking about? I mean, that's what's. That's what's interesting. But there is a lack of nuance. I've probably been guilty about this myself as a fairly militant atheist, the way I speak about religious subjects. But we can get into that here because I know you exist because of Twitter now, X. I mean, it's not an entirely useless social media platform. I started to spot your posts. You're among a number. I'm not putting you into a group per se, but you're among a number of historians, I'll generally say, on the left, who are frustrated with the way people on the left and liberals discuss religion, right?
- [10:19]
Norman Lear
Yeah. Not only religion, but ideas of politics, of progress, of culture. I mean, I was just having a conversation last night with a colleague of mine, Tyler Austin for the Atlantic, and we're just sort of chit chatting and I sort of just observed to myself, you know, liberals can make the most compelling, like, wonderful television about politics, but doing politics like in the actual real world has Been a tremendous challenge and in many ways it's kind of ironic. Some of my favorite things to consume, like Veep, House of Cards, you know, you think about the wonderful popular culture on politics and public life, Parks and Recreation. I've written about that. So we have this wellspring and reservoir of vision and public life and civic imagination, but in some ways falls flat, you know, once it reaches the public sphere, if you will. So, yeah, I mean, the more nuanced, the more slowly I suppose we can talk about these things, the better.
- [11:16]
Martin DeCaro
Well, it comes down to how the left views its opponents on the religious right, or just people who say, voted for Donald Trump. Being able to connect with them without just dismissing them because you disagree with some of their ideas on, say, cultural issues, what have you. I mean, the Democrats used to be pretty good at this. They used to have socially conservative, but economically on the left, union workers in their coalition. Not anymore. So let's get to the topic and try to connect past and present. I picked up your book, the Rise and Fall of the Religious Left. Not expecting what was in it. I had no idea what you had written about. I thought I was going to read about clergy and left wing religious activists and the influence of the religious left in, say, presidential politics. People who oppose the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King Jr. I mean, he was a reverend on the left. That's not what you wrote about. The subtitle really says it all. Politics, television and popular culture in the 1970s and beyond. You chose the lens of Norman Lear and his amazing television career. All the great TV shows he put out. In the 1970s when television really mattered, there was only a handful of stations, there was no cable, there was no Internet, no nothing. Archie Bunker, all in the Family. I never thought of Norman learning as a religious figure. Why is he a religious figure?
- [12:38]
Norman Lear
Wonderful question. So I, in my doctoral program, I was working on, you know, different things in classes and I started writing my dissertation on Norman Lear, partly biographical. I had been kind of raised on 70s television by my family for sort of various idiosyncratic reasons. And I had an intimacy, a familiarity with it. When we're talking about religion, spirituality on the left, you know, liberalism, religious liberalism, these kind of broad terms, religious left, you know, to me we have to think a bit more broadly. Typically, we assume the religious right to be this monolithic Christian kind of entity that's imagined into this catastrophic force in the public square. Not wrong, I suppose, but at the same time, a lot of it is constructed. And so Norman Lear is someone who I wanted to focus on. Because, yes, like you said so eloquently, we have King, the Berrigan brothers, of course, you know, like you said, anti Vietnam in the 60s and 70s. So we have these case studies. But for me, you know, the religious left is a broad, cacophonous construct, if you will, not to say that doesn't exist out in the world. It certainly does. But these are turns of phrases, you know, these are journalistic enterprises that we're sort of talking about, and scholastic ones as well, talking about religion and spirituality on the left. We're talking about, you know, to me, someone like Norman Lear, who late in life purchased William Frost's home and held little seminars basically every year for the, you know, liberal intelligentsia, if you will, like the Bill Moyers. They would go and talk about religion and spirituality and nature of existence, you know, that kind of thing.
- [14:10]
Martin DeCaro
And he had allies. He had allies in churches too, right? They were more center or leftist clergy or church denominations, Is that what you'd put it?
- [14:20]
Norman Lear
Yeah. So, I mean, I got. I had a great time, you know, writing about Lear's eventual creation of People for the American Way and his association with people like, you know, Martin Marty, who's a very well known professor, but he's also a minister. He's interacting with deans of Yale Divinity School at the time who are also kind of middle. Middle left, you know, ecumenical figures. Part of the religious left is that it's kind of a patchwork. It's. It's diverse, it's cacophonous, it's interdisciplinary, it's multi religious, it's pluralistic. It's oftentimes difficult to leverage, you know, in public life on behalf of this kind of political aspiration, that kind of political aspiration. So to me, I wanted to talk about, you know, this topic having to do with religion, but from a slightly different angle. Maybe one that people weren't expecting, but maybe saw every night as they were watching all in the Family.
