The Adam and Dr. Drew Show - #1702 Archie Bunker vs Meathead

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Adam and Drew take a deep dive into the life of Archie Bunker on ' All in the Family'. Next, Drew gives a caller his thoughts on the HPV vaccine. Please Support Our Sponsors: Simplisafe.com/ADAM2

Recorded live at Corolla One Studios with Adam Corolla and board-certified physician and addiction medicine specialist, Dr. Drew Pinsky. You're listening to The Adam and Dr. Drew Show. Yeah, you know, sold America. Remember that when you were a kid? Yes, I do. I don't know what it meant, but they would say it a lot. They just repeated the same things over and over again.

Something I should share with you, Drew, is I was walking through the Rev Museum in Florida, and it's an amazing collection of automobiles. Mainly racing automobiles. Lots of history. Lots of dollars. Lots of good stuff.

And you know, you take a look at these guys in the past that don't really exist anymore. Like Briggs Cunningham, you know, and he did this and then he built his own car and he took it to Le Mans. He's been to Le Mans 10 times.

And, but he also won the America's cup, skippering a ship, you know, 1957. And yeah, there's just craziness. You know what I mean?

The kind of stuff nobody does anymore. These characters don't exist. So on and so forth. Right. But an Emmy can look for Briggs Cunningham and see what a crazy character this guy was. But we don't need it right now. I was walking out and the guy pointed at an American car and he said, that's a LaSalle. And I said, oh, yeah.

And then I thought that was depicted in the opening of a TV show theme song. LaSalle was. Give me the approximate year of thatalle well the tv show was decade tv show was i we looked up the lasalle it was like i it was late 20s to the mid 50s or late late 40s or something something was like 29 to 46 or something i don't remember it seemed to go on i for some reason i think there was LaSalle's from the 50s, but anyway, I think it was by General Motors, like a division.

It was like Buick or something, but anyway. So, as soon as you said LaSalle, I had this connection to All in the Family from 1971 in the theme song. Although, Drew, you could never do the song from All in the Family.. Although, Drew, you could never do the song from All

the Family. The way Glenn Miller plays. Songs that made the hit parade. Guys like us, we had it made. You're reading. No. Those were the days. And we knew who we were

then. Girls were girls. Men were men. And then this next part I could never hear. I could never understand what we were then. Girls were girls and men were men. And then this next part I could never hear. I could never understand what they were saying. All right. Mister. We could use a man like Herbert Hoover again. I just need one word.

Go ahead. I missed a word? Now go. I can't. That's as far as I can go. I'll give you one word. We'll get you going. Didn't. Didn't need no welfare state.

That's right. See, only one word. Yeah, everybody pulled his weight. Now, this is the part I really couldn't know. Gee, I don't know what they were saying. Yeah. Gee, our old LaSalle ran great. Oh, see?

I couldn't put it together because I did not know what he was talking about. Yeah, that's interesting. Right. Wow. But. Why did you think I couldn't do that? I don't know, because you don't have a memory. I mean, you're musically inclined, but you don't have a memory for a lot of like tv and 70s you sort of you don't remember the commercials and

the jingles and the stuff like that i remember the theme songs from so many shows from the 60s and 70s it's ridiculous and i remember engineer mike mike dooley he had a a a vinyl record of theme songs to 60s cartoons and i said i bet you i can name every one of them and he goes and he says no no way so i named a couple of them no problem so as he played he goes i'm gonna do a name that soon and he put on this one very loud orchestra chord it was like bop and i was like i know what that is top cat no but it goes bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop the alvin show oh that's a little before my time and so that was with one note i got that one he was like never forgot that but you get into the 80s and stuff and by the time i'm so fucking busy you know with school and stuff i just i can't i got too much other shit going on

in my head i didn't have room for it for for team songs and television well Well, in that, uh, in that same song from 1971. Yeah. Over 50 years ago. Yeah. He says, didn't need no welfare state. Everybody pulled their weight.

I know girls were girls and men were men. Yeah. You knew who you were then. Yeah. That's 50-something years ago. Yeah. Remember I tell you all the time this shit's been going on for a while? Yes.

It's been going on for a while. Yeah. And I usually say it as it pertains to the environmental movement, but it's just the bullshit has been going on for a while yeah and it's interesting i i've strangely all the families come across my palette a few times in the last couple of months and uh that opening theme song did not but a few i i watched a norman lear interview about how he did the pilot and you know who would they ran the pilot three times there are three different casts at least with the young kids

and uh and watching some of the interaction between um meathead and blanking on his name uh reiner rob reiner and uh archie bunker was interesting because rob reiner is exactly the same now as he was as that character then exactly exactly saying the exact same stuff but the exact same stuff is sort of not pertinent to the present moment it back then it sounded pretty good to me and even in retrospect listening to it it's like yeah yeah archie just wasn't getting it he didn't understand you know he didn't wasn't paying any attention to this you know underprivileged or racial issues whatever it was and he's like yes of course i am but of course he wasn't um and yet rob reiner is there are no more archie bonkers and rob Reiner has not changed his tune one molecule.

