The creators of “All in the Family” intended Archie Bunker to be a parody of closed-mindedness in Americans. To their surprise, many people in the United States adopted Bunker as their hero.
From a character in the American television series “All in the Family” which premiered in 1971
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Archie Bunker created his own lexicon and made the nickname “Meathead” as common as Bob.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 18, 2026
Early in his career, Rob Reiner played Michael “Meathead” Stivic on the sitcom “All in the Family” from 1971 to 1979, alongside Carroll O’Connor as Archie Bunker.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 15, 2025
At a time when antiheroic leads, with the outsize exception of Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker, were a rarity on television comedies, Mr. Coleman’s distinctly unlikable Bill Bittinger on “Buffalo Bill” was an exception.
From New York Times • May 17, 2024
A corrective, in some ways, although so-called “lovable bigot” Archie Bunker was ultimately more popular with American viewers.
From Salon • Dec. 7, 2023
The recommendation of the research department was that Archie Bunker be rewritten as a soft-spoken and nurturing father.
From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
