Speaker 1: Pushing. Hey, Khalil, Hey, hey. The other day, my brother Jake,
Speaker 1: he stopped buying and while he was standing there, I
Speaker 1: secretly dialed his cell phone, okay, secretly. All right, that's intriguing.
Speaker 1: So what happened? Hello? Oh man? You know what that is? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the theme song to Sanford and Son. You have
Speaker 1: Quincy Jones. It's the second greatest theme song to a
Speaker 1: show ever. Really, wow? Yeah, like ever, like of all
Speaker 1: theme songs across all television history. I didn't say just television,
Speaker 1: any show, okay, because you know what the best theme
Speaker 1: song is not not moving on up you little lily man.
Speaker 1: Of course some of my best right O? Man? All right,
Speaker 1: So so my brother that's his cell phone ring tone.
Speaker 1: I love it, and of course, of course I had
Speaker 1: to ask him about it. Why do you have that
Speaker 1: as your ring tone? Well? That is my favorite television
Speaker 1: show of all time. I think that uh Red Fox
Speaker 1: is the greatest American comedian. Wow, he doesn't, he doesn't.
Speaker 1: He speaks in absolutes, and I love that. That's my
Speaker 1: brother's right. This, this sparks what I think is going
Speaker 1: to be our episode today that I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about Samford and Son, and I want to
Speaker 1: talk about it's greatness and all the way Jake is saying, okay, uh, well,
Speaker 1: what I really want to talk to you about is
Speaker 1: how this TV show from the nineteen seventies really does
Speaker 1: the same thing that we always do on this podcast,
Speaker 1: just you know, like, how does it reveal the absurdities
Speaker 1: and challenges of race in America today? Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: so you're saying that for Sandford and Son, it was
Speaker 1: showing us something about the society we're living in when
Speaker 1: that show started, and it's still mad relevant even fifty
Speaker 1: years later. Well, I love we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: Sanford and Son because I want to talk about the Jeffersons,
Speaker 1: which which could not be more opposite to Sandford and Son.
Speaker 1: A story set in a junkyard for a father and son,
Speaker 1: and my story is set in an Upper east Side
Speaker 1: luxury apartment of a striving black family with their son Lionel,
Speaker 1: and the absurdities of their experience as literal newcomers on
Speaker 1: the block of wealth and power or some kind of
Speaker 1: power in America in the nineteen seventies. Okay, okay, So
Speaker 1: this is a special episode of some of my best
Speaker 1: friends are. We're talking about old TV shows, but we're
Speaker 1: really talking about how they're timeless and how they're they're
Speaker 1: relevant to today. And listen, man, this is going to
Speaker 1: be fun. This is gonna be a lot of fun listeners.
Speaker 1: One more thing, I want to give a warning. The
Speaker 1: TV shows that we discussed us some strong racial language,
Speaker 1: including the use of the N word. All Right, Khalil,
Speaker 1: all Right. Sandford and Son, Okay, Sanford Insen goes on
Speaker 1: the air in nineteen seventy two and it runs for
Speaker 1: six seasons on NBC. And I know you know the show,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna give you a little refresher on what
Speaker 1: it's about. But I haven't seen the show on a
Speaker 1: long time, so it wasn't my homework. And I just
Speaker 1: have to say I didn't realize it was. It premiered
Speaker 1: my birth year in nineteen seventy two. Wow. So here's
Speaker 1: the premise. Okay, there's a father and son adult son.
Speaker 1: They own a junkyard, which you know, like a salvage
Speaker 1: business and antique business in Watts in south central Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: All Right, And the main character's name is Fred Sandford.
Speaker 1: His son is named Lamont. Fred Sandford is played by
Speaker 1: the comedian Red fast Right and lamont is played by
Speaker 1: Demand Wilson. Okay, so a lot of the show is
Speaker 1: just this kind of situational humor of the father and
Speaker 1: son dynamic. Fred's a widower, he is he doesn't want
Speaker 1: his son to move out. He wants him to keep
Speaker 1: on living with him. And lamonton this is a funny
Speaker 1: kind of way that humor works. Is kind of miserable,
Speaker 1: you know, like miserable because he wants to get away
Speaker 1: from his pops. He doesn't want to have anything to
Speaker 1: do with the family business. What is it. He just
Speaker 1: feels like he feels a lot of resentment and he
Speaker 1: feels like a kind of failure and so so listen
Speaker 1: to this. This is a clip from the first episode.
Speaker 1: I just can't stand being poor at this poor you
Speaker 1: think this is poor? Lisa Chia was seven us in
Speaker 1: the family. Seven be slept in the same room, same bed,
Speaker 1: same underwear. That's cool. When I was a young stout
Speaker 1: war one pep tissues five years warm out up to
Speaker 1: the name on the ankle, don't didn't shoot the head
Speaker 1: called kids. I won't mind the lastick yo yo? I mean, so,
Speaker 1: what what is so powerful? And wonderful about that is
Speaker 1: that you can hear Red Fox just doing stand up right,
Speaker 1: Like the show is just a set piece for a
Speaker 1: riff that that he's probably done many times before. Yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'll just take a step back because
Speaker 1: like a lot of American sitcoms, it's based on a
Speaker 1: British sitcom and also like a lot of American sitcoms,
Speaker 1: it's written and produced by Jewish people. All right, all right,
Speaker 1: but just like you said, the thing that that that
Speaker 1: changes it is like the secret sauce is Red Fox
Speaker 1: the comedian. He's a comic genius. U. He is just
Speaker 1: you know, even when the show comes on in the
Speaker 1: air in nineteen seventy two, he is a wildly successful comic. Okay,
Speaker 1: so his reputation is already he's already a superstar. He's
Speaker 1: like the Eddie Murphy of his generation. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and so much, so much of the comedy. It's not
Speaker 1: the writing of the jokes, it's his delivery. It's it's
Speaker 1: the way his facial expressions, his sight gags, the way
Speaker 1: he walks, the way he moves. Going back to what
Speaker 1: my brother says, you know, my brother actually has studied
Speaker 1: Red Fox. Jake says that Red Fox is like a
Speaker 1: jazz musician, improvising with each measure like and and and
Speaker 1: and I'll just give you an example. So, like I'm
Speaker 1: going to play another clip for you right here. It's
Speaker 1: the start of another episode. Fred says it's his birthday.
