March 22, 2023 • 44 mins
Ben and Khalil throw it back to the 1970s to talk about the TV shows they loved growing up – two of the greatest and most important sit-coms: Sanford & Son and The Jeffersons. They discuss how the shows handle race, class and comedy. And how the small screen and the world it reflects have changed since then.
If you’d like to rewatch Sanford & Son or The Jeffersons, both are available on Amazon Prime Video.
Further Reading:
The Media Dramas of Norman Lear - Michael J. Arlen, The New Yorker
Jake Austen’s zine Roctober on the vast comedic work of Redd Foxx
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushing. Hey, Khalil, Hey, hey. The other day, my brother Jake,
he stopped buying and while he was standing there, I
secretly dialed his cell phone, okay, secretly. All right, that's intriguing.
So what happened? Hello? Oh man? You know what that is? Right? Yeah,
(00:45):
that's the theme song to Sanford and Son. You have
Quincy Jones. It's the second greatest theme song to a
show ever. Really, wow? Yeah, like ever, like of all
theme songs across all television history. I didn't say just television,
any show, okay, because you know what the best theme
song is not not moving on up you little lily man.
(01:12):
Of course some of my best right O? Man? All right,
So so my brother that's his cell phone ring tone.
I love it, and of course, of course I had
to ask him about it. Why do you have that
as your ring tone? Well? That is my favorite television
show of all time. I think that uh Red Fox
(01:33):
is the greatest American comedian. Wow, he doesn't, he doesn't.
He speaks in absolutes, and I love that. That's my
brother's right. This, this sparks what I think is going
to be our episode today that I want to talk
to you about Samford and Son, and I want to
talk about it's greatness and all the way Jake is saying, okay, uh, well,
(01:54):
what I really want to talk to you about is
how this TV show from the nineteen seventies really does
the same thing that we always do on this podcast,
just you know, like, how does it reveal the absurdities
and challenges of race in America today? Okay, all right,
so you're saying that for Sandford and Son, it was
(02:15):
showing us something about the society we're living in when
that show started, and it's still mad relevant even fifty
years later. Well, I love we're going to talk about
Sanford and Son because I want to talk about the Jeffersons,
which which could not be more opposite to Sandford and Son.
A story set in a junkyard for a father and son,
(02:37):
and my story is set in an Upper east Side
luxury apartment of a striving black family with their son Lionel,
and the absurdities of their experience as literal newcomers on
the block of wealth and power or some kind of
power in America in the nineteen seventies. Okay, okay, So
this is a special episode of some of my best
(02:59):
friends are. We're talking about old TV shows, but we're
really talking about how they're timeless and how they're they're
relevant to today. And listen, man, this is going to
be fun. This is gonna be a lot of fun listeners.
One more thing, I want to give a warning. The
TV shows that we discussed us some strong racial language,
including the use of the N word. All Right, Khalil,
(03:30):
all Right. Sandford and Son, Okay, Sanford Insen goes on
the air in nineteen seventy two and it runs for
six seasons on NBC. And I know you know the show,
but I'm gonna give you a little refresher on what
it's about. But I haven't seen the show on a
long time, so it wasn't my homework. And I just
have to say I didn't realize it was. It premiered
my birth year in nineteen seventy two. Wow. So here's
(03:51):
the premise. Okay, there's a father and son adult son.
They own a junkyard, which you know, like a salvage
business and antique business in Watts in south central Los Angeles.
All Right, And the main character's name is Fred Sandford.
His son is named Lamont. Fred Sandford is played by
the comedian Red fast Right and lamont is played by
(04:12):
Demand Wilson. Okay, so a lot of the show is
just this kind of situational humor of the father and
son dynamic. Fred's a widower, he is he doesn't want
his son to move out. He wants him to keep
on living with him. And lamonton this is a funny
kind of way that humor works. Is kind of miserable,
you know, like miserable because he wants to get away
from his pops. He doesn't want to have anything to
(04:33):
do with the family business. What is it. He just
feels like he feels a lot of resentment and he
feels like a kind of failure and so so listen
to this. This is a clip from the first episode.
I just can't stand being poor at this poor you
think this is poor? Lisa Chia was seven us in
the family. Seven be slept in the same room, same bed,
same underwear. That's cool. When I was a young stout
(04:59):
war one pep tissues five years warm out up to
the name on the ankle, don't didn't shoot the head
called kids. I won't mind the lastick yo yo? I mean, so,
what what is so powerful? And wonderful about that is
(05:21):
that you can hear Red Fox just doing stand up right,
Like the show is just a set piece for a
riff that that he's probably done many times before. Yeah, totally, totally.
And you know, I'll just take a step back because
like a lot of American sitcoms, it's based on a
British sitcom and also like a lot of American sitcoms,
(05:43):
it's written and produced by Jewish people. All right, all right,
but just like you said, the thing that that that
changes it is like the secret sauce is Red Fox
the comedian. He's a comic genius. U. He is just
you know, even when the show comes on in the
air in nineteen seventy two, he is a wildly successful comic. Okay,
(06:03):
so his reputation is already he's already a superstar. He's
like the Eddie Murphy of his generation. Yeah, you know,
and so much, so much of the comedy. It's not
the writing of the jokes, it's his delivery. It's it's
the way his facial expressions, his sight gags, the way
he walks, the way he moves. Going back to what
my brother says, you know, my brother actually has studied
(06:24):
Red Fox. Jake says that Red Fox is like a
jazz musician, improvising with each measure like and and and
and I'll just give you an example. So, like I'm
going to play another clip for you right here. It's
the start of another episode. Fred says it's his birthday.
He's like singing happy and so first for someone who
may never have seen Fred Stanford. And I was just
(06:44):
about to say, he just he just turned sixty four.
And so so he's gonna call the Social Security Office
because it's check start when his check start coming in
time to get paid. Listen to that this recording does
not repeat, So please wait until a line is free.
And I wouldn't have to wait about it. White, That's
(07:09):
like one of the funniest jokes ever. That's just one
of them. And his delivery is deadpan delivery. But man,
I gotta tell you the set up to this joke.
There's like two or three minutes of him just like
looking for his glasses of you know, looking like crmudgeon
walking over there knowing that the comedy is just emanates
from its physical I think it's just physical guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(07:31):
When I was preparing for this you know this show
with you. I watched an episode with Danielle, my wife,
and in one of the episodes, he's putting on a
dupei and like for two minutes he's just looking at
in the in the mirror putting on the dupe. It
is fall on the floor funny, all right, Like it
is just it's his facial expression and everything about But
the one thing I wanted to say about that delivery
that I wouldn't have to wait as I if I
(07:52):
was white, is it's both genius in terms of being
such a simple punchline, but it also contains a little
bit of anger in it. Like it it feels a
little bit like like like you're laughing, but you're like,
oh wow, he's serious, okay. And so this gets me
to the next thing I want to talk about exactly
that of like what it means to have a black
(08:14):
cast and for this to be a black show. It's
set in a black neighborhood in Los Angeles, um and
the cast around him. Red Fox sort of brings in
the people that he's worked with on the Chitland circuit.
You know, they're sort of like older, older entertainers, lesser
nous people like him. You know, if you've watched the show,
(08:34):
the people who played Grady and Esther, all of them
are like his friends. And it's it's just part of
the humor is just seeing comedians so comfortable with one
another being themselves. And I know, I know, the child
circuit is common enough a term, but it's not exactly
a household term. So it's a term for for the
places where black people performed for black people, mostly in
(08:56):
the South, Duke joints, speakeasies, you know. It was it
was just basically wherever black people could get together outside
the gays of white people and have a good time. Yeah,
like there's always been an alternative universe as especially during
segregated America. Um. And so you might know this, but
but this is this is essentially the first predominantly black
cast since Amos and Andy comes out in the nineteen
(09:19):
did not know that, you know, an Aminus Andy, which
is often criticized for a kind of minstrelsy, But you know,
this is this is like twenty plus years later. Um
and you know, and and this is the other thing
I want to say, man, Like this show in the
seventies is wildly popular. Okay, So it's not just for
black audience. It is one of the most popular shows
in America. Before this show, it seems like The Brady Bunch,
(09:42):
which is like, if people don't know, it's the whitest
show ever, and it's a it's a version of of
Los Angeles and suburban Los Angeles, which couldn't be whider.
It's it's like leave It to Beaver nineteen fifty stuff. Um.
