Mayberry is back..............................sort of.

First, what's the surprising twist? The video seems quite long.

[quote] Andy was molesting Opie

Racist thread

[quote] First, what's the surprising twist?

Aunt Bee and Clara were lovers, and liked to get it on in front of Opie.

Southerners & others longing for the past are 100% Trumpers. Quelle surprise.

[quote] And then, it take a totally unexpected turn at the end. Kind of surprised me.

Can;t you just tell us? I'm not going to watch some long videoclip about a 60s sitcom.

OP, I was surprised by that turn as well but pleasantly so because I had already come to that conclusion about these people as I was watching the segment this morning. That poor little boy and the garbage his parents are (most likely) filling his head with.

R6, Ted Koppel begins to question the visitors about our current political climate and, save for one or two, they are all MAGATS who believe the election was stolen from Trump.

I've had this thought in the back of my mind for as long as I've lived, that, in Hell, along with all the pain and suffering and fire and brimstone, above it all is the repeated whistling of the theme to "The Andy Griffith Show ".

Shocking , disgusting!

They must be arrested now!

Ironic as Andy Griffith was a Democrat.

But yes, nearly everyone who is nostalgic for that era ("that's when America was GREAT!) is a MAGAT. They've even tried to turn James Dean into a symbol of the trumper cause, because of his "rebel/ outsider" persona.

I was aware of the show but never connected with it and probably never saw a complete episode. I did, and do however have the greatest respect for Andy Griffith as an actor.

[quote] James Dean into a symbol of the trumper cause, because of his "rebel/ outsider" persona.

I'm not American but I would have thought that if one party has ALL the power at the moment then the other party which doesn't have the power automatically takes on the "rebel/ outsider" persona.

Surry County, which Mount Airy is the seat of, recently voted to remove all Coca-Cola vending machines from county property after remarks by the CEO of the Coca-Cola Company condemning Georgia’s recent restrictive voting bills.

The machines were removed until the county commissioners were apprised of the fact that the machines were actually owned and serviced by the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Charlotte, whose owner happens to be a prominent donor to the GOP. The machines were promptly replaced and Coca-Cola is now again available in the Surry County Courthouse in beautiful and backwards Mount Airy.

"I just hope when this airs, it won't show Southerners as a bunch of dumb idiots," said one woman.

Sadly, she didn't get her wish.

Excellent piece. Koppel went right to the heart of what these 100% white middle-aged and elderly southern folks are nostalgic for - racism. I teared up when the Black lady told about the restaurant that made them take their food outside. The one reasonable guy who spoke up on the trolley is my hero.

Next week, Ted ruins Dollywood!

R16, I saw that! I laughed and said, "Too late, honey."

[quote] Ironic as Andy Griffith was a Democrat.

He was also a sexual harasser. Elinor Donahue quit the show after the first season because she refused to have an affair with him. Other actresses who played his girlfriends slept with him, including actresses who played Peggy McMillan & Helen Crump. Griffith liked to pull pranks on people, so Howie Morris and other crew members pranked him on his birthday one year by showing up with flowers at the motel where he & Helen Crump were fucking.

I watched this. It's a quaint town, sort of corny and Trumpville now. The people interviewed fit the mold.

[quote]The machines were promptly replaced

I think you mean returned.

Kind of funny they ran subtitles when a couple of bus people spoke.

[quote] Koppel went right to the heart

He took 13 minutes to get 'right to the heart' and I guarantee that only 10% of people here sat through those thirteen minutes.

The old days when white superiority and entitlement was not questioned. . .

In front of white people.

The rest of us were most certainly talking about it and looking forward to its end.

[quote] The rest of us were most certainly talking about it and looking forward to its end.

Did you take action to help end its tyranny?

Yes, I watched The Cosby Show in the 1980s, what’s your point?

[quote]Other actresses who played his girlfriends slept with him, including actresses who played Peggy McMillan

That would be Joanna Moore, mother of Tatum O'Neal.

I was only half listening until then end, when my mouth dropped open. What I thought was a fuzzy human interest piece became an eye-opening commentary on old white southerners. Plus they covered the things that were actually happening during that era, like JFK's assassination, the war in Vietnam, etc. That time period was nothing like the TV show depicted it as being. Those people were nostalgic for a halcyon time that never really existed.

Well done, Ted!

Do you expect a simple-minded, half-witted comedy show to cover JFK's assassination, the war in Vietnam, etc, etc, etc etc?

R30, the show had an episode in which Andy hosted a State Department summit with the USSR in his house, though since Mama’s Family also had a USSR-themed episode it was seen, strangely, as fodder for family sitcoms.

For those that want to skip ahead.

R29 got it. TY!

