All In The Family Theme Song with a Twist

[Ken Gigliotti]

In my TV cable package I noticed they were showing the 1970's TV sitcom All in the Family (all inclusive with spin off charaters) and the theme song and content were more of an ironic lament about the changing times in the United States. Pretty interesting to see the power of the old WWII vet, opinionated, chronically wrong and surprisingly Trump like patriarch, Archie Bunker.A person who's home was his castle and easy chair his throne. A person we would now call, illiberal ,blue collar, working middle class, non college educated, from Queen's NY, white male living with his classic 1950's wife, and liberal college educated but unemployed daughter and her husband in the tumultuous 1970's, fallowed by the tumultuous, 1980's, 90's, 2000's you get it. The battle ground states were just being formed during the 1970's ,correctness not a factor but coming, and layoffs in the Rust Belt.
I imagined the theme song spiced with the aspirations and lines borrowed and conflating the words by the theme writers Charles Strouse and Lee theme  Those Were the Days, song for All in the Family a popular sitcom written by Norman Lear running Jan 12 1971- April 8 1979 and words from the The Constitution of the United States and  The United States Declaration of Independence as well as  JFK's moon shot commitment. It was a different time with cutting dramatic humour and an ending more often than not with profound democratic pauses. Not sure when the preaching started.

“We the people of the United States.”
Boy the way Glenn Miller played
songs that made the hit parade
“In order to form a more perfect Union,”
Guys like us we had it made.
“establishing Justice,insure domestic Tranquility,”
Those were the days.

Didn't nee no welfare state,
“promoting the general Welfare and secure the Blessings
of Liberty to ourselves and our
Posterity,”
really,
Those were the days.


So everybody pulled their weight
Gee our old LaSalle ran great.
Those were the days.
And you knew who you were then
Girls were girls and men were men.

Mister we (don't)need a man like Herbert Hoover again.
People seemed to be content
Fifty dollars paid the rent
Freaks were in the circus tent,and
 “they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are,Life Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Those were the days.

Take a little Sunday spin
Go to watch the Dodgers win
Have yourself a dandy day
that cost you under a fin.

Hair was short and skirts were long
Kate Smith really sold a song
The United States Declaration of Independence
speaks to “The Want, Will and Hopes of the People,”
I don't know just what went wrong
but, Those were the days.

“...in this decade,and do the other things,
not because they are easy,but because they are hard,
but that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies
and skills,
because that challenge we are willing to accept,
one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
John F. Kennedy to the Moon