Davis V. Family Dollar Store: Fill & Download for Free

I just remembered that I never answered this, although God knows I've spilled enough of my life story (and my guts) all over this site that of the people interested enough to read this, most will already know a lot of it.I was born in Baltimore, Maryland to American-born Greek-American parents. My mother's people were from Sparta and my father's people from the islands. Three of my grandparents were born in Greece; my mother's mother was born in Pittsburgh to a Greek-born father and a Polish-born mother.[There's a legend in my family (I hope it's true) that my mother's mother's mother left Poland as a teenager because she was running away from anarranged marriage to a coal miner twice her age. Whatever happened, shemade her way to Reading, Pennsylvania, where she got a job in a Greekrestaurant and met my great-grandfather, who was an itinerant puppeteer and looked like Cary Grant (seriously). They got married and embarked on a lifestyle that involved her staying at home for weeks or months while he went out on the road, touring from one Greek coffeehouse to another with hismarionettes. He would return home long enough to knock her up and thengo out on the road again.]My mother died in January 2013, just a few weeks before her 83rd birthday. Here she is on her 82nd birthday.My dad is 90. If Mom had survived another few months they would have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in June 2013.My dad is a retired electrician who owned a small appliance store when I was a little girl, then foresaw the dominance of the big box stores (realizing he could not compete with a local store called Luskin's) and got a job as a troubleshooter at the big Bethlehem Steel plant in Sparrows Point, Maryland. He retired in 1984. My mom was the office manager at an insurance agency until I was born, then stayed home for about ten years, then took a part-time job, but basically dedicated herself to my brother and me.My brother is four years younger than I am. I despised him when he was born but for many years he has been very dear to me, and his 13 year old daughter Christina is one of the joys of my life. Unfortunately I live in Oregon and pretty much my whole family live in Maryland, so I don't see them more than three or four times a year, which can be hard sometimes. This is my brother and me, taken by Christina, on his birthday a few years ago. (She and I made the cake.)I'm very happily married to a guy I went to college with, Mike Radway. We were together as a committed couple for 26 years before we got married, and knew each other as friends for six years before that. During the time before we got married we got asked a lot of questions about how long we'd been together and I always used to enjoy responding, "Since the Carter Administration, although we met during the Nixon Administration."Stephanie V's answer to Do long-distance relationships work?Here is our wedding photo. We were married at the Multnomah County Courthouse. I'm glad no one ever called my mother's attention that I wore black (she's seen the photos of course, but in her relief that I was finally married she didn't pay much attention to the details).Not only did I manage to find an excellent life partner, he has a great family who have always welcomed me warmly into whatever events or activities I happened to be doing with them. I know many people can't say the same about their own in-laws and I feel very fortunate.When I was an adolescent I always assumed that I'd never get married, partly because I couldn't imagine ever wanting to marry anyone, and partly because I didn't feel like wife material. I am a slob and an terrible housekeeper. I'm not much of a cook (although I'm improving). I knew I didn't want to have children. I knew I would never want to change my name. Etc. However, the one time I tried to discuss these feelings with my mother I only succeeded in freaking her out because when I spoke the words, "I'm just not the kind of girl boys marry," she ran with that in a whole different direction. I figured it out later.Because I am a firstborn my mother had no idea I was a little weirdo when I started reading at about age 2.5. She just assumed this was how it went. We didn't have public kindergarten, so when she took me (just turned 6) to sign up for first grade they told her I had to take a reading readiness test. When she told them I'd been reading for years they didn't believe her until I started reading all the forms they had printed out for the parents, at which point I got to meet the principal, got sent for testing to the Baltimore County Board of Education, and got skipped into the second grade. So I was always a year younger than my classmates, all through school.I was never much good at sports but I was really good at pretty much everything in school, and I especially loved math, at least until I ran into second year algebra (the only D I ever got) and got scared off. I took five years of French and a lot of English and social studies classes instead. I got involved in student government, became the VP of my junior class and then the president of the student council. I was most likely to succeed and all that. My mother wanted me to stay in Baltimore and go to Goucher College (which was all female in those days). I wanted to go away, and I knew that if I was going to get my parents to accept it I needed to get into a major brand name school. I got into Yale, Harvard, Cornell, Goucher, and two other schools. Most first generation Greek-American fathers in 1973 would never have supported the idea of a daughter going to Yale. I had some financial aid and a bursary job but my parents came through with the money for me to go.Yale was a transformative experience for me.Stephanie V's answer to How has higher education changed your life?Stephanie V's answer to What does it feel like to attend a world-renowned university?For my senior essay in American Studies I decided to write about the Black Sox scandal. I called up the most notorious baseball fan on the Yale faculty, A. Bartlett Giamatti, and asked him to advise it. He agreed. A few months later he was elected President of Yale, but he insisted on keeping his commitment. Working on it with him was a great experience.After Yale I managed to land my dream job as an executive trainee with MLB (business).Stephanie V's answer to Is it really possible to make your own luck?While I worked as Manager of Waivers and Player Records for the American League, I went to law school in the evenings at Fordham. I graduated from Fordham in 1985 and lucked into something great. There was a new Commissioner, Peter Ueberroth. Peter didn't like lawyers but he did like professional women, and he created a new Assistant General Counsel position for me in the Commissioner's Office, so I could stay on. This was a huge break for me, and I'll always be grateful to him for it.In 1988-89 when it started to seem that moving on from MLB might be a good idea, Bart (who by then was National League President and would soon be Commissioner) introduced me to his Yale classmate Donald Dell. Donald was a former US Davis Cup captain and had started the first sports agency specializing in representing tennis players, ProServ. His first two clients were Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith. By the late 80s ProServ had branched out into other sports and represented hundreds of athletes including Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Greg LeMond, Boomer Esiason, James Worthy, Dominique Wilkins, and tennis players like John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Stefan