My Informed Nuanced Unapologetic Takes Everyday

-THE TAKE-

The Cosby Show is one of my favorite shows of all time. What I miss about those golden-era TV shows is that there were actual life lessons taught in them. Family values, morals, ethics, standards of propriety — all of it woven right into the comedic acting. You were laughing too hard to notice you were being raised. Sitcoms are a seriously underrated art form, and I don't think we'll fully appreciate what we had until it's clear it isn't coming back.

Anyway. This "trash can lid" episode I'm talking about is the one where Vanessa brings Dabnis home and introduces him — cold — to the whole family as her fiancé. Nobody knew she was dating him. Nobody knew he existed. She just walks in with a grown man and a ring and expects everybody to clap.

They didn't. And Dabnis, being a man with some pride, took the chilly reception personal. Figured the family looked down on him, figured they didn't think he measured up. So Cliff pulls him aside, and instead of arguing about whether the man was good enough, he paints him a picture. A beautiful steak dinner. Then he sets that steak down on a garbage can lid and asks him, plain — you still want it now?

Because it was never really about Dabnis. The steak might've been perfect. The problem was the way it got served. VANESSA presented the whole thing wrong. She sprang it on people who had every right to be brought in the proper way, then acted like their reaction was the offense. Cliff wasn't ruling on the man. He was ruling on the rollout. The dinner failed before anybody ever picked up a fork.

And that's the kind of thing those old shows did to us. They'd slip a whole grown lesson in under the jokes, and half the wisdom I carry I picked up sideways from a sitcom, when sitcoms taught values, before I ever heard it in a sermon. So no, I don't watch that episode and just see a family squabble. I see a principle. And the principle walks straight into the biggest fight we've had in this country in years.

I think about that steak every time somebody wants to lecture me about immigration.

Let me tell you what the last few years actually felt like. It felt like Vanessa walking in the house with a stranger and a ring, telling a whole country to smile and deal with it. Under Biden and Harris, millions and millions of people came across our southern border (STILL don’t know the real number, I hope you’ve noticed I keep harping on that point), and the American people were never once brought into that decision like adults. It got handed to us as a done deal. Already settled. Small towns that never signed up for it got told to absorb it overnight — schools registering kids they had no seats for, shelters and ERs that were already backed up getting stretched past the breaking point, working folks watching the bottom of the labor market get flooded while somebody on TV called their concern a character flaw. Every time a regular person raised a hand to ask a fair question, they got treated like the problem instead of the one pointing at it. The only role we were handed was to accept it, adjust to it, and feel like monsters if we said a word.

Now let me be clear, because people love to twist this. The steak can be a good steak. I don't doubt for one second that most folks crossing that border want the exact same thing my people always wanted — a shot, a little safety, a future for their kids. I'm not going to insult that. Dabnis might've been the best thing that ever happened to Vanessa. That was never the argument. It's not that people are against immigration — it's that we've got every right to be against millions and millions of folks getting thrust on us with no say in the matter. The argument is the LID.

And watch how fast the logic flips when it gets personal. The same people telling the country to accept whatever shows up would lose their whole mind if their own daughter walked in next week engaged to somebody they'd never met, wedding already booked. They'd want to know who, when, how, and why they're just now hearing about it. They'd feel disrespected, and they'd be right to. But scale that exact disrespect up to a whole nation and suddenly asking the questions makes you a bigot. Come on. You don't actually believe that. You just got trained not to say it out loud.

And that training is the part nobody wants to examine. Somewhere along the way a word got wired straight to a feeling that has nothing to do with it. You say BORDER and a certain crowd hears hate. You say enforce the law and they hear cruelty. You say a country is allowed to have a limit and they act like you compared human beings to trash. That reflex didn't fall out of the sky. It got planted, repeated, and rewarded until it started passing for a conscience. And the tell is that the people running that reflex never once turn it on their own front gate, their own guest list, their own money. Everybody on earth believes in limits. They just got talked into pretending the country is the one house on the block that isn't allowed to have any.

Here's what should bother you if you've got a principle left in you. The expectation was never that we'd talk it through. The expectation was that we'd swallow it and move on — go quiet because saying no felt uncomfortable. But a country that'll accept ANYTHING as long as it's pushed hard enough has forgotten it's even allowed to have a standard. And then, right on cue, folks finally start saying enough. Enforcement comes back. Deportations come back. The hard, unpleasant cleanup of a mess we didn't make comes back. And now WE'RE the villains, for wanting the thing done in an order that respects the people already standing in the house?

The responsibility sits exactly where Cliff put it. Not on the steak — on the one who served it wrong. Biden and Harris are the ones who brought this to the family as a surprise nobody signed off on. They decided the country's consent was optional and its patience was infinite. So when people get heated about the cleanup, aim the heat at the ones who created the situation, not at the folks now trying to set the table right.

I'll say this as a believer and keep it plain: order was never the enemy of compassion. You can love people and still believe a thing ought to be done decently and in order — the two have lived under the same roof for a very long time. Somebody just needed you to forget it so you'd hand over your judgment and feel righteous doing it.

And if you read all this as me hating immigrants, you're either not paying attention or you don't want to. The whole point is the presentation. It's being handed something enormous, with no warning and no vote, and getting told your only acceptable response is gratitude.

Serve it to me right and we can talk all day. Serve it to me on a garbage can lid and tell me to be thankful? Nah. I've seen that episode. I know how it ends.

-THE CLOSE-

That's the minute. You paused, you looked closer — that's the whole point. If this made you think, do two things: forward it to one person who needs to slow down too, and if somebody sent you here, get on the list so you don't miss the next one. See clearly. Think deeply. Respond wisely. — WAYTAMINUTE