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Jewish World Review
July 6, 2012/ 16 Tamuz, 5772
Why we'll miss Andy Griffith
By
Jay Ambrose
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
One reason I always liked Andy Griffith is that a character he played seemed in some ways like my father. Raised on a poor Kentucky farm in the early 20th century, Carl Ambrose always had a twinkle in his eye, humor in his soul and a friendliness that reached out to everyone. There was shrewdness in him at the same time, and the Andy we saw in his best-known TV show was no one's fool, either.
Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry was in fact smart, on top of being endlessly kind, and that was one of the marvels of the show at a time when unflattering prejudices about the South and some country folks were in vogue. To be sure, the South had done a lot to earn its reputation of being racist, but that was never the whole story. I have known scads of Southerners and people from rural settings all over who are very special.
Griffith himself seems to have been blessed with mightily moral characteristics. People who knew him have been telling obit writers, on the occasion of his death Tuesday at age 86, what fine things he was always doing. He was a native of North Carolina who aimed for some career objectives he did not achieve while achieving others beyond expectation. And in his career he played characters who were nothing like wise, lovable Andy of Mayberry. We're reminded these roles were of villains who were cruel and vicious.
But I am old enough to remember his 1953 monologue on college football, in which he comes across as a yokel utterly likeable through and through. You can revisit the routine on the Internet and hear him describing the game as a fight over a pumpkin in a cow pasture, and I defy you not to laugh. Griffith played a yokel again in the 1958 movie, "No Time for Sergeants," which I remember as very, very funny, although I have not seen it in years.
Griffith stayed nice but quit being a yokel in "The Andy Griffith Show" of the 1960s. Of course, Barney Fife, as played by comedic genius Don Knotts, might be described as yokel-like, though much else was at play in his personality, such as a sense of self-importance perhaps compensating for a deeper sense of not measuring up. In the end, he would do what made sense, as is pointed out in an excellent July 4 New York Times piece by Neil Genzlinger.
So how does the Griffith show compare with TV fare today? I admit that I mostly watch current-events shows and sports. My wife and I do watch an occasional series and I surf the channels sometimes to see what is there. I supplement all of this by reading about TV, and here is my impression: There's some splendid acting and obvious intelligence and artistic ability behind the best of the shows, but many of the cable dramas and sitcoms are crude beyond belief, a eat deal of both cable and broadcast is stupid beyond belief and some of the reality shows are trashy beyond belief.
Nothing I have run across has the wholesomeness of the Griffith show, which is not the same as saying sitcoms should all be fashioned in that mode. It is instead a way of saying we have drifted far from an entertainment world that could give us really, really decent human beings always making final resort to decent behavior to solve their problems, with no untoward innuendo or sex scenes thrown in.
I miss my father, and in a different way, I am going to miss Andy and already miss Hollywood norms that could foster TV shows like the one named for him.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
• 07/05/12: All will feel Affordable Care Act's bite
• 07/02/12: A social solution --- homes with dads
• 06/27/12: Being a 'nation of immigrants' is not an excuse
• 06/20/12: Barack Obama the autocrat
• 06/18/12: Bradbury's lessons for today
• 06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
• 06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
• 06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
• 06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
• 06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
• 05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
• 05/23/12: Student loans fail students
• 05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
• 05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
• 05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
• 05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
• 05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
• 04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
• 04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
• 04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
• 04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
• 04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
• 04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
• 04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
• 04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
• 03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
• 03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
• 03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
• 03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
• 03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
• 03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
• 03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
• 03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
• 02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
• 02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
• 02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
• 02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
• 02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
• 02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
• 02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
• 01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
• 01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
• 01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
• 01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
• 01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
• 01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
• 01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
• 01/04/12: How America smothers itself
• 12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
• 12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
• 12/21/11: A tale of two men
• 12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
• 12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
• 12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
• 12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
• 12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
• 11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
• 11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
• 11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
• 11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
• 11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
• 11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
• 11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
• 11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
• 10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
• 10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest - or at least shouldn't be
• 10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
• 10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
• 09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
• 09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
• 09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
• 09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
• 09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
• 09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
• 09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
• 09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
• 08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
• 08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
• 08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
• 08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
• 08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
• 08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
• 08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
• 08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
• 08/03/11: The people who may save America
• 07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
• 07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
• 07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
• 07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
• 07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
• 07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
• 07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
• 07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
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