TV families

[Peter]

I was thinking about TV families for no particular reason. Many of the families were politically neutral though Home Improvement and Last Man Standing with Tim Allen had a more conservative father.  Dallas had some conniving female family members and Roseanne didn’t seem like much of a mother to me.

Remember Ralph Kramden played by Jackie Gleason on the Honeymooners? Sometimes, he was a total ass. “One of these days, Alice! Pow, right in the kisser!” His tough wife called his bluff when she said, “Go ahead Ralph.” Interestingly, I think Ralph Kramden and Archie Bunker depicted a couple of scoundrels not to promote misogyny, but to protest against it. What bastards . . . portrayed for all the world to see and in the hope some men might clean up their acts.

The Crawleys on (Downton Abbey) were interesting. Imagine all those people living under one roof. Will we have a barely hidden Presidential first family sitcom soon? Who are your favorite TV families and which ones were the most cloying or unbelievable, etc.?  

Peter

From TV Guide online.  The 60 Greatest TV Families of All Time. By Bruce Fretts | Jun 11, 2013 8:32 PM EDT. Family ties bind us. We invite TV dynasties into the middle of our full houses (upstairs, downstairs) for happy days and good times. Watching married-with-children characters one day at a time becomes an all-in-the-family affair for the wonder years and brings about home improvement. That's why modern families matter and can take us to seventh heaven.

1. The Bradys (The Brady Bunch) Here's the story of a blended family who put the fun in functional. No matter that behind the scenes, Dad was gay and No. 1 Son hit on Mom. They taught us important lessons like "Don't play ball in the house." ("Oh, my nose!")

2. The Huxtables (The Cosby Show) From its first episodes — remember the
funeral for Rudy's goldfish? — Bill Cosby's Brooklyn Heights clan brought family comedy home in living color. Cliff, Clair and their five kids saved sitcoms and defined must-see TV.

3. The Sopranos (The Sopranos) Tony and his families (the one at home and the one at work) proved that blood is thicker than water — or marinara sauce. We always whack the ones we love, right up to the final shot. Pass the onion rings and fuhgeddaboudit.

4. The Bunkers (All in the Family) We can't choose our relatives, so sometimes we get a meathead like Mike, a dingbat like Edith or a bigot like Archie. The best family therapy is laughter, and we got a bunker-full from Norman Lear's groundbreaking social satire.

5. The Barones (Everybody Loves Raymond) There's no escaping your family, so why not move across the street from your smothering parents and obsessive-compulsive brother? Ray Romano's titular Everyman taught us why not for nine hilarious seasons.

6. The Conners (Roseanne) Roseanne and Dan weren't always the greatest parental role models (for example, they discovered their old pot stash — and smoked it!). And that's why we loved them. In their struggle to scrape by, we saw ourselves...at least, until they won the lottery. 

7. The Ewings (Dallas) We hope we don't see ourselves in these backstabbing, money-grabbing kinfolk. But we still love watching them mistreat each other. Whether it's J.R. (RIP) getting shot or a supposedly deceased Bobby appearing in the shower, it's all been a Texas-size dream.

8. The Cleavers (Leave It to Beaver) Despite their surname, Ward, June and sons Wally and Theodore (aka the Beaver) could never be cleaved. We don't have to be a suck-up like Eddie Haskell to pay them a compliment: As nuclear families go, they were the bomb.

9. The Addamses (The Addams ­Family) Gomez, Morticia and their altogether ooky gang (who started out as Charles ­Addams's New Yorker drawings) didn't leave us in the lurch, providing the design for ­cartoonish clans to come, like the Flintstones and the Simpsons.

10. The Waltons (The Waltons) The Depression couldn't get 'em down up on Walton's Mountain — nor could World War II. Creator Earl Hamner wove memories of his own rural upbringing into the lives of these close-knit Virginians. Good night, John-Boy...

The Other 50 (Alphabetically):

The Andersons (Father Knows Best)

The Arnolds (The Wonder Years)

The Bankses (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air)

The Bellamys (Upstairs, Downstairs)

The Bluths (Arrested Development)

The Bradfords (Eight Is Enough)

The Bundys (Married...With Children)

The Camdens (7th Heaven)

The Carringtons (Dynasty)

The Clampetts (The Beverly Hillbillies)

The Cohens (The O.C.)