Floyd's Barber Shop had a back room where the mansex happened.

Ted did a great job. He seemed very intelligent and likeable

[quote] The video seems quite long.

The video is too long to watch.

This segment really bummed me out. At first I thought it was a cute story about a town making an effort to become a tourist attraction to generate revenue.....nothing wrong with that. But then Koppel starts interviewing the people in that minibus and my heart just sank. I know half the country seems to exist in a totally different hemisphere than I do but when you actually see them matter-of-factly say with certainty that the election was stolen and all kinds of dead people voted, duplicate ballots, etc, it just reinforces how broken we are.

You're missing the point, r30.

Side Note: I just watched "The Pickle Story" & "Aunt Bea's Restaurant" episodes the other day. I always enjoy this show...at least before fellow West Virginia native Don Knotts left.

And I've been through that area, but haven't ever stopped in Mt. Airy. I should at some point.

Well just fuck it all. Now since I happen to have liked the reruns, because Barney and Otis the drunk were funny to me, I am a racist. I also loved Bugs Bunny cartoons as a child. I suppose that makes me a blood thirsty pro-bunny killing advocate.

the bed jacket

Aunt Bee was a drunken hussy!

R40, having liked "The Andy Griffith Show" no more makes you a racist than it does Ron Howard for having acted on it.

BTW, the actor who played the football coach on Andy Griffith (only black person on the show to have a speaking part) was hot in a very masculine timeless way. Off to find out the actor’s name.

The ubiquitous and terpsichorean Miss Shaw...

As Eleanora Poltice...

his name was Rockne Tarkington, he passed in 2015 but was super handsome in his prime

Remember when Andy had a gentleman’s gentleman?

R48, that's no gentleman! That's Dr. Bombay!

Jeannie comes to Mayberry...

I never liked this show, even in its prime when I was a young child. I don't know how any of you manage to watch it.

Loved the show until Don Knotts left, which coincided with the show no longer being in B & W. More importantly, this was the same time that the key original writers departed.

Those of you talking about the tv series have completely missed the intent of this thread.

What is the intent of this thread?

Who is this Koppel person and what is his axe to grind?

[quote] you actually see them matter-of-factly say with certainty that the election was stolen and all kinds of dead people voted, duplicate ballots, etc

I wonder if we locked some of these people in a room and showed them in great detail how none of these things is possible, could they be swayed? I mean, do they really think that some person or group could just create tons of duplicate and fake ballots and then just "drop" them in a mailbox and steal the election? Can't they be shown in detail how the voting and counting process works?

Mt Airy is a shithole. The only thing their is the Woltz family which pretty much runs the town and through various businesses accounts for 90% of those employed there (FYI, the gay son T. Nelson Woltz is bearded but always has a side twink on his payroll for all you gold-diggers out there) and the pork chop sandwiches. Koppel is tight with William Woltz Jr., that's the connection. There's no reason to visit, this is just a puff piece so Koppel could visit his pal.

R54, Ted Koppel is a legendary, highly respected, journalist. Most of his career was with ABC, where he was a foreign correspondent, before becoming the original host of Nightline.

The Woltz family is the NC version of the SC Murdaugh family. Both sons have gotten off scot free for drugs and drunk driving, the oldest paralyzed someone, fled the scene and was sent away to school.

R58 aren't you worried about being sued for saying this?

Andy and Aneta Corsaut (Helen Crump) did far more than just fuck. They had a decades long affair, with the full knowledge of Andy's wife, I might add.

I'm not shocked that Joanna Moore slept with him as she was deep into her drug addictions even back then. She was spreading for just about any man back in those days. I read years back that her tenure on the show ended after only 4 episodes primarily because of her drug issues.

She was so deaf deaf from otosclerosis (caused by a buildup of calcium in the inner ear) when she was on the show and had to read lips to do her lines. She had an operation in 1962 that restored her hearing.

I've seen three types of reactions to the piece. 1.) Ted Koppel had to drag politics into an otherwise sweet story. 2.) Please stop doing stories on racist Southerners in small town America. It's demoralizing to give these assholes a platform. 3,) Boy, did Koppel stick it to those assholes.

4) completely unexpected turn from sweet, innocent, naive but popular TV show from 50 years ago to BANG…you are all moronic Right wing Trumpers if you are here as a tourist.

Andy Griffith and Ron Howard were both Dems. 😂

Mayberry was a backlot in Culver City part of that "big city" hell mouth known as Los Angeles.

Andy Griffith was fucking the actress who played Helen Crump for years. In fact he got her the part. Of course old Anj was married at the time.

R56 and R58! coming through with gossip! Thanks guys.

Hello doll!