Speaker 1: He's like singing happy and so first for someone who
Speaker 1: may never have seen Fred Stanford. And I was just
Speaker 1: about to say, he just he just turned sixty four.
Speaker 1: And so so he's gonna call the Social Security Office
Speaker 1: because it's check start when his check start coming in
Speaker 1: time to get paid. Listen to that this recording does
Speaker 1: not repeat, So please wait until a line is free.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't have to wait about it. White, That's
Speaker 1: like one of the funniest jokes ever. That's just one
Speaker 1: of them. And his delivery is deadpan delivery. But man,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you the set up to this joke.
Speaker 1: There's like two or three minutes of him just like
Speaker 1: looking for his glasses of you know, looking like crmudgeon
Speaker 1: walking over there knowing that the comedy is just emanates
Speaker 1: from its physical I think it's just physical guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: When I was preparing for this you know this show
Speaker 1: with you. I watched an episode with Danielle, my wife,
Speaker 1: and in one of the episodes, he's putting on a
Speaker 1: dupei and like for two minutes he's just looking at
Speaker 1: in the in the mirror putting on the dupe. It
Speaker 1: is fall on the floor funny, all right, Like it
Speaker 1: is just it's his facial expression and everything about But
Speaker 1: the one thing I wanted to say about that delivery
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't have to wait as I if I
Speaker 1: was white, is it's both genius in terms of being
Speaker 1: such a simple punchline, but it also contains a little
Speaker 1: bit of anger in it. Like it it feels a
Speaker 1: little bit like like like you're laughing, but you're like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, he's serious, okay. And so this gets me
Speaker 1: to the next thing I want to talk about exactly
Speaker 1: that of like what it means to have a black
Speaker 1: cast and for this to be a black show. It's
Speaker 1: set in a black neighborhood in Los Angeles, um and
Speaker 1: the cast around him. Red Fox sort of brings in
Speaker 1: the people that he's worked with on the Chitland circuit.
Speaker 1: You know, they're sort of like older, older entertainers, lesser
Speaker 1: nous people like him. You know, if you've watched the show,
Speaker 1: the people who played Grady and Esther, all of them
Speaker 1: are like his friends. And it's it's just part of
Speaker 1: the humor is just seeing comedians so comfortable with one
Speaker 1: another being themselves. And I know, I know, the child
Speaker 1: circuit is common enough a term, but it's not exactly
Speaker 1: a household term. So it's a term for for the
Speaker 1: places where black people performed for black people, mostly in
Speaker 1: the South, Duke joints, speakeasies, you know. It was it
Speaker 1: was just basically wherever black people could get together outside
Speaker 1: the gays of white people and have a good time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like there's always been an alternative universe as especially during
Speaker 1: segregated America. Um. And so you might know this, but
Speaker 1: but this is this is essentially the first predominantly black
Speaker 1: cast since Amos and Andy comes out in the nineteen
Speaker 1: did not know that, you know, an Aminus Andy, which
Speaker 1: is often criticized for a kind of minstrelsy, But you know,
Speaker 1: this is this is like twenty plus years later. Um
Speaker 1: and you know, and and this is the other thing
Speaker 1: I want to say, man, Like this show in the
Speaker 1: seventies is wildly popular. Okay, So it's not just for
Speaker 1: black audience. It is one of the most popular shows
Speaker 1: in America. Before this show, it seems like The Brady Bunch,
Speaker 1: which is like, if people don't know, it's the whitest
Speaker 1: show ever, and it's a it's a version of of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and suburban Los Angeles, which couldn't be whider.
Speaker 1: It's it's like leave It to Beaver nineteen fifty stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: But but then, so this show is about race and
Speaker 1: also about class. You know, they're poor and it's it's comedy,
Speaker 1: so it's not like it's always social issues. But this
Speaker 1: show and the majority of the most popular shows during
Speaker 1: this era are all similar shows. All all in the Family,
Speaker 1: which your white working class family. So good Times, Chico
Speaker 1: and the Man, Welcome Back Cotter Rhoda, Mary Tyler Moore,
Speaker 1: who is about a working woman. This is so fascinating
Speaker 1: because like that's so different from today. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: we can talk about this later after you talk about
Speaker 1: the Jeffersons of what this means. But but man, like
Speaker 1: did we regress? Like you know, I think about almost
Speaker 1: every show today sort of creates this classless world, like
Speaker 1: people are so wealthy in some unnamed way. That you
Speaker 1: don't even have to talk about money. All these shows,
Speaker 1: all these shows in the seventies are about pretty much
Speaker 1: kind of like either working class or impoverished people, and
Speaker 1: race is at the center. And like think about like
Speaker 1: this is after civil Rights, after sort of the racial
Speaker 1: turmoil and riots and uprisings of the nineteen sixties. It's
Speaker 1: after Attica in nineteen seventy one. Like this is a
Speaker 1: year after that, this prison uprising and violent repression that
Speaker 1: kills thirty nine people. This is America. Is like, even
Speaker 1: as America is sort of becoming way more conservative, like
Speaker 1: Nixon as president, and like we're moving into the Reagan years,
Speaker 1: comedy is still like in this moment, fascinated by the
Speaker 1: world race and class. Yeah, can I add one thing?
