It’s hard to pinpoint just when this happened, but my theory is that it was sometime between the debut of All In The Family in 1968 and the downgrading of Archie Bunker from comic bigot to chastened widower after the premiere of Archie Bunker’s Place in 1979, by which point we had been duly marginalized and the self-appointed liberal majority was able to feel a bit sorry for us.
By then, unfortunately, we’d accepted our new role as outsiders, and our engagement with pop culture was deputized to activist groups like the American Family Association and the Parents Television Council, whose stance was easily caricatured as perpetual outrage and just as easily dismissed.
***
As has been noted ad infinitum (which is probably why Rick left it out), it is universally agreed that Judy Garland — not a beauty — never looked lovelier than in Meet Me In St Louis. Because she was loved. By her director. Yes, he was gay, but it was good enough.
She isn’t a very good blonde, either, but even that poor choice in hair colour couldn’t detract from her looking her most radiant.
Judy Garland had at her disposal the finest makeup artists and products then available, and still never managed to look very attractive. Only her belief that she was, at last, desirable was able to push her up a few notches, temporarily.
(Corny “Making of Meet Me In St. Louis” video)
