Posted on 10/17/2015 9:49:59 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
The other day I was watching a rerun of a popular TV show from the past. Suddenly it occurred to me that this was the most CONSERVATIVE TV show ever despite the fact that it wasn't specifically a political show.
Okay, I'll give you the name: DRAGNET. I was watching the color version that came back to the airwaves in 1967. Detective Joe Friday didn't fool around. He was all business with NO apologies in enforcing the law. Also notable was how he sneered at hippies, drug addicts, or (in the case of the episode I was watching) idiotic teenyboppers who shoplifted strictly to be members of a dopey club.
Interesting. “Will Queer.”
Well, he was the Skipper's First Mate.
When “Dragnet” came back for its second run in ‘67 it was popular and a Ronald Reagan could be elected Governor of California. Those days are gone forever.
The TV show and Reagan both were ridiculed by the rapidly turning liberal-leftist media(the SF Examiner, Orange County Register, and the SD Union-Tribune were considered Right Wing in 1967!!)of the day but, as is often the case with liberal-leftists, for all the wrong reasons.
One could justifiably make fun of “Dragnet” because the Hollywood “hippies” and “rock music” characterizations were so ridiculously off the mark it was hilarious. All from the stone-ignorant imaginations of Hollywood producers and writers with names like “Murray” and “Sid.”
As for “Ronald Ray-Gun,” he was portrayed as a dumb-as-a-post Drug Store Cowboy bent on enslaving Californians and putting hippies in concentration camps. Nothing’s changed.
Hollywood, BTW, is still just as far off the mark as it ever was. Only difference between then and now is that firearm violence is more graphic, the language more coarse, there is no “moral to the story” unless its to make some leftist point, and the “scantily-clad” actresses are tougher than the men.
There was an element of that, I believe...at least in the pilot, "The Homecoming", which is shown at Christmastime.
I was a kid when the show aired, so I don't remember much of the political element. But last year I watched the pilot, and at the very beginning, the Grandpa character said that Mr. Roosevelt was going to save them all (paraphrasing).
Almost as bad as Grandolf the Gay.
I’ll never forget the episode where Harry Morgan went undercover to buy marijuana. A 5 year old could have spotted him as police.
I don’t know, Ginger (formerly known as Greg, and you’re a bigoted insensitive Neanderthal if you refer to her as a “he”) would garner a lot of sympathy for his, oops her, victim status. So it would be close. Gilligan, as the token straight white male, would have the hots for Maria, subjecting him to constant ridicule by the writers. Of course the Howells would rather hire her because she does the work that the other castaways “won’t do”.
Geer the Queer
Forget them. now "Lovie", now there was a woman, hubba hubba.
A Commie Queer to boot.
Andy Griggith also had a fairly consistent theme that law enforcement could handle its problems with talk therapy rather than violence [and certainly, no guns.]
I’m always amazed at how NON-liberal “The Naked City” was considering its locale and its slew of East Coast crewmembers from the NY-Broadway crowd. There were only two examples I recall of liberalism creeping in... one an episdoe with Lee J. Cobb which was analogous to McCarthy-era “naming names,” and one other episode which briefly had a line by Horace MacMahon in which he spoke harshly to some family members, expressing some misplaced sympathy towards a WW2 vet who went crazy and started on a killing spree.
Indeed, this and Herbert Leonard’s other series, “Route 66” seemed to be astonishingly adept at avoiding even the slightest hint of liberal messaging in his shows. Both series also were very, very PRO-religion.
The radio show “I Was a Communist for the FBI” starring Dana Andrews is still aired sometimes on Sirius/X-M radio.
Great stuff — evil Communists, everyone calling each other “Comrade.”
There was a TV version called “I Led Three Lives.”
LOL pre-65...Father Knows Best?
Generally, Dragnet described a world in which agents of the government (LEO's) protected the citizen-sheep from their own stupidity. I'm not sure that that is a conservative world-view.
Brady Bunch
Happy Days
Hill Street Blues
Hart To Hart
Magnum PI
She used to look good to me but now I find her simply irresistible.
And I thought I was the only one who liked Lovie.
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