Opie and Andy for Barack Obama (D)

Did Andy not like the actress who played Ellie? Or maybe she did not like him? Or maybe I do not know what I am talking about. I have always heard that the guy who played Gober was a real asshole irl and no one liked him.

[quote] Boy, did Koppel stick it to those assholes.

Koppel has got issues.

Why can't he do two stories instead of wrecking one?

Elinor...

You call THAT a statue?

Pfft.

If you think Ted Koppel is going to do a charming little local color piece on Mt. Airy, you don't know Ted Koppel's work.

Joyce Jameson looks like she could’ve been Jennifer Coolidge’s mother.

That segment with Koppel on the bus with the good citizens of Mt. Airy, not a mask in sight, shows the astonishing intentional ignorance of so many Trump supporters. Very depressing.

Mad TV captured the real Mayberry 23 years ago.

And before then, we had SCTV's version.

[quote] I have always heard that the guy who played Gober was a real asshole irl and no one liked him.

Highly doubtful. George Lindsey played "Goober Pyle", cousin of Gomer Pyle played by Jim Nabors. I've never heard anything untoward about him, but I do know he and Andy Griffith were close lifelong friends.

One of the most disliked people on the Andy Griffith Show set was Frances Bavier (Aunt Bee). She was a surly old broad who looked for anything she could find to be pissed off about. Howard Morris (who played Ernest T. Bass) directed several of the episodes. He once spoke about a day on the set when he was directing and Frances was being particularly objectionable. While blocking a particular scene he said to Frances, "Frances I'm going to move you over here". Bavier became incensed and bellowed back "I WILL NOT BE MOVED ANYWHERE - I AM NOT A PIECE OF FURNITURE!". Morris said that was the day he most wanted to slap her across the face.

When they were planning the reunion show in the 80s Bavier, who had by then moved to Siler City, NC. refused to take part. Griffith and Ron Howard went to her house and knocked on the door hoping to convince her to be in the show. Bavier had never like Griffith, even during the years they worked together. They said she would speak to them from behind the closed door and told them both in no uncertain terms she had no interest. Frankly, I think by then she was suffering from some level of senility.

Griffith did say in the early 70's not long after she'd moved to Siler City she called him one day and told him she was sorry they had never been better friends. He told her "well Frances, I guess that's just the way it works out sometimes".

She moved there because she wanted to be completely out of the public eye after "Mayberry RFD" had wrapped in 1971. Unfortunately it did not work out that way. Fans of the show found out where she lived and for many years until she died in 89 people would just show up at her house wanting to speak with her. It sounds like she had become very skittish and wanted little to nothing to do with people. She had 14 cats living in the house. That pretty much says it all.

Here's Bavier's Siler City home, obviously many years after her death. As they'd say in North Carolina, they done it up nice.

Forgot the link for Bavier's house tour.

Here it is.

I wonder if Andy, Barney, Aunt Bee....even Opie would have been trumpers....hmmmm.

It was state upthread that Griffith and Ron Howard were both registered Democrats. Of the others I can envision Bavier as having been a staunch republican. But she died long before the republican party basically changed into the American Nazi party.

[quote] Very depressing.

Very! And that woman who practically cried saying something like "I Love President Trump so much!..." Like another poster upthread said, it truly is Bizarro World.

I hate these cunts.

Said as a mixed race gay born in the 1950s in the rural South.

[quote]I wonder if we locked some of these people in a room and showed them in great detail how none of these things is possible, could they be swayed?

They would discount any evidence you showed them as fake. You cannot reach them with evidence and logic. I fear they are lost forever.

They have no objective thinking and are totally loyal to their leader......trump. They are gone. It is very depressing, as there are too many people like this and have influence on how politics are today.

Shocker! Most older white southerners are conservative! What important groundbreaking information.

R85, How is it any different than people who worship the ground the Obamas and The Clinton’s walk on? Because the media approves of those people?

Get back to us when people who like the Obamas and the Clintons reject reality and truth, R87.

R87 MTF are women.

R88, they do. All politicians are corrupt and worshiping any of them especially the clintons whose name is synonymous with corruption requires you to have a skewered reality.

Skewed*

I don't see people who like the Obamas and the Clintons being in a cult, like with trump. Some have even turned away from them with they disagreed with some of their policies. trump takes a shit, and his followers think he's God. As far as the media...they can't mention trump's name enough. They miss his drama and want him back.

*when they disagreed^^

[quote]Southerners & others longing for the past are 100% Trumpers. Quelle surprise.

And what about the liberal elite enclaves that are gated or are protected historic districts or so expensive that nothing changes. And where the demographics are 99.99% white? The North East has plenty of them.

I just watched the video. So, so smug. So hypocritical.