Edberg, and Gabriela Sabatini. I worked for Donald for eight years. A major highlight of that time was in 1990 when ProServ was hired to represent the merchandising rights to Nelson Mandela's first US visit, after his release from Robben Island. (When Mandela was released from prison, Arthur Ashe was the first person he asked to meet, and Arthur helped us get a meeting to pitch the business.) A colleague and I ran the merchandising program. It was thrilling.The licensee in the Bay Area was Winterland Productions. I flew out to San Francisco and appeared on local TV with the head of artist licensing at Winterland to urge people to buy only the officially licensed t-shirts, etc.In 1995 I was elected to the Board of Directors of the Sports Lawyers Association, and still serve as a director, and now as a member of the Executive Committee.I was recruited to Nike (company) in 1997 and worked there for almost 14 years. I was originally recruited to do sports marketing deals but lucked into an opportunity to start building Nike's global product safety team and infrastructure in a serious way in about 1999, and ran with it.In that job I built a global multidisciplinary virtual team that only saw each other perhaps twice a year, but which met weekly to deal with existing issues and plan out the mechanisms by which we hoped to prevent future issues. We traveled to Asia and Europe to give and receive trainings. We visited the European Parliament and the Chinese product safety authorities in Shanghai. We managed the occasional product recall and worked with product designers and developers to avoid future recalls. I served on the ethics committee of the Nike Sport Research Lab and my team and I worked with the NSRL and the product engines to decide how much we were willing to promise by way of product performance claims based on their work. I worked with amazingly smart people -- chemists, materials scientists, manufacturing gurus, social compliance experts, ESH specialists. My team and I sat through days of toxicology lectures to elevate our understanding of consumer allergies, sensitivities, and other chemical safety issues. I took a special two-week training course called "PS72 Shoe School" in 2000 and learned how to brief, design, spec/develop, cost out, and build an athletic shoe. Those two weeks (one in Oregon, one in Korea and China) will always be a highlight of my life. I can't ever remember learning so much in such a short time.Between 1997 and 2009, in partnership with the staff on the business side, I also papered and negotiated literally billions of dollars in sports marketing deals. My principal sports of concentration were tennis, golf, baseball, and some Olympic sports. I worked on every piece of Nike sports marketing business related to Lance Armstrong for 12 years, including setting up the "LiveStrong" wristband promotion and getting it legally qualified in the 20 states that regulate that kind of fundraising. Last I heard more than 70 million yellow wristbands had been sold. I'm sure it's closer to 100 million now. I worked on Nike's product supply and sponsorship agreements with Ohio State, University of Washington, University of North Carolina System, and other schools. I worked on Nike's deals with scores of athletes. I've been called a bitch by at least two agents representing athletes you've heard of. I also have had very warm relationships with people who represented athletes under contract to Nike.http://www.quora.com/Stephanie-Vardavas/My-Posts/I-just-learned-that-my-friend-Keven-Davis-died-on-Friday-nightIn 2009 Nike had major layoffs after which I was repurposed as a trademark lawyer, a specialty I had last practiced 20 years earlier, at MLB (although at MLB we did licensing and at Nike we did clearance and prosecution [registration] of trademarks). After a few more departmental reorgs I found myself involuntarily retired. I won't say I had no idea about what to do next. Rather, I had too many ideas about what to do next. I started working on a couple of patents, which I'm still working on, but I thought I wanted to get a new job. At first I thought I'd try to get a job in the technology field, which has fascinated me since the first time my friend Jim HendlerWho is James Hendler?first showed me the World Wide Web in 1995.Stephanie V's answer to What was the first website you built, and in what year did you build it?I applied for jobs at [tech startup A], [tech startup B], [tech pioneer], and [tech survivor], got a couple of phone interviews, and that was it. I realized as I scanned the various job listings that nobody wanted to hire a lawyer with my amount of experience. So I knew I was going to have to take charge of my own path from then on. I remembered that ten years earlier I had thought about becoming a mediator after I retired. Now was my chance.I took almost 100 hours of training as a mediator and embarked on a new career. I've also done some consulting in product safety, the work I loved most when I worked for Nike. But none of it felt exactly right. Finally the light bulb went on for me when I hit a million miles on United Airlines and realized I had never owned a carry-on bag that I really liked. I connected with a former Nike colleague who is an expert in materials and a new company, row99.com, was born.In 2011 the Governor of Oregon appointed me to the Oregon Commission for Women, and I was elected Chair in 2012. My service on the Commission has been a great experience so far. My fellow Commissioners are really smart, capable women, and the work we do is important.I'm politically activeStephanie V's answer to What is it like to host a political fundraising dinner at your house?Stephanie V's answer to What is it like to be a delegate at an American presidential nominating convention?and cut my teeth in local politics as a library advocate, with six years on the board of directors and two years as President of the Friends of Multnomah County Library. I was also one of the founding board members of EMERGE Oregon (a 501c4 that trains Democratic women to run for office). I spent Election Day 2008 as a voter protection volunteer at a polling place in Albuquerque. I have absolutely zero ambition to hold elective office myself, and happily neither does Mike. We don't want that kind of life. (That's us with the late Elizabeth Edwards. We spent a day driving her around in June 2007 when she came to Portland to campaign for her husband. I'll always be grateful for the time we spent with her, but if I'd known what a dick he was I would never have supported him, so I guess I'm glad I didn't know, or I would never have met her.)And here we are with Congressman John Lewis, a real honest-to-God hero.Like seemingly 95% of Quorans, I have an idea for a startup. I don't have the technical skills to execute on it but the service would have immediate value to some very big ecommerce companies so I keep telling myself I need to figure out how to find someone to work on it with me and make it happen; I'll be really sad if someone else gets to it before I do. I've been researching prior art at the USPTO to decide whether I should try to get a business process patent to give me some protection while I try to implement it. I'm not a natural born entrepreneur but I've been in the business world for more than 30 years and learned a few things along the way.Random miscellaneous crap about me:I love Jane Austen (author), Star Wars, Leonard Cohen, Elton John, The Beatles (band), and lots of other music, including Baroque Music and Opera. I love Musicals. I am both an Anglophile and a Francophile, although some believe those two things