The Corbetts (The Courtship of Eddie's Father)

The Crawleys (Downton Abbey)

The Cunninghams (Happy Days)

The Davises (Family Affair)

The Douglases (My Three Sons)

The Evanses (Good Times)

The Fishers (Six Feet Under)

The Flintstones (The Flintstones)

The Formans (That '70s Show)

The Gavins (Rescue Me)

The Gilmores (Gilmore Girls)

The Hecks (The Middle)

The Heffernans (The King of Queens)

The Ingallses (Little House on the Prairie)

The Jeffersons (The Jeffersons)

The Keatons (Family Ties)

The Lanes (The Patty Duke Show)

The Lawrences (Family)

The Lopezes (George Lopez)

Malcolm's family (Malcolm in the Middle)

The Munsters (The Munsters)

The Nelsons (The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet)

The Partridges (The Partridge Family)

The Petries (The Dick Van Dyke Show)

The Pritchetts and the ­Dunphys (Modern Family)

The Ricardos (I Love Lucy)

The Romanos (One Day at a Time)

The Salingers (Party of Five)

The Sanfords (Sanford and Son)

The Simpsons (The Simpsons)

The Stones (The Donna Reed Show)

The Tanners (Full House)

The Taylors (The Andy Griffith Show)

The Taylors (Friday Night Lights)

The Taylors (Home Improvement)

The Tates and the Campbells (Soap)

The Walshes (Beverly Hills, 90210)

The Winslows (Family Matters)

The Whites (Breaking Bad)

[anthony]

Good, I see family Heck of The Middle is in there. Enjoyable show.

[Peter]

"Last Man Standing" has been renewed after being cancelled.

Cultural shifting? The TV show "Madam Secretary"'s President is sounding a bit more like our current president and not so liberally squishy though the President on "Designated Survivor" is still too progressive / liberal for me. They will come around after the midterm elections in 2018. Both acted Presidential characters will become Trumpian.  

[william.scherk]

On 5/10/2018 at 11:02 AM, TV Guide online, unlinked by Peter said:

6. The Conners (Roseanne) Roseanne and Dan weren't always the greatest parental role models (for example, they discovered their old pot stash — and smoked it!). And that's why we loved them. In their struggle to scrape by, we saw ourselves...at least, until they won the lottery. 

Spoiler

 

[Peter]

Uh oh. William is correctamundo. They cancelled “Roseanne.” Reminds me of Our Prez calling gangs, “animals.”

Peter

Cancellation came after she said, "muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj," Barr said earlier on Tuesday in response to a Twitter thread about Jarrett, a former adviser to Barack Obama. Barr apologized before ABC's statement on Tuesday, saying that her statement suggesting that former Barack Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett is a product of the Muslim Brotherhood and the "Planet of the Apes" was a "joke" that was "in bad taste. end quote

[Peter]

Alas. A show about the morbidly obese is cancelled. I never could stand her voice in the original but I watched the reboot and thought her voice was fine. Maybe there will be an upwelling of support sent to ABC. Now, on TV, we are back to skeletal female humans with enhanced lips. Do they still use butt fat to puff up the lips? 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

As I just said over here, I think the Republicans just got a big bump in heartland middle class votes for the midterm elections with the cancellation of Roseanne.

People are so fed up with this PC culture, I think they will come out in droves to give President Trump a big fat majority in both houses of Congress just to give a big fat finger to the nanny-state mind control freaks.

Let's see what happens, but that is my prediction.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It starts.

This is going around, that Disney fired Roseanne even after she apologized for a tweet, but they still hired this guy for ESPN:

This is going to get real ugly and not for Roseanne. There's talk of an ABC boycott spreading.

Speaking of apologizing, you never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever apologize to PC control freaks. They will eat you alive. 

Roseanne just saw this in action. She apologized and they cancelled her show post haste.

It's the law of the jungle with predators. They prefer maimed prey to healthy because maimed prey are easier to kill, seeing that healthy prey run and fight. In the jungle, if you are alone and send out a distress signal, you get a bunch of predators showing up. And the PC control freaks interpret any and all apologies as distress signals, so it's killing time. It's instinctive with them.

President Trump didn't apologize and he's President.

Something to think about...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roseanne said she was drugged up on Ambien when she did the tweet-storm.

I think Joe Rogan is right about ambien. Not giving excuses for what I did(tweeted) but I've done weird stuff while on ambien-cracked eggs on the wall at 2am etc -

— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) May 30, 2018

I think it unlocked the contempt she has for the progressives...

Michael

[9thdoctor]

6 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Roseanne said she was drugged up on Ambien when she did the tweet-storm.

This article lists a few of her prior outrages against PC-dom:

http://reason.com/blog/2018/05/29/roseanne-barr-valerie-jarrett-cancelled

Plus, I remember her national anthem performance from way back when. 