But but then, so this show is about race and
also about class. You know, they're poor and it's it's comedy,
so it's not like it's always social issues. But this
(10:02):
show and the majority of the most popular shows during
this era are all similar shows. All all in the Family,
which your white working class family. So good Times, Chico
and the Man, Welcome Back Cotter Rhoda, Mary Tyler Moore,
who is about a working woman. This is so fascinating
because like that's so different from today. Yeah, I mean,
(10:23):
we can talk about this later after you talk about
the Jeffersons of what this means. But but man, like
did we regress? Like you know, I think about almost
every show today sort of creates this classless world, like
people are so wealthy in some unnamed way. That you
don't even have to talk about money. All these shows,
all these shows in the seventies are about pretty much
(10:44):
kind of like either working class or impoverished people, and
race is at the center. And like think about like
this is after civil Rights, after sort of the racial
turmoil and riots and uprisings of the nineteen sixties. It's
after Attica in nineteen seventy one. Like this is a
year after that, this prison uprising and violent repression that
kills thirty nine people. This is America. Is like, even
(11:07):
as America is sort of becoming way more conservative, like
Nixon as president, and like we're moving into the Reagan years,
comedy is still like in this moment, fascinated by the
world race and class. Yeah, can I add one thing?
So I looked up a New Yorker article dating to
nineteen seventy five, and a critic was looking at the
world of Norman Lear, who is behind the shows that
(11:30):
you mentioned totally, and of course San Francis and the the
Jeffersons we're talking about today. But just to emphasize the
point you've made, the critic in nineteen seventy five estimated
that one hundred and twenty million people watched every week
one of those shows or more, and the critic estimates
that that amounted to five billion people watching a year
(11:52):
or five billion views a year. Can you imagine the
reach of those shows? Just to your point, what happened
where America? Who? This was saturating the culture and as
part of whatever backlash, I mean, this is also the
start of mass and cars rat at this moment and
other things. Um that that moves away from these topics. Well,
(12:14):
what you're saying, I mean in short, is that people
were learning something meaningful and impactful. Yeah, all right, So
I don't want to oversell Sandford and Son as sort
of like you know, as the truth. So much of
the humor is also like all in the family, Fred
Sandford is a total big Fred Sandford is a racist.
(12:36):
Fred Stanford is ignorant as all right, that's the joke.
That's the joke, okay, Like like he is completely provincial
and you're seeing how somebody thinks, you know, when they're
they're by themselves. I'll add that like almost every sitcom
operates this way, that that we learn the exaggerated limitations
(12:56):
of a character, that characters are super limited, and then
they get to be put in moments in situations, and
we get to see their limitations play out. Got it,
often in very problematic ways and then like sometimes in
sweet ways where they overcome their limitations. So you can
you can reproduce this over The Office is exactly like that,
or Abbot Elementary is exactly like that. Almost every show
(13:17):
is exactly like that. Um and Fred is universal in
his targets. Okay, everybody comes. Oh man, it's about Jewish people.
He talks about Latinos, he talks about Asians. He sort
of shakes his hand in this way. They like assuming
people are gay over and over again, and that's you know,
that's a lot of like laugh lines. And also other
black people. There's a there's this funny episode where he
(13:40):
goes to the dentist and he has a black dentist,
and of course he's like, no, no, no, this guy
can't be good. Okay, I want the white dentist, you know,
like like the all saying that white ice is colder
than than anyone Else's all right, So here's where I
want to go with this, Khalil, I need to share
one specific episode with you because this sort of is
(14:00):
like where Samfordisson takes this race stuff in a really
a different place, in an interesting place. Um, there's an
episode nineteen seventy four called Fred Sandford Legal Eagle and
and here's what he sets up a business to to provide.
LaMonte gets a traffic ticket. Okay, you know he's in Watts.
(14:21):
He's in South Central, an all black neighborhood, and he
stopped by a white cop and he feels that had
happened unjustly. And just a question for you, is the
context of the Watts Uprising, which had occurred in nineteen
sixty five and had like totally transformed the conversation about
civil rights, would lead to the Kerner Report on de Johnson,
Like is that part? Is there any signposting of that
(14:43):
in this episode. I'm so glad you brought that up
because kind of listen to this and well we'll come
back to that, like put a pin of that, because
how could you imagine people know Watts and no sound
Central because of that, and yet it's you know, so
it defines the everyone's conception of that. It's the only
thing most people actually know who are not have ever
(15:05):
heard California. Yeah, yeah, all right. So Lamont feels like
he's been profiled. So he's going to fight the ticket
in court. And here is Lamont on the witness stands
as the judge tells him he can't address the white
cop in court in the courtroom directly, Oh, mister Sandford,
I would think that whatever question you had would be
(15:25):
better asked by your counsel. Are you represented by counsel? Well?
See when I came up here, I figured it. Did
you say that that question could be better answered by
his counsule? That is correct? Who are you? I'm his consul?
All right? So here we are classic sitcom set up,
fish out of water, Fred Sandford, who's always disruptive wherever
(15:48):
he goes. He doesn't follow any of the rules. He's
it's his obliviousness. He just doesn't care. A moment where
you can just you let Fred be Fred. And and
so I need you to hear what happens next and
how this because I'm thinking does this work to Lamont's
advantage or not? Oh? Man, it's crazy because because I
am actually not sure even what to make of this
moment From from UH Network Television in nineteen seventy four,
(16:13):
k So Fred, acting as Lamont's lawyer, he turns to
the lap D officer and begins to question him. Okay, listen,
why don't you arrest some white rabbits? I do you do?
Look at all these niggas, indiot, there's enough niggas in
(16:38):
here to make a Tarzan movie. Oh gosh, oh man,
oh my goodness. Yes, that's network television. That is honest,
network unbelievable. Yeah, so I think I think, yeah, you
(16:59):
go ahead. No, you were five. I was three, And like,
although we didn't watch these when they premiered, we grew
up on these and and frankly our kids have watched
TV Land versions of these shows. It's just it's just
it's just incredible to think about the racial politics and
the language and the raw edge of social commentary and
(17:20):
criticism expressed in that moment. Yeah, yeah, that's really well put. Uh,
this is something I learned from Jake. Also, Paul Mooney
helped write that episode. Paul Mooney, the black writer. He
wrote for Richard Pryor. He people might have seen him
on Chappelle's show. He was a recurring character as well. Um,
and so he wrote that that line, and he thought
(17:40):
the joke was the second part about Tarzan, which is,
you know there is supposed to be said in Africa.
But but there's such a laugh line of just Fred
stating the truth and stating it with this you know, flourish,
this embellished word that you don't hear on network television. Well,
well not anymore. But it turns out you yeah, because
we get to the jefferences. Boy oh boy. But like
(18:03):
the joke is just stating the facts. It's stating the
sense of racial oppression. And how is that funny? Right,
Like that's kind of why it's well, it's stating it.
I mean, I'm hearing it again for the first time
maybe ever and certainly in a long time if I
watched it at all, and it's like that earlier clip
(18:23):
you played. It's both hilarious for the inside humor that
that speaks to black people, right because they've all been
there in that moment, and also the searing criticism that
the in word is the way in which the criminal
justice system treated and understood black people as deserving of
this this punitive system. Yeah, and I'm going to add
(18:48):
something about this episode because Fred is also undercutting the politics.
All of his cronies come to the courtroom, you know,
all of his buddies Ubb Grady and and he's actually
betting with them whether Lamont's going to get h you know,
get off or not. You know. So he's like got
two to one odds and so on. And he's like
(19:09):
even as he's saying this, he's winking to his friends.
So it's just funny. Like he's speaking in many voices,
if you know what I mean, Like like it's working
on all these different levels. And yeah, I just something
about this, the seriousness of this moment of being part
of the national conversation. And you talked about the Watts riots.
(19:31):
I mean, here it is about the Watts riots. Yeah,
it's exactly because I mean it's not stated. I mean,
and obviously most people know this, but the Watts riot
in a thousand other ones were all centered around some
police activity, some instance of police brutality and justice outright killing.
I mean almost every so called civil disturbance of the
(19:53):
time period, riot or uprising, all centered around policing. Yeah,
but let's take a quick break and when we come back,
you can break down some stuff to me about the
Jeffersons and we'll think about the connections and what to
make of this. Do it welcome? Back to some of
(20:20):
my best friends are Ben Man. That was so much
fun revisiting Sanford and Son and hearing Red Fox. I mean,
someone who was before our time, but you know we
got we got to know a little bit of him
through Sandford and Son. Oh. Just but but always right
on time, exactly. You know. I just want to talk
about in the context of what's happening just years after
(20:43):
the Civil Rights Movement. This is the period of time,
by early nineteen seventy when when a whole new generation
of black people are entering into they're they're becoming mayors
of cities, they are moving into positions in middle management
and companies all over the place. I call this the
era of black firsts Black first, Okay, that's right. And
(21:05):
another way to think of it is it's also the
age of the self made black man and woman. Anyone
of that generation picking up an Ebony magazine or a
Jet magazine would see, you know, these beautiful black people
in full color, you know, celebrating black excellence in the
nineteen seventies and eighties especially, Yeah, yeah, interesting. So the
(21:27):
image of Sanford, instead of being so impoverished and kind
of run down and slovenly not that like that sort
of cuts against this image. That's right, because the image
of poverty had always defined the sort of debate about
black people coming out of slavery then as sharecroppers, and
of course black Southerners through the Civil rights movement had
(21:48):
always always presented themselves as respectable. You know, you never
saw anybody in a civil rights protest that was covered
by the news who wasn't in a three piece suit
and wearing a fancy fedor or a woman in the skirt.
