That '80s show: did Michael Jordan and Michael J. Fox invent modern individualism?

• Author: Walker, Jesse
• Position: Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now--Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything - Book review

Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now--Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything, by David Sirota, Ballantine Books, 220 pages, $25

1971 SAW THE DEBUT of All in the Family, a generation-gap comedy that pitted a liberal college student against his conservative father-in-law. 1982 saw the debut of Family Ties, a generation-gap comedy that pitted a pair of liberal ex-hippies against their conservative son. As anyone with a taste for reruns knows, the two shows had drastically different styles. In Back to Our Future, a book about the pop culture of the 1980S, David Sirota makes a much shakier claim: that All in the Family used "sixties-motivated youth and progressivism to ridicule fifties-rooted parents and their traditionalism" while Family Ties was its "antithesis."

Actually, the shows had a lot in common. Both were launched by liberal writers who were surprised when large swaths of the audience identified with their conservative creations. Both programs processed this viewer reaction by shifting their focus and tone. On All in the Family, the crusty old bigot played by Carroll O'Connor became cuddlier and less offensive, and in some episodes it was his son-in-law who came off as the greater fool. On Family Ties, Michael J. Fox's kid Reaganite moved to the center of the show and, after a while, became less of a Young Republican stereotype. (He may have been a conservative, but he was also, as far as I can recall, the only sitcom character of the 1980s to have spoken up for the First Amendment rights of Eugene V. Debs.) Sirota, a liberal columnist and broadcaster, uses Family Ties to illustrate the era's "fifties-glorifying jihad against the sixties." But while the show did make its share of hippie jokes, its attitude toward the '60s always struck me as more bittersweet nostalgia than anything else: the liberalism of a thirtysomething professional who's given up on levitating the Pentagon but still tries to live his life by his youthful values. Family Ties feels less like a farewell to the '60s than a sign that the older era's ghosts still had a home in the age of Reagan.

Sirota thinks the '80s marked the beginning of an ethos that still governs the country today. The decade, he argues, saw an overt rejection of the ideals of the '60s, with a series of pop artifacts that held up hippies and protesters for ridicule. It exalted the individual, with hero worship of talented figures like Michael Jordan (and not-so-talented figures who wanted to Be Like Mike) replacing the spirit of teamwork. It promoted a new narcissism, now on display everywhere from the blogosphere to the self-help shelf. Its pop culture methodically denigrated the government, preferring private-sector remedies like the Ghostbusters and the A Team over traditional tax-funded bureaucracies--except the military, which was relentlessly glorified. On top...