Sitcoms Have Always Been Political

This essay was inspired by a conversation that was had on Tumblr, where an anonymous poster whined that sitcoms were too political these days and that he wanted to watch them without politics. I found this declaration to be both deeply funny and disgracefully ignorant of the history of sitcoms. There are plenty of sitcoms that have existed, yesterday and today, that have no political message to them, but many (if not most) sitcoms have always had political components, and social messages and comedy have always been good bedfellows, from Saturday Night Live, to In Living Color, to Key & Peele.

There are those shows where not every episode deals with social issues, but plenty of sitcoms addressed specific issues during their run, and some of them were political, not because they discussed social issues, but because just their very existence was a political act.

The most famous political sitcom which didn’t appear to be about politics also had a somewhat disingenuous title. All In The Family aired from 1971 to 1979. It starred Carrol O’ Connor as Archie Bunker, a close-minded and racist bigot who liked to wax nostalgic about the good ol’ days, who lived with his sweet-tempered wife Edith, (Jean…