- [15:12]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, that was his gospel. The discussions and debates in the living room of Archie Bunker and Meathead. So Norman Lear was Jewish. He didn't seem particularly devout or religious in his Judaism, but religion mattered a lot to him and social issues mattered a lot to him. Not because he wanted to impose his ideas on society, because he was worried about how the right, as he saw it, was imposing its ideas on society. What informed his view of this? You mentioned some of the things that are people who influenced him younger, in his younger days. Fdr, Father Coughlin. Or is it Coughlin the preacher? The Anti Semitic preacher in the 1930s.
- [15:54]
Norman Lear
Yeah, I mean, that's where it all starts. And in some ways, you know, Lear is spending his early life in Hartford, Connecticut, but perhaps more importantly also in New Haven. So he's close enough to Yale to overhear things about quotas and how many people are able to be accepted on a given year. He is glued to the radio, just glued to it. When it comes to fights, listening to fights with his father in the famous chair that's now in the Smithsonian Museum. He's listening to FDR and he's writing to presidents. Because he's brought up to express himself and his family, everyone encouraged him to write to the President. Dear Mr. President, oftentimes learn, would say, and in many ways, that's how my book got started. Not to get too far afield here, but the book really got started with me discovering a series of letters between Norman Lear and Ronald Reagan, published in Harper's in 80, 81 or so. And it's this kind of civic vision that Lear has. Kind of like a mid century liberal, you know, trifaith America, but that kind of letter writing, that kind of civic, maybe broadly sort of Jewish commitment to pluralism. His involvement in World War II, literally fighting fascism, I suppose, in Europe, like literally. Not as far as like the, you know, discussions we've had or some of the discourses about all that kind of stuff. Right. So he's literally like flying missions over Italy. So, you know, he comes back, he gets into television, he's reading the writings of Justice Learned Hand, kind of a mid century figure of law, who talks about the spirit of liberty, which is something that Lear is big on when it comes to people for the American Way, envisioning and imagining sort of a liberal understanding of the public square. So Lear's influences are coming from different places and his Judaism comes to the fore oftentimes when it comes to issues of discrimination. There's sort of an infamous quote about, I can't remember who said it, but someone on the right broadly says, you know, God does not hear the prayer of a Jew. And that's something that Falwell has to address. That's something that Lear brings up. So it's certainly there. It's just understood in the old school tri faith America, you know, World War II sense of Protestant, Catholic, Jew.
- [18:17]
Martin DeCaro
Charles Coughlin, Father Coughlin. Or is it Coughlin? I'm embarrassed to say I should.
- [18:22]
Norman Lear
No, no, I mess it up too.
- [18:24]
Martin DeCaro
He was on the radio in the days Lear's childhood, when the radio was the medium he was a Catholic priest. He was a populist, anti Semitic, pro fascist. That left a mark on Lear.
- [18:39]
Norman Lear
Right.
- [18:39]
Martin DeCaro
About the dangers of the right wing. And at the time, the government had standards. And I'm not saying I agree with this. I'm a First Amendment pretty close to a First Amendment absolutist. But the government actually stepped in and denied Coughlin his platform after a while because of the incendiary nature of what he was saying. You mention this in the book, by the way, before you answer that question, Coghlor Coughlin, he died in 1979, so he may have watched all in the Family. He probably did at some point.
- [19:05]
Norman Lear
That's an amazing connection, though. I wish I could somehow explore that. I mean, I have a bunch of stuff on Falwell and what he thought and all that kind of stuff, but that would be amazing. Yeah, I mean, right around that time, I have a chapter about the FCC and how the fcc, you know, begins to kind of step in and regulate airwaves. And. And someone like Coughlin or Coughlin is not necessarily seen as the most sort of kosher, if you will, sort of subject, I suppose, for the airwaves. And so in some ways, that begins Lear's understanding of this abrasive right wing populist appeal. But then the government's also kind of looking at it too, and sort of divvying up and trying to figure out how to regulate the airwaves. It's such a fascinating idea, this idea of the public interest, you know, like, where does it come from? How is it compromised? Who defines it? It's such a wonderfully complex idea. And I got to read all these law articles I remember, for that.
- [20:03]
Martin DeCaro
Wow. Yeah. Which ideas are aligned with the public interest and which are beyond the pale? I mean, when it came to all in the Family, right, you had people saying, you know, this is not what Lear is making it out to be. This is one sided, making conservatives look like a bunch of pigheaded bigots. And.
