These days, I often keep my distance from automobiles with a stylized version of the American flag on a window sticker. American flags in the wild tend to make me suspicious.
Who really waves flags these days? Who really shouts U-S-A, honestly?
I know, I’m not proud of myself. It’s sad and cynical.
Forty years ago the feeling was different.
To reflect our state of mind on September 20, 1984 when Family Ties Season 3 kicked off, here is the actual cover of Time Magazine:
Can you imagine this feeling? An “upbeat mood?” Inflation was down, employment was up. It was peacetime for the US. In the previous year the US invaded Grenada, a 100 square-mile Caribbean island, to show them who’s boss, encouraging “more V-G day celebrating than seemed strictly appropriate,” as this article points out.
All that Vietnam, Watergate, energy crisis stuff? History. We fixed it. Yes, the federal deficit had tripled since Reagan took office, but look at our military! It’s so big and cool. We have space lasers!
What a change from only a few years ago, when patriotism seemed so out of style — Ronald Reagan, Sept. 1984
Our President was damn good-looking and happy and charming. We won practically everything in the 1984 Summer Olympics in L.A., covered in flags. The two political party conventions were adrape in flags. Flags flags flags, everywhere.
Reagan is about to clobber Mondale to get reelected. Everybody already knows this will happen. On Tuesday, September 11th, the Reagan campaign booked a solid half-hour on primetime, 8:00 ET, on EVERY broadcast network, to show America how great Reagan is. Every network! It pre-empted A-Team. It included an 18-minute film that had been used to introduce him at the summer party convention.
Here’s a 60-second excerpt that ran as a regular ad:
Ahh, Morning in America. Look at all those happy (white) people! Raising flags, hopping into wood paneled station wagons, farming, getting married. It’s hard to imagine anyone trying this tone now. We got an inaugural address lamenting “American carnage.” It’s like a big sigh of relief. Warm feelings.
If you’re running against Reagan, you’re basically running against America. Or at least, against television.
In international news elsewhere this week, South Africa enacted a new Constitution and elected P.W. Botha as the nation’s first President (vs. Prime Minister). The new constitution created a “Tricameral Parliament.”
The three houses were, explicitly, for Whites, Coloureds, and Indians. Their own Congresses! Each named group was accountable for its “own affairs,” meaning education, housing, and local government. In his inaugural address, Botha got religious, explaining that God put the white people into Africa to serve a divine mission.
Hey wait what about the Black people, who made up 73% of the country’s population? They don’t have representation? No. Absolutely not. They’re not in this constitution. They were made “citizens” of their separate townships, and forced to stay there. They were no longer citizens of South Africa. Poof!
On September 3, 1984, a movement called the Vaal Uprising sparked in a Black township near Johannesburg. It would stretch into a years-long popular revolt across the country, with violent incidents involving police and the army.
The Tricameral Parliament would last 10 more years. This was the structure that Nelson Mandela’s government would replace in 1994.
I know something else you’re impatiently NOT wanting to hear about. Let’s just get it over with. What about Donald Trump in 1984? Is he a thing yet?
Yes, he’s a thing.
Trump Tower had just opened the prior year. 95% of the residential units sold in the first four months. Johnny Carson bought a unit. So did Steven Spielberg. Trump said it’s for “the world’s best people.” Yes, this is the place with The Escalator.
It was before his bankruptcies but after his tax abatements. He was throwing money into the Tower, the Grand Hyatt and Atlantic City’s Trump Plaza casino. He owned the New Jersey Generals, a USFL football team.
He was pitching an idea for the “Galaxy Bowl,” which would pit the NFL champ against the USFL champ, and was drawing up plans for a domed “Trump Stadium” in New York.
GQ profiled him in May in a piece called “Donald Trump Gets What He Wants” and the NYT awed at him in the poofiest of puff features in April called “The Expanding Empire of Donald Trump.”
In these profiles, everything for him was “incredible, gorgeous, gleaming.” His wife Ivana was “the number one model in Montreal for 8 years.” He was “like, the top-ranking guy in terms of the military” after school. His building had “the greatest group of stores ever assembled under one roof. Well, it's probably the most expensive set of stores, certainly. And the greatest. And they're the most important stores."
