FONZIE MADE ME LIBERAL

Well, anti-authoritarian, anyway.

The other day I was flipping around channels on the TV while getting a quick bite to eat before I had to go back to class. Ordinarily, I don't stop to watch Happy Days. The general consenus seems to be that the show died when Fonzie jumped the shark, but I'm pretty much of the opinion that it was over after the first season or so: once the Fonz became less of a hood, less threatening, an adopted member of the Cunningham family, a thug with a heart of gold, Happy Days became lame. That first year when there was actually a chance that Fonzie might beat the crap out of Richie if he looked at him the wrong way, the show had some edge to it. The Fonz was cool then, uncool later.

Anyway, that's all beside the point. For the first time in many years, I watched an episode of Happy Days. Why? Because it was an episode that I had completely forgotten, an episode where the people of Milwaukee stood up to the cops and struck a blow for Bohemian individuality. The long and the short of the story is that a new guy becomes the county sheriff and he decides to run the Fonz out of town. When Mr. C, at the urging of his son, calls a special lodge meeting to try to help out Fonzie, Sheriff Kirk busts in and starts issuing citations to everybody. Distraught, the Fonz decides to leave town. Later, while Fonzie meets at midnight with the authoritarian cop at Arnold's to let him know that he's won, dozens of community members walk in dressed in black leather jackets to essentially tell Kirk to go to hell. The sheriff is flabbergasted and backs down.

Here is a brief synopsis of the episode called "A. K. A. the Fonz."

The point here is that I saw this episode when I was in the third grade. It had to have had some kind of effect on me. After all, I still remember to this day that final scene where everybody, including Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham, is dressed like the Fonz, snapping their fingers and telling the law where to stick it. I loved it when I was a kid, but I treasure it now: it is a simple but effective morality play about the value and function of democracy. I'm sure it sounds absurd, but "A. K. A. the Fonz" taught me, at the age of eight, the essence of these lines from the Declaration of Independence:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government...

Not simply a right: a duty. When I was a kid I got to see the characters of Happy Days doing their duty as citizens, throwing off despotic government, and I really think this was something of a key formative moment for me. I learned that democracy is cool.

Thanks, Fonzie.



Aaaaay!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$