to be mutually exclusive. I love Star Wars (creative franchise). My favorite animal is the Sheep, but I was born in the Year of the Monkey. I love Monty Python and I know I should love Firesign Theatre, but I never got into it.Going to law school at night broke my TV habit. Today I watch very little television, and the only thing I watch live is sports and awards shows like the Oscars, or other kinds of breaking news. On Tivo I watch all three US major network news shows, The Big Bang Theory (TV series), The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report. On DVD I recently finished a 19 hour Downton Abbey (TV series) marathon and have dived into the Q&A here.I love Architecture and would have considered becoming an architect if it weren't for all the math. %^>I love the Baltimore Orioles, and have since I was a very little girl. I care about the Yale Bulldogs and have learned to love the Baltimore Ravens almost as much as my father and brother do. In the National League I've always liked the Philadelphia Phillies and the San Francisco Giants.The National Basketball Association (NBA) has never interested me all that much but I do love college hoops (I was raised a fan of the Maryland Terrapins; one of the biggest thrills I had working for ProServ was the opportunity to spend a little time with John Lucas, whom I really loved as a player, who later had terrible drug problems, and who got clean and is now very successful).I have no artistic talent to speak of, but I can take pretty good photos, and I used to be good at sewing. I could make professional looking coats and suits. My sewing skills are now long atrophied. I bought a fancy new electronic sewing machine six years ago and have never used it. I can still hem things by hand and sew on buttons, and I enjoy doing that kind of thing for my husband; it helps me delude myself into feeling domestic.I read widely, often nonfiction, especially Biographies and Memoirs. I do reread Austen (luckily she only wrote six books) at least once every couple of years. I recently did deep dives into Henry James (author) and Edith Wharton, who unaccountably has no Quora topic of her own. I'm reading Anna Karenina (1877 book) now for the first time (shocking, I know, but better late than never).I've been to Christmas luncheon at Manchester United. It felt as if I had stepped into outtakes from Love Actually (2003 movie)In 1975 I borrowed Brooks Robinson's uniform for Halloween. That's a whole other story.There's a chapter about me in the book Baseball Lives, by Mike Bryan, and the part relating to Brooks' uniform was excerpted in Sports Illustrated in April 1989 (the issue that had Tony Mandarich on the cover, I forget the date). George Vecsey also wrote a column about the uniform story the weekend Brooks was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.I've stood 50 meters from the finish line of the Tour de France on the Champs Elysées and cried like a baby when they played the Star Spangled Banner for Lance Armstrong as he mounted the podium.In 1990 I went on morning TV in New York City along with Arthur Ashe to talk about the Mandela merchandising program. It was a huge thrill for me.Stephanie V's answer to What are some of the unique (likely hasn’t been done by another Quora member) experiences of Quora community members?I've sat in the Commissioner's box at the World Series, in the owner's (singular) box at Yankee Stadium, in the owners' (plural) box at Fenway Park, and in the Directors' box at Old Trafford. I sat in front of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and one seat over from Harry Belafonte in the House gallery when Mandela addressed a joint session of Congress in 1990.In October 2011 I traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, where I attended in the same week both the World Championships of the International Gay Rodeo Association and the Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America. I am quite certain I am the only person in the world who did this.I've also got three unfinished novels in my hard drive. Perhaps I will finish one of them someday. I hope I'll pick a good one.

I can't answer for Bernie Sanders, but I believe that most of them are duped. So, if it's an actual quote by him, I'd say I agree with him 100% on that one.I come from a family of at least four generations of Republicans. In Davie County, North Carolina, where I live -- as with the rest of the 'High Country', the mountainous northwestern counties of the state -- that was the thing to be, even when it wasn't 'cool', even before the Southern swing that occurred between 'Southern strategy' of the Nixon era, and 'Morning In America' of the Reagan era. It cost us. Back when I-40 was being built across our Democratic machine-controlled state --at least as far as Raleigh -- during the 1960's, Davie County was the last county to get it.I was proudly a Republican myself for a long time.Most of my family still are Davie County Republicans. They're good, conservative folks, the best people you could ever hope to know. They're against homosexuality and same-sex marriage (frankly, by contrast, I could care less). That doesn’t mean that they ‘hate’ anyone, or that they’re not good-hearted, well-intentioned, God-fearing folks that they indeed are. They just read the passages in the book of Leviticus and 1 Corinthians, and simply believe that the Bible means what it says. They oppose abortion and believe that life begins at conception. (I don't like it myself, but since I don't see within the Bible an unambiguous case that 'life begins at conception', I can't call it murder, and therefore can't claim that either I or the law has the right to interfere with a woman's choice to do it. I would characterize my own view as “pro-choice — and the choice should be made before you make the choice to have sex”.) They don’t understand transgenderism and think these people who are going nuts over HB2, North Carolina’s infamous ‘bathroom bill’, are nuts. (Frankly, my own understanding of transgenderism, and why HB2 rated the controversy that it does, and why so many people would care so much more than I expected, is lacking: that’s why I asked the question, to raise my own awareness and understanding as may be more appropriate.) And they do worry a bit about what the world will come to if God’s laws aren’t upheld.Yet, those three things are only a small, small part of what comes up for them when you mention the term family values. Indeed, you never hear those three things talked about unless it’s election season, or some piece of gay- or gender-related legislation in the news, or some major court case coming up on those subjects.While their patience with significant crime, or criminals, is also pretty limited (well, la-de-da — so is mine), as is their patience with alcohol, drugs, and the bad effects of excessive use of it (indeed, Davie County was until recent years, one of the last ’dry counties’ in this part of the country — no liquor, no beer in convenience stores. If you wanted a bottle of booze or a twelve-pack, you had to drive to Winston-Salem or Statesville. There was one pool room with a beer bar in the town of Mocksville, on Court Square, and it was watched carefully…), they’re not intolerant. Actually, they’re some of the nicest, most open and hospitable people you could ever hope to meet.They're hard-working and clean living, and have spent several generations experiencing that life works better for everyone if people stick to the nuclear family structure and if families stick together for life, if people make it to church on Sundays and look to Christianity for external