Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Have we become a society of small minds?
In 1974, Time magazine rolled out a new publication, People, to capitalize on its wildly popular section. Fifty years later, we need not wait for a weekly publication.
Privacy, a concept once treasured, is being ceded to the pirates with a fight.
After Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the widow of our 35th president, had been widowed a second time, the paparazzi hounded her. They argued that because she had married a former president and then a wealthy shipping magistrate, she was fair game. She had given up her right to privacy.
Privacy is not mentioned in our Bill of Rights, but perhaps it should be. It is implied in the Declaration of Independence’s promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” as depriving citizens of their privacy violates every aspect of life and limits their personal liberty. Plus, happiness is difficult to pursue when you are being pursued by paparazzi.
Should Jackie have had to spend her entire life pleasing all of the people all of the time? Did the public have a right to know her every move, even to vilify her for wanting privacy? Apparently, the answer was “yes” to both questions. Her only choice: to hire a firm to manage her public relations. She was considered American royalty.
The stakes have only gotten higher, the privacy invasion only more insidious.
Years later, a “real” royal, Princess Diana, discovered this. And paid dearly.
And since her hospitalization in January, Kate Middleton, now princess of Wales, has become the object of intense media speculation. Was her husband, Prince William, having an affair? Was she? Were they on the verge of divorce? And why was the princess not playing to her public, catering to the enquiring minds who want to know, as The National Enquirer used to say.
Turns out the answer to all the speculation was: none of the above. The princess is battling cancer.
For shame.
Yet, the blood-thirsty media can’t be entirely blamed for procuring fresh meat to feed our insatiable appetites. Besides, don’t we have a right to know?
Do we? Did we have the right to force a devoted mother suffering with a horrendous disease to disclose her struggle publicly?
Others’ “stories” may be interesting, but their personal lives are just that – personal. Why do we so want to infiltrate them? As fodder for our otherwise mundane lives? And why are we satisfied being preoccupied with other’s lives, while, in the words of T.S. Eliot, measuring out our own in “coffee spoons?”
Garnering adulation for being in the know, especially for the first to know, our hunger for salacious gossip is seemingly unquenchable and only grows more so in our increasingly connected world. In our obsession with celebrity status, so much time is consumed by others’ lives and curating our own. Influencers and those famous for being famous, with no other talent than the ability to draw attention to themselves, are admirable, emulated. And how willingly we disclose our own honed versions of ourselves, hoping our “followers” or resulting “likes” will capitulate us to our 15 minutes of fame, as promised by Andy Warhol.
But what is the difference between the outrage we feel at our phones being tapped, or cameras in private places, and the invasion of an individual’s privacy?
And where is “oneself,” when always playing to the public or pleasing others? Appeasing and pleasing are constraints which leave no possibility of remaining true to oneself.
Despite this, Oscar Wilde’s adage has seemingly been taken to heart: “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” Privacy has become an archaic idea in this tell-all age. The pirates have taken over the ship.
What if we concentrated on fully living our own lives, ignoring both critics and followers, and engaging in worthwhile, real pursuits? Instead of indulging our endless fascination with others’ lives and showcasing our own, would it not be a thousand-fold more enthralling for us to keep our treasures and sail bravely forth?
Then, think of Mary Oliver “and tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.