So super interesting man, because because a critique of Sanford
and Son from at the time was that he's not
like a credit to the race. You know that that
that this isn't what the Osby Show would be like
(22:10):
in the nineteen eighties, where everything is pristine. That's right.
So there is a tension. I mean, what Sanford and
Son brings to the national cultural milieu of that time
is this essentially kind of war between two competing images
of Black America. What year does the Jeffersons appear in
nineteen seventy five is when the chopin years that seems
(22:31):
so much earlier than I would have thought. I remember
watching it, you know, aln Air at the time. It
must have been later episodes, but I remember watching it
with my brother. Well, the curious thing is it ran
for eleven seasons, so by the time through the eighties,
that's right, we were thirteen fourteen years old, just about
high school by the time this show actually went off
the air, so we captured a lot of time. But
(22:52):
talking about this age of the self made black man
and woman, Richard Nixon actually initiates in his presidency in
his first term after he's election in nineteen sixty eight,
he's going to try to pick off black people by
initiating this domestic policy of black capitalism. And what that meant,
practically speaking, was by turning black people into capitalists, by
(23:16):
encouraging the private sector to give them jobs, by making
some key appointments in the federal government, by establishing a
small business loan operation which ultimately produces minority and women
contracts to this very day for federal and state local contracting.
Nixon was like, I'm going to secure the future of
the Republican Party by focusing on black elites, or at
(23:38):
least by manufacturing them. It's come on, professor, keep coming,
keep coming. So it's a sense of like I got
mine really sort of promoting individualism over a sort of
like a whole sort of social idea collective good. That's
exactly right. He's gonna He's gonna be the answer to
Lamont's prayer. So if Lamont and Sanford and such says
(23:59):
I don't want to be poor, Richard Nixon is going
to say, hey, you can become rich if you just
follow the Republican party plan. And it's always going to
be about individual the first season, the Jefferson gives voice
to this idea, but this show is built around this
new era of a self made black man and woman who,
(24:19):
in the case of the Jeffersons, are going to literally
move up, like literally move on up. We're been moving
on DoD. I mean, the whole theme song is a
(24:40):
is a commentary on exactly this point. We are moving
on up, moving to the East side to a d
luxe apartment in the sky. Everybody's heard this song at
some point, ah man man. So this is this is
almost like the show is an illustration exactly of this idea.
They're on the upper east Side of New York City
in a penthouse. Uh and and and the main guy,
George Jefferson Sherman Hemsley, the actor he runs if I
(25:04):
remember a cleaning business Rights and Laundry Cleaners, Yes, okay, yep.
And so so what we learn of this couple is that,
you know, George is this successful businessman. When we first
meet them, essentially they are in this luxury apartment. He's
he wears double breasted and three piece suits. He occasionally
(25:24):
wears an ascot and a smoking jacket. And Louise, his wife,
who's played by Isabel Sandford. George is played by Sherman Helmsley,
and they are fighting constantly. I mean, this is like
if if leave it to Beaver, which you mentioned earlier,
was like the idyllic white suburban housewife and and husband
and their two you know, beautiful kids. One just happens
(25:47):
to be mischievous. This is just the opposite. These two
are fighting constantly, and indeed the fight itself is the
platform through which they often explore the tensions in their
own family. Louise, it turns out, is much more concerned about,
you know, the trappings of being rich. George is obsessed with.
(26:09):
George is doing everything in his power to make more money,
to open more stores, to make more contacts and Louise
is like, you know, I feel kind of useless in
this space, and and you know, I'm not used to
not working, and I'm concerned about Lionel, who is their
adult son. So interesting that some of the dynamics from
San franc And continue here and some are in a
(26:30):
completely different setting and economic world. That's right, And and
interestingly enough, I mean dating ourselves. George, believe it or not,
and Louise are like forty six years old, so they're
actually younger in this movie or this TV show than
we are at this time. But George is the son
of a sharecropper and Louise is the daughter of a janitor.
(26:52):
So we meet them in this small setting where it's
the two of them their son. There are two other
sets of characters that are very meaningful. It's there's an
interracial couple, Tom and Helen Willis and you know that
they're my role models for life. That's right. Toma's wife
Helen is black, and their daughter Jenny. There is George's mother,
(27:14):
mother Jefferson. She is worth watching every episode of the
first season. She is incredible. So the final person that
I want to mention briefly is the maid Florence. Florence
in the opening episode of the show, gives voice to
the class tensions that are on full view in the Jeffersons.
(27:38):
Let's hear it in this clip. You folks man, if
I ask you something, no, go right ahead? Can you
live in this apartment? Right? And you've got an apartment
in this building too? Yes, that's right. How come we
overcame and no Matter told me. Yeah, there's something that
throws her off about this whole dynamic. Yeah. So there
are really some powerful themes that come through in the
(28:01):
Jeffersons that I want to talk about. This consistent with
this class tension. So if Sandford and Son, as you've
already suggested, is really sort of the bridge between the
world of Wattson uprisings and poor people left behind in America.
This is an aspirational vision, This is a normative vision,
and this takes us into the Reagan era. This is
like a Reagan theme show, even if it starts before it.
(28:24):
That's right. So let's just start with one theme, which
is the interracial politics of the show. I mean here
it is some of my best friends are This show
is playing to this issue and we want to understand
precisely how they as a black family are navigating proximity
to white people, which of course is now on equal terms,
(28:45):
rather than in the world of Sandford and Sun, which
is always about power and conflict. And so the show
comes out swinging in the first episode. First of all,
George is constantly calling Tom and Helen a zebra couple,
so it's very explicit language to like make fun of them.
There's a lot of conversation about the in word, about
(29:06):
about they use the word honky all the time, the
word whitey is ubiquitous. But they're also these moments where
there's this commentary about how white people are not all
that they are cracked up to be. In fact, Mother
Jefferson says to Louise in one episode, She's like, I
think you're out cheating on George because you didn't meet
(29:27):
me where you were supposed to be. And Louise of
course is like, that's ridiculous, and Mother Jefferson's line she
comes back and she says, if you live among the
white folks, some of their ways are bound to rub off,
that's right. And then there are all these references to
blacks and Jews, which I have to say, I didn't
pick up, of course before, but they're the playful references.
(29:49):
For example, at some point they're hosting a party and
they have out bagels and locks and cream cheese, and
George is like Jewish so food. You know, it's interesting
when just when you said that, in my memory of
the show and the white characters that you described, they
are so goyish, they are so not Jewish, and that
(30:13):
you have all these white writers, but they the white
sort of buffoony characters, whether they're British or sort of
you know, very waspy. They don't write in Jews as
the neighbors. That's interesting. Actually there's this isn't This is
in the Upper West Side for example. That's right. So
just to give people a sense of how language works.
And this is not Red Fox, this is Sherman Helmsley
(30:35):
and Isabel Sandford. I want you to hear this clip. Now.
This is a moment where George basically buys his son
Lionel a very expensive watch. So let's listen to the clip,
which again heads up, the N word is in here too,
but must be at least hundred dollars three hundred and
(30:57):
fifty dollars for watch nigga, please what man exactly? Huh?
That was surprised me. Yes, that I don't. I don't
remember that about the show, And I thought, yeah, I mean,
so George is flexing like he wants the price he's
(31:19):
proud of I'm imagining in that episode. Yeah, No, he's
he's totally flexing. This is blaming, he's blinging. He wants
his son to shine, he wants to show his wealth,
which is, you know, part of a familiar trope of
like nouveau reache. Right, you wear it on you literally
wear it on your sleeve. Yeah, they're of this world
and not of this world. That's a that's a lot
of the humor is derived out of that. Yeah. So
(31:41):
so of course I already told you the in word
is is ubiquitous. But it's not just it's not just
like the timing of of dropping the in word in
these episodes. It's also like using the in word in
mixed company. And and that is what's different in this
show is like how do you navigate, at least as
the writers understand it, what's on people's minds. So in
(32:01):
this scene, George and Wheezy are having one of their
usual fights and they're having it in front of Tom
and Helen, and basically it turns on like this question
of like, why do you guys always fight with each other?
Um in front of this interracial couple. So we're gonna
play the clip and hear what they say, Comemen, Helen,
(32:21):
they don't fight, they don't fight, they're scared to fight.