guidance on life’s questions; if people work hard, live quietly and behave themselves -- and you can still live quite well and have a good time from time to time.They don’t even mind sharing that with you. They’re some of the most hospitable people on the face of the earth. It’s like the movie Doc Hollywood, but without the characters being quite so exaggerated and comical. Or Little House On The Prairie. Come to Davie County for the big annual tractor parade and other Fourth-of-July weekend celebrations, or the Daniel Boone festival that they have every May, and experience it for yourself.It's a little bit Mayberry, but that's just the way we like it.That's where about 90--95% of the Republicans' support comes from -- my folks and people like them around the country.Where they and I, between ourselves, part ways on the subject and for a time, at least until the Republican Party rights itself, is the question of whether the GOP being the party of 'business' is a good thing.They don't like paying taxes so people can get something for nothing. Neither do I. People who have a choice, and choose to live that way can starve to death for all I care. (Under the Republican ideology that my folks and I supported for years, they could work if they wanted, so they had no excuse. Under what the Republican Party has turned into . . . they could work . . . if there’s work to be had . . . and if not, then they’re obviously not worth a whole lot, forget them . . . so you have to wonder . . .)But what burns me up even worse is people working full time (often more than full time, at two jobs), and putting forth the effort , yet having nothing, and still having to beg for public assistance, and welfare, and alms.That’s not what the pro-business Republicanism I was a proud part of is about: back then, it meant, don’t ask for a heck of a lot, you have to be in pretty pathetic shape to need, or qualify for, any kind of public assistance, but if you worked for what you wanted, you could make it, and living well shouldn’t be a problem. (And until 1972 when Jesse Helms got elected to the United States Senate from North Carolina, between the Democrats and the Republicans, the Republicans were considered the liberals, not the other way around. Richard Nixon’s ‘Southern strategy’ was considered a brilliant tactical play that worked. No one saw it as the start of what would be a permanent trend, the shape of things to come.)My folks, on the other hand, actually buy that bovine waste material that it's important to the economy to keep Republicans in office, because they're the party of business (even though, ever since prior to the Depression, business has -- with single exceptions for each of the parties, Eisenhower in the case of the Republicans, Carter in the case of the Democrats -- always fared better under Democratic administrations.) They actually buy it that if 'job creators' have to deal with any regulation or be required to obey the law, they'll move offshore. (There's the docks. Go. Move the entire company while you're at it. Sell your products to a thirty-cent-an-hour Chinese market, or a two-dollar-an-hour Mexican market, depending on where you're moving it for the cheap, unregulated labor. We need to get out of TPP. And NAFTA.) They believe that if you’re ill or injured, you pay the doctor and hospital bill, and no one should be required to chip in and pay it for you; and they aren’t comfortable about the Affordable Care Act.My former Republicanism saw ‘pro-business’ as benefiting everyone: anyone who worked and earned was a participant and could be part of it. Today’s Republicanism favors only ‘winners’ at the expense of the ‘losers’, and expects its designated ‘losers’ to graciously accept losing and disappear, crawl under a leaf and die, whatever.Today’s ‘pro-business’ Republicans feel that if you can’t do any better than it takes so any of that — employer-provided health care, deregulation, “globalization” — is a problem for you, forget you, you’re a loser and you deserve no better. If you’re ill or injured, you pay — using your employer’s insurance, if your employer that provides it; and if you’re not enough of a “contribution to society” to be picked to work for someone who cares to provide it, that’s your problem.Today’s Republicans believe America should be strong, and defend itself — and all too unquestioningly take the administration at its word on any need it might feel to buy or improve weapons systems and, when they feel the need, or to open fire with those weapons, or to drop a few of those bombs.We've discussed it before and I've told my people, over and again, with today’s Republican Party, take away the opposition to homosexuality and abortion, and what you're left with is economic policies and often foreign policies that no Christian would support.Or anyone else in their right mind, for that matter.That's much of the reason I'm no longer Republican, and most of the reason I support Bernie Sanders.Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee have frequently made noises from time to time about forming a third party for social conservatives if the Republican Party doesn't go back to being more 'conservative'. Oh, please, please, please, do it already! I've known for nearly sixty years now that you can't get Christians in most places to agree between themselves on anything: any time all too many of them don't have secular humanists or atheists or unbelievers or pro-choice activists or LGBTs to fight against, they'll quarrel and bicker between each other. So it's not like such a party is going to be a dominant force in American politics. (Put me down as one Christian, for example, who feels that Sarah Palin is nothing but a ditzy rabble-rouser, and Mike Huckabee is an unrealistic dreamer, and both of them are as successful as they are because of their pandering to the unaware and unquestioning . . .)But I'd really like to see the more thoughtful Christians and social conservatives break free of the Republican party, leave the 5–10% without the ability to take them for granted election after election, and hear what kind of concessions they GOP would have to make to get them to align with them for a single election -- after the Democrats have made their pitch to them on foreign policy and social justice issues.And make each of the parties do the same, next election. And every election afterward.Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land for more than forty years now, and every piece of legislation passed by die-hard Republicans to suppress abortion gets tossed as soon as a federal judge sees it. Obergefell v. Hodges set in cement the right of gay couples to marry: full recognition as a protected minority group is only a few more court cases away.If it's so important to some Christians and social conservatives to 'put a stop' to same-sex marriage and abortion, hopefully these cases should be their wake-up call (although based on the recent history of laws passed to chip away at abortion rights, they probably won’t). The Republican Party has proven itself utterly incompetent and worthless to stop it, no matter how committed social conservatives are, and no matter how they get out the vote. And they know it. They just keep pretending to try.No one benefits — or was ever intended to benefit — except for Bernie’s 5–10%. They get the large numbers of bodies and the votes from social conservatives that that they need for the Republicans to win, so the Republicans win, and they get to implement their destructive economic and foreign policies.And I’m not suggesting abandoning or rolling back LGBT rights, but — since, as I pointed