Speaker 1: So I looked up a New Yorker article dating to
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, and a critic was looking at the
Speaker 1: world of Norman Lear, who is behind the shows that
Speaker 1: you mentioned totally, and of course San Francis and the the
Speaker 1: Jeffersons we're talking about today. But just to emphasize the
Speaker 1: point you've made, the critic in nineteen seventy five estimated
Speaker 1: that one hundred and twenty million people watched every week
Speaker 1: one of those shows or more, and the critic estimates
Speaker 1: that that amounted to five billion people watching a year
Speaker 1: or five billion views a year. Can you imagine the
Speaker 1: reach of those shows? Just to your point, what happened
Speaker 1: where America? Who? This was saturating the culture and as
Speaker 1: part of whatever backlash, I mean, this is also the
Speaker 1: start of mass and cars rat at this moment and
Speaker 1: other things. Um that that moves away from these topics. Well,
Speaker 1: what you're saying, I mean in short, is that people
Speaker 1: were learning something meaningful and impactful. Yeah, all right, So
Speaker 1: I don't want to oversell Sandford and Son as sort
Speaker 1: of like you know, as the truth. So much of
Speaker 1: the humor is also like all in the family, Fred
Speaker 1: Sandford is a total big Fred Sandford is a racist.
Speaker 1: Fred Stanford is ignorant as all right, that's the joke.
Speaker 1: That's the joke, okay, Like like he is completely provincial
Speaker 1: and you're seeing how somebody thinks, you know, when they're
Speaker 1: they're by themselves. I'll add that like almost every sitcom
Speaker 1: operates this way, that that we learn the exaggerated limitations
Speaker 1: of a character, that characters are super limited, and then
Speaker 1: they get to be put in moments in situations, and
Speaker 1: we get to see their limitations play out. Got it,
Speaker 1: often in very problematic ways and then like sometimes in
Speaker 1: sweet ways where they overcome their limitations. So you can
Speaker 1: you can reproduce this over The Office is exactly like that,
Speaker 1: or Abbot Elementary is exactly like that. Almost every show
Speaker 1: is exactly like that. Um and Fred is universal in
Speaker 1: his targets. Okay, everybody comes. Oh man, it's about Jewish people.
Speaker 1: He talks about Latinos, he talks about Asians. He sort
Speaker 1: of shakes his hand in this way. They like assuming
Speaker 1: people are gay over and over again, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of like laugh lines. And also other
Speaker 1: black people. There's a there's this funny episode where he
Speaker 1: goes to the dentist and he has a black dentist,
Speaker 1: and of course he's like, no, no, no, this guy
Speaker 1: can't be good. Okay, I want the white dentist, you know,
Speaker 1: like like the all saying that white ice is colder
Speaker 1: than than anyone Else's all right, So here's where I
Speaker 1: want to go with this, Khalil, I need to share
Speaker 1: one specific episode with you because this sort of is
Speaker 1: like where Samfordisson takes this race stuff in a really
Speaker 1: a different place, in an interesting place. Um, there's an
Speaker 1: episode nineteen seventy four called Fred Sandford Legal Eagle and
Speaker 1: and here's what he sets up a business to to provide.
Speaker 1: LaMonte gets a traffic ticket. Okay, you know he's in Watts.
Speaker 1: He's in South Central, an all black neighborhood, and he
Speaker 1: stopped by a white cop and he feels that had
Speaker 1: happened unjustly. And just a question for you, is the
Speaker 1: context of the Watts Uprising, which had occurred in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five and had like totally transformed the conversation about
Speaker 1: civil rights, would lead to the Kerner Report on de Johnson,
Speaker 1: Like is that part? Is there any signposting of that
Speaker 1: in this episode. I'm so glad you brought that up
Speaker 1: because kind of listen to this and well we'll come
Speaker 1: back to that, like put a pin of that, because
Speaker 1: how could you imagine people know Watts and no sound
Speaker 1: Central because of that, and yet it's you know, so
Speaker 1: it defines the everyone's conception of that. It's the only
Speaker 1: thing most people actually know who are not have ever
Speaker 1: heard California. Yeah, yeah, all right. So Lamont feels like
Speaker 1: he's been profiled. So he's going to fight the ticket
Speaker 1: in court. And here is Lamont on the witness stands
Speaker 1: as the judge tells him he can't address the white
Speaker 1: cop in court in the courtroom directly, Oh, mister Sandford,
Speaker 1: I would think that whatever question you had would be
Speaker 1: better asked by your counsel. Are you represented by counsel? Well?
Speaker 1: See when I came up here, I figured it. Did
Speaker 1: you say that that question could be better answered by
Speaker 1: his counsule? That is correct? Who are you? I'm his consul?
