Carlos Is Teaching You The Mambo?

To me, the greatest local New Year's tradition is the Honeymooners marathon they show all day on television every January 1st. I still laugh like I'm seeing each episode for the first time, and in my view from here on the Stoop, the show has never been topped.

Two quick observations from watching yesterday:

1) Norton's apartment. It's so god-damned modern when compared to Ralph's. It has state of the art appliances & furniture, cool wallpaper, & that unbelievable record player where you can make your own record like Ralph did when he apologized to Alice for yelling at her mother. All of this on a sewer worker's salary? Norton must have been taking bribes. If Norton's apartment was around today, it would be featured on MTV cribs.

2) If the Honeymooners were a new show with its premiere episodes shown in 2010, it never would have made it. It would be the focus of protests, and its advertisers would have been pressured to drop the show. Why? Well of course the show is smut-free, and they never even show you the Kramden's bedroom. But Ralph's threatening to send Alice to the moon every episode would have made liberal women's groups like NOW froth at the mouth. And Gleason did not have the proper liberal credentials to survive it. So while Charlie Sheen in real life can threaten women, and Chuck Schumer can go around calling women bitches, they are shielded by having the proper liberal views. But Gleason, they would have went after hard. Real hard. And somehow, I think he would have rather shut down the show than submit to demands for diversity training.