This is Ted Koppel's estate in Maryland. I guarantee you , the demographics of that North Carolina town are more diverse than where he lives.

This false equivalency here is quite something. I was a lifelong Democrat who turned Republican due to my strong distaste for Bill Clinton. I even supported his impeachment. But nobody can compare to the sheer awfulness - on every level - that is Donald Trump. After voting Republican for many presidential cycles, I knew that, as a responsible citizen, I had no choice but to vote for Hillary in ‘16. And despite my lowest possible expectations of Trump - a failed casino owner who talked openly of having sex with his daughter - his presidency was so much worse than even I could have imagined.

A pleasant DisneyLand style recreation of simpler times and an asshole like Ted Koppel has to trash it to score points.

Go back to your white enclave and stop the lecturing.

Please provide timestamps to the sections of the video where Ted is "lecturing."

Oh c'mon, it's the whole smug tone of the piece. Dragging in the race riots and Jim Crow of 60 years ago.

Koppel should investigate the real estate practices of some of the towns where his limousine liberal friends live. Now that would be interesting. Of course it will never happen.

That faux Mayberry is very low hanging fruit.

There are other faux Mayberry's that he should be reporting on.

^Mayberrys

r95--And you would be wrong: Mount Airy Demographics According to the most recent ACS, the racial composition of Mount Airy was:

White: 87.05% Black or African American: 8.75% Two or more races: 1.62% Other race: 1.08% Native American: 0.69% Asian: 0.69% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander: 0.13%

Potomac Maryland

Race and Hispanic Origin White alone, percent 68.2% Black or African American alone, percent(a) 6.2% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent(a) 0.0% Asian alone, percent(a) 21.5% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent(a) 0.1% Two or More Races, percent 2.8% Hispanic or Latino, percent(b) 8.3% White alone, not Hispanic

Republicans love to call out Democrats for hypocrisy, which is a way of saying "You're just as bad as we are, so don't criticize us for being racist. Everyone is."

Potomac Maryland is 4.6% African American.

This is Ted Koppel suing neighbors in order to keep things the way they are:

"...said her home was one of those cleared by the appellate court, but not before the Koppels’ attorneys crawled around her house with tape measures." "

God forbid white people go visit a tourist attraction based on a tv show.

Boo hoo. The tourists of Mt. Airy were exposed as dumbshits. And it's all Ted Koppel's fault for living in a place that 20 percent less white but 2 percent less black. How dare he have a property dispute. Everyone knows Jan. 6 was staged by BLM who shipped in boatloads of costumed felons.

Do better, trolls.

Would some of the good, longtime DL-ers articulate further everything that's being unpacked here?

Why can't Democrats reach these people, when D. policies are nearly always most beneficial to "the common man" economically? What did/does Trump do that inspires such blind allegiance, and why can't the Dems ever find anyone like that? People are always talking about holding their nose and voting for Hillary or Biden, or not voting at all.

It's all deeply tied to race, and probably--and Koppel only touched on one of these by including the "godless society" comment--one would suspect, religion and by extension the homophobia and misogyny it espouses...but should we just give up hope? If they live in a closed circle of information where messages from the outside are not to be trusted, what would break through, especially to someone like the woman who "wouldn't name the sources" where she "found her truth?" The more people's core beliefs are challenged, the more they cling to them.

What do you say to the "we don't care what color you are" guy to counter his "good neighbor" argument? I'm sure they "care" if you're gay or not.

Why do the women, especially, put up with the misogynist candidates who want to police their bodies and keep them paid less for the same work?

I don't doubt any of it, I just wonder what could be done to make it change. What this piece did was to just show it all again, in a very specific variation.

Mayberry must’ve been a sundown town.

You know those cunts hate gay people too.

R106, It’s because they sons so much time time lecturing working class whites that they are inherently evil because of their skin color

Let's put some Section 8 housing next to Ted Koppel's estate. Then we'll see who's the racist.

[quote]especially to someone like the woman who "wouldn't name the sources" where she "found her truth?" The more people's core beliefs are challenged, the more they cling to them.

She should have turned around and asked Ted Koppel if he believes trans women are women.

I for one always suspected that Goober molested Opie in that garage and paid him off with Dr. Peppers. Of course Goober was acting out on what Floyd did to him in the barber chair with the shades down "to keep the heat out" and the door "accidentally" locked.

And this video proves it.

R110 is playing rhetorical games. Playing the "Let HIM live next to nasty blacks and see how he likes it" is not relevant or responsible.

RIght, R107. In a phony "dry" county.

[quote]Playing the "Let HIM live next to nasty blacks and see how he likes it" is not relevant or responsible.

Calling out the hypocrisy of people like Ted Koppel is relevant and responsible.