What's that supposed to mean? You know, damn well what
it means if you do ever really started going in
one another inside of five minutes, he'd be calling you
young saint niggah man. So so obviously with this interracial couple,
instead of us just assuming that there is no racial
(32:42):
tension in the in the relationship itself, George actually transposes
his own animosity, his own sense of race onto this
other couple. Oh man, I'm thinking one about how the
N word is deployed differently in the clip I played
you from from San Ferdancian and in these moments, and
(33:04):
and also about this continuum from the early seventies and
sort of coming out of the racial uprising of the
sixties through the Jeffersons into the eighties, which is about
moving on up about this individualism and still we're hearing
you know, the Jeffersons is still about about class differences
(33:25):
and racial differences, but we're just moving them from the
Junkyard into the Upper east Side. But in a way,
the dynamics are similar. Yeah, so let's talk about how
they deal with class or the class divide actually in
how whites perceive that class divide. So rather than it
just being about how black people themselves are navigating their
new wealth in a white world, part of what the
(33:47):
show does is to expose how white people are trying
to make sense of their new black middle class and
elite neighbors. So in this scene, George has just bought
a brand new piano for the home. No one can
play it, and no one is interested in playing it.
It is literally a set piece for showing off his
new wealth in front of his white neighbors. And they
(34:09):
happen to be there, happens to be a large gathering
them in his apartment because he's been elected to lead
a tenant protest against the building management because they've raised
prices to you know, for the for the association fee.
So one of the guests, one of the guests approaches
George to thank him for taking leadership. We're gonna hear
(34:30):
this in the clip. Oh, hello Jefferson. I must say,
we're delighted that you're leading the protests, aren't we marrying? Yes,
you colored folk can teach us a lot to be
a militant. I'm a businessman. Do I look like a
militant to you? Yes? The answer is yesterday exactly. That's hilarious.
(34:52):
So it was like appropriating all of the all of
the militancy of the last ten years and saying like,
now we can use it for our own good on
the Upper East Side. One's hilarious. And also assuming that
every black person was a militant of that time period.
And George is like, no, don't pigeonhole me. I gotta
ask you a ques, okay, because I'm thinking about the Jeffersons,
and you are working on a book that's called Bootstrapping,
(35:16):
which is essentially exactly about this. It's about the Jeffersons
in a way, about this moment and what you started
out talking about, you know, from the Nickson era through
the Reagan era. So how does this sitcom play into
sort of your thesis, your idea of black individualism of
(35:36):
you know, and that it even has a kind of
corrosive effect on society. So that's a really good question because,
as you know, my book is trying to make sense
of the emergence of this new generation of black elites
and what their politics are. And to some degree, the
Jefferson perfectly encapsulates the early tension for this new generation.
(35:58):
They're trying to make sense of their own success. They're
trying to figure out like are we leaving the community behind?
Like how do we connect with white people? Are we
do we have shared interest? Are we totally aligned? Or
are we not? And one of the aspects of the
show is the tension that the Jeffersons themselves find themselves
(36:19):
in between. And that's what I would say to answer
your question. They are and in between. They are in
a middle space. They are neither They've neither drunk the
tea of individual success as the only measure of racial progress,
and they don't leave behind the people who they grew
up with. In fact, one of the scenes is this
scene with an old couple that they lived with in
(36:42):
a rat infested apartment and they haven't seen this couple
of years, and Louise is so excited to host them
for dinner, except that they happen to be coming on
the same night that this rich black businessman named Coleman
Harris has already been invited. And of course George is
a thousand percent committed to doing business with this guy.
And in the scene you hear this older couple say, hey,
(37:05):
we're uncomfortable being around this guy, like we don't know him,
and usually the people are not very kind to us.
And George and Wheezer are like, no, no, no, no,
we'll we'll work it out. But then they end up
having this conversation about working class black people. You know,
Sam's the trouble with the working classes that they don't
want to work anymore. I don't know about you, but
I'm having a lot of trouble getting colored help. Yeah,
(37:27):
what color you looking for? You know what I mean?
How do people not asking the No. One opportunity to knocks?
How much are you knocking with? What do you mean?
I mean? How much are you paying? Well? What difference
does that make you do? All the people out of work,
you think they'd be glad to get anything, but no,
(37:49):
they're rather say at home, living lazy on welfare, living
lazy on welfare. Let me telling you something, mister I
ain't like the wine, mister h Man, I was. I
was wondering if sort of that idea of welfare was
also brought into this of you know, this this hotbudon
issue right at this moment, of whether it's at a
(38:10):
sapping initiative or whether we should actually invest more in people.
All right, So the Jeffersons your book hilarious. I can
hear of sort of this in between space. It's the
recipe for a lot of hilarious comedy. And this idea
of being a first as you were saying, do you
sort of revel in it for yourself or do you
(38:32):
start thinking about how you make seconds and thirds and
fourths and fifths and the community that you came from
that you also lift up. Is that also the tension?
I think all of that, I think I think it's
it's exactly what you just said. And for the Jeffersons,
they are a vehicle ultimately for the writers to explore
like we don't really know how this is going to
(38:53):
work out, and that's what's so I mean, fun is
not quite the word. It's kind of brilliant about the show,
Like instead of just writing something that wasn't real, they
actually try to reflect the very conversations that people were
having in these SCEs of a new Black elite or
new Black middle class, and the extent to which they
(39:14):
owed working class people anything including jobs or whether they
blame them for not moving on up like they did.
All of it is on full view in this show,
and I would say handled with a lot of smartsum
and a lot of effective writing. All right, man, Well,
then I need to come back to this question that
I raised at the beginning, when I about the popularity
(39:37):
of these shows in this moment in America, when this
is what mainstream America wanted to see. Crazy, This is
what America in the seventies and into the eighties. They
wanted to spend their evenings with issues of race and
class and questioning all these all these things that are
going on in the country. What happened? You know? Like
(40:00):
like that that even to laugh at these things that
they kind of disappear. And the shows, even the interracial
shows that are on the air all the time we're
teenagers and this is off the air, are not like
this at all. You know, Miami Vice, there's a black
and white lead. They don't ever talk about race. They
don't talk about sort of that dynamic at all. It
just exists. Yeah, The Cosby Show doesn't talk about class
(40:23):
at all. You know, it's it's it's invisible. They just are. Obviously,
I know the answer to a lot of what happened,
but it still boggles the mind. Yeah. I think it's
a really good point. And I think it is the
emergence of a massive cultural shift that comes with the
Reagan era, a kind of shift that to really focus
(40:46):
on Reagan as a singular politician who first coined the
phrase make America Great, essentially whitewashed the politics of the nation.
Here was a guy who essentially was an early version
of anti CRTs, like, you know, this country is not
what the socialists left is telling you it is, this
(41:08):
is the greatest nation on earth. And he won over
the archie bunkers of the world, who were no longer
feeling conflicted or guilty or even having a kind of
moral obligation to make real the promises of the civil
rights movement. In fact, they got angrier and more hostile,
and so too did the nation's politics. And the talk
(41:32):
about Coleman Harris, the black guy in that scene that
we just heard you know, this notion of people being
on welfare as being lazy embodied the entire Republican revolution
of the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, and I think
TV followed. Man, these shows tell us about the history
of America. When we make our ap sitcom history culture class,
(41:58):
that's gonna get banned in twenty five states. This is
going to be. This is going to be, you know,
part of the curriculum. This is going to be first
semester and second semester. I think I already saw that
the head band Sandford and Son and uh and the
Jeffersons from the existing APFM studies. Correct, man, that's why
we're going to get it in the secret ways. That's
(42:18):
why you gotta come to Some of my best Friends
Are to get the real stuff. That's right. All right, man,
Well this was a whole lot of fun and I
learned a whole lot. I'm going to go watch the
Jeffersons and I'm gonna watch now. I'm hooked on Sandford
and then again I gotta go. We've been watching it
all dud dude, all right, man, love you all right,
Love you too. Some of my Best Friends Are is
(42:41):
a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and
hosted by me Khalil, Jibron Muhammed and my best friend
Ben Austin. This show is produced by Lucy Sullivan. It's
edited by Sarah Knicks with help from Keishow Williams. Our
engineer is Amanda Kawan, and our managing producer is Constanza Gyardo.
(43:02):
At Pushkin thanks to le Tall, Mulad, Julia Barton, Heather Faine,
Carly Migliori, John Schnars, Gretta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg. Our
theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the brilliant
Avery R. Young, from his album Tubman. You definitely want
to check out his music at his website Avery R.
(43:22):
Young dot com. You can find Pushkin on all social
platforms at Pushkin Pods and you can sign up for
our newsletter at pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
like to listen. And if you like our show, please
give us a five star rating and a review and listen.
