I remember Archie Bunker. I remember that great old show ‘All in the Family.’ We loved laughing at the young hippie parents and their progressive ideas (for the 70’s). We loved the way they were portrayed as innocent and wide eyed, but also kind and funny.
We agreed with them. We identified with that young couple.
Of course, the heart and soul of that old show was the father, a character named Archie Bunker. Archie and his wife Edith were working class New Yorkers, born in the 30’s. Edith was an air-headed, traditional wife and mother who fluttered around her family day and night.
Then there was Archie. Rigid, demanding, bigoted and self-focused. We laughed at how awful he was, expressing his narrow minded opinions about Blacks, Jews, homosexuals, Asians and pretty much anyone else who wasn’t exactly like himself. He was short tempered at his best. He had no filter and he insulted everyone without remorse.
If Archie was alive today, couldn’t you predict who he’d vote for?
Rob Reiner, who played the part of Archie’s son-in-law, thinks so.
RawStory reports that Reiner is 100 percent certain that Archie would be a big supporter of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. He said:
“They have the same kind of mentality. Archie was a bigot, and the things that come out of Trump’s mouth are totally bigoted. So yeah, he definitely would be. That would be some good arguments we’d being having.”
Reiner pointed out that both Bunker and Trump come from the New York Borough of Queens. Like the majority of Trump’s supporters, Bunker is a working class white man who lacks a college degree.
Like most of those who support Trump, Archie was afraid of change, afraid of anything outside of his familiar routines. He had a jingoistic attachment to what he considered to be the real America.
There is another funny similarity, too. Trump wants to “Make America Great Again” by returning us to some fictional better past. Archie and Edith opened each show by singing a duet of a song called, ‘Those Were the Days.”
Fear of change, bigotry and a longing for the past. Yup. Archie would have been a big Trump guy for sure.
Check out the words of the song in the video below.
Featured image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr. Available through Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Generic license 2.0.
