THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

KISSING THE FROG | 2008-03-01

Married With Children was about the trashiest sitcom in history. It put the Fox Network broadcast network into straight competition with the three giants, but Fox always HATED it. Everybody on New York was deeply embarrassed by the attacks they ran into at New York cocktail parties.

But I noticed that highly intelligent people tended to LOVE the thing. Then I realized they loved it for the same reason I did. MWC was SO trashy that they could say almost anything they wanted to. One simply could not be taken seriously if he denounced MWC as Social Commentary.

One of the two inventors of MWC was black. When MWC was cancelled, he said, accurately, "There is just no room for politically incorrect working class humor on the networks."

He then took the millions he had earned on it and retired.

Whenever they had a black guest star on MWC, the Bundies would call him every other black star besides the one he was. They all looked alike to other Bundies.

MWC got away with saying things everybody was aching to say but couldn't. Once Peggy was playing Death talked about the time she took Lincoln when he died: "All he said when I came for him was, 'OK, OK, I WON'T free them."

But my favorite exchange was on the Bundy spin-off, "Unhappily Ever After." The kids there were talking about what words really meant.

"The boy said, "Like 'exotic.'"

The girl replied, "Yeah. It just means 'ugly.'" Every hideous looking product of an interracial coupling is called "exotically beautiful," but NOBODY is allowed to SAY that.

Once Peg was putting Al down again, as if he could be put down any farther:

"I don't know. I kiss you and I kiss you and you're still a frog."

Everybody searches for Hidden Meanings in Emily Dickinson and so forth, but this sort of observation is left unnoticed. What really hits the funny bone here is that "kissing the frog" is the basis of what we suffer through every day. We have a bunch of loud-mouthed blacks making monkey motions and reciting what in a white person would be denounced as the lowest form of doggerel, but when a moron-IQ black does it, it becomes The Art of Rap.

No one dares to call it doggerel and monkey-motions because that is OBVIOUSLY what it is. The first requirement at a New York cocktail is not to even THINK about words like "ugly" or "doggerel." Above all things, you must not call a frog a frog. You must kiss it and insist that it not only will become a Prince, it IS a Prince.

So you cannot be against interracial breeding because the children will be UGLY. You have to be interested in the "love" between the parents and totally ignore the fact that, after you get through kissing the resulting frogs, those frogs will have to live their entire lives, and their children will live their entire lives, being UGLY.

COMMENTS (8)

#1 YearningForFreedom | 2008-03-01 12:12

What about Eminem, who is white and one of the highest selling "rap artists" of all time?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminem

#2 Dave | 2008-03-01 12:21

What sticks out in my memory about the program was Al Bundy looking at his tart daughter and saying, "We're Americans, we hate police."

That's pretty good for network TV.

#3 backbaygrouch4 | 2008-03-01 18:37

I could retire with millions if I could collect a pittance every time some network sightless moron tells me how handsome Obama is. He is not. By what standard of beauty is he handsome? Never saw a movie star or model that looked like that. Ears too big, neck too long, Head too small for the body. Mind you, he is younger than the others, dresses cleanly and has no disfigurements. He is always affable and smiles, very good traits in a salesman. But he does not have the matinee idol good looks that they keep repeating that he has. When one is neither fowl not fish you cannot be a swan or a sailfish, both creatures deemed felicitous to the eyes

#4 Bob | 2008-03-02 09:11

Backbaygrouch, it's like Haille Berry, who looks to me just like any black woman in good physical shape. Obama would be described as handsome if he had a trunk and warts.

#5 Simmons | 2008-03-02 15:54

I can kind of explain this. David Milch the creator of "Deadwood" did an interview for his DVD set and this method of saying the unPC comes from the Hayes Doctrine that Hollywood somewhat operates under. This means the bad guys always lose, but in the meantime they can be as bad as they want to be and say what the "respectable" cannot. Take the movie "American History X" now most Stormfronters lament the hopelessness of it all after watching the movie, but what I saw was that blacks were just thrown under the bus and even the sanctimonius jews got a brushback.

#6 mderpelding | 2008-03-02 22:39

"Married With Children was about the trashiest sitcom in history."

But they were racially aware. Weren't they?

The so-called "trash people" aren't the sellouts.

It's always been those at the top.

The fictional Al Bundy has always been a better white man than all those two faced so-called leaders that us foolish white people elected to present our interests.

#7 Prometheus | 2008-03-04 05:06

Married with Children was one of my favourite sitcoms. Yes it was trashy, but it was also unpretentious, funny and HONEST. I also remember the ever present Habib, the generic middle eastern and digs at the lesbian neighbour.

These shows are almost dangerous, they make it seem almost OK to speak your mind, which is perhaps why Al Bundy was so admired. A stark contrast to other sitcoms where characters say what we EXPECT them to say on TV. Predictable, boring, but politically correct.

On a side note, Family Guy promotes itself as being "unPC" but in reality is one of the most PC shows there is. But MWC didn't define itself as being unPC, just a look into the lives of a trashy, hardworking family. There will always be a market for TV shows like that if you can squeeze one in.

#8 richard | 2008-03-04 07:35

My favourite scene is in when Al is in the army with a black soldier, who has been ordered to attack the enemy.

Black man - "Every war movie is the same - the black guy gets killed first. You order us in to test the water, get killed, then the white guy goes home to his family."

Al - "So we both lose"