Speaker 1: All right? So here we are classic sitcom set up,
Speaker 1: fish out of water, Fred Sandford, who's always disruptive wherever
Speaker 1: he goes. He doesn't follow any of the rules. He's
Speaker 1: it's his obliviousness. He just doesn't care. A moment where
Speaker 1: you can just you let Fred be Fred. And and
Speaker 1: so I need you to hear what happens next and
Speaker 1: how this because I'm thinking does this work to Lamont's
Speaker 1: advantage or not? Oh? Man, it's crazy because because I
Speaker 1: am actually not sure even what to make of this
Speaker 1: moment From from UH Network Television in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: k So Fred, acting as Lamont's lawyer, he turns to
Speaker 1: the lap D officer and begins to question him. Okay, listen,
Speaker 1: why don't you arrest some white rabbits? I do you do?
Speaker 1: Look at all these niggas, indiot, there's enough niggas in
Speaker 1: here to make a Tarzan movie. Oh gosh, oh man,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness. Yes, that's network television. That is honest,
Speaker 1: network unbelievable. Yeah, so I think I think, yeah, you
Speaker 1: go ahead. No, you were five. I was three, And like,
Speaker 1: although we didn't watch these when they premiered, we grew
Speaker 1: up on these and and frankly our kids have watched
Speaker 1: TV Land versions of these shows. It's just it's just
Speaker 1: it's just incredible to think about the racial politics and
Speaker 1: the language and the raw edge of social commentary and
Speaker 1: criticism expressed in that moment. Yeah, yeah, that's really well put. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is something I learned from Jake. Also, Paul Mooney
Speaker 1: helped write that episode. Paul Mooney, the black writer. He
Speaker 1: wrote for Richard Pryor. He people might have seen him
Speaker 1: on Chappelle's show. He was a recurring character as well. Um,
Speaker 1: and so he wrote that that line, and he thought
Speaker 1: the joke was the second part about Tarzan, which is,
Speaker 1: you know there is supposed to be said in Africa.
Speaker 1: But but there's such a laugh line of just Fred
Speaker 1: stating the truth and stating it with this you know, flourish,
Speaker 1: this embellished word that you don't hear on network television. Well,
Speaker 1: well not anymore. But it turns out you yeah, because
Speaker 1: we get to the jefferences. Boy oh boy. But like
Speaker 1: the joke is just stating the facts. It's stating the
Speaker 1: sense of racial oppression. And how is that funny? Right,
Speaker 1: Like that's kind of why it's well, it's stating it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm hearing it again for the first time
Speaker 1: maybe ever and certainly in a long time if I
Speaker 1: watched it at all, and it's like that earlier clip
Speaker 1: you played. It's both hilarious for the inside humor that
Speaker 1: that speaks to black people, right because they've all been
Speaker 1: there in that moment, and also the searing criticism that
Speaker 1: the in word is the way in which the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system treated and understood black people as deserving of
Speaker 1: this this punitive system. Yeah, and I'm going to add
Speaker 1: something about this episode because Fred is also undercutting the politics.
Speaker 1: All of his cronies come to the courtroom, you know,
Speaker 1: all of his buddies Ubb Grady and and he's actually
Speaker 1: betting with them whether Lamont's going to get h you know,
Speaker 1: get off or not. You know. So he's like got
Speaker 1: two to one odds and so on. And he's like
Speaker 1: even as he's saying this, he's winking to his friends.
Speaker 1: So it's just funny. Like he's speaking in many voices,
Speaker 1: if you know what I mean, Like like it's working
Speaker 1: on all these different levels. And yeah, I just something
Speaker 1: about this, the seriousness of this moment of being part
Speaker 1: of the national conversation. And you talked about the Watts riots.
Speaker 1: I mean, here it is about the Watts riots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's exactly because I mean it's not stated. I mean,
Speaker 1: and obviously most people know this, but the Watts riot
Speaker 1: in a thousand other ones were all centered around some
Speaker 1: police activity, some instance of police brutality and justice outright killing.
Speaker 1: I mean almost every so called civil disturbance of the
Speaker 1: time period, riot or uprising, all centered around policing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but let's take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: you can break down some stuff to me about the
Speaker 1: Jeffersons and we'll think about the connections and what to
Speaker 1: make of this. Do it welcome? Back to some of
Speaker 1: my best friends are Ben Man. That was so much
Speaker 1: fun revisiting Sanford and Son and hearing Red Fox. I mean,
Speaker 1: someone who was before our time, but you know we
Speaker 1: got we got to know a little bit of him
Speaker 1: through Sandford and Son. Oh. Just but but always right
Speaker 1: on time, exactly. You know. I just want to talk
Speaker 1: about in the context of what's happening just years after
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Movement. This is the period of time,
Speaker 1: by early nineteen seventy when when a whole new generation
Speaker 1: of black people are entering into they're they're becoming mayors
Speaker 1: of cities, they are moving into positions in middle management
Speaker 1: and companies all over the place. I call this the
Speaker 1: era of black firsts Black first, Okay, that's right. And
Speaker 1: another way to think of it is it's also the
Speaker 1: age of the self made black man and woman. Anyone
Speaker 1: of that generation picking up an Ebony magazine or a
Speaker 1: Jet magazine would see, you know, these beautiful black people
Speaker 1: in full color, you know, celebrating black excellence in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and eighties especially, Yeah, yeah, interesting. So the
Speaker 1: image of Sanford, instead of being so impoverished and kind
Speaker 1: of run down and slovenly not that like that sort
Speaker 1: of cuts against this image. That's right, because the image
Speaker 1: of poverty had always defined the sort of debate about
Speaker 1: black people coming out of slavery then as sharecroppers, and
Speaker 1: of course black Southerners through the Civil rights movement had
Speaker 1: always always presented themselves as respectable. You know, you never
Speaker 1: saw anybody in a civil rights protest that was covered
Speaker 1: by the news who wasn't in a three piece suit
Speaker 1: and wearing a fancy fedor or a woman in the skirt.