R113, it’s called shooting the messenger. It’s usually what people who want to ignore what’s being said resort to because they are so entrenched in their ways that hard truth will upset the reality they’ve built for themselves.

I also question people who say this is just a nice Disney-fied little town making a living off tourists. This is a real town, with real politicians, who make real decisions which effect all the people who live there. I’d point people to the large movement against Disney, led by Abigail Disney herself, to force Disney to pay people a living wage to see what being like DisneyLand really is and what that means for the people who make it all happen.

It's funny to me that Southerners are keenly sensitive to being stereotyped but will happily shit on people from California or New York.

Interesting the way you say "southerners" as if all southerners act the same way. Now, just who is the hypocrite here? I've seen some of the worst instances of racism and bigotry ever in California and in New York City. The only difference is I know that not all Californians or New Yorkers act that way.

It's interesting that, in the clip, a woman specifically says she hates the way Southerners are portrayed as stupid.

It's also interesting that that same woman, and people like her, will happily stereotype Californians or New Yorkers or lots of people.

It's also interesting how terrible you are at shit stirring.

[quote]Potomac Maryland

Huh? What does this have to do with anything?

This Census data only goes back to 2000 but Potomac's demographics have changed considerably over the years.

Geographically, it used to be horse country, there has been a lot of development over the years, commercial development comes with a lot of red tape, even building the library was a big deal. As far as residential development goes I prefer the way it used to be.

[quote] the liberal elite enclaves...

They are dismissive of the common people. They deplore the common voters.

This rich man travels around and insults the commoners so the commoners can be justified and insult him in return. They can declare that this rich man hasn't changed his hair-do for 45 years. And that he looks like Mr Bean.

Keep clinging onto that limo liberal elite bullshit. The tour bus idiots needed no help in showing they believe the earth is flat.

This long-winded article says Koppel has issues

Well the other thing is that the LIBERAL MEDIA can't get enough of the Jus' Folks Trump Voter from the Holler since they've convinced themselves that they're the Real America. Biden voters (you know, the majority?) never get this kind of kid-glove reverence.

[quote]I watched this. It's a quaint town, sort of corny and Trumpville now. The people interviewed fit the mold.

I'm not surprised by this; I used to work in Winston Salem, south of Surry County and supposedly that area was known as a KKK stronghold even before Dump came along.

I think the whole "the election was stolen from Trump" (at least for some people) is more about "I was outvoted by people who in my mind have no right to vote (blacks, hispanics, blue staters, etc.) therefore I refuse to recognize the right of majority rule"

Corny TV show be damned, this place is a racist shithole & has always been a racist shithole

Yep! And the end of the segment said "We don't want to be questioned on our racist shit. If you dare try, you're being rude."

[quote] "We don't want to be questioned on our racist shit. If you dare try, you're being rude."

Did Ted Koppel say that? Or did you make it up?

Christ you racist defenders don't watch your own propaganda. Koppel brought up the election and was met by an avalanche of whining, paranoia and self-pity. Then the douche who runs the tour butts in and says something to the effect of "We come to this town to not talk about this stuff!" As if Koppel were being rude for bringing up the obvious points about elderly white Southern Trump racists spending their free time in a Whites Only Fantasy Land.

If only Andy Griffith - like Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall - could've been brought onto the Trump bus by Ted Koppel to let these people know exactly what he thinks of them.

{quote}a Whites Only Fantasy Land.

R126 Ted Koppel and his kind have their own Whites Only Fantasy Lands.

Oh gawd what is Ted Koppel's "kind"? Canadian?

[quote]I don't doubt any of it, I just wonder what could be done to make it change.

Appeal to their victimhood.

That’s all Trump had to do.

What’s stuck in their craw isn’t actually about/because of race or religion, or anything like that.

If everyone on the planet were white and presbyterian, they’d still think and behave this way.

Somehow, it will be necessary to establish that they have been duped.

This must be done without grouping them, because no one likes that when it happens to them. They resented being called deplorables, not just because the word deplorable is insulting, but because they resented being lumped together like the hive-minded folks they are.

Show they were duped, not like an insult - what’s that saying bandied about here, ‘it’s easier to fool someone than it is to convince them they’ve been fooled’ - but like they were victims of a debilitating disease, caught by no fault of their own, and that it’s only right that the rest of us champion them and declare they were dealt a great injustice.

Appeal to their ego and victimization and they’ll be slightly more amenable to the idea of being heralded as the great Americans who, through no fault of their own, were unfairly bamboozled by a conman.

Proclaim what happened to them shouldn’t happen to a dog.

They’ll have no problem deluding themselves that they’re better than a dog.

As if!

Love you R130. They do have medications for delusions. Alas those that are being duped, fucked and lied to have no clue.