- [20:19]
Norman Lear
And what's so fascinating is, you know, being in radio and, you know, coming from radio yourself, like the public interest determines in some ways, like who has access, basic access. And I mean, at the time, you know, the story becomes based on Coughlin's kind of example, and then how the federal government starts to lean kind of mainline when it comes to the FCC and how it sort of regulates licenses and that kind of stuff. So then that creates this dynamic of middle left denominations, radio programs really getting free airtime. The dynamic between the free airtime and then the Airtime that conservatives are going to have to work for and pay for the entrepreneurial spirit, depending on how much we want to get into it, of conservatism going after the New Deal. And this is a formative moment, like conservatism, however defined, comes about in this moment. And Lear is doing this all at the same time. You know, so it's a really fantastic case study, you know, for what we mean by suppose liberal and conservative and how they get aligned with ideas of the public interest, which then regulates everything in some ways, like you see it in all in the Family. So it's such a fascinating connection.
- [21:26]
Martin DeCaro
So what our listeners need to do is not only go back and watch all in the Family, which I intend to do now, after reading your book, it is actually streaming. It's on one of the streaming services. You can watch all of the original seasons. But the other thing they have to do is imagine a time, well, when there wasn't streaming, there wasn't cable, there wasn't Internet. There's nothing except network television. And network TV is deliberately made to be the least offensive, least political, no politics. So no one is offended. It's truly what some people might consider family programming. Right. This is the 1960s. Lear comes to television and he says, enough of this stuff. Why don't we use TV to get people to think? Relevancy programming. Talk about the importance of this as we peel away the layers here of what would become the religious left.
- [22:18]
Norman Lear
Yeah, wonderful question. So relevancy television, I think. I think I found that somewhere, borrowed that from a book on this time period. You know, Lear is looking across the landscape, and he's kind of echoing the sort of public assertion that television is a wasteland. There's that famous speech, I can't remember some executive basically calls it a Wasteland. You know, Mr. Ed.
- [22:40]
Michael Stivic
Hello, I'm Mr. Ed.
- [22:47]
Pat Robertson
A horse is a horse.
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Norman Lear
Of course, the witch, you know, you know, Beverly hillbillies.
- [22:53]
Martin DeCaro
That's better than reality TV.
- [22:59]
Norman Lear
In some ways, in that extent. Explains a lot, if you want to get into that when it comes to reality television. But. Yeah, exactly. So think about that. You've got talking horses, flying witches, you know, hillbillies in Beverly Hills.
- [23:10]
Martin DeCaro
For some people even now, they don't want politics in sports, they don't want politics in tv. They do have those choices now. You can find anything you want. But in those days, to put a political show on primetime. Right. That was a big deal. Go ahead. I'm starting to interject.
- [23:25]
Norman Lear
So now we have to get into what is A political show. You know, what does it mean to be political? The trinity shows in this time period are on the Family. MASH and Mary Tyler Moore.
- [23:54]
Martin DeCaro
You gonna make it after all.
- [23:59]
Norman Lear
And Lear is the one who is in the lead. You know, I have these wonderful quotes where Larry Gelbart and others, you know, spearheading mash, they're looking to Norman to see what Norman will do. So he's kind of setting the pace.
- [24:13]
Martin DeCaro
He sees it as a place where you can have these one act plays, which was all in the Family, where you'd have real issues to be discussed and debated. And Lear wanted to introduce these ideas to people, not necessarily tell them how to think, although he probably was criticized for doing just that.
- [24:29]
Norman Lear
I don't know necessarily if you would understand it as like a political show. Lear wanted to make TV that could be applicable. You know, that was didactic. And that's what I saw in the spiritual, civic dimension of the show. Each character is a metaphor for a major force at the time, whether it was hippies or young women or they. Housewives like Edith are kind of realizing their sort of station and how their younger daughters are illustrating that and the conflict to do with all that. So Lear was very purposeful. He had his writers, you know, read headlines of newspapers and really wove life into the show. And so for him, in some ways, it was doing something that he thought was timely, relevant. But the only way that it really got going, though, or that the networks were kind of interested in it, was because it was seen as hip. It was kind of seen as something to be in the know about. It would be appealing to younger demographics. So in some ways, it's like a blending and marriage of economic and cultural interests. You have networks who are driven by certain interests. You have this very risque programming that's on cbs. And so Lear, on the first episode, has to fight standards and practices for suggesting that Meathead and. And his girlfriend Gloria, basically are going to, like, mess around when the parents are out of the house. And that was the first huge battle between the network and Lear. And that was almost not gonna happen. And Lear thought to himself, if, like, if I fold here, nothing's ever going to work.
