All in the Family featured the curmudgeonly Archie Bunker. Archie was television’s most famous grouch, blunt, blustering, straightforward and untouched by the PC crowd. He was the archetype of the conservative male. Michael desprately tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.



Looking back at the last 40 years, we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!

6/25/2013

U2

In the 1980's I was in Jr high and high school.  For part of that, my parents had me enrolled incarcerated in a Baptist school.  Baptist school is a lot like Catholic school except you can't drink, smoke or dance.  That and there aren't a lot of Irish redheads running around.  Fortunately for me the valedictorians of both the public high school and the Catholic high school were red heads as well as several girls from around the area, who definitely did not adhere to the the teachings of the Baptist brethren whom I was subjected to for 8 hrs a day.

One of the particulates of the religious movements in the 80's was a hatred for the always evil "rock music".  It seems ridiculous to kids today, but at one time, there was a real concern in America about the quality of entertainment.   It was like the video for Twisted Sisters "I wanna rock" or the movie "Footloose", except without the pumped up jam session and dancing at the end.  This is how it was.  Dancing, bad.  Music that might lead to dancing, bad.  Music with electric guitars, bad.  Music which might make you tap your feet, bad.  Any music which might have an, up beat or back beat and potentially be used in  beer commercial, bad, bad and bad. All and I mean all of this music was filled with backward satanic messages that would cause you to get girls pregnant and do bad things to puppies.

The rules were clear, if the music in any way sounded "cool" it was bad, and not in the same way that "bad" was really "good" back then either.  Without any warning the rules got all confused with a new genre of music, Christian rock.  Christian Rock was drums and guitars that sounded like rock music with bible verses on the album jacket and pro religious themes written into the music.  This really blew away the Baptists.  One one hand it was Bible related and on the other it wasn't Bill and Gloria Gaither. 

Eventually we were permitted "Christian Rock" but not the evil "secular rock".  I had great fun with this.  "Mr. Howdyshell, Judas Priest is a Christian group", I lied.  He didn't have a clue so I got away with it.  I guess "Unleashed in the East" might have had some sort of rapture related meaning.  It really pissed me off when someone (a pastors kid) tipped him off that Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy" was less than Holy Spirit inspired.  Oh well you win some and sometimes you have to buy the cassette a second time.

One of the bands that was considered questionable was U2.  On one hand one of their first music releases contained a song that was a blatant rip off from the Old Testament.  On the other hand they were from a Catholic country (bad) and they never claimed to be a Christan band (bad) and then Bono said that they were Christians that happened to be in a rock band and that they didn't want to have the music put into any particular category (worse).  To those I was around, the last part seemed like they were denying Christ and U2 went on the banned list. 

It amuses me to no end that the "debate" on if U2 is a Christian band is still being hashed out 30 years latter.  For those of you that don't know, Focus on the Family when James Dobson was running the place, was for baptists the equivalent of the Pope to Catholics.  Today its somewhat less than that, and for good reason.  Regardless, U2's Bono statement: Yes, Jesus is the Son of God is being treated as some sort of evangelical news flash.  This isn't anything new, he said it 30 years ago too. 

What I want to know is "am I in the clear for peaking down Carry's dress and catching a glimpse of her cleavage and a nipple at a high school dance in 1988"?  We were dancing to the Joshua Tree.  I seem to remember thinking that I might have found what I was looking for, at the time anyway.


5 comments:

  1. For the record, my parents, the school and the teachers were all good people who really did do the best they could considering who they had to deal with, me. In retrospect they were correct in many things even if the reasons they gave at the time were complete crap. Dealing with an extra smart but rebellious kid is never an easy thing to do. I wish I had cut them more slack at the time.

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  2. WaterBoy5:44 PM

    "One of the particulates of the religious movements in the 80's was a hatred for the always evil "rock music"."

    Dungeons & Dragons, too. Fortunately for me, by the time my mother found out it was supposed to be "evil", I was already too old for her to do anything about it.

    "It seems ridiculous to kids today, but at one time, there was a real concern in America about the quality of entertainment."

    They are receiving the benefits of our groundbreaking Boomer efforts in video games, music, and movies, too; we fought the good fight so they didn't have to.

    Of course, even today the quality of said benefits has, on occasion, been questionable to us. I, for one, don't see any redeeming qualities in gangsta rap....

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  3. considering how far we've slipped morally in in the last 30 years, the Baptists my have been right.

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  4. "the Baptists my have been right."

    I think in some ways they were. The problem was they compromised on the wrong stuff.

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  5. I did D&D a little but never enjoyed it enough to keep with it.

    "They are receiving the benefits of our groundbreaking Boomer efforts in video games, music, and movies, too; we fought the good fight so they didn't have to."

    Viva! the PONG and PAC MAN revolution!

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