Mayberry In Truth

 

CBS "Sunday Morning," often a forum for nice news featured one of its segments a return to Andy of Mayberry, the Andy Griffith sitcom that  was "wholesome entertainment" beginning in 1960.  Ted Koppel had the distinction of interviewing a bus load of primarily white tourists to the recreated set.  The answers to the questions he asked were as if he took a trip to one of the Maga rallies for Trump where the responders gave a litany of false information they absolutely thought was true.  They reiterated, sadly, conspiracy theories about the virus and mostly did not support mandatory vaccination even though medical experts advocate for it.  Of course, they regurgitated the ever present big lie as to whether or not the election of Biden as president was a fraud.  Most resoundingly they said it was and that they had a plethora of evidence to back up their views.  It was as if they took a test that Trump engineered and they passed with the proverbial flying colors.  Most thought, of course, Biden is an illegitimate president.  Oh yes, they told Koppel, a journalist for over 20 years, that they, in fact, thought the media spawned "fake news" and was the enemy of the people as Trump has so often said.  Koppel offered no rebuttal to any of this which left me frustrated wishing I were on the bus to offer one or two or many oppositions.  Black Lives Matter protests were seen by them as subversive and violent but the January 6 true violent storming of the Capitol by right wing terrorists and Trump supporting trespassers to overthrow an election was seen as perfected by left wing radicals.  Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other right wing extremists were it was said photo shopped brandishing weapons and Confederate flags they used in rage both on police and on the Capitol itself.  In the final analysis four people died in this some even said friendly fire onslaught but oh it was also fabricated by Antifa and other left wing radicals. 

In truth I have watched Andy of Mayberry when I needed a rest from political discord.  I can understand that.  The problem is when these supporters in the Maga crowd refuse to believe in verified truth.  If they refuse to do that then what?  Who has had true power in Mayberry and in the US? Who has had power for centuries ever since the nation's founding? If you said white men always had all the power you would be right. That is why one complains about Mayberry. There is zero element of veracity in its portrayal.  It was portraying, in fact, a very southern town in North Carolina based on where Andy Griffith grew up but few blacks were ever seen or blacks were imperceptible in a crowd of people. None of the main characters or not so main characters was black. There were no stories about blacks and surely no stories about Emmet Til or Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglas and no stories about the history of slavery and certainly no stories of lynchings or segregated swimming pools or segregated lunch counters.  There were no stories about Jim Crow laws or literacy tests or grandfather clauses or counting jelly beans in a jar as tests to vote which blacks could not answer. 

This is why I look at Mayberry and ask what truth is there in each episode.  Mayberry was and continued to be a white man's illusion and a white man's fantasy for how white men of our modern era wished the south to be but in truth never was.  Andy Griffith's Mayberrry should read Mayberry of Bull Connor, of John Stennis and of George "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever" Wallace.  Maybe there is more truth in Mayberry to that!