out, full recognition as a protected minority group is only a few more court cases away — has any progressive group considered staying out of that and leaving it to work itself out, or not making it such a large part of your agenda, and trying to reach these folks with an economic and social justice program that emphasizes accountability and responsibility on the part of all — recipients and big business and the finance sector? You’re never going to get folks in Davie County to support the rights of sexual minorities, at least not for a few more years until they begin to notice that Obergefell won’t require the local church to perform same-sex marriages or accept gay couples as members, or that ‘transgender’ rights doesn’t mean having their young daughters sharing a toilet with some guy wearing a dress and exposing himself to them.But you might bring them around on economic and foreign policies, once you show them — especially those among them who’ve had a job offshored over the last ten years — the unworkability of what is now in place.The other half of your problem in reaching these people is that, every time you mention economic policies, it always lands with them as something they have to pay taxes to pay for that benefits some else, usually some racial or ethnic-based minority group, often someone “less deserving”. It’s never presented as something that benefits them in any way. Some of the most strident Trump supporters — and anti-Bernie Sanders people — I’ve met recently are a bunch of guys who just this past week lost their jobs because of cutbacks where they work, said cutbacks applied first to them because they were employed through a staffing agency, as part of a now-all-too-common phenomenon of large companies using temp agencies for permanent help so they can do that as they please (and get around lots of other regulation, and workplace benefits and job protection obligations, as well.) They’ll learn — if someone teaches them.Unfortunately, the only thing anyone’s teaching them this year is that the bogeyman responsible is China and Mexico, not large companies in America whose responsibility and accountability in the matter is somewhat more direct. And the sad thing is, they’re buying it, and their ‘teacher’ now has the Republican nomination for President bagged, because with the Bernie Sanders campaign going into end-game, there’s no competing message that’s listenable.(I think the ones closest to me personally, and the more intelligent ones, get it about Trump. But what are they going to do — vote for Hillary?)They really need to terminate, or at least re-visit, their connections to the GOP and move it along -- and consider directing their efforts toward more useful areas, where Christian values and influence — the whole of it, not just the parts on homosexuality, transgenderism and reproductive rights that some people find hard to accept — would be more widely appreciated, and not so maligned.Unfortunately, that’s going to involve some level of getting off it about homosexuality, transgenderism, and abortion, agreeing that they’re pretty much stuck with it the way things are, and moving on; something that isn’t going to come easy for a lot of them. But even if you can’t win the 5–10%’s social conservative grassroots bodies-and-votes base, you can neutralize much of it, just by showing up as being about something besides homosexuality and abortion and welfare yourselves, that might mean something for them, and not just something to benefit someone else.So, the opportunity is there for more progressive groups.The folks in Mayberry are achieving nothing by supporting the Republican Party, and never will. They’re just being used. They’re the ballast that provides the bodies and the votes to allow the 5%-10% to get away with the remaining, relatively unopposed, Republican agenda that is ruining the economy of our country, and keeping us in trouble in other parts of the world. (“Globalization” is a fact of life and we’re just going to have to suck it up? Right. When did you last hear of a plant in comparatively ‘socialist’ Canada, Germany, France, Denmark or Sweden being shut down, and the jobs being offshored?)It's truly amazing what that 5% to 10% can get away with because Christians and social conservatives always give them the benefit of the doubt, and are thus a demographic that that 5% to 10% have in the bag and can take for granted for as long as they mouth the right words about homosexuality and abortion and illegal immigration -- and pass laws to suppress them that they themselves acknowledge, even as they campaign or lobby for passage of them, will eventually be struck down as unconstitutional . . .Somehow, I make this sort of activity on the part of Republicans — in obvious, egregious, breach of one’s voter registration oath, or any elected official’s oath of office, to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” — to mean, someone is getting played, big time.If the people responsible for pushing something like that really cared about making a difference, they’d do something that would actually make a difference. If anything they did would ever make a difference. But it won’t. Roe v. Wade is law, Obergefell v. Hodges is law. But they keep pushing for the noise value. And the folks in Mayberry keep showing up for the show, hoping against hope — and being sucked in.That 5–10% that Bernie speaks of provides the only agenda that the Republican Party is able to successfully implement and to effectively make stick. Mayberry provides the bodies and the votes to enable them to do it — and gets nothing in return except empty promises to eradicate sin from the planet.And we deserve better. Mayberry and its values, the folks in Davie County, all really do have a lot to offer America, even if not all of America is so sure that the eradication of homosexuality and abortion is a thing to be had — or even attainable. We may no longer be what America is all about, and have to accept that other people are a part of what America is all about as well. But like all of those other people, we’re still an important part of it. And we do have some continuity to offer, and values that over centuries have proven timeless.If we want to be a force in American elections, we need to pack a swing vote, not get super-glued to the same party, with the same bad policies, that'll just use us and take us for granted year after year. And the way to make that happen is to make each side negotiate that swing vote with us, year after year.Otherwise, we’re not a force in politics, we're just a tool.One more demographic group to form part of the base of those who really control the Republican Party -- or to be written off and ignored altogether by the Democrats -- and taken for granted accordingly.By both sides.The Problem with Voting for the 'Most Christian' CandidateDemocrats Have a Religion Problem