The apology and now this excuse-making strike me as being out of character. 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, 9thdoctor said:

The apology and now this excuse-making strike me as being out of character. 

Dennis,

I agree.

btw - Roseanne deleted her Ambien tweet. But part of it was text when I embedded it here on OL, so the text remained in the post above. Cool...  

The thing is, there's a mantra going around--in both conservative and liberal places--that Roseanne said something racist. I honestly think she didn't know Valerie Jarrett was black. I, myself, didn't until this kerfuffle. I knew she was Iranian, but not black. But people are not roasting Roseanne for the Muslim Brotherhood part of her tweet, which I would understand. They are seeing racism where it just wasn't there. I think she used the Planet of the Apes comment like her producer, Wanda Sykes, did in calling President Trump an orangutan. 

Our society now runs on a racist core story like back during the slavery days or Jim Crow times. And we had mostly gotten rid of racism as an automatic cultural archetype. (By this, I mean a default accusation in society for bad behavior or other inexplicable acts.) No longer. Nowadays it's the first thing everybody not only says, it's what they think. What's more, Obama did that with his divide and conquer methodology and the mainstream media was fully complicit.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

They are seeing racism where it just wasn't there. I think she used the Planet of the Apes comment like her producer, Wanda Sykes, did in calling President Trump an orangutan. 

Here's a tweet by Larry Elder (a black man) who makes my point visually.

"[@realDonaldTrump should  prove he wasn't] the spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan."
--@BillMaher, "The Tonight Show," January 2013

.@therealroseanne makes the same joke about Obama aide Valerie Jarrett--and Barr's show gets cancelled.#DoubleStandard pic.twitter.com/IphBqkKeLD

— Larry Elder (@larryelder) May 30, 2018

 

Even after knowing Valerie Jarrett is black, when I look at that picture, she still doesn't look black to me. When I look real hard I can see it a little. But I have to purposely look for it.

Michael

[Peter]

Remember those prior to 1930's and 40's classifications of people with Negroid blood? I remember mulatto but not what classified you as that. Passing for white was a crime. Recently there was a pre Meghan Markel story about Hollywood stars who had "black blood." Remember the Stewart Whitman movie, "Black Like Me."?

Jarret is a darker tanned person with a straight nose. To anthropologists, the broader nose is called a "tropical nose," and it is shared with people of all races including Asian, who evolved and live around the equator. Darker skinned East Indians are Asian Caucasians. Since all humanity originated in Africa, don't be surprised, David Dukes, if you too, have quite a few negro genes!  

Peter

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Scott Adams comes as close to how I think about the foundation of Roseanne thing as anyone I have seen in the media so far.

There are a few points where we disagree, but they are not fundamental in terms of the kind of world we want to live in. And I fully agree with him when he says if you have no intention of accepting apologies, don't ask for one.

Scott Adams talks about the portal to Hell that opened in his Twitter feed. And Roseanne. With coffee. https://t.co/98YPTZjRtL

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 30, 2018

Michael

[william.scherk]

"Albino Gorilla" weighs in on the brouhaha, and repeats the stupid Soros 'wisdom' ...

[william.scherk]

6 hours ago, Peter said:

To anthropologists, the broader nose is called a "tropical nose,"

Can you supply a cite or reference to this, Peter, please?  Like name one anthropologist who talks about "the tropical nose"?  If you are not up to supporting your assertion, no problem.  Bald assertions are the coin of the realm sometimes.

[Peter does 'cite' in his inimitable way, and evidence of nose+tropic hypothesis talk in the ballpark of Peter's was found, so the referee ought give him the point. ]

Edited May 30, 2018 by william.scherk
Added Appeal to Referee

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

"Albino Gorilla" weighs in on the brouhaha, and repeats the stupid Soros 'wisdom' ...

William,

Have you seen the Soros video? No distortion is needed to feel creepy. Just watch the footage as filmed. Start at about 1:38 for the pertinent part.

Soros said he feels no guilt about what he did as a kid (going with Nazis to confiscate the property of Jews), but he kept smiling as he talked about it. Then he capped it all off by saying if he didn't do it, somebody else would. So he feels no guilt. He mentioned he was only a spectator anyway. But he kept smiling all through the thing.

Some people think you can't blame a kid for what being a part of an evil situation like that (I'm one of those), but others look at all that creepy smiling and nonchalance about witnessing the human destruction he was part of, then call him a sociopath (I am one of those, too).