- [25:59]
Martin DeCaro
What are you running away from me?
- [26:01]
Archie Bunker
Come here.
- [26:03]
Martin DeCaro
Gloria. Gloria. We have been living with your folks since we're married. We don't get the house alone that much.
- [26:09]
Glenn Miller
Oh, we're not alone. Lionel's upstairs.
- [26:12]
Norman Lear
Lionel?
- [26:12]
Martin DeCaro
Why?
- [26:13]
Glenn Miller
He's fixing the portable TV for Dad. No, Michael, not now. I don't have any time.
- [26:18]
Martin DeCaro
Laurie, they don't get out of dress till 11:30. It's a 10 minute walk. We got time to spare.
- [26:23]
Norman Lear
So that was the first conflict. But the network, you know, all in the Family, started with a disclaimer that the network put up before the show. And not unlike South Park's disclaimer, you know, which is all satire and tongue in cheek, the network was like, you know, this is a look at our frailties and this is kind of satirical. I'm not meant to represent, blah, blah, blah, blah. So the network was really, really concerned. They didn't know how it was going to go. They had additional people at the phone banks to get phone calls. So it was. They didn't know how it was going to go.
- [26:54]
Martin DeCaro
Not just the kissing scene, I guess, or kissing on screen when the parents are out of the house, but the language. Right. As far as I know, the N word was never used. But I do remember Archie referring to black people as jungle bunnies.
- [27:07]
Glenn Miller
They're really very nice people out here.
- [27:10]
Archie Bunker
Oh, yeah, very nice. They're wonderful, beautiful people. Are lovely people. Leader. But they are also colored people.
- [27:16]
Glenn Miller
Better hold it there, daddy.
- [27:18]
Archie Bunker
Now listen, little girl. Been around a lot of places. I've done a lot of things. But there's one thing Archie Bunker ain't never gonna do, and that's break bread with no jungle bunnies.
- [27:28]
Martin DeCaro
The term gooks was used to refer to Vietnamese people, among many other racial slurs.
- [27:33]
Archie Bunker
What are you talking about? You put a chap in a chink together, you're gonna tell me which is which.
- [27:38]
Martin DeCaro
That's right. Because I find out about them, I.
- [27:41]
Archie Bunker
Talk to them as individuals. Sure, you talk to them. You say, which one of you guys is the chin?
- [27:48]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah. I mean, people weren't saying words like that on tv. So are you laughing at or laughing with Archie Bunker? Lear wanted to expose what he saw as dangerous in American society, right? Religious intolerance, racism and sexism. And he believed, and even Carroll O'Connor, you quote him in the book, also believed that by showing it in this way, people would get it right, that they would realize we have to move past sexism, racism, religious intolerance, et cetera. Looking back on it, were they effective and how does this reflect the rise of the religious left?
- [28:24]
Norman Lear
So it's a delicate question. And this is all satire. That's the assumption is that you kind of go in knowing that as I've gotten into this or as I've gotten a little bit older or maybe picked up some more anecdotes, you know, over the years by people who watch the show because hundreds of millions of people watched it every week. So there's a history just to be told in that. You know, I'm getting the sense that, you know, like, you kind of suggested that a lot of people didn't really understand it like that. I mean, the New York Times freaked out, did a bunch of studies about if the show actually increased racism, actually amplified it. You had OP eds, pretty critical ones, going after Lear for making things worse. So in some ways, this is a very debated enterprise.
- [29:11]
Martin DeCaro
People are agreeing with Archie Bunker. The white backlash to civil rights was a real thing. But go ahead. Yeah.
- [29:18]
Norman Lear
And to connect today to yesterday, we've known this for some time. It's not like there's an out of touchness. I suppose there is, but there's also a tradition of condescension, of satire, of kind of exposing people for the American way. Becomes one of the first right watch groups in America. So there's something to that. You know, like there's. I think there's some nuance there in the sense that we've known about deplorables ever since the 1970s and maybe even longer ago. So the idea that it's been a surprise is just mind blowing. You know, to me, I explain it. There's a tradition of condescension which is often masked as satire. But, you know, we've known about this for some time. It's just been a matter of coming to terms with it. You know, Archie really hasn't gone anywhere.
