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%.
unny how such a rabid pinko came to be known as the ultimate representative of small-town, Heartland values...
ReplyDeleteDavid "Applebee's salad bar" Brooks is in charge of those now, thank you very much.
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Good night, Sheriff.
ReplyDeleteDavid "Applebee's salad bar" Brooks is in charge of those now, thank you very much.
ReplyDeleteMayberry 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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
ReplyDeleteNonnie seems to be irate.
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Nonnie seems to be irate.
ReplyDeleteHe just doesn't understand snark.
Irate for Andy Griffith.
ReplyDeleteThat last vid is great; funny however that he refers to a "sacred right of privacy," rather than actual Constitutional guarantees against self-incrimination.
ReplyDeleteIrate for Andy Griffith.
ReplyDeleteEmbrace 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.
ReplyDeleteYour spelling bothers me far more than Andy's politics, with which I agreed.
ReplyDeleteYou're back? Give it up, it's been two years, and your understanding of snark hasn't improved in all that time.
ReplyDelete