Dialogue like you see below. These are my top-50 favorite scenes from the show:1.Archie (reading a political leaflet): I call this representative government. You’ve got Feldman, Salvatori, O’Reilly and Nelson: A Jew, an Italian, an Irishman and a regular American. What I call a balanced ticket.Mike: Why do you always have to label people by nationality?Archie: Because how else are you gonna get the right man for the right job? See, they’ve got Feldman up for Treasurer. That’s perfect. All them people know how to handle money. You know what I mean?Mike: No, I don’t.Archie (ignoring Mike): Then you’ve got Salvatori running for DA. He can keep an eye on Feldman. You know, I wanna tell you something about your Italians - when you do find an honest one, you’ve really got something. Then there’s O’Reilly - the mick. He can see that the graft is equally spread around. You got Nelson, the American guy. He’s good for TV appearances. Make the rest of them look respectable.2.Archie: His pal Roger is as queer as a four-dollar bill and he knows it!Mike: You know something, Archie. Just because a guy is sensitive, and an intellectual, and wears glasses, you make him out a queer.Archie: I never said a guy who wears glasses is a queer. A guy who wears glasses is a four eyes. A guy who’s a fag is a queer!Archie (turning to Edith): You’ve seen Roger sashaying around here with his lah-dee-dah talk. He’s a pansy, isn’t he?Edith: I don’t know.Archie: What do you mean you don’t know?Edith: I’m not an expert on flowers.Mike: You know, Archie, you might as well face it, you’re all alone here. We all know Roger is straight. And even if he isn’t - and I say if - what does it matter? Do you know in a lot of countries, England for instance, there’s a law that says whatever two consenting adults do in their own home is their own business?Archie: Wait a minute. We ain’t talking about England. We threw England out of here a long time ago. We don’t want no part of England. And for your information, England is a fag country!Mike: What?!Archie: Certainly. Ain’t they still picking handkerchiefs out of their sleeves and standing around leaning on them skinny umbrellas? The whole society is based on a kind of fagdom.Mike: You know, Archie, you’re right. You’re right. The British are a bunch of pansies. Pansies, sissies and queers. And the Japanese are a race of midgets, the Irish are boozers, the Mexicans are bandits…Archie: And you Polacks are meatheads!3.Edith: Maybe the Chinese say, “Buddha bless you” when they sneeze.Archie: No, they just sneeze and say nothing. They don’t speak English.Mike: Couldn’t they say Buddha bless you in Chinese?Archie: They just don’t. Or if they say anything at all, it’s ‘sayonara.”Mike: That’s not Chinese, that’s Japanese!Archie: Same thing.Mike: No it’s not!Archie: Are you telling me that if you had two of them standing there you could tell the difference?Mike: Sure I could. Because I’d talk to them. I’d ask them about themselves.Archie: Sure you’d ask them. You’d say, ‘Which of you is the Chink?4.Archie: Tell me everything. I don’t want to be kept ignorant.Mike: It’s a little late to change at your age, Archie.5.Archie: The army’s been good to you people, Lionel. It gives you three squares a day, a nice uniform, a chance to make some money…Lionel Jefferson: A chance to die in Vietnam.Archie: Well, Lionel, you’ve got to take the bad with the good.6.Archie: No, Edith. That ain’t how it works. The Hebes don’t change their first names. They change their last names. So they know each other. Like for instance, two guys meet on the street. One of them says, ‘My name is Smith…Morrie Smith.’ See what I mean? You have Sol Nelson, Izzy Watson…Mike: Abe Lincoln.Edith: I didn’t know Lincoln was Jewish!7.Gloria: Wait a minute, I want to hear the truth.Archie: Forget the truth! Listen to me!8.Archie: I’ll tell you one thing about Tommy Maclin. He used to be in jail.Mike (laughing) Oh, what a great guy!Archie: Wait a minute! Will you let me finish the story? It so happens the man was framed.Mike: How do you know?Archie: Because he told me!Mike: Oh yeah, right!Archie: All, right, what’s the point in talking to you? That’s your whole, what do you call, attitude. You’re against Tommy Maclin because you know he’s a white guy.Mike: I don’t know anything about him.Archie: I just told you he’s a white guy.Mike: So?Archie: That’s why you hate him! You are prejudiced against white people! If I told you Tommy was a black guy, you’d be crying tears and saying, “Oh, give the poor ex-con a chance.” But you know he’s a white guy, so you’re against him. Well I ain’t prejudiced that way. I ain’t prejudiced against no man just because his skin is the same color as my own!Edith: Yeah, Archie has lots of white friends.Archie: You’re damn right, Edith, and I’m going to get more!9.Archie: Say, Lionel, you never told me you had a cousin in the police force.Lionel Jefferson: Yeah, he’s the white sheep of the family.10.Archie: Being a good bowler ain’t the only thing you need to get on the “Cannon Bowlers.” You’ve got to be a special kind of guy.Mike: Special kind of guy? What are you saying?Archie: I’m saying that the “Cannon Bowlers” is all cut from the same hunk of cloth. They’re all the same. They don’t want no different guys mixin’ in. Know what I mean?Mike: I know what you mean. The team is restricted.Archie: I never said that! All I’m sayin’ is they’re, what do you call, careful.Mike: Arch, it’s discrimination keeping a guy off because of what he is!Archie: They don’t keep nobody off for what he is. They might keep a guy off for what he ain’t! Like if he ain’t a good bowler he ain’t gettin’ on…and if he ain’t white and Protestant. What could be fairer than that?Mike: Letting anyone on, no matter what color he is and no matter what religion he is. That’s what this country’s supposed to be about!Archie: Ah, get out of here! That’s only for the Civil Service! Your regular people, they all want to be with their own kind. I’ll give you a good example. Take your coloreds up in Harlem.Mike: Wait, are you saying black people live in Harlem because they want to?Archie: Certainly! It’s a free country, ain’t it? They’re all up there together. They all know the lingo there. And it’s easier for them. I’ll tell you how. Suppose a relative comes up from the South to see his family. He don’t have to go searchin’ all over town. All he’s got to do is go uptown, stand on the corner of 125th and Lennox Avenue and the family turns up.Mike: You know it’s a good thing your brain never hears what your mouth says? Because if it did you’d cut your throat!Archie: Get away from me!Later in same episode:Archie: And Edith, they have a special banquet every year and everyone gets a trophy. You know, a trophy for most improved bowler, bowler with the highest score…Mike: Bowler with the most prejudice.Archie: I’m ignoring that because first of all that ain’t what I said and second of all I wasn’t talking to you.Archie (to Edith): And another great thing about this bowling team is everyone gets a nickname on their shirt. Like the big fat guy’s nickname is “Skinny,” and the real tall guy’s nickname is “Shorty.” I’ve got to think of a nickname for myself.Edith: I know a good one: ‘Handsome!’Archie: No Edith, it don’t work that way. The nickname has to be the opposite of what the guy is.Mike: How about your initials - AB?Archie: AB? What kind of nickname is that?Mike: Then everyone could call you, “Abe-y.” You’ve got to admit, you’d be the only “Abe-y” on that team!11.Mike: You don’t understand, Mrs. Bunker. I’m an agnostic.Edith: Oh…. Does that mean you want a rabbi?Archie: I think it’s worse than that, Edith. I think it means he can’t have kids!12.Louise Jefferson: I’m so sorry to hear the news, Mr. Bunker. Was his death untimely?Archie: Yeah, around lunchtime.13.Archie (to Sammy Davis Jr.): Sammy, them words you were just saying, they reminded me of something I’ve always wondered about.Sammy: Yes, Mr. Bunker?Archie: Yeah, I mean, I know being colored, you had no choice in that. But whatever made you turn Jew?14.Archie (to Sammy Davis Jr.): Now, Sammy, no prejudice intended, but I always check the Bible on these sorts of things. I mean, if God had wanted us to be together, why didn’t He put us together? But look what He done. He put you over in Africa and the rest of us in all the white countries.Sammy: Well, He must have told you we were there, because someone came