R130 And that perfectly describes the Dems and their approach to certain demographics...

R130

[quote] Appeal to their victimhood.

Everyone wants to be a victim nowadays. Celebrities and millionaires are claiming to be victims.

Those appalling transvestite cross-dressers are claiming to be victims.

Even members of the Royal Family and their American wives.

Yes even crazy trans-hating weirdos seem to think that this tiny, despised minority is Secretly The Gestapo and will ruin you if you look twice at them.

Who the hell else besides a bunch of Trump racists would enjoy traveling back in time to these hick enclaves that prob still have water fountains segregated? This piece should embarrass those in the piece (on the trolley) saying without a doubt the election was fixed, but nah they’re proud of their blind faith to Trump. Gross. Y’all can keep the South, I’ll vacation elsewhere.

The post-Civil War North was hardly covered in glory, either, R136.

Please point to the spot in the North where theme parks devoted to glorifying slave times are built?

Fuck you and your vacuous equivalence.

R138, I'm sorry you read my post to suggest there was some equivalence between the North & the South as that was not my intent. My intent was merely to state the fact that the North was hardly a bastion of equality, a point that gets lost in the desire to make this strictly, ahem, a black & white issue.

It's interesting that most right-wing argument boils down to "I know you are but what am I??"

It showed that racism as portrayed on TV was always cloaked in White Supremacy.

Does this little town hold weekly "Jews will not replace us" torchlight parades?

A lovely place for Klan Grannies to visit.

Visit, r141? Those fuckers LIVE THERE!

[quote]It showed that racism as portrayed on TV was always cloaked in White Supremacy.

Uh...how exactly was The Andy Griffith Show racist?

Oh i dunno - it did present an all-white southern town and completely erased black people from what was a heavily black part of the country. There weren't Klan hoods on Aunt Bea but did Opie go to an all-white school? It took place during the 50s when segregation was, you know, a thing. And it just didn't come up.

It wasn't actively "racist" maybe but it presented an all-white fantasy world to racists.

R144 There was absolutely nothing racist about the show. It depicted the world Andy lived in. Similar to the town I lived in in 1962.

If you you think the Andy Griffith Show was racist for depicting Andy's white world, then what are you thoughts on The Dick Van Dyke Show?

[quote] It took place during the 50s when segregation was, you know, a thing. And it just didn't come up.

True. And the Beaver never mentioned it either.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show and her white newsroom never mentioned the race riots in Minneapolis. How shameful!!

Don't forget me, R147.

[quote]but did Opie go to an all-white school?

Did Beaver? Ritchie Petrie? Chip and his two brothers? Patty and her identical cousin Cathy?

Were any other parents policemen?

So R145 is saying he lived in a segregated southern white town. And The Andy Griffith Show depicted that. And there's nooooo racism in keeping black people and white people absolutely separate?

Ok.

On YouTube, I came upon a Red Skelton show from 1964 & was struck by how very white it was. The performers, the dancers, the audience. That said, I can’t easily cast judgment on these people as that was the world as they knew it. I heard someone recently cautioning against quick judgment of people living back in the day. It was said these people weren’t living in the past, they were living in their present. I doubt any of us would like to be judged harshly over evolving societal standards by generations well into the future.

Sure but lionizing it as a perfect lost world from the vantage point of 2021 is deeply strange. That's what these tourists and Trumpers are doing. So are some of the ppl on this thread.

[quote]is saying he lived in a segregated southern white town.

You might want to read a little history. Northern towns were segregated as well. Ever hear of Jim Crow. Gosh you are ignorant.

[quote]Sure but lionizing it as a perfect lost world from the vantage point of 2021 is deeply strange.

It is exactly what "Grease" celebrated.

And go to Mackinac Island, Michigan (as an example) if you want to see the lost perfect American white town lionized.

[quote]I came upon a Red Skelton show from 1964 & was struck by how very white it was. The performers, the dancers, the audience.

You had to go all the way back to Red Skelton in 1964?? Try most episodes of Carol Burnett, Sonny and Cher. Etc. Erase Garret Morris from SNL and it was the whitest show on earth.

R156, you’re only talking about a decade’s difference between these shows, so the gap in time isn’t as significant as you suggest. In any event, the ‘70s variety shows at least had some Black representation among their dancing troupes.

R157 Shindig, Hullabaloo, The Ed Sullivan Show during the 1960s were much more diverse than those shows.

R154 that isn't the own you think it is.

[quote] Northern towns were segregated as well.

Boston & Chicago, just to name a couple of Northern cities, were notoriously racist well into the 1970s.

I remember the first black actor in a commercial created a stir in my family. And it was for Newports, which I was informed, no white people smoked.