- [30:08]
Martin DeCaro
So Lear then creates a problem he hoped to dispel.
- [30:12]
Norman Lear
It's a very complicated legacy of the show, like you're suggesting it was on for a decade. Hundreds of millions of people watched it a week. Lear would do an episode of hypertension in the black community, and people would go out the next day and get tested. That made him so happy. Like, the happiest that he could ever be, really, was to hear something like that and something like that happen. This is the kind of naivete, maybe of like liberalism or American religious liberalism. You know, like, we can make wonderful shows about Archie or Leslie Knope and, you know, Parks and Recreation, but it just translating it into the actual world is the challenge.
- [30:54]
Martin DeCaro
Well, you say Lear was excellent at achieving cultural influence, but the left in general, or the religious left was less effective at obtaining political power. When we talk about then the people that Lear was opposed to, although he didn't see himself as, like, personally at odds with some of these figures on the religious right, but that's how it was often framed. The Religious right, the moral majority today, they're the evangelical. You had people like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, people who I personally despise. But that's beside the point here. They saw Lear as a threat. They were reacting to him. And that's where we get this conflict.
- [31:34]
Norman Lear
It's funny, I stumbled upon a quote, and I'm pretty sure it's Falwell who basically calls Lear the number one enemy of the family in America. But by the time that Lear starts creating even more television shows, not just on the family, you think about it. Sanford and Son, good times, the Jeffersons. And I would especially say Maude, because.
- [31:59]
Martin DeCaro
There was an abortion episode with Maude, right?
- [32:02]
Norman Lear
Yes, there was. It was a two part episode.
- [32:05]
Glenn Miller
Look, there's only one sensible way out of this. You don't have to have the baby. It's legal now.
- [32:09]
Norman Lear
You know, she's right. It's legal in New York state.
- [32:11]
Archie Bunker
You better give that a thought. I have given it a thought.
- [32:15]
Norman Lear
Oh, I don't know. I don't know.
- [32:16]
Michael Stivic
I just don't notice.
- [32:18]
Norman Lear
It actually had Catholics laying out in front of executives cars in New York to protest the idea. This was a major problem. Major problem. So by the time that, you know, Lear gets to creating people for the American way, he's the apotheosis of liberal religious America in some ways.
- [32:38]
Martin DeCaro
So the rise of the religious right during these years, the Republican party was not married to it at this time. You had pro choice presidents, Gerald Ford, especially his wife. You know, the notion that you'd have people on the right picking, handpicking Supreme Court justices as they do now for Donald Trump. That really wasn't the battleground then. Right. The battleground was TV culture, pop culture. That was the culture war before it really got into the politics the way we see it now. Right.
- [33:07]
Norman Lear
I mean, think about parallel trajectory. So religious left, religious right. And part of my point was to say that they're intermeshed. You know, we have to see them as being kind of interacting with each other, co constituting, you know, Lear got annoyed because it's like I'm tired of being reported with Falwell in these stories because we're not as aggressive or we're not as confrontational, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. But to me, yeah, I wanted to sort of focus on, you know, the other side of the culture wars, scholastic intervention, is to say that all this work is on the right. All this work is on Falwell, on the Robertsons. But who are they responding to? Is there anyone on the proverbial quote, unquote, like, other side. That's actually spearheading anything, you know, a vision, an actual vision.
- [33:50]
Martin DeCaro
Well, I think Lear was correct to say that the religious right or the Moral majority, people like Robertson Falwell, did want to scrap the separation of church and state and did want to impose their social mores on all of society by, say, abandoning all abortions. But their critique of Lear was also right, maybe in a way that he didn't want to give them credit for, because Lear would say, I'm not telling people how to think. We're debating. We're discussing these issues. Through the characters of Archie Bunker, Meathead, Edith and Gloria. The audience can make up their minds, you know, who's right and who's wrong. But come on, I mean, you're watching all in the Family and you understand what Lear is getting at. Archie is wrong, and Meathead, well, Meathead had his problems, too. But the idea was to expose ideas like racism, sexism that Lear equated with the threat from the right at that time.
- [34:42]
Norman Lear
You just have to look at episodes and the titles, and it sort of gives you a sense of, you know, where he's coming from. And I was lucky enough to, when I was interviewing him, stay with a family friend who was a co writer for an episode on Gloria Discovers Women's Lib. It's the actual title, you know, that's what it's called. And it's this amazing expression and articulation from Gloria. But then Gloria is kind of asking her mom, like, mom, why are you doing this every day?