and got us! I mean, there was work for us!15.Mike (wearing a bag strapped over his shoulder): What’s wrong with it? It’s just a bag to carry things in.Archie: Do you need me to spell it out for you, Meathead? F-A-G fruit!”Gloria: Think about it daddy, even you might want one. You could keep all your cigars and papers from busting out your pockets.Archie: No man wears a purse! Case closed!Edith: In the olden days, a lot of men wore purses.Archie: Oh yeah, who?Edith: Robin Hood.Archie: Robin Hood was an English fag. That’s why the sheriff run him into the woods!16.Archie: I’m talking about the Bible, Meathead, which has nothing to do with the Jews!17.Repairman: You mean you want us to go?Archie: Do I have to spell it out for you? L-E-E-V, leave!18:Archie (seeing Lionel Jefferson at the blood bank): Oh, hey Lionel. What are you doing here, making a few extra bucks for yourself?Lionel: Oh yeah! I sweeps up!19.Archie: Lionel, why do you always go running with Mike here? Why don’t you just run by yourself?Lionel: Mr. Bunker, let me put it to you like this: If you were walking in this neighborhood, at 6 in the morning, and saw a black man coming toward you, running, all by himself, what would your reaction be?Archie: I think I see what you mean, Lionel.Lionel: I thought you would.20:Archie (to Henry Jefferson): What are you doing here? Why didn’t your brother come?Henry: You don’t want to know.Archie: Yes I do!Henry: OK, he said he ain’t never been in a honky house before, and he doesn’t want to start out at the bottom of the heap!Archie: I don’t like that, Jefferson!Edith: He said you wouldn’t.21.Archie (to Jewish repairman): You have to stay and fix the TV now!Repairman: I’m sorry. It’s my sabbath. I just can’t go against my religion.Archie: Hey, Hey! Turning down business - THAT’S against your religion!Repairman: Mr. Bunker, I can only answer that insult with an old Jewish expression: ‘Tzun a leben in a hoyz mit a toyznt tsimers aye zolt hobn a boykhveytik un yeder tsimer.’Archie: What the hell does that mean?Repairman: You'll never know, but believe me, I got even.[The Yiddish expression means: "May you live in a house with a thousand rooms, and get a stomachache in each room"]22.Gloria (to Archie): Do you know that 65% of murder victims in America last year were killed with handguns?Archie: Would it make you feel any better, little girl, if they was pushed out of windows?23.Gloria (to Archie): I think it will be wonderful having a black family living next door.Archie: Oh, you’ll think it’s wonderful when the watermelon rinds come flying out the window!24:Mike (to Archie): Are you saying the black man has it as easy getting a job as you did?Archie: Easier, Meathead. He has it easier. I didn’t have no million people marching in the street to get me my job!Edith: Yeah, his uncle got it for him.25.:Archie (to Mike): This priest ain’t kosher, and I’ll prove it to you!26.Mike (to Archie): Why is Jefferson number two?Archie: Because, Meathead, there can only be one number 1 and one number 2, and life made Jefferson number 2 long before I come along.Gloria: So then Puerto Ricans are number three then, huh Daddy?Archie: Well not necessarily there, little girl. Your Puerto Ricans can be 4. Your Japs and your Chinks can be 3: Three-A and three-B.27:Henry Jefferson (to Archie): You’re the one who passed around a petition to keep another black family from moving onto the block.Archie: How do you know it was me?Henry: Because you’re always against any improvement in the neighborhood!28.Archie: Listen, little girl. If you want to pick a winner, you’ll vote for Lundy!Gloria: I’m not interested in picking a winner.Archie: Well I knew that the day you married this guy!29.Archie (to political candidate Claire Packer): Well it’s nice to meet you, Miss Claire Packer, so I can give you a piece of my mind. You know, if you liberals all keep getting your way, we’re going to hear one loud flush, and that’s the sound of the US of A goin’ down the toilet!Packer: Listen Mr. Bunker. I want your vote tomorrow. Now you tell me, how do I get it?Archie: Can you handle a shotgun? Cuz that’s the only way I know!Mike (to candidate): Come on, let’s go.Packer: No, wait. I want to talk to Mr. Bunker.Archie: Listen, sis, I got a word of advice for you. Women and politics is like oil and gasoline - they don't mix. It's against nature.Packer: Why, Mr. Bunker, you sound like a male chauvinist.Archie: Right, an ordinary taxpayer. Now you better stop runnin' for public office and start runnin' for a husband, 'cause I wanna tell ya, from where I sit, you got some running to do.30.Archie (to desk sergeant): That's what I keep telling my big, dumb Polack son in-law.Desk Sergeant: Big, dumb what?Archie: Polack!Mike: Say it louder, Arch. Sgt. Pulaski didn't hear you.31.Archie: She waits all her life for Mr. Right, and now she’s going to marry Mr. Wrong…ski!”32.Mike: Are you going to tell this man you're taping his conversation?Archie: Does J. Edgar Hoover tell anybody?Gloria: If you don't tell him you're taping him, you're depriving him of his civil rights.Archie: He ain't colored, he's Polish!Mike: Archie, you're violating his rights under the First Amendment.Archie: Whose side are you on anyhow, huh? Look at me, I know I got a lot going against me, I'm white, I'm Protestant, I'm hard-working. Can't you find one lousy amendment to protect me?33.Archie: Wait a minute, there, Jefferson. It takes more than brains to get elected.Henry Jefferson: Then why haven’t we had a black president yet? Some black people are just as dumb as Nixon.Archie: That’s easy. God ain’t ready for a black president.Mike: Wait a minute: What!?Archie: You heard me, Meathead. God ain’t ready yet. He’s got to try it out first by having a black pope. And there ain’t been one of those.Lionel: Maybe that’s because God isn’t Catholic?Archie: Well we already know that, Lionel.34.George Jefferson: I don't want no daughter-in-law that's a zebra.Louise Jefferson: Why not? She don't mind a father-in-law who's a jackass.35.Archie: Wait a minute. Are you telling me you hit a car with a can of cling peaches?Edith: Yeah…it was a freak accident!Gloria: How could a can of cling peaches do so much damage?Edith: Maybe it was the heavy syrup.36.Archie: I know one thing about this election: It’s going to be won by Floyd J. Lundy, your distinguished incrumbent!Mike: Floyd Lundy?Archie: My man.Mike: How can you be for Lundy? He’s against school busing, he’s voted down every pay raise for teachers, and he’s a hawk on Vietnam!Archie: A great American.37.Political candidate (to Archie): What do you have against welfare?Archie: I’ll tell you what I have against it. I’m against having my hard-earned money taken away and given to people I’m not even related to. And who I couldn’t be related to for complexionary reasons!38:Lionel: That guy, Mr. Bird, he’s what we call an Oreo cookie. You know, black on the outside, white on the inside.Archie: Yeah, Lionel. I’m glad you think he’s a good guy. I liked him, too.Lionel: Yeah, I thought you would.39.Archie: God don’t make no mistakes! That’s how he got to be God!40:Archie (to Irene Lorenzo): It’s a well known fact, Irene. Men are worth more than women.41:Archie: This country was ruined by Franklin Delano Roosevelt!Maude: You’re fat!42.Archie: Oh yeah, Mike - don’t tell your friend Lionel that Sammy Davis Jr. is coming over. He’ll get on his tom-tom and we’ll be up to our necks in jungle bunnies!Mike: Come on Arch. What’s the difference between our friend Lionel Jefferson and Sammy Davis Jr.?Archie: Ten million dollars and five purple Cadillacs! (turning to Edith): Now Edith, get some fried chicken cooking