{"id":69,"date":"2026-02-01T10:11:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T10:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/?p=69"},"modified":"2026-02-01T14:03:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T14:03:35","slug":"he-was-there-all-along","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"He Was There All Along"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you follow historians such as <a href=\"https:\/\/heathercoxrichardson.substack.com\/\">Heather Cox Richardson<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@tadstoermer\">Tad Stoermer<\/a> then you know that Archie Bunker has always been a part of us. I got slapped in the face with this reality not long ago when my wife and I faced a show-hole. We were scrolling through our options and came across <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/All_in_the_Family\">All in the Family<\/a> streaming on Pluto TV. I hadn&#8217;t seen this show in 50 years.<\/p>\n<p>What the heck! We hit play and were launched into the early 1970s and discovered how little has changed &#8212; at least as far as Archie Bunker is concerned. He was <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Make_America_Great_Again\">MAGA<\/a> through and through.<\/p>\n<p>The show holds up, in my opinion. It is even shocking in some ways &#8212; especially the raw racism, sexism, and xenophobia.<\/p>\n<p>After watching a few episodes, I began to recall several moments from my early days as a student journalist at the University of Delaware, and in my first newspaper job, in which people I was interviewing or photographing said to me: &#8220;I&#8217;m just like Archie Bunker.&#8221; This struck me as silly at the time &#8212; the late 70s and early 80s &#8212; because, well, obviously, wasn&#8217;t Archie Bunker a foil and a buffoon?<\/p>\n<p>But now? Watching this all again, I understand a piece of what they were trying to tell me: I am a real American, and I don&#8217;t care what you think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you follow historians such as Heather Cox Richardson or Tad Stoermer then you know that Archie Bunker has always been a part of us. I got slapped in the face with this reality not long ago when my wife &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/?p=69\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-rhetoric"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetorica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}