- [35:09]
Glenn Miller
Boy, oh, boy, a woman sure has no chance to express herself around you. It's as if she were in prison. She can't grow, she can't change. She's second class.
- [35:18]
Archie Bunker
Half a person there. Little girl, them ain't your words. Where you getting all that from?
- [35:24]
Glenn Miller
Oh, Gloria has been reading a book about women's lib.
- [35:29]
Archie Bunker
Oh, Jesus 3.
- [35:32]
Glenn Miller
And I didn't read them. I devoured them. Not only that, I had Michael read them too.
- [35:37]
Archie Bunker
Mike, it ain't enough that he's a pinko and an atheist. You're going to turn him from a man into a morphinite.
- [35:44]
Norman Lear
The tricky thing about all of this is that kind of hindsight, meaning I don't want to necessarily overly read into the television of this political kind of tablet or checklist in the sense that, like, looking at it from this time and seeing the titles, you'd imagine, wow, like, look at all these issues he's bringing up. But then if you were to ask him, you know, like you said, and it was always so frustrating because he never would admit what he was really up to. But to ask him at the time, like Norman, were you doing something political? I don't know necessarily how he would answer that because he would remind us that, you know, Archie Bunker also reminds us of the kind of frailty of humanity or like the human condition itself.
- [36:28]
Martin DeCaro
He had a heart, he was a person, he was a likable guy, even though he held some attitudes that weren't so nice.
- [36:34]
Norman Lear
And Lear said, you know, depending on if we buy this or not, that he didn't say anything in the shows that kids didn't hear, like every day on playgrounds. So you can buy into that if you want to. You don't necessarily have to. That's kind of, you know, up to the viewer. But yeah, it was meant to be an illustration, a didactic illustration of a classroom, discussion oriented, figure out your political kind of aspirations and kind of a perfect world.
- [36:59]
Martin DeCaro
So how does the right fight back? They didn't get their own primetime TV shows. How did they fight back?
- [37:06]
Norman Lear
We saw this in some ways at the beginning of November. In some ways, like the path to political power. How does that happen?
- [37:15]
Martin DeCaro
Well, it starts in 1980 with the first conservative president, although Reagan was not a culture warrior.
- [37:21]
Norman Lear
Maybe going back to those letters. Norman's writing letters to Reagan and. And he's expressing his concerns about, you know, I'm concerned about the First Amendment. I'm concerned about something fascinating that he says back in the day, Christian nation movement. That's an interesting phrase in light of, you know, Christian nationalism, blah, blah, blah. But that's how the book started. And that's how Lear kind of understood Reagan as this continuation of a potential threat. But now it's in the White House, the moral majoritarians, as he would say. And it's those turns of phrase that I'm really interested in because it's connected to deplorables. It's connected to how we conceive of conservatives and just a rich sort of wealth of information.
- [38:04]
Martin DeCaro
So they fight back. Going back to my question, in the cultural sphere, I mean, we know how they did it politically. Phyllis Schlafly and the others, they become more and more influential within the Republican Party. And now evangelicals are a dominant force in the party, but in the cultural space, they did things like what? Boycotts and campaigns and publicity. Right. They would criticize Lear's programming as being anti family and all this other stuff. Right. Were those campaigns, boycotts, whatever you want to call them, were they effective?
- [38:35]
Norman Lear
Yeah, Donald Wildman, he's a figure of the kind of religious right and you're aware it's a catch all term that's meant to homogenize and catch for journalistic and kind of academic kind of reasons. So, yeah, I would say so. But Donald Wildman, you know, you have political action committees being started, you have organizing started by conservatives and sometimes religious conservatives, you know, going after Lear. But at the same time, like the Richard Vigories or the kind of figures of the new right, like Kevin Phillips. I mean, even someone like Richard Nixon, I mean, brings up, not to jump all over the place, but like Nixon brings up in one of his tapes how the American people should treat Archie more kindly and they shouldn't be as harsh and they should understand him. So as far as, like how it sort of weaves its way into the.
- [39:22]
Martin DeCaro
Particular kind of imagination, it's a sprawling subject. Culture, politics, local, state level, national, getting the courts to rule in certain ways, school boards taking over school curricula. I mean, all of this is in play. Even though people on the right do complain with reason about how the left commands so many cultural institutions. I mean, the right isn't doing badly. I mean, they have the Supreme Court. I mean, look what happens when Bud Light did a stupid commercial with a trans activists or whatever happened there. I mean, look what. Look at the public anger that was generated on that.
