{"id":2248,"date":"2013-06-01T21:57:04","date_gmt":"2013-06-01T21:57:04","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2013-06-01T21:57:04","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T21:57:04","slug":"carnot-and-stapleton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/franklycurious.com\/wp\/2013\/06\/01\/carnot-and-stapleton\/","title":{"rendered":"Carnot and Stapleton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JeanBefore starting, we have to do a death of note. Jean Stapleton<\/a> died yesterday at the age of 90. She was very big in musical theater from the late 1950s. She was something there has traditionally been too few of: a female character actor. Most of the time, she played rather different kinds of characters. In You’ve Got Mail<\/a><\/i>, she played kind of a ball buster—a straight talking and strong woman. But we will all remember her as Edith Bunker for nine years on All in the Family<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n

I was pretty young when the show was on—just seven when it started. But our family never missed it, at least for the first several years. At some point we transferred our love to The Jeffersons<\/a><\/i>, probably because my father associated with George Jefferson in a way that was not healthy. But to me, All in the Family<\/i> was a simulacrum of the life that was going on in and around the house that I was growing up in.<\/p>\n

The heart of the show was Edith Bunker and Stapleton’s layered and surprisingly subtle performances. As a sensitive young person, I doubt I could have dealt with the show if it weren’t for Edith’s character. She is an archetype: the conciliator who keeps everyone grounded in what matters most, as the rest of us fly at each other over what are, at any given moment, academic matters. There is great strength in those who don’t need to be the smartest or the the loudest in the room. She really did make the show, even if Archie and Michael got all the attention.<\/p>\n

Here is the opening song, which has some very clever lyrics. You can see what Norman Lear was going after with lines like, “Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again!”<\/p>\n