The death of legendary actor and director Rob Reiner will put the show that first made him a household name, All in the Family, back in the spotlight.
When the Norman Lear-produced show debuted in January 1971, it broke all of the rules of prime time. All in the Family eschewed lighthearted escapism in favor of humor that touched on real-life issues like birth control, residential segregation, and the Vietnam War, while also pushing boundaries of propriety. Within a year, it was both the most controversial and most popular show on television, making Reiner and costars Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton, and Sally Struthers into household names.
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That combination of edginess and popularity attracted the attention of various political interests eager to banish All in the Family from the airwaves. Conservative columnists labeled it “liberal hogwash” and propaganda. Activists organized letter-writing campaigns to “stop immorality on TV.” All of these efforts failed, however, because the show’s massive ratings made it untouchable. That has blazed a path for decades of shows to tackle the most sensitive of political topics and do boundary pushing political satire — if they’re successful enough.
When All in the Family hit the airwaves, it marked a departure from the sitcoms with which Americans were familiar. During the 1960s, the genre had specialized in escapism — featuring everything from talking horses to flying nuns to shipwrecks on deserted islands.
All in the Family, by contrast, brought real life to the situation comedy. Lear wanted to challenge the status quo of television, and use the medium to engage with issues of social and political importance.
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At the center of the show was O’Connor’s character, Archie Bunker, a working stiff, a bigot, and a fool living with his dewy-eyed wife and their progressive daughter and son-in-law. While Mike, the son-in-law played by Reiner, wanted to change the world, starting with his father-in-law, Bunker dismissed him as a “meathead.” That led to regular arguments around politics, race, gender, and sexuality. “The kinds of topics Archie Bunker and his family argued about… were certainly being talked about in homes and families,” Lear observed later. “They just weren’t being acknowledged on television.”
Tackling these issues came with risks. President Richard Nixon had revealed himself to be willing to use the regulatory power of the federal government to curb political satire on television. After late night host Dick Cavett aroused the president’s ire with his sharp wit and decision to platform political rivals, Nixon mused to aides, “Is there any way we can screw him?” They assured the President that they were already at work trying to do so.
White House efforts to intimidate shows took many forms: Nixon’s aides placed angry phone calls to network executives, government officials requested transcripts of shows, the Federal Communications Commission made veiled threats, and the IRS conducted audits. The administration also enlisted conservative allies in its campaigns against critical shows. Columnists denounced these programs, and grassroots activists flooded the networks with harsh letters.
These campaigns could prove potent. In 1969, CBS abruptly fired Tom and Dick Smothers and cancelled The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The move was widely seen as an attempt to appease the Nixon Administration. The anti-war and anti-establishment humor of the show had ruffled feathers and when the Smothers brothers turned Nixon into the punchline, he declared a need to counter such “attacks.”
Nixon took a similar disliking to All in the Family. He came across the brash new sitcom making waves by accident on a night when the ball game he intended to watch was rained out. “I turned the goddamned thing off,” the president exclaimed to aides in private about an episode dealing with homosexuality. “I couldn’t listen to any more.”
Initially, Nixon held off on a campaign of intimidation, in part because he believed his friends in Hollywood could turn the show to his advantage. After all, the blue collar, white Bunker was a representative of Nixon’s Silent Majority. The president believed the satire might fail to reach audiences, making Bunker a hero rather than the butt of the show’s jokes.
Yet, the weeks leading up to the 1972 Presidential election changed the President’s calculus. As the second season of All in the Family unfolded, Bunker was growing sour on Nixon and his economic policies. Even worse, O’Connor was channeling Bunker in ads for Nixon’s opponent George McGovern. In response, the administration reached out to CBS with a request for transcripts of the show while boosting editorials suggesting it was “a form of undercover campaign” that warranted regulatory action and a grassroots boycott.
The White House campaign, however, ran aground — even after Nixon scored a massive reelection victory. For as much power as the President had, at the end of the day, television was a business. And All in the Family was protected in a way the Smothers Brothers had not been.
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It was not just the most popular show on television, it was a blockbuster success. In the 1971–1972 season as many as 60% of American television sets in use were tuned to All in the Family on Saturday nights. The price for advertising minutes on the show shattered records. And Lear and his production partner Bud Yorkin were also behind Maude, one of the fall’s new rating successes. That gave them even more influence with CBS. As Lear later put it, nobody messes with success — though he used more colorful language.
Today, another show is taking advantage of the immunity provided by success: South Park, the long-running, outrageous animated situation comedy. The show actually owes its roots to All in the Family. Creaters Trey Parker and Matt Stone based Eric Cartman, the obnoxious loudmouth at the center of the show, on Bunker.
This year, the show has featured storylines about President Donald Trump expecting a child in a romantic relationship with Satan, while also working with Vice President J.D. Vance, with whom he is in a clandestine sexual relationship, to secure an abortion. This is classic South Park at its most irreverent.
Ironically, Trump’s regular attacks on television hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers, and the culture of fear they threaten to create, helped to motivate Parker and Stone to go after the President. South Park has long mocked both conservatives and liberals, including a story line about George W. Bush being behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and one about Barack Obama having conspired with the Chinese government to steal the 2012 election. “Trey and I are attracted to [taboos] like flies to honey,” Stone acknowledged in an interview with the New York Times. “Oh, that’s where the taboo is? Over there? OK, then we’re over there.”
A White House spokeswoman dismissed the long running sitcom as a “fourth-rate show,” “uninspired,” and “desperate.” She asserted that it “hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years.” Yet, even Trump can’t do much about South Park.
And it’s because of something that the ratings-obsessed Trump certainly understands. He still keeps the Nielsen ratings from the first season of The Apprentice framed at his offices in Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago. His attacks on people like Meyers and Kimmel often involve hitting them for “VERY POOR TELEVISION RATINGS.”
But South Park‘s ratings have soared since it turned its bite toward the current administration. This success makes network executives far more immune to political pressure tied to the show. Parker and Stone recently inked a new $1.5 billion deal with Paramount over the streaming rights for South Park, a deal which gives them remarkable freedom. “They’re letting us do whatever we want, to their credit,” Stone told the New York Times in November.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows the history of All in the Family. Lear’s pathbreaking show revealed that bold can stand out in a business often described as bland, and that controversy can produce ratings and revenue. This reality gives producers and creators license to push boundaries — even if that today means criticizing the size of the president’s manhood.
Oscar Winberg is a postdoctoral fellow at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Turku and the author of Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics.