Beloved American icon and ardent socialist Andy Griffith has died at the age of eighty-six. While best known as the homespun sheriff of idealized, fictional small-town Mayberry, Griffith also played small-town lawyer and catnip-for fogies Matlock.
In a more atpyical role, Griffith played amoral opportunist and rabble-rouser Lonesome Rhodes in the frighteningly prescient A Face in the Crowd:
In his subversive Andy Griffith Show, Griffith portrayed a gentle Southern sheriff who lived in a sanitized, all-white town... a role antithetical to the tradition of the Southern lawman embodied by Bull Connor. While superficially all-American, Griffith's Sheriff Taylor represented the tyranny of the state and a soft-on-crime belief in the power of rehabilitative jailing:
Of course, in later years, Andy Griffith didn't even bother to hide his socialist, statist tendencies:
Funny how such a rabid pinko came to be known as the ultimate representative of small-town, Heartland values... he even had the temerity to disguise himself as a good, Christian man. Of all the tools of teh Debbil, deception is the greatest.
Uh, if I can turn off the snark for a while, I have to say that my favorite episode of The Andy Griffith Show was the episode in which Gomer Pyle tried to effect a citizen's arrest of Deputy Barney Fife... it cracks me up every time:
Damn, if only small-town sheriffs were as gentlemanly and competent as Griffith's Sheriff Taylor... I prefer the fictional version of America's sheriff to what's passing for America's sheriff nowadays. Rest in peace, Mr Griffith.
UPDATE: I just found this, and it makes Andy's passing even sadder to me:
Now, those are some real American values that I can get behind 100%.
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13 comments:
unny how such a rabid pinko came to be known as the ultimate representative of small-town, Heartland values...
David "Applebee's salad bar" Brooks is in charge of those now, thank you very much.
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Good night, Sheriff.
David "Applebee's salad bar" Brooks is in charge of those now, thank you very much.
Mayberry had an Applebees?
Good night, Sheriff.
He was a class act.
I Catered a BBQ pig roast for Andy, and i saw a good descent man, can't say that for the Bald Prick that runs this blog.
I Catered a BBQ pig roast for Andy, and i saw a good descent man, can't say that for the Bald Prick that runs this blog.
I just can't get too worked up over the opinion of someone whose spelling and reading comprehension skills are as poor as yours.
Dang, B^4.
Nonnie seems to be irate.
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Nonnie seems to be irate.
He just doesn't understand snark.
Irate for Andy Griffith.
That last vid is great; funny however that he refers to a "sacred right of privacy," rather than actual Constitutional guarantees against self-incrimination.
Irate for Andy Griffith.
Embrace your anger!
That last vid is great; funny however that he refers to a "sacred right of privacy," rather than actual Constitutional guarantees against self-incrimination.
I think it was just a relic of a time before "strict constructionist" fantasies became vogue.
Honestly who cars what a skinhead in prison thinks... I believe Andy's politics are what bother you most.
Your spelling bothers me far more than Andy's politics, with which I agreed.
You're back? Give it up, it's been two years, and your understanding of snark hasn't improved in all that time.
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