in the kitchen because they like to snack on that.43.Archie: What do you want me to do, spend over $600 on a funeral for a cousin who used to sit on my face?Edith: He'll never do it again, Archie.44.Archie: Guess what famous and important personality I carried as a passenger in my cab today.Edith: Oh, tell us!Archie: Oh, no, no, you ain't gonna get it out of me that easy. Come on, you gotta guess for this one.Edith: Oh, all right, let's try. I'll go first. Living or dead?Archie: I was driving a cab, Edith, not a hearse. Go back to your Solitaire, huh.Gloria: Give us a hint. Is he in show business?Archie: Bingo. I'll give you another hint. Bongo, bongo, bongo.Mike: Well, he's either Desi Arnaz, or knowing you, he's probably black.Archie: Right. Black as the ace of spades.45.Mike: In today's society, if something doesn't work, you throw it out.Archie: Well, you don't work, maybe we'd better throw you out.46.Mr. Vechino: (referring to God) He sees everything! He knows everything we do!Archie: Get outta here, you don't really believe that.Mr. Vechino: Yes, I do!Archie: Then how come youse people are always running to confession, telling Him what's happening?Mr. Vechino: Now we're getting the truth! It's because I'm Catholic that you ain't helping me!Archie: That ain't the truth. I'd say the same thing even if you belonged to the right church!47.Maude: Archie, you have ruined my daughter's wedding!Archie: Well, that makes us even, Maude, because you ruined my weekend!48.Gloria: Was your father strict with you, I mean, on who you went out with?Edith: Oh, yeah. The boy had to be kind, and thoughtful, and a gentleman.Mike: How did Archie ever pass that test?Edith: Well, Dad died a year before I met Archie.49.Henry Jefferson (to his nephew, Lionel): If they want to mix up the races, let 'em. But we're going to keep ours pure! No more of that cream into the coffee!50.Archie: It's right there in your Second Amendment.Edith: Oh no, Archie. That's the one that says "Thou shalt not make any graven image."Archie: That ain't the Constitution, Edith. What you said is the Gettysburg Address.51.Archie: Because, Meathead, the Indians don’t vote.Mike: Archie, the Indians were given the vote in 1924.Archie: I ain’t talking about that. I’m saying that they don’t use their vote, like a fella told me. They sell all their horses for booze and then they can’t ride into town.Mike: That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!Archie: That ain’t stupid. That’s the truth! That’s what the Indians do to us after all we done for them!52.Archie (to Mike): Aw, what’s the sense in talking to you? You don’t believe nothin’ I say. You don’t believe nothin’ unless you read it in one of them pinko, left-wing magazines of yours!Mike: You’re wrong, Archie. You’re wrong about everything that happened tonight.Archie: I AIN’T WRONG! I was just like a perfect gentleman, and that colored guy came in and stepped all over me!53A:Evil Archie (in repairman episode -per Mike’s version of events):The refrigerator’s on the blink again? It ain’t got no right to be on the blink again, it’s only 15 years old! (Turns to Mike): If it’s on the blink again, it’s your fault! Opening and closing it all the time to feed your face! YOU DUMB, MEATHEADED, UNEMPLOYED, OVER-SEXED, PINKO, PROFESSOR OF POLACK, YOU!!!Mike: Those aren’t very kind things to say. But I’ll try to do better.53B:Evil Mike (in repairman episode - per Archie’s version of events):Archie: Oh, the refrigerator is broke? Ah well, heaven knows we’ve had our money’s worth out of that old box.Mike (jumps off couch and runs up to Archie): HEY! What kind of dirty crack was that?Archie: What did I say, Michael?Gloria: You insulted my husband!Archie: Well I hope not.Mike (getting in Archie’s face): You’re saying I’m the one who broke the refrigerator! Well I’m not the only one who uses it, you know! I’m not the only one who eats! We all eat! You eat 10 times as much as I do, so don’t go making dirty cracks like that!Gloria (also in Archie’s face): Michael’s right, daddy. He’s right. Did you hear me? Michael’s always right!Archie: Well of course he is, he’s a college boy. Look, I think you two are taking me up wrong. I realize there are four people living here and one of them’s in college doing brainwork and needs all the food he can eat and he’s welcome to it it’s delightful having a student in the house.54.Archie (to Lionel Jefferson): You know them riots youse people are always going to?Lionel: “Youse people?”Archie: I don’t mean you, personally. I mean, you know, the troublemakers.Lionel: Oh, them other people.Archie. Right. Now at these riots, do they ever break into jewelry stores?Lionel: Sure. They don’t want no one to feel left out!Archie: Ok, say during one of these riots, a guy breaks into a jewelry store and swipes a watch. And then, later on, the watch gets broke. For instance, a cop tries to hit the guy in the head, and hits the watch instead. You can see this happening right?Lionel: Oh, definitely. That’s the kind of thing that gives riots a bad name!Archie: Well I have this friend, see, and his watch broke.Lionel: Your friend got in a riot?Archie: No, no, no. He’s a white guy!Lionel: Ohhh.Archie: And he’s wondering where he could get the watch fixed, you know, on the QT.Lionel: Oh, Mr. Bunker, I wouldn’t know about them places.Archie: I don’t mean you. I mean, maybe a friend.Lionel: Oh, my friends aren’t into little things. They’re more into cars, air conditioners, refrigerators…Archie: Never a watch?Lionel: No, but if you want, I could put in an order for the next riot!Later in same episode:Edith: Archie, I’ve got the ticket for your watch.Archie: What!Edith: Your ‘round the world watch. I took it to Abrams Jewelers.Archie: Why did you do that?Edith: Well, you said it was broken…Archie: Oh, Edith!Lionel: Ain’t that a coincidence, Mr. Bunker. Your friend’s watch broke the same time yours did!Archie: See you around, Lionel.55.Archie: Back in my day, there wasn’t none of this “Afro-American” or “Italian-American” stuff. Everyone was just a plain old American. And after that, if you were a spick or a spade, it was your own business.56.Archie: Look at the meathead over here, stuffing his face again.Mike: Hey, I like to eat!Archie: Well, so does a tapeworm. But we don’t need none of them around here.57.Sammy Davis Jr.: If you were prejudiced, Archie, when I came into your house, you would have called me a "coon" or a "nigger." But you didn't say that, I heard you clear as a bell, right straight out you said: "colored".Archie: Yeah, that's what I done, all right.Sammy Davis Jr.: And if you were prejudiced, you would, like some people, close their eyes to what's going on in this great country that we live in. But not you, Archie, your eyes are wide open. You can tell the difference between black and white. And I have a deep-rooted feeling that you'll always be able to tell the difference between black and white.“And if you were prejudiced, you'd walk around thinking that you're better than anybody else in the world. But I can honestly say, after spending these marvelous moments with you, you ain't better than anybody.Archie [extends his hand]: Can I have your hand on that, Sammy?57.Archie (Explaining to Lionel why a black family shouldn’t move into his neighborhood): They ain't gonna be happy here. What are they gonna do? What are they gonna do for recreation? There ain't a crap game or a pool hall in the whole neighborhood. There ain't a chicken shack or a rib joint within miles.Lionel: No ribs? Oh Lawd all mighty, what is we gonna do?!Archie and Lionel Jefferson (above)Mike and Archie (below)Sammy Davis Jr. and Archie (below):