As Mr. Trump inched his way toward the exit, dragging a dozen reporters, men in the crowd stood on their tiptoes to wave and call to him - like so many bejowled rock-star fans. There was a desperation about them as they reached through the reporters to pat him on the back, to grasp his hand or just to stuff a business card into his coat pocket. If only he could cut them in. - Bill Geist, NYT 4/8/94
OK, OK. Enough of that. Yes, he was a thing. C’mon, I know you wanted to know.
A couple of sports things going on this week -
Dwight Gooden is near the end of his rookie season as a New York Mets pitcher. He is 16-8. He has won all of his last seven starts. Put your baseball hat on and take a look at this:
God, these stats just don’t happen anymore. Not for rookies. He will have 276 strikeouts in his first season, breaking the rookie record set in 1955. The record has still not been broken, 40 years later. (For that matter, no other rookie has passed the 1955 record!)
The next year, 1985, he would get 268 strikeouts and win the Cy Young award. In his 16-year HOF career he’d never get close to that number again.
Kicker: In 1984 Gooden earned the standard rookie salary - Forty Thousand Dollars. $40,000! 2023’s rookie scale was $710,000.
Speaking of rookies, there’s one in the NBA that just signed a contract with the Chicago Bulls. His name was Michael Jordan. Six million dollars over seven years. He would get $455,000 this first year, making him the third highest paid rookie in NBA history, behind Ralph Sampson and Hakeem Olajuwon, who earned over a million.
Jordan’s seven year contract would get renegotiated later. But he wouldn’t make over a million until 1988-89, his fifth season.
The current annual salary for the NBA #1 draft pick is over $10 million.
An intro to Family Ties
Family Ties was conceived as a mirror to reflect the transition time of the Eighties, when the Sixties tripped over a big pile of money and face-planted. It’s a family sitcom, shot in front of a live audience. The parents are forty-ish Boomers, and their three kids are Gen X.
Mom and Dad had been there in the Sixties. Protesting, being all liberal. She’s an architect. He runs the local PBS station. They’re very middle-age cute.
Now they run a household with children who are awash in the “upbeat mood” of the Eighties. Prosperity, peacetime, new tech, the reawakening of the American dream.
The ‘60s-’80s contrast was the main conflict, but it was always lovingly wrapped in, well, family ties. “What would we do, baby, without us?” says the opening theme.
The kids:
Alex (Michael J. Fox) - the oldest, Reaganite, U. of Chicago style economic conservative. He’s the entrepreneur, he’s got ideas.
Mallory (Justine Bateman) - younger, apolitical, written ditzy and boy-crazy, likes shopping more than knowing things
Jennifer (Tina Yothers) - preadolescent, loves sports, an innocent kid
Originally the show was intended to focus on the parents. Oh, how would they manage these kids today? But the audience glommed onto the Alex character. And all his conservativeness. Fox was charming, he had great comic timing. He also had the advantage of being 23 and playing a (5’4”) high schooler.
Fox won three consecutive Emmy awards for the role. Like Archie Bunker, Alex P. Keaton was conceived as a foil and became the viewers’ hero. Writers moved him to the front of the stage.
They were very successful. Fifth in the ratings behind Dallas, Dynasty, 60 Minutes, and Cosby. This, its third season, would air at 8:30 on Thursdays, right after The Cosby Show, which has its colossal debut tonight. The lineup following Family Ties was Cheers, Night Court, and our old friend Hill Street Blues at 10. This was the birth of NBC’s “Must See TV” era.
[Side note to readers unfamiliar with time slots or TV networks, this stuff all used to matter]
Enough talking, let’s watch! It’s on Paramount Plus.
Family Ties, S3E1: The Gambler
We are not going to gamble
Mom is presenting at an architecture conference in Atlantic City this weekend, so the whole family is going. But there won’t be gambling!
MOM is still excited because “it’s the most exciting place on the East Coast!” [umm, it IS?]
