Bea Arthur

I just learned that Bea Arthur has passed away. Bea starred on the popular sitcoms Maude and the Golden Girls.

You know, this is somewhat of a shock to me, and the reason is that I watch the Golden Girls every now and again on the Hallmark Channel. For many of us, cable tends to immortalize people, when actually time and life continue to go on, as people grow old and die.

As Maude, Bea played the liberal cousin to Edith Bunker, and she often got into fights with Edith’s arch-conservative husband, Archie. When Arch was going to a hotel room and Edith was asking how he’d find entertainment, Maude said, “Oh, don’t worry, Governor Wallace will be on the Tonight Show. Archie will love it!”

As a conservative (loosely speaking), my reaction to Maude was pretty much love-hate. I liked the show because it made fun of bleeding-heart liberals, implying that there was a degree of inauthenticity in their acts of “concern.” On one episode, for example, Maude was hiring a Puerto Rican to be her maid solely because the lady was Puerto Rican. Maude was expressing her white liberal guilt!

At the same time, there was a two-parter in which Maude is pregnant and struggles with whether or not to abort the child. That episode made no attempt whatsoever to give us the pro-life side of the debate. As far as it was concerned, the only consideration was that women have rights, and that’s it! The life of the unborn child was not even considered. The creator of the series, Norman Lear, could be a thoughtful liberal who critiqued his own side, but he was a liberal nonetheless.

But there was one episode in which we got to see some sparks: Maude’s shoot-out with conservative movie star John Wayne! She got to duke it out with the Duke, right before she danced with him.

Something about Maude that spilled into Dorothy Sbornak on the Golden Girls was that she was real. She dealt with emotions that many of us experience: bitterness, disappointment, love, loyalty to friends, insecurity, moral dilemmas, struggles with dating, etc., etc. I can think of many scenes that illustrate these emotions, but there’s one that I want to share. On one episode, the Golden Girls were going to shake hands with the first President Bush when he came to their door, and Dorothy was planning to hit him with all sorts of challenging questions about education. When Bush finally came to their door, she choked up and didn’t say anything. Even when he asked her about her thoughts on education, she was too nervous to speak! I can picture myself doing that!

Both Maude and Dorothy came across as opinionated know-it-alls who had a sharp wit. I think of the episode of the Golden Girls in which Dorothy was about to appear on Jeopardy. In the practice session, Dorothy was really mopping the floor with a professor (I think) and a highly educated physicist, even though she was a lowly substitute English teacher. But she was rejected from appearing on the Jeopardy show because the person in charge didn’t think anyone would root for her!

But weaknesses often overlap with strengths, and both Maude and Dorothy could be described as principled, morally-conscious, and courageous. On an episode I saw recently, Dorothy tried to flunk a popular high school football player, to the consternation of most of the town! At the end, when he was in the hospital on account of a football injury, she came to visit him and read him The Tale of Two Cities. Now that’s a great teacher!

I can’t believe that Bea Arthur is gone, but her work lives on.