The fringe, left and right, slide it over to Soros being a commissioned Nazi and other kinds of nonsense so they don't have to talk about this creepiness (I am not one of those). Thus, the haters (both sides) can hate without having to worry about any facts getting in the way.

 

But the creepiness is there. This man is not troubled by the suffering of others, even when he is part of what causes the suffering. When he was a kid, I don't hold him in blame. But because of the things he funded after he grew up, because he did it (and still does it) on purpose, I judge him to be evil.

And why not smile when talking about ruining the lives of others as a kid? Life is good, after all...

Michael

[Peter]

Once again I tried to link to a message from William, and copy portions, and my computer went bananas. My anthropology professor, Doctor Laid at Salisbury University scientifically talked about genetics and race. I have mentioned him before and told how he died doing research in South Africa. Wikipedia’s Evolutionary Psychology pages, used to talk about how discussing heredity is not “racism.” Peter

From: "William Dwyer" To: "'Atlantis'" Subject: ATL: RE: Individualism, Immigration, and Race. Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 11:53:14 -0700. Greg Johnson says that we can't treat people as individuals, if we don't know enough about them to judge them solely on that basis.  He argues that for practical purposes we must often categorize them as members of various groups and treat them accordingly.

F

or example, we evaluate the gang of black teenagers coming towards us at night as potentially dangerous, because they belong to a group that exhibits a high crime rate compared to other groups. Granted, but to say that we should treat people as individuals simply means that we should judge them on their individual merits to the extent that we're aware of these qualities. For example, to admit students into university based on their race or sex regardless of how well they do on entrance exams violates the principle of individualism, because it ignores what we know about them as individuals in favor of their membership in a group. Similarly, to refuse to hire someone based on race or sex, ~despite~ one's knowledge of the person's individual qualifications is also a violation of the principle of individualism.

Greg says that an "individualist society is one that protects individual rights, a society that protects private property and freedom of association with the force of law, leaving each individual free to live his life as He pleases, so long as he does not violate the equal rights of others."

Simultaneously and in the same breath, he states, "Immigration is not a right, but a privilege, and it is perfectly reasonable to put restrictions on who can receive that privilege. Since there is no right to immigrate to the US, no rights are violated by such restrictions. And I have already given perfectly good reasons for making race, education, intelligence, and religion criteria for immigration."

But if people have a right to freedom of association, as Greg says, then why don't foreigners have right to associate freely with American citizens, by immigrating to the U.S.?  How are restrictions on immigration compatible with the right to freedom of association?

Greg argues, "Since the protection of the US government is paid for by US taxpayers, is it unreasonable for taxpayers to demand certain conditions be met before the US government protects the rights of a foreign national? I think not."

Of course, there is nothing wrong with denying protection to foreign immigrants who do not pay for it.  In a fully laissez-faire society, anyone who did not pay for protection would not have a right to it.  But this cannot be used as an argument for denying someone the right to immigrate to the U.S. and to pay for that protection.  Nor can it be an argument for denying a prospective immigrant the right to live here without that protection, if he chooses not to pay for it.

Greg asks, "Does everyone have the right to demand that their rights be not merely respected by the US government, but actually defended by the US government?"

No, but everyone does have the right to demand that his or her rights be ~respected~.  And a government that denies people freedom of immigration is not respecting their right to freedom of association! Bill

From: "Dennis May" To: atlantis Subject: ATL: Re: ...Anthropology Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 09:39:45 -0600. I recently heard in another forum that based on blood proteins and genetic closeness there are four distinct human racial groups, three of which are what most Americans would consider to be black.  There are the bushmen, the pigmies, all other African blacks, and everyone else.  By this method Orientals, Whites, Arabs, Asian Indians, and Aboriginal Australians are all more closely related than any of the three black races.  Among the non-black sub-races Aboriginal Australians would be the most distantly related to the rest.

Forensic anthropologists can still tell the difference between the many sub-races composing non-blacks.  They can also tell the difference between early and later groups of Native Americans and the fact that they originated from several racial and sub-racial groups. Dennis May

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, Peter said:

Once again I tried to link to a message from William, and copy portions, and my computer went bananas.

Peter,

There's probably a bug in the latest software update.

I, myself, have been experiencing a bit of odd behavior.

Not enough to shut me down, but small irritations.

Please bear with any you may experience for a bit and see if they fix it. If this continues after a couple of days or so, I will submit a ticket.

With linking to William, though, be advised that he does coding tricks to fancy up his posts and some of them actually do make his posts difficult to quote, get links from, etc.