She won’t gamble, though. No way. There will be so many other fun things to do! And gambling is bad, a waste of money.
[Yes, after 30 seconds we know the whole plot]
Ok, just one hand
In the hotel room, MOM is working on her important speech. DAD just wants to make out with her. JENNIFER tries to call room service, but Mom shuts it down. “We’re economizing,” she says.
ALEX put the “Alex Keaton Blackjack System” on laminated cards, a copy for each parent. They want to hit the boardwalk but Alex is on them like a pusher. He’s obsessed with having them gamble. They agree to one hand. Alex assaults them: “Split aces and eights, never split picture cards” etc.
Mom gets the fever
They walk into the casino.
ALEX: Whoa. Look at this, Dad. Fortunes won and lost. Hearts broken, lives ruined. Free drinks. This…is what America is all about
DAD: Thank you, Thomas Jefferson
The parents sit at the table to “get it over with.”
MOM wins the hand, of course, and we see that she has absorbed Alex’s mathematical rules. Yay you won, let’s hit the boardwalk, says Dad, but Mom says “CAN it, Steven” She’s hooked.
Fade cut to a big pile of chips on the table. Mom is doing 3 hands at a time, wild-eyed. “Stick…hit…stick.” A crowd has gathered. Dad is begging her to stop.
They make a decision
Back in the hotel room, the family is gathered around the table counting chips. ALEX announces the haul ($1,263) Everyone screams, Alex and MOM jump on the bed. “Mom, we did it!” Even DAD is pumped - great streak of luck, let’s cash in!
But Mom and Alex aren’t quitting. Alex wants her to go back and quadruple the bets. Mom’s speech is in 3 hours. Four room service carts arrive. She’s going back.
The bottom drops out
Back at the table. “I can’t lose, I can’t lose!” MOM tweaks. “Stick, Hit, Hit, Stick, Stick!” Five hands won. Piled chips. DAD pleads with her to stop.
It’s time for her conference speech. She looks at MALLORY with manic junkie eyes and hands over a copy of her speech. Go upstairs and read them my speech, she tells her daughter, and sits back at the table.
Fade cut to 4 chips left. Mom is frazzled and angry. Now she’s losing. The whole family tries to snap her out of it. “I don’t need a break, I need more money,” she says. She literally frisks Mallory for change. Dad gathers the kids and they leave her there.
Insanity? What insanity?
MOM sneaks back to the hotel room at 3:30AM. She looks beaten. She sadly tells the whole family that “the bottom dropped out.” DAD steels himself, asks just how much she lost. She says she WON almost $2,000 and (for some strange narrative reason) she dumps all the cash out of a briefcase and onto the bed.
The KIDS gather handfuls and try to stifle giddy celebration as Mom continues to self-flagellate. The bottom that fell out, see, was her soul. She won 18 consecutive hands and “I’ve never felt so empty and alone.” She ditched her conference. She had prepared so hard. She was vile to her family.
But they still have the money, right?
NO! She had taken a cleansing walk down the boardwalk (yep, 3 AM in Atlantic City). A mile away she found a “midnight mission.” She pledged $2,000 to them. In fact, the money on the bed is only $1,800, so the family now OWES the mission $200. Nervous laughter in the studio audience. ALEX is demolished. Dad is supportive and disgustingly unangry.
We end with a smiling family Hug of Unity on the bed. On top of the cash. Everything is fine. Mom’s psyche? It’s fine. She’s fine!
Giving the money away was totally…the right thing…right? We all agree, yes, it was.
There’s a Twilight Zone episode from 1960, called “The Fever.” It’s a similar plot. A middle aged couple is in Vegas, the man is dead set against gambling, but finds a quarter and is beckoned. Quickly he’s in deep and he gambles and loses all night. Later the machine appears at his hotel room door, robot-like, and haunts him. He loses his mind, jumps out the window, and dies.
Not on Family Ties! No no, here we learned a different lesson. Here, Alex’s system, well, it …worked. I mean, Mom WON. But the awful things she did! For money! Like, real money. That was won legally. And would have been so useful…