That's a very good point. He's still tilting against the windmills. Exactly. But the windmills are gone. Exactly. That's a very interesting point. To be fair to Rob Reiner, he essentially has to just convert Tucker Carlson into Archie Bunker.

Right. That's what he's done. Right. Because he needs a foe. It's a little bit different. Think about his Trump derangement. It's like Trump is not quite Archie, so he has to be a madman, lun horrible person that you know is going to destroy the world

yeah the the thing about all in the family when you watch it now and I even looked it up which um I think I wikipedia'd it or something but it was like Archie was described like the first three words were racist, sort of buffoon. You know what I mean? But let's just break it down. There were four people living in that house. One of them had a fucking job. Guess which one? The racist buffoon.

The other was a 30-year-old college student who was perpetually unemployed and living under the roof of the house that the racist buffoon paid the mortgage on. Yeah. And eating the food from the refrigerator that the racist buffoon stocked with food with his paycheck. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's perfect. what i'm saying yeah it's a it's perfect so he's the meathead's the protagonist and and the racist buffoon archie's the antagonist except for he's the one working and paying taxes the other guy's not paying he's a perpetual student and i mean uh rob reiner you know I don't know how Rob,

but Meathead was considered a guy in his mid-late 20s or something who's never had a job. Right. But he's the hero in this equation. He's the college student, which the youthful college students were heroes back then. Right. Well, the more antisocial, the better. Look, we did that. That was our generation.

Right. All right. Do you want to hear a little bit about that wiki that you're reading? Yeah, I do. Archie has a gruff, overbearing demeanor largely defined by his bigotry toward a diverse group of individuals including blacks, Hispanics,

commies, gays, hippies, Jews, Asian, Catholic, women liberals, and Polish Americans are frequent targets of his barbs. He refers to his son-in-law, Michael, as a dumb Polack and even ascribes black as colored. Right. So here's something that's interesting about that wiki. He said Polack five times for every time

he said colored or n-word or whatever he said colored or n-word or whatever he said right polak comes in what place in the groups that he's made fun of polish people i mean read the read the list once again i mean people he attacked blacks hispanics commies gays hippies all right so he didn't say very much about hispanics his his pecking order would have been polox was the group he made i'll just read the list sorry uh blacks hispanic commies gays hippies jews asians catholics women liberals, and Polish Americans. Right. Dead last.

Right. Because Wikipedia is kind of corrupt. They don't want to put a white group at the top of the group that the bigot made fun of. So they go with all the people, and then they get to Polak or polish americans except for that was in every show so i don't remember ever saying i'm just gonna say it must be there somewhere it's interesting as bigoted as it was norman lear managed to make almost every one of the references funny you know what i mean uh he so it kind of came off at the time as a little defanged, even at the time, because it was done in a sort of joking way. I remember I watched one the other day where he said Meathead something like, you know, you call every person in in uh you know wire room glasses gay and he goes no i called them four eyes i called it queer as gay you know this is his

this is his thing and uh it's like it it's like yeah yeah we get it he's he is he is calm he is cartoonishly bigoted which was a way again a way of defanging it and looking at it and examining it making it sort of something to to yeah at least as a young person watching it, I remember thinking that made him less threatening and more easy to sort of address, you know? Yes, now he would need to be shouted down, certainly thrown off his job. All right.

Yeah, you know what's funny drew we'll see if you have any any memory of this i said to mike mike said uh yeah archie was a cab driver no and i said no no that's i said no did you i said I said no. He worked on the docks. There was like a warehouse, like a longshoreman. Yes. He worked in a warehouse or something. And he said, no, no, I was a cab driver. And I said, hmm, not – maybe he drove a cab later and when he got laid off or some other episode or something. But he was a warehouse worker, as I recall, which would have been a better job for that character anyway.

And he was like, no, he was a cab driver. And then Mike looked it up, and he looked it up, and it said he was a longshoreman and a cab driver. And then he announced it was a tie. But I walked away, and I felt this was dubious. Yeah. Because there are many episodes where he talked about working at the warehouse or getting laid off at the warehouse. He'd have his friends from the warehouse,

you know, like-minded clods from the warehouse. So now Amy's got to look it up because I think Mike. I wonder if you know how he later owned a bar and the new, the next incarnation of the show. I wonder if in between there, he was a cab driver or something, you know, Google me,

right? Amy. All right. Matt is part-time cab driver. Oh, so what's it say? All right. Matt. It says part-time cab driver. Oh. So what's it say? Because here's what Mike does. Mike will fashion it.