Boston and Chicago were horribly segregated. Long Island, New York was one of the most segregated places in the country. Levittown, New York famously wouldn't let black families move in.

Where, exactly, are the parts of Boston or Chicago (or even Long Island) where old white people visit in 2021 to relive their minority-free youth based on a TV show that wasn't really based there?

[quote]where old white people visit in 2021 to relive their minority-free youth

The wealthy elites do those tourists one better...they LIVE in places that recall their minority-free youth .

[quote] It showed that racism as portrayed on TV was always cloaked in White Supremacy.

You can't make a gross generalisation like that.

TV was invented in the 1940s.

^ TV was invented in the 1920s.

R165 Well in that case it's even more of a generalisation.

R141 is making a generalisation about a century's worth of television.

Fifty years ago Wednesday, Rob Petrie opened the front door of his home in New Rochelle, N.Y., and admitted two visitors. Their arrival collapsed a studio audience in laughter and, amid the watershed year of 1963, perhaps nudged the needle of social change toward integration and inclusiveness.

The episode is “That’s My Boy??” and it begins with a dinner party at which Rob and Laura Petrie — Mr. Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore — are hosting a few friends. Rob is goaded into telling the story of the time he became convinced that he and Laura had brought the wrong baby home from the hospital.

The episode flashes back to that time, with Mr. Van Dyke — later to win an Emmy for his work that season — giving a riotous performance as a flustered new father stringing together anecdotal evidence to reach the wrong conclusion. Another couple, the Peterses, had also welcomed a baby that day in a nearby room in the same hospital, and misdelivered flowers and such convince Rob that he and Laura had returned home with the Peters baby rather than their own. The episode (the writing credits went to Bill Persky and Sam Denoff) builds perfectly to a sight-gag punch line when Rob opens the door and the visiting Peterses walk in. They’re black. The show was filmed in front of an audience, and the crowd’s reaction left Greg Morris, who played Mr. Peters, unable to keep a straight face.

[quote]where old white people visit in 2021 to relive their minority-free youth

You mean like Main Street Disneyland (created in 1956)?

Disney is actually under attack by the MAGA chuds of the world for being too WOKE. Why, their cartoons haven't featured a blonde princess in years!!!

[quote] Disney is actually under attack by the MAGA chuds of the world for being too WOKE. Why, their cartoons haven't featured a blonde princess in years!!!

Zootopia pretty much was an animated film about racism, police brutality and corrupt politicians who use divide-and-conquer tactics with the allegory of animals. Great film but I think it triggered a lot of MAGAts.

At the height of the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, veteran journalist Ted Koppel was working out on the treadmill when he came across an episode of “The Andy Griffith Show” — it caught his attention because of something he heard earlier that day while listening to WMAL, a Virginia-based conservative talk radio station. A listener had called in to explain that they used to live in the Washington area, but couldn’t stand how “woke” it had become, so they fled to the South. They said something along the lines of, “We moved down here to the Carolinas, and boy, life is just wonderful. People are so lovely. They’re so neighborly. Everything is so nice.”

Koppel, 81, started thinking about how “The Andy Griffith Show” was also set in the Carolinas, in the fictional town of Mayberry, N.C. After his workout, he went online and discovered that the CBS comedy was an even bigger hit than he remembered; the series, starring Griffith as the good-natured sheriff and Ron Howard as his adorable young son, was one of the most-watched shows from its debut in 1960 until it went off the air in 1968. And, more intriguingly, while Mayberry was not real, the city of Mount Airy, N.C., claims to be the prototype on which it was based, and still draws thousands of tourists every year looking to relive their beloved show.

So Koppel, the former ABC “Nightline” host and now a senior contributor to “CBS Sunday Morning,” called his producer, Dustin Stephens, and suggested that they travel down to Mount Airy. Koppel was curious: What made the show so popular? And what was it about this community that makes people want to come visit decades later?

What started with those general questions wound up evolving into one of the most striking TV segments of the year, as Koppel was visibly taken aback by the fierce nostalgia for a time and place that literally never existed — and how it connects to the misinformation that has infiltrated America’s politics.

“People looking back at that program seem to confuse the program with what reality was like in those days, wishing that we could only restore some of the good feelings, some of the kindness, some of the decency,” Koppel said in an interview. “But what they’re really reflecting on is not what was going on in a particular North Carolina community. What they’re reflecting on is what was going on in the creative minds of a bunch of scriptwriters out in Hollywood.”

On a base level, Koppel understands why people connect — and cling to — the show about a friendly small town where any minor issue was resolved in 30 minutes with commercial breaks. It’s the same reason people now repeatedly binge-watch “The Office” and “Friends” and “Seinfeld”: When life is a nightmare, TV comedy is an excellent escape.