Speaker 1: So super interesting man, because because a critique of Sanford
Speaker 1: and Son from at the time was that he's not
Speaker 1: like a credit to the race. You know that that
Speaker 1: that this isn't what the Osby Show would be like
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, where everything is pristine. That's right.
Speaker 1: So there is a tension. I mean, what Sanford and
Speaker 1: Son brings to the national cultural milieu of that time
Speaker 1: is this essentially kind of war between two competing images
Speaker 1: of Black America. What year does the Jeffersons appear in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five is when the chopin years that seems
Speaker 1: so much earlier than I would have thought. I remember
Speaker 1: watching it, you know, aln Air at the time. It
Speaker 1: must have been later episodes, but I remember watching it
Speaker 1: with my brother. Well, the curious thing is it ran
Speaker 1: for eleven seasons, so by the time through the eighties,
Speaker 1: that's right, we were thirteen fourteen years old, just about
Speaker 1: high school by the time this show actually went off
Speaker 1: the air, so we captured a lot of time. But
Speaker 1: talking about this age of the self made black man
Speaker 1: and woman, Richard Nixon actually initiates in his presidency in
Speaker 1: his first term after he's election in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: he's going to try to pick off black people by
Speaker 1: initiating this domestic policy of black capitalism. And what that meant,
Speaker 1: practically speaking, was by turning black people into capitalists, by
Speaker 1: encouraging the private sector to give them jobs, by making
Speaker 1: some key appointments in the federal government, by establishing a
Speaker 1: small business loan operation which ultimately produces minority and women
Speaker 1: contracts to this very day for federal and state local contracting.
Speaker 1: Nixon was like, I'm going to secure the future of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party by focusing on black elites, or at
Speaker 1: least by manufacturing them. It's come on, professor, keep coming,
Speaker 1: keep coming. So it's a sense of like I got
Speaker 1: mine really sort of promoting individualism over a sort of
Speaker 1: like a whole sort of social idea collective good. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. He's gonna He's gonna be the answer to
Speaker 1: Lamont's prayer. So if Lamont and Sanford and such says
Speaker 1: I don't want to be poor, Richard Nixon is going
Speaker 1: to say, hey, you can become rich if you just
Speaker 1: follow the Republican party plan. And it's always going to
Speaker 1: be about individual the first season, the Jefferson gives voice
Speaker 1: to this idea, but this show is built around this
Speaker 1: new era of a self made black man and woman who,
Speaker 1: in the case of the Jeffersons, are going to literally
Speaker 1: move up, like literally move on up. We're been moving
Speaker 1: on DoD. I mean, the whole theme song is a
Speaker 1: is a commentary on exactly this point. We are moving
Speaker 1: on up, moving to the East side to a d
Speaker 1: luxe apartment in the sky. Everybody's heard this song at
Speaker 1: some point, ah man man. So this is this is
Speaker 1: almost like the show is an illustration exactly of this idea.
Speaker 1: They're on the upper east Side of New York City
Speaker 1: in a penthouse. Uh and and and the main guy,
Speaker 1: George Jefferson Sherman Hemsley, the actor he runs if I
Speaker 1: remember a cleaning business Rights and Laundry Cleaners, Yes, okay, yep.
Speaker 1: And so so what we learn of this couple is that,
Speaker 1: you know, George is this successful businessman. When we first
Speaker 1: meet them, essentially they are in this luxury apartment. He's
Speaker 1: he wears double breasted and three piece suits. He occasionally
Speaker 1: wears an ascot and a smoking jacket. And Louise, his wife,
Speaker 1: who's played by Isabel Sandford. George is played by Sherman Helmsley,
Speaker 1: and they are fighting constantly. I mean, this is like
Speaker 1: if if leave it to Beaver, which you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: was like the idyllic white suburban housewife and and husband
Speaker 1: and their two you know, beautiful kids. One just happens
Speaker 1: to be mischievous. This is just the opposite. These two
Speaker 1: are fighting constantly, and indeed the fight itself is the
Speaker 1: platform through which they often explore the tensions in their
Speaker 1: own family. Louise, it turns out, is much more concerned about,
Speaker 1: you know, the trappings of being rich. George is obsessed with.
Speaker 1: George is doing everything in his power to make more money,
Speaker 1: to open more stores, to make more contacts and Louise
Speaker 1: is like, you know, I feel kind of useless in
Speaker 1: this space, and and you know, I'm not used to
Speaker 1: not working, and I'm concerned about Lionel, who is their
Speaker 1: adult son. So interesting that some of the dynamics from
Speaker 1: San franc And continue here and some are in a
Speaker 1: completely different setting and economic world. That's right, And and
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, I mean dating ourselves. George, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: and Louise are like forty six years old, so they're
Speaker 1: actually younger in this movie or this TV show than
Speaker 1: we are at this time. But George is the son
Speaker 1: of a sharecropper and Louise is the daughter of a janitor.
Speaker 1: So we meet them in this small setting where it's
Speaker 1: the two of them their son. There are two other
Speaker 1: sets of characters that are very meaningful. It's there's an
Speaker 1: interracial couple, Tom and Helen Willis and you know that
Speaker 1: they're my role models for life. That's right. Toma's wife
Speaker 1: Helen is black, and their daughter Jenny. There is George's mother,
Speaker 1: mother Jefferson. She is worth watching every episode of the
Speaker 1: first season. She is incredible. So the final person that
Speaker 1: I want to mention briefly is the maid Florence. Florence
Speaker 1: in the opening episode of the show, gives voice to
Speaker 1: the class tensions that are on full view in the Jeffersons.