(43:43):
Even if you don't like it, give it a five
star rating and a review, and please tell all of
your best friends about it. Thank you. Then that was
a lot of fun, man, that was so much fun.
(44:05):
This guy got serious savery for the type, serious laugh
therapy on that. All right. M.
Pushing. Hey, Khalil, Hey, hey. The other day, my brother Jake,
he stopped buying and while he was standing there, I
secretly dialed his cell phone, okay, secretly. All right, that's intriguing.
So what happened? Hello? Oh man? You know what that is? Right? Yeah,
(00:45):
that's the theme song to Sanford and Son. You have
Quincy Jones. It's the second greatest theme song to a
show ever. Really, wow? Yeah, like ever, like of all
theme songs across all television history. I didn't say just television,
any show, okay, because you know what the best theme
song is not not moving on up you little lily man.
(01:12):
Of course some of my best right O? Man? All right,
So so my brother that's his cell phone ring tone.
I love it, and of course, of course I had
to ask him about it. Why do you have that
as your ring tone? Well? That is my favorite television
show of all time. I think that uh Red Fox
(01:33):
is the greatest American comedian. Wow, he doesn't, he doesn't.
He speaks in absolutes, and I love that. That's my
brother's right. This, this sparks what I think is going
to be our episode today that I want to talk
to you about Samford and Son, and I want to
talk about it's greatness and all the way Jake is saying, okay, uh, well,
(01:54):
what I really want to talk to you about is
how this TV show from the nineteen seventies really does
the same thing that we always do on this podcast,
just you know, like, how does it reveal the absurdities
and challenges of race in America today? Okay, all right,
so you're saying that for Sandford and Son, it was
(02:15):
showing us something about the society we're living in when
that show started, and it's still mad relevant even fifty
years later. Well, I love we're going to talk about
Sanford and Son because I want to talk about the Jeffersons,
which which could not be more opposite to Sandford and Son.
A story set in a junkyard for a father and son,
(02:37):
and my story is set in an Upper east Side
luxury apartment of a striving black family with their son Lionel,
and the absurdities of their experience as literal newcomers on
the block of wealth and power or some kind of
power in America in the nineteen seventies. Okay, okay, So
this is a special episode of some of my best
(02:59):
friends are. We're talking about old TV shows, but we're
really talking about how they're timeless and how they're they're
relevant to today. And listen, man, this is going to
be fun. This is gonna be a lot of fun listeners.
One more thing, I want to give a warning. The
TV shows that we discussed us some strong racial language,
including the use of the N word. All Right, Khalil,
(03:30):
all Right. Sandford and Son, Okay, Sanford Insen goes on
the air in nineteen seventy two and it runs for
six seasons on NBC. And I know you know the show,
but I'm gonna give you a little refresher on what
it's about. But I haven't seen the show on a
long time, so it wasn't my homework. And I just
have to say I didn't realize it was. It premiered
my birth year in nineteen seventy two. Wow. So here's
(03:51):
the premise. Okay, there's a father and son adult son.
They own a junkyard, which you know, like a salvage
business and antique business in Watts in south central Los Angeles.
All Right, And the main character's name is Fred Sandford.
His son is named Lamont. Fred Sandford is played by
the comedian Red fast Right and lamont is played by
(04:12):
Demand Wilson. Okay, so a lot of the show is
just this kind of situational humor of the father and
son dynamic. Fred's a widower, he is he doesn't want
his son to move out. He wants him to keep
on living with him. And lamonton this is a funny
kind of way that humor works. Is kind of miserable,
you know, like miserable because he wants to get away
from his pops. He doesn't want to have anything to
(04:33):
do with the family business. What is it. He just
feels like he feels a lot of resentment and he
feels like a kind of failure and so so listen
to this. This is a clip from the first episode.
I just can't stand being poor at this poor you
think this is poor? Lisa Chia was seven us in
the family. Seven be slept in the same room, same bed,
same underwear. That's cool. When I was a young stout
(04:59):
war one pep tissues five years warm out up to
the name on the ankle, don't didn't shoot the head
called kids. I won't mind the lastick yo yo? I mean, so,
what what is so powerful? And wonderful about that is
(05:21):
that you can hear Red Fox just doing stand up right,
Like the show is just a set piece for a
riff that that he's probably done many times before. Yeah, totally, totally.
And you know, I'll just take a step back because
like a lot of American sitcoms, it's based on a
British sitcom and also like a lot of American sitcoms,
(05:43):
it's written and produced by Jewish people. All right, all right,
but just like you said, the thing that that that
changes it is like the secret sauce is Red Fox
the comedian. He's a comic genius. U. He is just
you know, even when the show comes on in the
air in nineteen seventy two, he is a wildly successful comic. Okay,
(06:03):
so his reputation is already he's already a superstar. He's
like the Eddie Murphy of his generation. Yeah, you know,
and so much, so much of the comedy. It's not
the writing of the jokes, it's his delivery. It's it's
the way his facial expressions, his sight gags, the way
he walks, the way he moves. Going back to what
my brother says, you know, my brother actually has studied
(06:24):
Red Fox. Jake says that Red Fox is like a
jazz musician, improvising with each measure like and and and
and I'll just give you an example. So, like I'm
going to play another clip for you right here. It's
the start of another episode. Fred says it's his birthday.
He's like singing happy and so first for someone who
may never have seen Fred Stanford. And I was just
(06:44):
about to say, he just he just turned sixty four.
And so so he's gonna call the Social Security Office
because it's check start when his check start coming in
time to get paid. Listen to that this recording does
not repeat, So please wait until a line is free.
And I wouldn't have to wait about it. White, That's
(07:09):
like one of the funniest jokes ever. That's just one
of them. And his delivery is deadpan delivery. But man,
I gotta tell you the set up to this joke.
There's like two or three minutes of him just like
looking for his glasses of you know, looking like crmudgeon
walking over there knowing that the comedy is just emanates
from its physical I think it's just physical guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(07:31):
When I was preparing for this you know this show
with you. I watched an episode with Danielle, my wife,
and in one of the episodes, he's putting on a
dupei and like for two minutes he's just looking at
in the in the mirror putting on the dupe. It
is fall on the floor funny, all right, Like it
is just it's his facial expression and everything about But
the one thing I wanted to say about that delivery
that I wouldn't have to wait as I if I
(07:52):
was white, is it's both genius in terms of being
such a simple punchline, but it also contains a little
bit of anger in it. Like it it feels a
little bit like like like you're laughing, but you're like,
oh wow, he's serious, okay. And so this gets me
to the next thing I want to talk about exactly
that of like what it means to have a black
(08:14):
cast and for this to be a black show. It's
set in a black neighborhood in Los Angeles, um and
the cast around him. Red Fox sort of brings in
the people that he's worked with on the Chitland circuit.
You know, they're sort of like older, older entertainers, lesser
nous people like him. You know, if you've watched the show,
(08:34):
the people who played Grady and Esther, all of them
are like his friends. And it's it's just part of
the humor is just seeing comedians so comfortable with one
another being themselves. And I know, I know, the child
circuit is common enough a term, but it's not exactly
a household term. So it's a term for for the
places where black people performed for black people, mostly in
(08:56):
the South, Duke joints, speakeasies, you know. It was it
was just basically wherever black people could get together outside
the gays of white people and have a good time. Yeah,
like there's always been an alternative universe as especially during
segregated America. Um. And so you might know this, but
but this is this is essentially the first predominantly black
cast since Amos and Andy comes out in the nineteen
(09:19):
did not know that, you know, an Aminus Andy, which
is often criticized for a kind of minstrelsy, But you know,
this is this is like twenty plus years later. Um
and you know, and and this is the other thing
I want to say, man, Like this show in the
seventies is wildly popular. Okay, So it's not just for
black audience. It is one of the most popular shows
in America. Before this show, it seems like The Brady Bunch,
(09:42):
which is like, if people don't know, it's the whitest
show ever, and it's a it's a version of of
Los Angeles and suburban Los Angeles, which couldn't be whider.
It's it's like leave It to Beaver nineteen fifty stuff. Um.
But but then, so this show is about race and
also about class. You know, they're poor and it's it's comedy,
so it's not like it's always social issues. But this
(10:02):
show and the majority of the most popular shows during
this era are all similar shows. All all in the Family,
which your white working class family. So good Times, Chico
and the Man, Welcome Back Cotter Rhoda, Mary Tyler Moore,
who is about a working woman. This is so fascinating
because like that's so different from today. Yeah, I mean,
(10:23):
we can talk about this later after you talk about
the Jeffersons of what this means. But but man, like
did we regress? Like you know, I think about almost
every show today sort of creates this classless world, like
people are so wealthy in some unnamed way. That you
don't even have to talk about money. All these shows,
all these shows in the seventies are about pretty much
(10:44):
kind of like either working class or impoverished people, and
race is at the center. And like think about like
this is after civil Rights, after sort of the racial
turmoil and riots and uprisings of the nineteen sixties. It's
after Attica in nineteen seventy one. Like this is a
year after that, this prison uprising and violent repression that
kills thirty nine people. This is America. Is like, even
(11:07):
as America is sort of becoming way more conservative, like
Nixon as president, and like we're moving into the Reagan years,
comedy is still like in this moment, fascinated by the
world race and class. Yeah, can I add one thing?
