• Compare the two pictures below in which characters are seated in front of a piano and a television set. How are the piano and tv similar and different? What kind of relationship do they promote between the characters?
  
  
• The episode "Writing the President" centers on the letters that Michael and Archie write to the President. Why don't Edith and Gloria write letters too? Do these characters believe that President Richard Nixon will actually read the letters? Why or why not?
  
  
• Television stations announced the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and John F. Kennedy. TV also brought very disturbing footage of the Vietnam War into people's homes, and covered the first moon landing. Watch the YouTube clips linked to the syllabus, and consider how these events might have influenced the representation of politics on TV. What is the difference in how "politics" shows up in The Honeymooners, The Dick Van Dyke Show, All in the Family, and The Simpsons. (These suggestions are broad-- please focus your response on a specific observation.)
  
  

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Linked to episode on YouTube: All in the Family, Part 1: "Writing the Preident," Season 1, Episode 2 (1970) | Part 2 | Part 3


Figure 1: Laura Archie and Edith Bunker sing "Those Were the Days" from the opening of the episode "Writing the President" (1970)

Lyrics from Those Were the Days (Lee Adams and Charles Strouse)

Boy, the way Glen Miller played--
songs that made the hit parade.
Guys like me we had it made,
Those Were The Days,--
Didn't need no welfare state,
ev'rybody pulled hiw 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 could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.
Hair was short and skirts were long,
Kate Smith really sold a song.
I don't know just what went wrong,
Those Were The Days.

Figure 2: Archie dreams of sitting around the television with Edith, his daughter Gloria, and son-in-law Michael as President Richard Nixon reads Archie's letter.