White Liberal Guilt 2.0
They’ve dressed it up with splashes of color, but the new Sex and the City revival still doesn’t have a clue about race and the city.
Despite the enduring popularity of certain sitcoms from the early ’90s to the early ’00s, the era was not exactly a golden age of television. Some of the most-successful shows from that period — Frasier, Friends, Mad About You, Seinfeld, Sex and the City, Will & Grace — feel largely dated today, not just due to the period hairstyles and fashion but because of the way they seem to exist in an alternate universe of Whiteness.
It’s not just the Whiteness of it all that separates these now-vintage hits from the best classic sitcoms of the ’70s. My favorites from the earlier decade — shows like All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Maude, and Sanford and Son — hold up in 2021, despite being dated visually, because they gave us more than humor and entertainment. They also offered commentary about the times we were living in, times that haven’t changed as much as they should have.
When I laugh while watching Beatrice Arthur’s title character on Maude spout her White-liberal nonsense and engaging in performative progressivism, I laugh and cringe because she sounds like a 1970s version of a “woke” White liberal. If she were alive today, she’d…