So I looked up a New Yorker article dating to
nineteen seventy five, and a critic was looking at the
world of Norman Lear, who is behind the shows that
(11:30):
you mentioned totally, and of course San Francis and the the
Jeffersons we're talking about today. But just to emphasize the
point you've made, the critic in nineteen seventy five estimated
that one hundred and twenty million people watched every week
one of those shows or more, and the critic estimates
that that amounted to five billion people watching a year
(11:52):
or five billion views a year. Can you imagine the
reach of those shows? Just to your point, what happened
where America? Who? This was saturating the culture and as
part of whatever backlash, I mean, this is also the
start of mass and cars rat at this moment and
other things. Um that that moves away from these topics. Well,
(12:14):
what you're saying, I mean in short, is that people
were learning something meaningful and impactful. Yeah, all right, So
I don't want to oversell Sandford and Son as sort
of like you know, as the truth. So much of
the humor is also like all in the family, Fred
Sandford is a total big Fred Sandford is a racist.
(12:36):
Fred Stanford is ignorant as all right, that's the joke.
That's the joke, okay, Like like he is completely provincial
and you're seeing how somebody thinks, you know, when they're
they're by themselves. I'll add that like almost every sitcom
operates this way, that that we learn the exaggerated limitations
(12:56):
of a character, that characters are super limited, and then
they get to be put in moments in situations, and
we get to see their limitations play out. Got it,
often in very problematic ways and then like sometimes in
sweet ways where they overcome their limitations. So you can
you can reproduce this over The Office is exactly like that,
or Abbot Elementary is exactly like that. Almost every show
(13:17):
is exactly like that. Um and Fred is universal in
his targets. Okay, everybody comes. Oh man, it's about Jewish people.
He talks about Latinos, he talks about Asians. He sort
of shakes his hand in this way. They like assuming
people are gay over and over again, and that's you know,
that's a lot of like laugh lines. And also other
black people. There's a there's this funny episode where he
(13:40):
goes to the dentist and he has a black dentist,
and of course he's like, no, no, no, this guy
can't be good. Okay, I want the white dentist, you know,
like like the all saying that white ice is colder
than than anyone Else's all right, So here's where I
want to go with this, Khalil, I need to share
one specific episode with you because this sort of is
(14:00):
like where Samfordisson takes this race stuff in a really
a different place, in an interesting place. Um, there's an
episode nineteen seventy four called Fred Sandford Legal Eagle and
and here's what he sets up a business to to provide.
LaMonte gets a traffic ticket. Okay, you know he's in Watts.
(14:21):
He's in South Central, an all black neighborhood, and he
stopped by a white cop and he feels that had
happened unjustly. And just a question for you, is the
context of the Watts Uprising, which had occurred in nineteen
sixty five and had like totally transformed the conversation about
civil rights, would lead to the Kerner Report on de Johnson,
Like is that part? Is there any signposting of that
(14:43):
in this episode. I'm so glad you brought that up
because kind of listen to this and well we'll come
back to that, like put a pin of that, because
how could you imagine people know Watts and no sound
Central because of that, and yet it's you know, so
it defines the everyone's conception of that. It's the only
thing most people actually know who are not have ever
(15:05):
heard California. Yeah, yeah, all right. So Lamont feels like
he's been profiled. So he's going to fight the ticket
in court. And here is Lamont on the witness stands
as the judge tells him he can't address the white
cop in court in the courtroom directly, Oh, mister Sandford,
I would think that whatever question you had would be
(15:25):
better asked by your counsel. Are you represented by counsel? Well?
See when I came up here, I figured it. Did
you say that that question could be better answered by
his counsule? That is correct? Who are you? I'm his consul?
All right? So here we are classic sitcom set up,
fish out of water, Fred Sandford, who's always disruptive wherever
(15:48):
he goes. He doesn't follow any of the rules. He's
it's his obliviousness. He just doesn't care. A moment where
you can just you let Fred be Fred. And and
so I need you to hear what happens next and
how this because I'm thinking does this work to Lamont's
advantage or not? Oh? Man, it's crazy because because I
am actually not sure even what to make of this
moment From from UH Network Television in nineteen seventy four,
(16:13):
k So Fred, acting as Lamont's lawyer, he turns to
the lap D officer and begins to question him. Okay, listen,
why don't you arrest some white rabbits? I do you do?
Look at all these niggas, indiot, there's enough niggas in
(16:38):
here to make a Tarzan movie. Oh gosh, oh man,
oh my goodness. Yes, that's network television. That is honest,
network unbelievable. Yeah, so I think I think, yeah, you
(16:59):
go ahead. No, you were five. I was three, And like,
although we didn't watch these when they premiered, we grew
up on these and and frankly our kids have watched
TV Land versions of these shows. It's just it's just
it's just incredible to think about the racial politics and
the language and the raw edge of social commentary and
(17:20):
criticism expressed in that moment. Yeah, yeah, that's really well put. Uh,
this is something I learned from Jake. Also, Paul Mooney
helped write that episode. Paul Mooney, the black writer. He
wrote for Richard Pryor. He people might have seen him
on Chappelle's show. He was a recurring character as well. Um,
and so he wrote that that line, and he thought
(17:40):
the joke was the second part about Tarzan, which is,
you know there is supposed to be said in Africa.
But but there's such a laugh line of just Fred
stating the truth and stating it with this you know, flourish,
this embellished word that you don't hear on network television. Well,
well not anymore. But it turns out you yeah, because
we get to the jefferences. Boy oh boy. But like
(18:03):
the joke is just stating the facts. It's stating the
sense of racial oppression. And how is that funny? Right,
Like that's kind of why it's well, it's stating it.
I mean, I'm hearing it again for the first time
maybe ever and certainly in a long time if I
watched it at all, and it's like that earlier clip
(18:23):
you played. It's both hilarious for the inside humor that
that speaks to black people, right because they've all been
there in that moment, and also the searing criticism that
the in word is the way in which the criminal
justice system treated and understood black people as deserving of
this this punitive system. Yeah, and I'm going to add
(18:48):
something about this episode because Fred is also undercutting the politics.
All of his cronies come to the courtroom, you know,
all of his buddies Ubb Grady and and he's actually
betting with them whether Lamont's going to get h you know,
get off or not. You know. So he's like got
two to one odds and so on. And he's like
(19:09):
even as he's saying this, he's winking to his friends.
So it's just funny. Like he's speaking in many voices,
if you know what I mean, Like like it's working
on all these different levels. And yeah, I just something
about this, the seriousness of this moment of being part
of the national conversation. And you talked about the Watts riots.
(19:31):
I mean, here it is about the Watts riots. Yeah,
it's exactly because I mean it's not stated. I mean,
and obviously most people know this, but the Watts riot
in a thousand other ones were all centered around some
police activity, some instance of police brutality and justice outright killing.
I mean almost every so called civil disturbance of the
(19:53):
time period, riot or uprising, all centered around policing. Yeah,
but let's take a quick break and when we come back,
you can break down some stuff to me about the
Jeffersons and we'll think about the connections and what to
make of this. Do it welcome? Back to some of
(20:20):
my best friends are Ben Man. That was so much
fun revisiting Sanford and Son and hearing Red Fox. I mean,
someone who was before our time, but you know we
got we got to know a little bit of him
through Sandford and Son. Oh. Just but but always right
on time, exactly. You know. I just want to talk
about in the context of what's happening just years after
(20:43):
the Civil Rights Movement. This is the period of time,
by early nineteen seventy when when a whole new generation
of black people are entering into they're they're becoming mayors
of cities, they are moving into positions in middle management
and companies all over the place. I call this the
era of black firsts Black first, Okay, that's right. And
(21:05):
another way to think of it is it's also the
age of the self made black man and woman. Anyone
of that generation picking up an Ebony magazine or a
Jet magazine would see, you know, these beautiful black people
in full color, you know, celebrating black excellence in the
nineteen seventies and eighties especially, Yeah, yeah, interesting. So the
(21:27):
image of Sanford, instead of being so impoverished and kind
of run down and slovenly not that like that sort
of cuts against this image. That's right, because the image
of poverty had always defined the sort of debate about
black people coming out of slavery then as sharecroppers, and
of course black Southerners through the Civil rights movement had
(21:48):
always always presented themselves as respectable. You know, you never
saw anybody in a civil rights protest that was covered
by the news who wasn't in a three piece suit
and wearing a fancy fedor or a woman in the skirt.