Speaker 1: Let's hear it in this clip. You folks man, if
Speaker 1: I ask you something, no, go right ahead? Can you
Speaker 1: live in this apartment? Right? And you've got an apartment
Speaker 1: in this building too? Yes, that's right. How come we
Speaker 1: overcame and no Matter told me. Yeah, there's something that
Speaker 1: throws her off about this whole dynamic. Yeah. So there
Speaker 1: are really some powerful themes that come through in the
Speaker 1: Jeffersons that I want to talk about. This consistent with
Speaker 1: this class tension. So if Sandford and Son, as you've
Speaker 1: already suggested, is really sort of the bridge between the
Speaker 1: world of Wattson uprisings and poor people left behind in America.
Speaker 1: This is an aspirational vision, This is a normative vision,
Speaker 1: and this takes us into the Reagan era. This is
Speaker 1: like a Reagan theme show, even if it starts before it.
Speaker 1: That's right. So let's just start with one theme, which
Speaker 1: is the interracial politics of the show. I mean here
Speaker 1: it is some of my best friends are This show
Speaker 1: is playing to this issue and we want to understand
Speaker 1: precisely how they as a black family are navigating proximity
Speaker 1: to white people, which of course is now on equal terms,
Speaker 1: rather than in the world of Sandford and Sun, which
Speaker 1: is always about power and conflict. And so the show
Speaker 1: comes out swinging in the first episode. First of all,
Speaker 1: George is constantly calling Tom and Helen a zebra couple,
Speaker 1: so it's very explicit language to like make fun of them.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of conversation about the in word, about
Speaker 1: about they use the word honky all the time, the
Speaker 1: word whitey is ubiquitous. But they're also these moments where
Speaker 1: there's this commentary about how white people are not all
Speaker 1: that they are cracked up to be. In fact, Mother
Speaker 1: Jefferson says to Louise in one episode, She's like, I
Speaker 1: think you're out cheating on George because you didn't meet
Speaker 1: me where you were supposed to be. And Louise of
Speaker 1: course is like, that's ridiculous, and Mother Jefferson's line she
Speaker 1: comes back and she says, if you live among the
Speaker 1: white folks, some of their ways are bound to rub off,
Speaker 1: that's right. And then there are all these references to
Speaker 1: blacks and Jews, which I have to say, I didn't
Speaker 1: pick up, of course before, but they're the playful references.
Speaker 1: For example, at some point they're hosting a party and
Speaker 1: they have out bagels and locks and cream cheese, and
Speaker 1: George is like Jewish so food. You know, it's interesting
Speaker 1: when just when you said that, in my memory of
Speaker 1: the show and the white characters that you described, they
Speaker 1: are so goyish, they are so not Jewish, and that
Speaker 1: you have all these white writers, but they the white
Speaker 1: sort of buffoony characters, whether they're British or sort of
Speaker 1: you know, very waspy. They don't write in Jews as
Speaker 1: the neighbors. That's interesting. Actually there's this isn't This is
Speaker 1: in the Upper West Side for example. That's right. So
Speaker 1: just to give people a sense of how language works.
Speaker 1: And this is not Red Fox, this is Sherman Helmsley
Speaker 1: and Isabel Sandford. I want you to hear this clip. Now.
Speaker 1: This is a moment where George basically buys his son
Speaker 1: Lionel a very expensive watch. So let's listen to the clip,
Speaker 1: which again heads up, the N word is in here too,
Speaker 1: but must be at least hundred dollars three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars for watch nigga, please what man exactly? Huh?
Speaker 1: That was surprised me. Yes, that I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: remember that about the show, And I thought, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: so George is flexing like he wants the price he's
Speaker 1: proud of I'm imagining in that episode. Yeah, No, he's
Speaker 1: he's totally flexing. This is blaming, he's blinging. He wants
Speaker 1: his son to shine, he wants to show his wealth,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, part of a familiar trope of
Speaker 1: like nouveau reache. Right, you wear it on you literally
Speaker 1: wear it on your sleeve. Yeah, they're of this world
Speaker 1: and not of this world. That's a that's a lot
Speaker 1: of the humor is derived out of that. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: so of course I already told you the in word
Speaker 1: is is ubiquitous. But it's not just it's not just
Speaker 1: like the timing of of dropping the in word in
Speaker 1: these episodes. It's also like using the in word in
Speaker 1: mixed company. And and that is what's different in this
Speaker 1: show is like how do you navigate, at least as
Speaker 1: the writers understand it, what's on people's minds. So in
Speaker 1: this scene, George and Wheezy are having one of their
Speaker 1: usual fights and they're having it in front of Tom
Speaker 1: and Helen, and basically it turns on like this question
Speaker 1: of like, why do you guys always fight with each other?
Speaker 1: Um in front of this interracial couple. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: play the clip and hear what they say, Comemen, Helen,
Speaker 1: they don't fight, they don't fight, they're scared to fight.
