Opus 2021-073: On the Street: I Look at the Checkout Counter

I would never pick up one of the magazines at the check out counter.  It would be embarrassing if someone saw me.  That doesn’t keep me from reading the covers.  Once in awhile something catches my attention.  I happened recently.  I noticed to special editions of Life, side by side.  One said that All in the Family was a ground breaking comedy.  The other said that the Mary Tyler Moore show was ground breaking.  It must be really easy to be ground breaking in the Time/Life world.

I know that I watched both and remember enjoying them.  It occurred to me that if they were to bring them back as reruns to a audience that knew nothing about them they would still be ground breaking as well as scandalous.  

They would be ground breaking because they were funny.  It is possible that Archie might need to be retooled for modern politics but he was still funny.  I didn’t like the way they made fun of my world but I still could enjoy good writing and acting.  They would be scandalous because the women were portrayed in a way that you cannot portray women in this day and age.  Ignore the fact that that was part of the satire.  Liberals today have no sense of humor.

Similar things could be said about problems in the character of Mary Richards.  She was the classic weak woman who was always falling for the manipulation of the men around her.  The actual scripts, if you could get past the politically correct police, would need little change to be funny because it wasn’t making fun of society as much as playing off of the characters.

I don’t like the politics of the stars but I could enjoy their talent.  I don’t know that I can say that about any entertainers today.  The world is poorer because of it.

homo unius libri