So super interesting man, because because a critique of Sanford
and Son from at the time was that he's not
like a credit to the race. You know that that
that this isn't what the Osby Show would be like
(22:10):
in the nineteen eighties, where everything is pristine. That's right.
So there is a tension. I mean, what Sanford and
Son brings to the national cultural milieu of that time
is this essentially kind of war between two competing images
of Black America. What year does the Jeffersons appear in
nineteen seventy five is when the chopin years that seems
(22:31):
so much earlier than I would have thought. I remember
watching it, you know, aln Air at the time. It
must have been later episodes, but I remember watching it
with my brother. Well, the curious thing is it ran
for eleven seasons, so by the time through the eighties,
that's right, we were thirteen fourteen years old, just about
high school by the time this show actually went off
the air, so we captured a lot of time. But
(22:52):
talking about this age of the self made black man
and woman, Richard Nixon actually initiates in his presidency in
his first term after he's election in nineteen sixty eight,
he's going to try to pick off black people by
initiating this domestic policy of black capitalism. And what that meant,
practically speaking, was by turning black people into capitalists, by
(23:16):
encouraging the private sector to give them jobs, by making
some key appointments in the federal government, by establishing a
small business loan operation which ultimately produces minority and women
contracts to this very day for federal and state local contracting.
Nixon was like, I'm going to secure the future of
the Republican Party by focusing on black elites, or at
(23:38):
least by manufacturing them. It's come on, professor, keep coming,
keep coming. So it's a sense of like I got
mine really sort of promoting individualism over a sort of
like a whole sort of social idea collective good. That's
exactly right. He's gonna He's gonna be the answer to
Lamont's prayer. So if Lamont and Sanford and such says
(23:59):
I don't want to be poor, Richard Nixon is going
to say, hey, you can become rich if you just
follow the Republican party plan. And it's always going to
be about individual the first season, the Jefferson gives voice
to this idea, but this show is built around this
new era of a self made black man and woman who,
(24:19):
in the case of the Jeffersons, are going to literally
move up, like literally move on up. We're been moving
on DoD. I mean, the whole theme song is a
(24:40):
is a commentary on exactly this point. We are moving
on up, moving to the East side to a d
luxe apartment in the sky. Everybody's heard this song at
some point, ah man man. So this is this is
almost like the show is an illustration exactly of this idea.
They're on the upper east Side of New York City
in a penthouse. Uh and and and the main guy,
George Jefferson Sherman Hemsley, the actor he runs if I
(25:04):
remember a cleaning business Rights and Laundry Cleaners, Yes, okay, yep.
And so so what we learn of this couple is that,
you know, George is this successful businessman. When we first
meet them, essentially they are in this luxury apartment. He's
he wears double breasted and three piece suits. He occasionally
(25:24):
wears an ascot and a smoking jacket. And Louise, his wife,
who's played by Isabel Sandford. George is played by Sherman Helmsley,
and they are fighting constantly. I mean, this is like
if if leave it to Beaver, which you mentioned earlier,
was like the idyllic white suburban housewife and and husband
and their two you know, beautiful kids. One just happens
(25:47):
to be mischievous. This is just the opposite. These two
are fighting constantly, and indeed the fight itself is the
platform through which they often explore the tensions in their
own family. Louise, it turns out, is much more concerned about,
you know, the trappings of being rich. George is obsessed with.
(26:09):
George is doing everything in his power to make more money,
to open more stores, to make more contacts and Louise
is like, you know, I feel kind of useless in
this space, and and you know, I'm not used to
not working, and I'm concerned about Lionel, who is their
adult son. So interesting that some of the dynamics from
San franc And continue here and some are in a
(26:30):
completely different setting and economic world. That's right, And and
interestingly enough, I mean dating ourselves. George, believe it or not,
and Louise are like forty six years old, so they're
actually younger in this movie or this TV show than
we are at this time. But George is the son
of a sharecropper and Louise is the daughter of a janitor.
(26:52):
So we meet them in this small setting where it's
the two of them their son. There are two other
sets of characters that are very meaningful. It's there's an
interracial couple, Tom and Helen Willis and you know that
they're my role models for life. That's right. Toma's wife
Helen is black, and their daughter Jenny. There is George's mother,
(27:14):
mother Jefferson. She is worth watching every episode of the
first season. She is incredible. So the final person that
I want to mention briefly is the maid Florence. Florence
in the opening episode of the show, gives voice to
the class tensions that are on full view in the Jeffersons.
(27:38):
Let's hear it in this clip. You folks man, if
I ask you something, no, go right ahead? Can you
live in this apartment? Right? And you've got an apartment
in this building too? Yes, that's right. How come we
overcame and no Matter told me. Yeah, there's something that
throws her off about this whole dynamic. Yeah. So there
are really some powerful themes that come through in the
(28:01):
Jeffersons that I want to talk about. This consistent with
this class tension. So if Sandford and Son, as you've
already suggested, is really sort of the bridge between the
world of Wattson uprisings and poor people left behind in America.
This is an aspirational vision, This is a normative vision,
and this takes us into the Reagan era. This is
like a Reagan theme show, even if it starts before it.
(28:24):
That's right. So let's just start with one theme, which
is the interracial politics of the show. I mean here
it is some of my best friends are This show
is playing to this issue and we want to understand
precisely how they as a black family are navigating proximity
to white people, which of course is now on equal terms,
(28:45):
rather than in the world of Sandford and Sun, which
is always about power and conflict. And so the show
comes out swinging in the first episode. First of all,
George is constantly calling Tom and Helen a zebra couple,
so it's very explicit language to like make fun of them.
There's a lot of conversation about the in word, about
(29:06):
about they use the word honky all the time, the
word whitey is ubiquitous. But they're also these moments where
there's this commentary about how white people are not all
that they are cracked up to be. In fact, Mother
Jefferson says to Louise in one episode, She's like, I
think you're out cheating on George because you didn't meet
(29:27):
me where you were supposed to be. And Louise of
course is like, that's ridiculous, and Mother Jefferson's line she
comes back and she says, if you live among the
white folks, some of their ways are bound to rub off,
that's right. And then there are all these references to
blacks and Jews, which I have to say, I didn't
pick up, of course before, but they're the playful references.
(29:49):
For example, at some point they're hosting a party and
they have out bagels and locks and cream cheese, and
George is like Jewish so food. You know, it's interesting
when just when you said that, in my memory of
the show and the white characters that you described, they
are so goyish, they are so not Jewish, and that
(30:13):
you have all these white writers, but they the white
sort of buffoony characters, whether they're British or sort of
you know, very waspy. They don't write in Jews as
the neighbors. That's interesting. Actually there's this isn't This is
in the Upper West Side for example. That's right. So
just to give people a sense of how language works.
And this is not Red Fox, this is Sherman Helmsley
(30:35):
and Isabel Sandford. I want you to hear this clip. Now.
This is a moment where George basically buys his son
Lionel a very expensive watch. So let's listen to the clip,
which again heads up, the N word is in here too,
but must be at least hundred dollars three hundred and
(30:57):
fifty dollars for watch nigga, please what man exactly? Huh?
That was surprised me. Yes, that I don't. I don't
remember that about the show, And I thought, yeah, I mean,
so George is flexing like he wants the price he's
(31:19):
proud of I'm imagining in that episode. Yeah, No, he's
he's totally flexing. This is blaming, he's blinging. He wants
his son to shine, he wants to show his wealth,
which is, you know, part of a familiar trope of
like nouveau reache. Right, you wear it on you literally
wear it on your sleeve. Yeah, they're of this world
and not of this world. That's a that's a lot
of the humor is derived out of that. Yeah. So
(31:41):
so of course I already told you the in word
is is ubiquitous. But it's not just it's not just
like the timing of of dropping the in word in
these episodes. It's also like using the in word in
mixed company. And and that is what's different in this
show is like how do you navigate, at least as
the writers understand it, what's on people's minds. So in
(32:01):
this scene, George and Wheezy are having one of their
usual fights and they're having it in front of Tom
and Helen, and basically it turns on like this question
of like, why do you guys always fight with each other?
Um in front of this interracial couple. So we're gonna
play the clip and hear what they say, Comemen, Helen,
(32:21):
they don't fight, they don't fight, they're scared to fight.