He'll fashion a tie out of this. So he left the part-time off. Yeah, of course. So you look it up and it says... Mike is not good about being wrong. No. He's Fonzie-esque. After World War II ended,

he got a job on a New York City loading dock through his uncle's influence. By 1974, he had risen up to dock foreman. To supplement his income, he also works as a part-time taxi driver at night. So his job was foreman at a warehouse or on the docks. I mean, the,

the, the, every show came open with him walking in the door, taking off the longshoreman coat, hanging it on the hanger and his hat, which sort of almost, almost a rain hat meets meets bowler. You know,

he was home for dinner every night, sitting in his chair, reading the sports page. He did not head out. There's no episode where he went, I got to go drive my hack now into Manhattan. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben, you got to keep looking into that. Cause I, he came home from work. He didn't, I don't remember the cab driver thing at all. Well, good luck with mike we have to get into this again with mike see i knew i was right and by the way when people never admit they're wrong announce you guys have tied look into it yeah because he left off the word part-time but you and i saw every episode of

that show and i never saw an episode of him driving the hack or parking it in the driveway or coming home after a late shift or had or telling edith to hurry up with the dinner because he had to head out and drive correct the hack right? Agreed. All right. Matt, 48 from Michigan. Hey, Adam. I had just called in on your last episode, and I was making the point that you say 1 plus 1 equals 2, and Dr. Drew tries to negotiate somewhere to the middle when somebody says it equals five.

Right. And you cut me off pretty quick. And my bigger point would be that Dr. Drew seems to want to negotiate to some make-believe middle rather than dealing with calling liars liars or calling the truth the truth. Yes, look no further than that. Quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet. Why do people don't respond to the voice stuff? It's got to be something to do with the phone system. You say that because you can't imagine.

I'm negotiating the middle. Yes. Look no further than Kelly Osbourne's appearance on Loveline in 2000. When I explained that women don't know anything about World War II. And then she explained she was an expert in World War II. World War II. And then she explained she was an expert in World War II and then could not name who participated in World War II. I remember you said, who were the allied forces? Did not know. You might have said who was the Axis or something. I didn't ask her like what campaign Australians fought in. You know, I just said,

what campaign Australians fought in. You know, I just said, name the main ones. Who fought who in World War II? She could not come up with that answer. Mm-hmm. And then accused me of sort of tricking her with a fake question. By the way, aren't people embarrassed? Like when do people get embarrassed at a certain point?

Do you know what I'm saying? Yes. That seems to be a thing of the past. Well, this was the past. And she wasn't embarrassed. And then I explained you don't know anything about World War II. And she explained it was a trick question.

And Drew tried to smooth it over and move on. Yes, I did. Yes, you did. Because you're very uncomfortable. Hello? Uh-oh. Is that Matt? Are you yelling at us?

I don't know. I'm trying to do this. Matt may have hung up. I'm trying to do this. Matt may have hung up. But I'm going to do that. Yeah. People. No. And so what I say to Kelly Osborne on the air.

You were saying that, if I recall, you can't call yourself an expert if you can't name the people. And I remember it being some something like the allied and the axis forces right and you were saying what let's get on with it that's different than i i think this guy's saying that i somehow don't think the truth exists but nothing could be farther from that you know the truth exists but you want to satiate or compensate for the crazy person who's making allegations and making noise. Yeah, I think I would argue I'd argue I was worse at that. I mean, I would do more of that in the past.

Don't you agree? Right. And what did I do? You've been the same. Right now, we just got ourselves our fucking asses handed to us because of covid because we would because we went along with the nutty fucking yentas just just let her have her way just yeah just just take a picture of yourself wearing surgical gloves in the store and then send it to your 13 year old daughter so she won't get upset like this, this is what we did. And then we fucked ourselves.

You understand? Oh, yes. We didn't all tell Kelly Osbourne she didn't know shit about World War II and to fucking zip it. We went like, okay, okay, okay. Let's agree to disagree or whatever the nonsense was. And now we're here.

Yeah. This is the problem. The adults cease to be adults adults and the people that were right started apologizing to try to not have the other side come undone yes i just did yeah they became dangerous i did uh howie mandel's podcast again i did it i, I don't know, a year and a half ago, and I argued with his daughter about COVID, and then came back, came up again, went right back into it,

and she got up and left. Now, to be fair to her, she asked me if I had a cold, and I said I felt something something like i might have something and she just got up and walked out because she has a child with an immune issue i think so maybe it's not fear of covid maybe just fear of any virus yeah yeah to be you know to hear how we tell it. But the whole point is, is we're in this position because we told young chicks they were right when we shouldn't have. Adults should have fucking stood up.