Michael

[KorbenDallas]

6 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

William,

Have you seen the Soros video? No distortion is needed to feel creepy. Just watch the footage as filmed. Start at about 1:38 for the pertinent part.

Soros said he feels no guilt about what he did as a kid (going with Nazis to confiscate the property of Jews), but he kept smiling as he talked about it. Then he capped it all off by saying if he didn't do it, somebody else would. So he feels no guilt. He mentioned he was only a spectator anyway. But he kept smiling all through the thing.

Some people think you can't blame a kid for what being a part of an evil situation like that (I'm one of those), but others look at all that creepy smiling and nonchalance about witnessing the human destruction he was part of, then call him a sociopath (I am one of those, too).

The fringe, left and right, slide it over to Soros being a commissioned Nazi and other kinds of nonsense so they don't have to talk about this creepiness (I am not one of those). Thus, the haters (both sides) can hate without having to worry about any facts getting in the way.

 

But the creepiness is there. This man is not troubled by the suffering of others, even when he is part of what causes the suffering. When he was a kid, I don't hold him in blame. But because of the things he funded after he grew up, because he did it (and still does it) on purpose, I judge him to be evil.

And why not smile when talking about ruining the lives of others as a kid? Life is good, after all...

Michael

Are there any other possibilities that Soros smiling in this context could indicate?  I have one in mind, and it's not an indicator of guilt.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, KorbenDallas said:

Are there any other possibilities that Soros smiling in this context could indicate?  I have one in mind, and it's not an indicator of guilt.

Korben,

Sure...

But when you see what all the nasty stuff that man was doing at the time he filmed this (and since), in my mind, the options dissipate.

Nobody causes the amount of death and destruction he has, especially covertly, and stays as comfortable as he was without being a sociopath.

Michael

[Wolf DeVoon]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Nobody causes the amount of death and destruction [Soros] has, especially covertly, and stays as comfortable as he was without being a sociopath.

I guess I'm uninformed. Who did Soros kill and what has he destroyed?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

16 minutes ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

I guess I'm uninformed. Who did Soros kill and what has he destroyed?

Wolf,

Soros finances terror groups all over the world, generally in smaller countries where he wants to government to fall. And this means groups that kill for real and sabotage stuff. They don't advertise where the bodies are buried, though. (There's a reason Hungary just threw his ass out, his money and his organizations out of the country.) That's in addition to the enormous amount of leftwing political crap he sponsors. And he does that through a highly complex web of institutions, organizations, NGO's, shadow organizations, shadow governments and the like (these are his terms) wedded to lots of covert offshore financial activities. He has practically destroyed entire economies of different nations through crony currency manipulation.

He calls all this activity being "God." And he means that literally. There are some juicy quotes around. Here's just one from The Independent by Gail Counsell in 1993: The billionaire who built on chaos: Gail Counsell charts the rise of a speculator who considers himself 'some kind of god'.

From the article:

Quote

GEORGE Soros bills himself, without a hint of self-mockery, as a 'financial and philosophical speculator'. The grandiose label is a fitting choice for a man who as a child fantasised about being God and as an adult can tell reporters with a straight face: 'It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.'

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 5/30/2018 at 9:06 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

The thing is, there's a mantra going around--in both conservative and liberal places--that Roseanne said something racist. I honestly think she didn't know Valerie Jarrett was black.

It looks like I'm right.

I'm really bothered by the sheer number of people who, I believe, know that Roseanne did not know Valerie Jarrett is black and still they accuse her of racism as their preface to discussing the episode.

I expect this on the left because they call everybody racist over nothing. But it's on the right with people like Hannity and Laura Ingraham. These folks are lying to their public for ratings.

(Well duh, Michael. Media people lie for ratings. Whodda thunk it and where the hell have I been?  Er... Maybe I should stop talking to myself...)

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Samantha Bee is mediocre and one-dimensional hack (thus not very funny outside of a small political niche audience), but now advertisers are pulling out from her show because she said one more vile filthy comment about a politician. This isn't the first time, fer goddsake.

I am against the advertisers doing this just as much as I am against what the suits did to Roseanne for trashing a politician.

When backroom folks tie advertising on comedy shows to obeying Big Brother on political discourse, we open the door to a new kind of crony corporatism. And comedy gets closer to the end point of death by a thousand cuts. (American mainstream comedians are already not funny anymore.)

If anyone thinks this is a good idea, and you don't mind extinguishing laughter from our culture because you are politically outraged, it sucks to be you.

Seriously. You need to get laid or something.

Michael