The Legend of Betty White
It can be hard to believe at this point, but there was a time when Golden Girls was seen as just a television program. It was a popular and beloved sitcom, but it nevertheless inhabited the world of television and entertainment rather than the realm of legend and myth.
That started to change a few decades back with the meme-ification of Bea Arthur. Due to her pioneering role as Maude Findlay in All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and finally Maude, Arthur had always been a badass feministic icon, a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners, suffer-no-fools smart-ass at the center of one of the most daring and audacious television hits of all time.
But the internet elevated Arthur to a whole new level of fame and glory. She stopped being just a popular and respected actress and became something closer to an idea or an ideal: the mother or older sister or friend everyone wish they had or were, someone who was unapologetically themself and unapologetically strong.
Arthur’s genially glowering image adorned novelty tee-shirts and bumper stickers and memes. Arthur lived a very long time and accomplished an extraordinary amount in her eighty-six years on the planet but at a certain point her fame eclipsed the real woman and took on a life of its own.
Something very similar happened to Arthur’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Golden Girls co-star Betty White. Like Arthur, White was always a revered cultural figure, a bona fide national treasure who has delighted generations of adoring Americans.
But just like Arthur, White became something much more than just an actress or a celebrity. White enjoyed a late in life surge of popularity so intense that it seemed a like a disconcerting percentage of Americans had an unhealthy attachment to White and a borderline disconcerting investment in her life and career.
Damn you, cursed image!
This helps explain how a grass roots movement developed around getting Lorne Michaels to invite White to host Saturday Night Live.
Hosting Saturday Night Live is our greatest honor, one only given to gods like Andrew “Dice” Clay, Steve Forbes and an endless series of superstars whose gifts as athletes are only usurped by their preternatural talent for making audiences laugh.
That people genuinely cared about White hosting Saturday Night Live speaks to our unique bond with the actress. It became a movement because the masses loved White and wanted only nice things for her.
Like Arthur, White became an icon for a whole new generation for whom she was, again, a folk hero and an icon for the ages, not just an unusually appealing performer with crack comic timing.
White was the kind of super-celebrity who inspires Twitter “parody” accounts of things White most assuredly did not actually say but are roughly in keeping with her persona.
Just as people got really fucking worked up about White hosting the consistently mediocre and sub-mediocre live television sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live they were SUPER geeked about her turning one hundred.
I’m one of those people. On more than one occasion the thought, “We’re living in hell and everything feels hopeless but at least we have Betty White’s hundredth birthday to look forward to. That will briefly distract us from the unrelenting misery of our everyday existence.” has rattled around in my brain.
She just had to make it a few more weeks! Then everyone would have been happy forever!
When I saw that White had died on New Year’s Eve, just a few weeks before the culture-wide celebration that would have greeted her 100th birthday I was sad because an actress and personality who I enjoyed and admired had died.
We need the idea of Betty White more than ever, because things look pretty damn hopeless right now. Thankfully the idea of Betty White outlives her.
Nothing begets a legend quite like an early death. Accordingly, White’s premature passing has only cemented her place among the gods of American pop culture.
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