We're not closing the beaches. We're not closing. I know you're hysteric. I know you're crying. Now you're calling me, I don't know, anti-science or racist or something. Fine. Say it all you want. You can scream as loud as you want about being an expert in World War II.

If you don't know who participated in World War II, then you don't know shit. And if you call that a trick question, it's essentially like you saying, I'm an expert in the NFL. And somebody said, what team, you know, what region of the country do the Packers football organization play for and follow up the Giants organization? What part of the country would they be in? It's essentially like saying that's a trick question. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. And I know we went over this a little bit last time, but that whole lockdown story has become worse and worse. The more I learn about it in that, you know, the the Chinese submitted a graph that essentially adam went like this it went straight up you know the the covid it was a graph of the covid cases and you see it going up rapidly at the point at which lockdowns are initiated it just goes flatline as though with just the initiation of their lockdowns covid ends ends in China, which is of course just fucking ridiculous. And the scientists sort of knew that, but were kind of impressed

like, oh, look what they're doing in China. It wasn't until Italy locked down that the rest of the world started falling like dominoes one after the other. But the really interesting thing about Lombardi not locking down, the

political official that that brought the lockdown to Italy wrote a book talking about what a glorious experience it was because he was a Chinese enthusiast. And this was an opportunity to bring a totalitarian influence to Italy. No interest in controlling COVID. I know. influence to Italy. No interest in controlling COVID. I know. And that's why these people need a fucking proper beat down verbally because of how fucking wrong they were.

How? It's so weird. The whole world fell for it. It's just hard to imagine. And people still can't get through their head that they didn't work. They want to believe that they worked, that it really did something. Yes. And of course, it just didn't.

No. And now the results are in. Kids have been damaged, some beyond repair, with maybe a generation lost. And we all have to sit there and say the same thing. Well, at the time, we didn't know. Bull fucking shit. You didn't know. At the time, what's the time mean?

Two weeks in or a year and a half in? Yeah. We knew plenty. Yeah. If you guys had listened to everyone Twitter shut down, then your batting average would be through the roof. Instead of circling the wagons and not apologizing for something you should be apologizing for by turning it into some sort of universal. We didn't.

Nobody. Nobody knew. Yeah. The Great Barrington Declaration knew. Alex Berenson knew. Plenty of people knew. You canceled them. Fucking.

Fucking liar. Hypocrites. Fucking eat a dick. You idiots. And these people, Fauci, Rochelle walensky what's his name the bond villain who runs the who fucking people need to step down and beyond yeah yeah awesome fucking idiots listen it's important that these people be contained because they cannot make policy decisions in the future. The reason Rochelle Walensky needs to have plenty of mud slung on her and Barbara Ferrer needs to have plenty of mud slung on her is because we don't want them making policy decisions in the future.

And by the way, Rochelle Walensky was just lying most of the time. It's her saying not lying, but she was learning. Look, the whole their whole their clear man, their clear philosophy was you can't handle the truth. Well, I'll call that lying. Let's just typify that as lying. All right, Jamie's got a quick question for you from Vermillion, Minnesota. Jamie, 38? Get it on.

Oh, no. Hi. Hi, guy. Hi, guy. So my question is for Dr. Drew. I'm curious about the HPV vaccine. I never got it because it kind of came out after I was really eligible. And now my 13 and 14-year-old are becoming eligible for it.

So just wondering if I should get it or not. I am a strong advocate for that vaccine. Adam remembers me fighting for it for years when it came around. I got my kids vaccinated the very first second that it could happen. And I'm a little disappointed with it from the standpoint of some of the cervical pathology and the HPV infections that we're still seeing, and the anti-vax group will point at that. I understand that, but I still think it's well worth the risk. I just, of course, any vaccine has risk, any medical intervention has risk, but I'm still an enthusiast for that vaccine. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Guy. All right, Turlock coming up. That'll be Friday. Thank you so much. Thank you, Guy. All right. Turlock coming up. That'll be Friday.

Maybe a few tickets left. Turlock Community Theater. And then it's off to picturesque Fresno, California. That's really true. I should work a couple of weekends over the course of the year. For the for the Performing Arts. That'll be Saturday. And then Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, Pasadena, Huntsville,

Monterey. Just go to mcroll.com for all the live shows and all the tickets. What do you got, Drew? drdrew.com for the podcast and .tv for the streaming shows. So, until next time, I'm Dr. Drew saying, mahalo.