I got some unexpected context for an episode of The Golden Girls yesterday.
We
did not watch it regularly growing up, but have come to enjoy it via
syndicated reruns. We have gotten into some of our favorite shows that
way.
This episode was "Dorothy's New Friend", Season 3, episode 15, first airing January 16th, 1988.
(As
this was the day before my 16th birthday, I remember quite clearly that
I was at a dance that was my first official date, and boring enough to
make me wish I had waited until I was officially 16 for that first date.
But I definitely didn't watch TV that night.)
In the
episode, Dorothy makes friends with a writer played by Bonnie Bartlett,
whom you may remember as the Widow Snider who married Mr. Edwards on Little House on the Prairie,
but eventually left him over his alcoholism after their oldest adopted
son's murder drove him back into the bottle. I guess we should have
realized she was going to be unreliable.
Barbara
Thorndyke gives Dorothy sparkling conversation and entry into literary
circles, but is a snob who keeps subtly insulting Blanche and Rose. The
last straw is when Dorothy discovers that the club they were going to go
to is restricted, so Sophia's date would not be allowed in: Murray
Guttman is Jewish.
I don't know how long ago it was
that we first saw the episode, but I think I felt like that conflict
made Barbara kind of cartoonishly bad. Restricted country clubs were
from the '60s. Golden Girls was the '80s. Anyone who was still doing that had to have some problems.
Well, yes, I still think that, but those problems were more common than I thought.
I just finished A Secret Gift: How One Man's Kindness and a Trove of Letters Revealed the Hidden History of the Great Depression
by Ted Gup. Gup's grandfather Sam Stone had set up a bank account under
an assumed name and put an ad in the paper offering to send help to
those who needed it. He initially planned to send 75 people $10 each,
but there were so many applicants that he halved it to $5 for 150
people. The title oversells it a little.
Stone's family
were Jews from Romania who had to flee the country when antisemitic
persecution increased. He spent time in Pittsburgh, then Canton, Ohio
where the gift-giving took place, eventually having enough money to
winter in Florida.
That was in the '50s, so perhaps it
not so surprising that he ended up next to a restricted apartment
building. I guess it's not quite the same as a red-lined neighborhood -
Jews can be on the street, just not in this building - but okay, that is
before the main thrust of the Civil Rights Movement, so maybe we should
expect things to be bad.
Except one of those building
residents married the author's mother, obtaining an exemption for her to
live in the building. Sign that they weren't really that committed to
racism? Or maybe not, because his country club, La Gorce, did not end
its restrictions until 1990.
La Gorce is in Miami Beach. A restricted country club in Miami in 1988 really wasn't that far-fetched.
When
Dorothy expresses her disbelief, Barbara says it's the club's policy,
not hers. Besides, they serve a great breakfast and the parking is free.
It
does sound less cartoonish now, but it also sounds more damning. How
could you ever think that free parking is a good reason to overlook
racism?
I view the episode differently now; as braver,
and more necessary. It was made at a time when pressure needed to be
applied, and was getting close to paying off. I never doubted the need
for the "Fore" episode of Designing Women, when Anthony is
recruited into the country club to try and avoid sanctions. I knew about
that kind of racism, but there's always more.
To be
fair, my family has never been likely to join a country club. Also, this
area has been so opposite of integrated that it would be easy to not
even know if there were restrictions. All through my school years I only
knew three Jewish families, and I never knew of them being excluded. I
probably wouldn't. My naivete lasted a while.
Still,
sometimes you find things out, and then you need to take a stand. Beyond
that, I have reached a point where I believe I need to work harder to
find things out. There are a lot of things that might not affect me yet.
That doesn't mean that they don't matter.
One
irritating thing in the book was the author expressing some chagrin that
some of his older relatives still feared antisemitism sweeping the
country. The book was published in 2010. Do those relatives seem to have
more of a point now?
I think I know what to write about tomorrow.
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
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