Speaker 1: What's that supposed to mean? You know, damn well what
Speaker 1: it means if you do ever really started going in
Speaker 1: one another inside of five minutes, he'd be calling you
Speaker 1: young saint niggah man. So so obviously with this interracial couple,
Speaker 1: instead of us just assuming that there is no racial
Speaker 1: tension in the in the relationship itself, George actually transposes
Speaker 1: his own animosity, his own sense of race onto this
Speaker 1: other couple. Oh man, I'm thinking one about how the
Speaker 1: N word is deployed differently in the clip I played
Speaker 1: you from from San Ferdancian and in these moments, and
Speaker 1: and also about this continuum from the early seventies and
Speaker 1: sort of coming out of the racial uprising of the
Speaker 1: sixties through the Jeffersons into the eighties, which is about
Speaker 1: moving on up about this individualism and still we're hearing
Speaker 1: you know, the Jeffersons is still about about class differences
Speaker 1: and racial differences, but we're just moving them from the
Speaker 1: Junkyard into the Upper east Side. But in a way,
Speaker 1: the dynamics are similar. Yeah, so let's talk about how
Speaker 1: they deal with class or the class divide actually in
Speaker 1: how whites perceive that class divide. So rather than it
Speaker 1: just being about how black people themselves are navigating their
Speaker 1: new wealth in a white world, part of what the
Speaker 1: show does is to expose how white people are trying
Speaker 1: to make sense of their new black middle class and
Speaker 1: elite neighbors. So in this scene, George has just bought
Speaker 1: a brand new piano for the home. No one can
Speaker 1: play it, and no one is interested in playing it.
Speaker 1: It is literally a set piece for showing off his
Speaker 1: new wealth in front of his white neighbors. And they
Speaker 1: happen to be there, happens to be a large gathering
Speaker 1: them in his apartment because he's been elected to lead
Speaker 1: a tenant protest against the building management because they've raised
Speaker 1: prices to you know, for the for the association fee.
Speaker 1: So one of the guests, one of the guests approaches
Speaker 1: George to thank him for taking leadership. We're gonna hear
Speaker 1: this in the clip. Oh, hello Jefferson. I must say,
Speaker 1: we're delighted that you're leading the protests, aren't we marrying? Yes,
Speaker 1: you colored folk can teach us a lot to be
Speaker 1: a militant. I'm a businessman. Do I look like a
Speaker 1: militant to you? Yes? The answer is yesterday exactly. That's hilarious.
Speaker 1: So it was like appropriating all of the all of
Speaker 1: the militancy of the last ten years and saying like,
Speaker 1: now we can use it for our own good on
Speaker 1: the Upper East Side. One's hilarious. And also assuming that
Speaker 1: every black person was a militant of that time period.
Speaker 1: And George is like, no, don't pigeonhole me. I gotta
Speaker 1: ask you a ques, okay, because I'm thinking about the Jeffersons,
Speaker 1: and you are working on a book that's called Bootstrapping,
Speaker 1: which is essentially exactly about this. It's about the Jeffersons
Speaker 1: in a way, about this moment and what you started
Speaker 1: out talking about, you know, from the Nickson era through
Speaker 1: the Reagan era. So how does this sitcom play into
Speaker 1: sort of your thesis, your idea of black individualism of
Speaker 1: you know, and that it even has a kind of
Speaker 1: corrosive effect on society. So that's a really good question because,
Speaker 1: as you know, my book is trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of the emergence of this new generation of black elites
Speaker 1: and what their politics are. And to some degree, the
Speaker 1: Jefferson perfectly encapsulates the early tension for this new generation.
Speaker 1: They're trying to make sense of their own success. They're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out like are we leaving the community behind?
Speaker 1: Like how do we connect with white people? Are we
Speaker 1: do we have shared interest? Are we totally aligned? Or
Speaker 1: are we not? And one of the aspects of the
Speaker 1: show is the tension that the Jeffersons themselves find themselves
Speaker 1: in between. And that's what I would say to answer
Speaker 1: your question. They are and in between. They are in
Speaker 1: a middle space. They are neither They've neither drunk the
Speaker 1: tea of individual success as the only measure of racial progress,
Speaker 1: and they don't leave behind the people who they grew
Speaker 1: up with. In fact, one of the scenes is this
Speaker 1: scene with an old couple that they lived with in
Speaker 1: a rat infested apartment and they haven't seen this couple
Speaker 1: of years, and Louise is so excited to host them
Speaker 1: for dinner, except that they happen to be coming on
Speaker 1: the same night that this rich black businessman named Coleman
Speaker 1: Harris has already been invited. And of course George is
Speaker 1: a thousand percent committed to doing business with this guy.
Speaker 1: And in the scene you hear this older couple say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're uncomfortable being around this guy, like we don't know him,
Speaker 1: and usually the people are not very kind to us.
Speaker 1: And George and Wheezer are like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll work it out. But then they end up
Speaker 1: having this conversation about working class black people. You know,
Speaker 1: Sam's the trouble with the working classes that they don't
Speaker 1: want to work anymore. I don't know about you, but
Speaker 1: I'm having a lot of trouble getting colored help. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what color you looking for? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: How do people not asking the No. One opportunity to knocks?
Speaker 1: How much are you knocking with? What do you mean?
Speaker 1: I mean? How much are you paying? Well? What difference
Speaker 1: does that make you do? All the people out of work,
Speaker 1: you think they'd be glad to get anything, but no,
Speaker 1: they're rather say at home, living lazy on welfare, living
Speaker 1: lazy on welfare. Let me telling you something, mister I
Speaker 1: ain't like the wine, mister h Man, I was. I
Speaker 1: was wondering if sort of that idea of welfare was
Speaker 1: also brought into this of you know, this this hotbudon
Speaker 1: issue right at this moment, of whether it's at a
Speaker 1: sapping initiative or whether we should actually invest more in people.