- [40:01]
Norman Lear
You know what I would say the right is much better at advertising. It's much better at marketing. And Lear and Bunker are persuasive, like people are watching it, hundreds of millions of people. But at the same time, like to me, what you just said or woke or any of these other things, like, they're all sort of distractions. They're all kind of like little marketing, little micro marketing schemes. Which is why, you know, I want to kind of redefine how we study the right and conservatism and all this. And I write about kind of the conservative leverage of direct mail, the fascinating kind of way of communicating with everyday, quote, unquote, everyday people. And to me, that's where all this really, like the rubber hits the road. It's the fact that Falwell or Wildman could put something together and discredit, could discredit all of that or create some sort of, you know, distraction to. So to me, you know, what we get wrong and right about conservatives. Say what you will, but since the 70s, I have this great quote and some other work I'm doing. The left used direct mail to raise Money. The right used it to move the country. So to me, it comes down to that kind of marketing and advertising and getting people to actually like, get out and vote. Like, go figure.
- [41:15]
Martin DeCaro
So how does the left misunderstand or misread the right today? A couple more questions I want to ask you in our conversation. One is, who is the religious left today? It's not Norman Lear or anything like that anymore. There are a million choices on TV and streaming. But my first question was how does the left misread, say, the evangelical right that has taken over the Republican Party? The left critique is these people are close minded and they want to impose their social morals, their religious ideas on the country through the force of law. Look no further than Roe versus Wade. The right would say with reason that the left imposed its morals on the whole country with Roe vs. Wade in the 1970s when abortion had been illegal in most places in, in the country. But where are they wrong?
- [42:02]
Norman Lear
There's a story to be written about how the right has been studied in the United States. How the right gets talked about, how the right gets analyzed, whether it's in discourse or podcasts or articles or op eds or all of that. It's a very unique subject matter as far as how it's kind of imagined and written about. This is where we don't have to get too far into it. But this idea of cold war liberalism and how it sort of shaped America and how, say McCarthyism, the impact McCarthyism had on the American people in the 1950s, especially academics. The long story short, what do we still get right, at least from an academic or maybe journalistic or scholarly vantage.
- [42:42]
Martin DeCaro
Or in some ways, or get wrong? I mean, well, dismissing, dismissing the religious right as only a group of Bible thumping dummies. There may be people like that, but. But they wouldn't have the Supreme Court in all these other institutions if they were dummies. You got to take people seriously and also treat them with respect. I think maybe there's a lot of condescension on the left as well.
- [43:04]
Norman Lear
Now I'm thinking of something different, like a different example. So before Lear created People for the American Way, he was going to do a movie called Religion, and he actually worked with Richard Pryor and Robin Williams on a script. And the story was going to be, you have good natured liberal pastor doing all this good stuff, and then you had another person who gets caught up in the electronic church in televangelism, and the sort of liberal, good natured person actually ends up rescuing the other person because the Other person gets lost in the ego, gets lost in the screens in the electronic church, which in and of itself is a dig. Is a criticism. Yes.
- [43:46]
Martin DeCaro
This person needs to be saved. He needs to be saved from his right wing ignorance is the message.
- [43:52]
Norman Lear
Sure. And even that you think liberal, mainline, compared to more conservative, evangelical, which is more storefront, which is more electronic. The electronic churches itself was a criticism. You have no real building, you have no real institution, you have no real congregation. But at the same time they had a congregation or an impact that people on the left could only dream of, could only imagine. So in some ways there's a point to be said about creating the very monsters that you were fearing.
- [44:21]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah, I mean, is there a liberal mega church today where like minded people go. And on a Sunday or whenever I don't go to church anymore, by the millions, you know, TV or whatever it is, you can, I guess, stream the services. But yeah, I get your point. Who is the religious left today?
- [44:39]
Norman Lear
I would answer it kind of differently. So at the time, and if you do a quick search, the major figure linked to articles on the religious left is someone named William Barber. Depending on the time and politics and culture and what's happening, he will kind of pop up every once in a while. I remember when I was writing, there's a New York Times piece, his picture is right there. And the articles, like, the religious left has sat out of politics for the last 50 years, but now they're getting back in the game. So in some ways, like it's very spotty, sporadic, and really disorganized. I think Barber is a professor type at Yale Div. Now. So in some ways it's kind of been institutionalized in some ways. That's why I also put Fall in the title, because to me, like, ever since this kind of time period and because of dipping into culture and, you know, maybe some other things, there's been a real kind of fading away. And why has that been the case? But you ask today?