Similarly, “The Andy Griffith Show,” a viewing experience that Koppel compared to “chomping down on a marshmallow,” was an antidote to everything going on in the world at the time, which never showed up on the sunny series: Tens of thousands of American troops killed in Vietnam War. Race riots throughout the country. Assassinations.

“If there’s any period that matches our current period in terms of how terrible things were and how difficult things were, the 1960s were it,” Koppel said.

Koppel’s 13-minute segment, which filmed in June and aired in September on “CBS Sunday Morning,” starts out looking like a pleasant feature about Mount Airy embracing its role as a stand-in for Mayberry, even though its only connection to “The Andy Griffith Show” is that Mount Airy was the real-life Griffith’s hometown. (It is debated whether Mount Airy was the inspiration for Mayberry, as many fans claim.) Randy Collins, president of the Greater Mount Airy Chamber of Commerce, explains to Koppel the origins of re-creating Mayberry: When the North Carolina tobacco and textile industries faltered, business owners needed another way to bring in revenue.

Kicking off with the cheerful, whistled theme song, cameras show the Andy Griffith Museum and a vintage police car and other replica hot spots from the series, including Wally’s Filling Station, the Snappy Lunch and Floyd’s Barber Shop — all packed with tourists. The piece takes its first hint of a darker, more serious turn as Koppel interviews one man who says our “godless society” could use a dose of the good old days. “Back when neighbors were neighbors, and they provided for everybody else,” the man explained.

“What you’re saying is true of certain people,” Koppel tells him. “If you were Black in the ‘60s, things were not all that good.”

“That’s true,” the man admits. (The segment notes that in the entirety of the show’s eight-season run, only one Black actor had a speaking role.)

Koppel also interviews a Black family who had lived in Mount Airy for decades, and as of the early 1970s, were turned away from eating in certain restaurants. Yet the siblings had all returned to their hometown. “Somehow Mount Airy becomes more complex with each conversation,” Koppel said, adding that the town “is a place where fantasy and reality intersect.”

This segues into the segment’s defining scene, on a tourist trolley: Koppel decides to “wave the political thermometer across the forehead of Mount Airy” and asks how many people there thought the 2020 presidential election was a fair one. Only two out of about a dozen people raise their hands.

“I think there was a lot of voter fraud,” one tourist says. “I think it’s more the mail-in ballots. You don’t know how much of those were duplicated, triplicated, the whole bit.”

“Look how many dead people voted for Biden,” another adds, referring to a false and debunked conspiracy theory.

The discussion continues as one person claims the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was a “staged” event with “BLM people.” (“I don’t understand why they’re focusing so much on that one issue, when there are so many cities being burned down every day by protesters.”) Others chime in to call the media the enemy of the people and profess their love for Donald Trump.

Koppel and his producers just let the scene speak for itself. At one point, a tour guide jumps in: “This conversation about politics and division is what people come here to get away from. We don’t care what color you are. We don’t even care what your politics are. We just want to be good neighbors and treat everybody alike. And that’s why they’re coming here.” The tourists yell “Amen!” and applaud. “That’s what America should be,” one says. Koppel’s voice-over concludes the segment: “And when the script was written in Hollywood, that’s the way it was.”

After it aired, Koppel heard lots of positive feedback from those who loved that he dug deeper; although some residents in Mount Airy and viewers in Southern states took issue with how the town was portrayed. Koppel had a phone conversation with Collins, the Chamber of Commerce president; and while Collins was very nice and didn’t “actively complain” (Mount Airy did get an enormous infusion of publicity with millions of “CBS Sunday Morning” viewers), Koppel got the impression that plenty of folks in town did.

“Speaking nationally, people either loved it or hated it,” Koppel said, though he pushed back on viewers who called it a “hit job.” “To the degree that it was critical, it was not critical of the show. It was not critical of the community. It was simply saying, 'You do need to understand that what you’re looking at here is not the original community that the show was — the show was not shot here. It wasn’t about this place.’”

Ultimately, Koppel emphasized that was the point: It’s fine if you want to escape reality on television. But conflating it with the real world can produce damaging results. One part that stuck out in his mind from the segment was one of the tourists at the end who said, “I just hope when this airs it won’t show Southerners as a bunch of dumb idiots.”

“That truly was never the intent,” Koppel said. “It was just — to the extent that people go to Disneyland and confuse Disneyland with reality, they need to be reminded of the fact that it’s a place that was created to sell tickets to a lot of rides and to make money. ... There’s nothing evil about that. There’s nothing wrong with that. But people shouldn’t be hurt if somebody reminds them that they’re not dealing with reality.”