[Vision2020] Beyond Archie Bunker

[Joan Opyr]

Rose writes:

>He is the terminal product of the privileged ruling class of the Old South
>(and I don't mean monied ruling class) who would use the phrase people 
>"knew
>their place" without wincing, because he does not understand how offensive
>(and telling) it is.  He is Archie Bunker come to life, being feted in 
>Moscow
>like a second-rate politician on the fried chicken circuit.

Actually, I have to take issue with my mother-in-law on this point.  One of 
the problems in getting people to recognize and understand the bigotry 
inherent in Steve Wilkins' and Doug Wilson's published views is that these 
men are not Archie Bunker.  Thanks in part to cultural archetypes like 
Archie, we've somehow gotten the idea that the word racist only applies to 
people who fling ethnic slurs or long for separate drinking fountains.  
Richard Butler is a racist.  He stands on a stump and screams "nigger" at 
people.  He's cheap and evil and easy to spot.  But the jolly neighbor who 
offers you coffee, who never uses racial epithets, who says he welcomes 
black people into his home and his church -- surely he can't be a racist.  
He seems so nice.  He seems so pleasant.  When you pass him in the street 
and wave to him, he just waves back.  He never gives you the Nazi salute.

But your neighbor believes that the evils of slavery were trumped by the 
greater good of bringing Christianity to idolatrous Africans.  He's written 
extensively about what a fine thing mission schools were because they 
reformed the pagan Sioux.  He's declared frequently and unambiguously that 
his religion is the only true religion -- that Jews, Muslims, Catholics, 
Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Jains, the Greek Orthodox, animists, Seven 
Drums, and the Baptists down the street are all going to hell because they 
are not Reformed Presbyterians of his particular theological bent -- and, 
what's more, he has said that those who do not agree with him on matters of 
faith should be stripped of their secular civil rights.  He says that; he 
prays for that; and he's doing his damnedest to see that his political 
vision, indistinguishable from his religious conviction, is codified in the 
law of the land.

You don't have to be Richard Butler to be racist, and you don't have to be 
Archie Bunker to be guilty of bigotry.  The word bigot originally meant 
"superstitious hypocrite."  It appeared in the English lexicon in the late 
sixteenth century, and over the last four hundred or so years, it's come to 
mean anyone who holds obstinate and unelightened views.  Sad to say, that's 
most of us.  With the possible exception of the Dalai Lama, we all get 
wedded to particular beliefs and we don't let critics or facts or the light 
of day shake us.  The world is flat.  The Cubs are going to win the World 
Series.  Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat.  Some bigotries are more 
or less benign, some are crackpot, and some get people killed.  When your 
religion tells you that you are always and eternally right; when it tells 
you that your point of view, and only your point of view, is the one 
approved by God; when it says that dissent and difference and tolerance and 
pluralism must be stamped out and punished, then you've jumped off the 
platform of legitmate debate and straight into the reactionary deep-end.

I enjoy watching reruns of "All in the Family" on TVLand, and I can laugh at 
Archie Bunker's ideas because he's not real.  He's an exaggerated stereotype 
who lives somewhere off in the ether.  Right now, however, a real person, 
George Grant, is in my town trying to convince my fellow citizens that the 
only civil right I should have is the right to a speedy trial.  Real people 
like Steve Wilkins and Doug Wilson are telling us that racism is a sin but 
patently racist historical revisionism is not.  They're preaching that what 
we need is a theocratic government, and they'll let us know what we all have 
to believe just as soon as they're able to enforce it.

If opposing them makes me a Meat-head or a Ding-bat, that's fine.  I'm in 
good company.  Like the Jeffersons, however, it's my fondest hope that all 
of us soon will be moving on up.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment

PS: Before any of you Cub fans send me hate mail, let me assure you that I 
have rooted for Chicago since I was a kid.  Last fall, the only reason my 
heart didn't break was that it was glued together with ballpark chili.

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