What's that supposed to mean? You know, damn well what
it means if you do ever really started going in
one another inside of five minutes, he'd be calling you
young saint niggah man. So so obviously with this interracial couple,
instead of us just assuming that there is no racial
(32:42):
tension in the in the relationship itself, George actually transposes
his own animosity, his own sense of race onto this
other couple. Oh man, I'm thinking one about how the
N word is deployed differently in the clip I played
you from from San Ferdancian and in these moments, and
(33:04):
and also about this continuum from the early seventies and
sort of coming out of the racial uprising of the
sixties through the Jeffersons into the eighties, which is about
moving on up about this individualism and still we're hearing
you know, the Jeffersons is still about about class differences
(33:25):
and racial differences, but we're just moving them from the
Junkyard into the Upper east Side. But in a way,
the dynamics are similar. Yeah, so let's talk about how
they deal with class or the class divide actually in
how whites perceive that class divide. So rather than it
just being about how black people themselves are navigating their
new wealth in a white world, part of what the
(33:47):
show does is to expose how white people are trying
to make sense of their new black middle class and
elite neighbors. So in this scene, George has just bought
a brand new piano for the home. No one can
play it, and no one is interested in playing it.
It is literally a set piece for showing off his
new wealth in front of his white neighbors. And they
(34:09):
happen to be there, happens to be a large gathering
them in his apartment because he's been elected to lead
a tenant protest against the building management because they've raised
prices to you know, for the for the association fee.
So one of the guests, one of the guests approaches
George to thank him for taking leadership. We're gonna hear
(34:30):
this in the clip. Oh, hello Jefferson. I must say,
we're delighted that you're leading the protests, aren't we marrying? Yes,
you colored folk can teach us a lot to be
a militant. I'm a businessman. Do I look like a
militant to you? Yes? The answer is yesterday exactly. That's hilarious.
(34:52):
So it was like appropriating all of the all of
the militancy of the last ten years and saying like,
now we can use it for our own good on
the Upper East Side. One's hilarious. And also assuming that
every black person was a militant of that time period.
And George is like, no, don't pigeonhole me. I gotta
ask you a ques, okay, because I'm thinking about the Jeffersons,
and you are working on a book that's called Bootstrapping,
(35:16):
which is essentially exactly about this. It's about the Jeffersons
in a way, about this moment and what you started
out talking about, you know, from the Nickson era through
the Reagan era. So how does this sitcom play into
sort of your thesis, your idea of black individualism of
(35:36):
you know, and that it even has a kind of
corrosive effect on society. So that's a really good question because,
as you know, my book is trying to make sense
of the emergence of this new generation of black elites
and what their politics are. And to some degree, the
Jefferson perfectly encapsulates the early tension for this new generation.
(35:58):
They're trying to make sense of their own success. They're
trying to figure out like are we leaving the community behind?
Like how do we connect with white people? Are we
do we have shared interest? Are we totally aligned? Or
are we not? And one of the aspects of the
show is the tension that the Jeffersons themselves find themselves
(36:19):
in between. And that's what I would say to answer
your question. They are and in between. They are in
a middle space. They are neither They've neither drunk the
tea of individual success as the only measure of racial progress,
and they don't leave behind the people who they grew
up with. In fact, one of the scenes is this
scene with an old couple that they lived with in
(36:42):
a rat infested apartment and they haven't seen this couple
of years, and Louise is so excited to host them
for dinner, except that they happen to be coming on
the same night that this rich black businessman named Coleman
Harris has already been invited. And of course George is
a thousand percent committed to doing business with this guy.
And in the scene you hear this older couple say, hey,
(37:05):
we're uncomfortable being around this guy, like we don't know him,
and usually the people are not very kind to us.
And George and Wheezer are like, no, no, no, no,
we'll we'll work it out. But then they end up
having this conversation about working class black people. You know,
Sam's the trouble with the working classes that they don't
want to work anymore. I don't know about you, but
I'm having a lot of trouble getting colored help. Yeah,
(37:27):
what color you looking for? You know what I mean?
How do people not asking the No. One opportunity to knocks?
How much are you knocking with? What do you mean?
I mean? How much are you paying? Well? What difference
does that make you do? All the people out of work,
you think they'd be glad to get anything, but no,
(37:49):
they're rather say at home, living lazy on welfare, living
lazy on welfare. Let me telling you something, mister I
ain't like the wine, mister h Man, I was. I
was wondering if sort of that idea of welfare was
also brought into this of you know, this this hotbudon
issue right at this moment, of whether it's at a
(38:10):
sapping initiative or whether we should actually invest more in people.
All right, So the Jeffersons your book hilarious. I can
hear of sort of this in between space. It's the
recipe for a lot of hilarious comedy. And this idea
of being a first as you were saying, do you
sort of revel in it for yourself or do you
(38:32):
start thinking about how you make seconds and thirds and
fourths and fifths and the community that you came from
that you also lift up. Is that also the tension?
I think all of that, I think I think it's
it's exactly what you just said. And for the Jeffersons,
they are a vehicle ultimately for the writers to explore
like we don't really know how this is going to
(38:53):
work out, and that's what's so I mean, fun is
not quite the word. It's kind of brilliant about the show,
Like instead of just writing something that wasn't real, they
actually try to reflect the very conversations that people were
having in these SCEs of a new Black elite or
new Black middle class, and the extent to which they
(39:14):
owed working class people anything including jobs or whether they
blame them for not moving on up like they did.
All of it is on full view in this show,
and I would say handled with a lot of smartsum
and a lot of effective writing. All right, man, Well,
then I need to come back to this question that
I raised at the beginning, when I about the popularity
(39:37):
of these shows in this moment in America, when this
is what mainstream America wanted to see. Crazy, This is
what America in the seventies and into the eighties. They
wanted to spend their evenings with issues of race and
class and questioning all these all these things that are
going on in the country. What happened? You know? Like
(40:00):
like that that even to laugh at these things that
they kind of disappear. And the shows, even the interracial
shows that are on the air all the time we're
teenagers and this is off the air, are not like
this at all. You know, Miami Vice, there's a black
and white lead. They don't ever talk about race. They
don't talk about sort of that dynamic at all. It
just exists. Yeah, The Cosby Show doesn't talk about class
(40:23):
at all. You know, it's it's it's invisible. They just are. Obviously,
I know the answer to a lot of what happened,
but it still boggles the mind. Yeah. I think it's
a really good point. And I think it is the
emergence of a massive cultural shift that comes with the
Reagan era, a kind of shift that to really focus
(40:46):
on Reagan as a singular politician who first coined the
phrase make America Great, essentially whitewashed the politics of the nation.
Here was a guy who essentially was an early version
of anti CRTs, like, you know, this country is not
what the socialists left is telling you it is, this
(41:08):
is the greatest nation on earth. And he won over
the archie bunkers of the world, who were no longer
feeling conflicted or guilty or even having a kind of
moral obligation to make real the promises of the civil
rights movement. In fact, they got angrier and more hostile,
and so too did the nation's politics. And the talk
(41:32):
about Coleman Harris, the black guy in that scene that
we just heard you know, this notion of people being
on welfare as being lazy embodied the entire Republican revolution
of the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, and I think
TV followed. Man, these shows tell us about the history
of America. When we make our ap sitcom history culture class,
(41:58):
that's gonna get banned in twenty five states. This is
going to be. This is going to be, you know,
part of the curriculum. This is going to be first
semester and second semester. I think I already saw that
the head band Sandford and Son and uh and the
Jeffersons from the existing APFM studies. Correct, man, that's why
we're going to get it in the secret ways. That's
(42:18):
why you gotta come to Some of my best Friends
Are to get the real stuff. That's right. All right, man,
Well this was a whole lot of fun and I
learned a whole lot. I'm going to go watch the
Jeffersons and I'm gonna watch now. I'm hooked on Sandford
and then again I gotta go. We've been watching it
all dud dude, all right, man, love you all right,
Love you too. Some of my Best Friends Are is
(42:41):
a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and
hosted by me Khalil, Jibron Muhammed and my best friend
Ben Austin. This show is produced by Lucy Sullivan. It's
edited by Sarah Knicks with help from Keishow Williams. Our
engineer is Amanda Kawan, and our managing producer is Constanza Gyardo.
(43:02):
At Pushkin thanks to le Tall, Mulad, Julia Barton, Heather Faine,
Carly Migliori, John Schnars, Gretta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg. Our
theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the brilliant
Avery R. Young, from his album Tubman. You definitely want
to check out his music at his website Avery R.
(43:22):
Young dot com. You can find Pushkin on all social
platforms at Pushkin Pods and you can sign up for
our newsletter at pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
like to listen. And if you like our show, please
give us a five star rating and a review and listen.
(43:43):
Even if you don't like it, give it a five
star rating and a review, and please tell all of
your best friends about it. Thank you. Then that was
a lot of fun, man, that was so much fun.
(44:05):
This guy got serious savery for the type, serious laugh
therapy on that. All right. M.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.