Eugene Robinson and Archie Bunker and Tigers, Oh My!

Almost forty years ago, Ebony Magazine put the actor Carroll O’Connor on its cover, asking the question: Is Archie Bunker the Face of White America?

The character of Archie Bunker raises the question of what the success of the TV show All in the Family said about America. Archie’s creator, the producer Norman Lear, was a McGovern Democrat and depicted Archie as a mean-spirited, bigoted buffoon. Personally, I saw All in the Family as a heavy-handed exercise in left-wing agit-prop depicting everyone on the right-wing side of the political divide as in need of a stay at a Reeducation camp.

I’ve read other people argue that Archie Bunker was, in fact, the face of much of right-wing America and that a sizable portion of the audience saw his racist diatribes as giving them a voice. Something that stays with me almost 40 years later is that in the introductory paragraph of that Ebony Magazine article is a quote from Archie stating that the reason that so many black athletes are great sprinters is that, back home, they had to run through the jungle with a tiger on their (heels.) (At the urging of my collaborator, I am cleaning this up a bit.) The article continued to state the obvious: that the only tigers in Africa are in zoos. Tigers are native to Asia.

This year’s Pulitzer Prize for Journalism went to a black man named Eugene Robinson. Last year, he wrote a column defending Michael Vick. After reading it, I did not know whether to laugh or spew. Robinson engaged in a bit of “everybody does it” moral relativism, pointing out that millions of people watch racehorses compete and a horse that breaks its leg is going to be shot. (Reality check, Mr. Robinson: they don’t shoot the losing racehorses.) Robinson continued stating, “after all, don’t we like to watch tigers eating zebras?” Yes, he actually said that. I believe this should serve as a reminder to newspaper readers. Number one: don’t believe everything you read. Number two: sometimes even a Pulitzer Prize winner can be as much of an ignoramus as Archie Bunker.

p.s. I seem to be the only person who noticed Mr. Robinson’s gaffe. I can only imagine how many column inches that story would have received if Sarah Palin had made a similar statement.