Speaker 1: All right, So the Jeffersons your book hilarious. I can
Speaker 1: hear of sort of this in between space. It's the
Speaker 1: recipe for a lot of hilarious comedy. And this idea
Speaker 1: of being a first as you were saying, do you
Speaker 1: sort of revel in it for yourself or do you
Speaker 1: start thinking about how you make seconds and thirds and
Speaker 1: fourths and fifths and the community that you came from
Speaker 1: that you also lift up. Is that also the tension?
Speaker 1: I think all of that, I think I think it's
Speaker 1: it's exactly what you just said. And for the Jeffersons,
Speaker 1: they are a vehicle ultimately for the writers to explore
Speaker 1: like we don't really know how this is going to
Speaker 1: work out, and that's what's so I mean, fun is
Speaker 1: not quite the word. It's kind of brilliant about the show,
Speaker 1: Like instead of just writing something that wasn't real, they
Speaker 1: actually try to reflect the very conversations that people were
Speaker 1: having in these SCEs of a new Black elite or
Speaker 1: new Black middle class, and the extent to which they
Speaker 1: owed working class people anything including jobs or whether they
Speaker 1: blame them for not moving on up like they did.
Speaker 1: All of it is on full view in this show,
Speaker 1: and I would say handled with a lot of smartsum
Speaker 1: and a lot of effective writing. All right, man, Well,
Speaker 1: then I need to come back to this question that
Speaker 1: I raised at the beginning, when I about the popularity
Speaker 1: of these shows in this moment in America, when this
Speaker 1: is what mainstream America wanted to see. Crazy, This is
Speaker 1: what America in the seventies and into the eighties. They
Speaker 1: wanted to spend their evenings with issues of race and
Speaker 1: class and questioning all these all these things that are
Speaker 1: going on in the country. What happened? You know? Like
Speaker 1: like that that even to laugh at these things that
Speaker 1: they kind of disappear. And the shows, even the interracial
Speaker 1: shows that are on the air all the time we're
Speaker 1: teenagers and this is off the air, are not like
Speaker 1: this at all. You know, Miami Vice, there's a black
Speaker 1: and white lead. They don't ever talk about race. They
Speaker 1: don't talk about sort of that dynamic at all. It
Speaker 1: just exists. Yeah, The Cosby Show doesn't talk about class
Speaker 1: at all. You know, it's it's it's invisible. They just are. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I know the answer to a lot of what happened,
Speaker 1: but it still boggles the mind. Yeah. I think it's
Speaker 1: a really good point. And I think it is the
Speaker 1: emergence of a massive cultural shift that comes with the
Speaker 1: Reagan era, a kind of shift that to really focus
Speaker 1: on Reagan as a singular politician who first coined the
Speaker 1: phrase make America Great, essentially whitewashed the politics of the nation.
Speaker 1: Here was a guy who essentially was an early version
Speaker 1: of anti CRTs, like, you know, this country is not
Speaker 1: what the socialists left is telling you it is, this
Speaker 1: is the greatest nation on earth. And he won over
Speaker 1: the archie bunkers of the world, who were no longer
Speaker 1: feeling conflicted or guilty or even having a kind of
Speaker 1: moral obligation to make real the promises of the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement. In fact, they got angrier and more hostile,
Speaker 1: and so too did the nation's politics. And the talk
Speaker 1: about Coleman Harris, the black guy in that scene that
Speaker 1: we just heard you know, this notion of people being
Speaker 1: on welfare as being lazy embodied the entire Republican revolution
Speaker 1: of the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, and I think
Speaker 1: TV followed. Man, these shows tell us about the history
Speaker 1: of America. When we make our ap sitcom history culture class,
Speaker 1: that's gonna get banned in twenty five states. This is
Speaker 1: going to be. This is going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: part of the curriculum. This is going to be first
Speaker 1: semester and second semester. I think I already saw that
Speaker 1: the head band Sandford and Son and uh and the
Speaker 1: Jeffersons from the existing APFM studies. Correct, man, that's why
Speaker 1: we're going to get it in the secret ways. That's
Speaker 1: why you gotta come to Some of my best Friends
Speaker 1: Are to get the real stuff. That's right. All right, man,
Speaker 1: Well this was a whole lot of fun and I
Speaker 1: learned a whole lot. I'm going to go watch the
Speaker 1: Jeffersons and I'm gonna watch now. I'm hooked on Sandford
Speaker 1: and then again I gotta go. We've been watching it
Speaker 1: all dud dude, all right, man, love you all right,
Speaker 1: Love you too. Some of my Best Friends Are is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and
Speaker 1: hosted by me Khalil, Jibron Muhammed and my best friend
Speaker 1: Ben Austin. This show is produced by Lucy Sullivan. It's
Speaker 1: edited by Sarah Knicks with help from Keishow Williams. Our
Speaker 1: engineer is Amanda Kawan, and our managing producer is Constanza Gyardo.
Speaker 1: At Pushkin thanks to le Tall, Mulad, Julia Barton, Heather Faine,
Speaker 1: Carly Migliori, John Schnars, Gretta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg. Our
Speaker 1: theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the brilliant
Speaker 1: Avery R. Young, from his album Tubman. You definitely want
Speaker 1: to check out his music at his website Avery R.
Speaker 1: Young dot com. You can find Pushkin on all social
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Speaker 1: our newsletter at pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
Speaker 1: listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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Speaker 1: give us a five star rating and a review and listen.
Speaker 1: Even if you don't like it, give it a five
Speaker 1: star rating and a review, and please tell all of
Speaker 1: your best friends about it. Thank you. Then that was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun, man, that was so much fun.
Speaker 1: This guy got serious savery for the type, serious laugh
Speaker 1: therapy on that. All right. M.