- [45:41]
Martin DeCaro
Well, the Democratic Party, I mean, the Democratic Party's not that comfortable with maybe that type of thing. I mean, Donald Trump's not a religious person at all, but he had a meeting at the White House. There's a photo out there where he's surrounded by all these evangelicals who are treating him like the savior. You don't really see pictures of Joe Biden or Barack Obama in the scene. Same context.
- [46:03]
Norman Lear
No. And, and what I've been critical of recently is, you know, someone saying whatever we mean by Christian nationalism, I mean, Trump wouldn't Know, an evangelical, if he, like, bumped into it, you know, and to kind of put all of this discourse of Christian nationalism ever since his first presidency has been really kind of mind blowing and to me is the most recent chapter in the liberal academic misunderstanding of the right. It's the most recent example. And going back in this next project I want to do, a lot of these categories are initially developed in studying and trying to understand McCarthy, you know, the John Birch Society, the most extreme dimensions that could challenge the public square could challenge the public interest. Sounds like Coughlin and Coughlin again. Let's jettison all of them from the public square. And now we're back to where we are today.
- [46:56]
Martin DeCaro
Well, that's not an effective strategy. You can't. They're part of our society.
- [47:01]
Norman Lear
I know, but like, that's kind of the imagined story as far as regulation. And there's a way of kind of manipulating public sphere and getting it to produce a certain thing. But. But yeah, that's the tradition that I'm talking about. And whether it's archie or. Or McCarthy or Deplorables or whatever it is, there is a line, you know, it's a fairly consistent one.
- [47:22]
Martin DeCaro
So the religious left, whether we're talking about Norman Lear or anti Vietnam War protesters, whoever was once very active and concerned and influential in persuading the public on any number of social justice issues, civil rights, anti war, what have you. My main critique of the Christian right today, I don't see a lot of talk about, well, what Jesus was talking about. Jesus was not. Maybe I'm not the best authority on this. I was raised Catholic. I went to Catholic school, used to read the Bible. I don't recall many lessons, Jesus Christ focusing on what gay people are doing and abortion and all this other stuff. Culture war issues important to the right today.
- [48:05]
Norman Lear
No, I'm right there with you. And so, I mean, I'm just thinking of something that I maybe never put into words here, but the extent to which we dip into culture and leverage culture, we've seen that maybe backfire for some people or work out for some people, depending on kind of where you're coming from. But this 70s time period when what we call the New Right forms, you know, we can debate about what it means and blah, blah, blah, and conservatism, blah, blah, blah.
- [48:30]
Martin DeCaro
But a lot of the same issues, though, a lot of the same issues. Gay rights, abortion. Go ahead.
- [48:34]
Norman Lear
Yeah, yeah. And so what I'm saying is that there was a lesson learned. Meaning I think there's a limit to what you can do. And that's the discussion today about too much, it should be too little. The new right kind of realizes how and learns how to run single issue campaigns that are then wedded together in political action committees. And all the infrastructure, the direct mail that really gets off the ground in the 70s like you've suggested. And what we should think about is that these histories are interrelated and they're kind of shaping each other as they're, as they're happening. Whether it's Lear writing letters like who, who would read those? I suppose to Reagan becoming something that Harper's publishes. Like, when people read it, what is that all about? Like, could you imagine something like that appearing today? Like in a magazine like that? Like, that would just be fascinating. I don't even know what I would even describe it.
- [49:31]
Martin DeCaro
Of all the criticisms I have of Donald Trump or any, any president, the fact that he doesn't know a Bible from an Italian cookbook is not one of my problems with him. I don't need my president to be a religious person at all. I'm electing a politician, not a pastor.
- [49:45]
Norman Lear
Wow. No, that is such an amazing quote. Because, like, that is such a cool thing to say in the sense of like, you don't expect that. But to see the kind of leveraging and wealth of analysis that has put so much on this one figure holding up a Bible upside down, right side up, as long as everything is entertaining, it'll be fine. And that's kind of where we're at, for good and for ill, I suppose.
- [50:13]
Pat Robertson
Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we come before you. Lord, we present our president. We come together from all denominations, all races together, as the Bible says, to pray for those in authority. Father, let your kingdom come.
- [50:35]
Martin DeCaro
On the next episode of History as it happens, it'll be Christmas Eve and we'll talk about a remarkable event that took place on Christmas 1914. Remember new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter, which is free every Friday. Sign up@historyasithappens.com or search for history as it happens on substack.