Saturday, August 3, 2013

President Richard Nixon Vents About The 'All in the Family' Episode Guest-Starring Anthony Geary & Philip Carey In Newly Found Audio Tape

Clockwise from Top Left: Philip Carey, Anthony Geary, Jean Stapleton, Richard Nixon and Carroll O'Connor.

New audio has been found of then-President Richard Nixon complaining about a TV show he stumbled upon that was glorifying homosexuality: ALL IN THE FAMILY. The show was centered around the father of the family, Archie Bunch, a lovable bigot. The episode Nixon watched was the fifth one ever, "Judging Books by Covers," which aired February 9, 1971. How does this relate to soap operas? The two key guest stars in the episode were GENERAL HOSPITAL's Anthony Geary, who played Mike's photographer friend, Roger (or "Roger The Fairy" as Archie called him), and ONE LIFE TO LIVE's Philip Carey as Archie's tough guy drinking buddy, Steve. The twist in the story was that Steve was the one that turned out to be gay, not Roger.

President Nixon saw this episode on TV (although he thought it was a movie) and was upset the CBS show was "glorifying homosexuality". Check out a transcript of the new audio below (h/t americablog.com of a conversation between Nixon, Domestic Affairs Advisor John Ehrlichman, and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman. Then watch the memorable episode of ALL IN THE FAMILY featuring Geary and Carey.

Nixon: CBS came on with a movie. They had two magnificent handsome guys, and a stupid old fellow in it. They were glorifying homosexuality!

Ehrlichman: Was that a panel, sir?

Nixon: Hell no, it was a movie!

Haldeman: No, that’s a regular show, it’s on every week. And usually it’s just set in the guy’s home. It’s usually just that guy, who’s a hardhat.

Nixon: That’s right, he’s a hard hat.

Ehrlichman: And he always just looks like a slob.

Nixon: Looks like Jackie Gleason.

Haldeman: And then he has this hippie son-in-law. And, uh, usually the general trend of it is to downgrade him, and upgrade…

Nixon: Upgrade the hippie son-in-law.

Haldeman: Make the square hardhat to be bad.

Ehrlichman: What’s it called, I’ve never seen it.

Nixon: Archie is the guy’s name.

Ehrlichman: Now that’s real family entertainment, isn’t it?

Nixon: The point that I make is that goddamit, I do not think that you glorify, on public television, homosexuality! You ever see what happened, you know what happened to the Greeks? Homosexuality destroyed them. Aristotle was a homo, we all know that. So was Socrates.

Ehrlichman: But he never had the influence that television has.

Nixon: The last six Roman emperors were fags. You see, homosexuality, immorality in general, these are the enemies of strong societies. That’s why the communists and the left-wingers are pushing it. They’re trying to destroy us.



RELATED:
- Anthony Geary talks to We Love Soaps about his 'All in the Family' appearance

3 comments:

  1. I never realized that was Tony Geary.

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  2. It's odd that AmericaBlog, CNN, etc. are somehow referring to this as "new." I remember it being featured by Andrew Sullivan in his column some years ago, and you can find the audio with complete transcription on youtube - uploaded way back in 2008.

    http://youtu.be/TivVcfSBVSM

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  3. Don't forget that Bob Hastings, who played the original Bob Hughes on ATWT and Burt Ramsey on GH, is Kelsey the bar owner on 'All In the Family.'

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