>The first TV I ever saw was in 1952 or 1954. A neighbor bought one to watch the world series. My father finally bought a TV in 1960. He was a fairly new LTC in the army then.
>I do not recall any left wing crap on TV until LBJ’s great society BS and the Vietnam War in 62. My old man went over his 1st tour in 63-64. What left wing shows do you recall from the 50’s?
My dad’s an old TV buff so I’ve watched a lot of stuff from that era. The one that sticks out to me the most is “Have Gun, Will Travel”, a show I very much loved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Gun_%E2%80%93_Will_Travel
A lot of the stories revolved around playing up the law as always being right and lawyers & judges are holy people, vengeance is always wrong, and other themes from the left during this period. The traditional virtues of bravery, avenging your folks, adventure and protecting your own through collective action took a back seat to an endless parid of victims and leftist type saints who save them. During this period the left was busy turning the legal system into a sort of priesthood that couldn’t be questioned and had to be obeyed through their victim narratives and shows like HGWT were a big part of making it happen. The propaganda was very subtle and very well done.
The show’s still very enjoyable but that reflects that the left had to be hidden and subversive back then. Today they just beat you over the head with their propaganda because they’re firmly in charge.
Contrast that to real entertainment like the Odyssey which is about Odysseus’s manly bravery and adventure, his long trip home, rights and courage, and about Odysseus murdering the guys who tried to take his wife. No moralizing about vengeance there.
Never saw that or read into westerns anything except the same old good vs. evil. The law is usually right. Too many kids today do not respect cops. The good guys always won in the end. They do make Jesse and Frank James into some folk hero types back then in every version of the movie. Surprisingly, I ran into people from a city where one of the James brothers jumped a wall with his horse to escape. They still looked at Frank as some good guy. He lived in Nashville, and; no one here says anything about him.
I’ll be darned if I saw much “left wing” in Have Gun, Will Travel. Sometimes a show is just a show.
And that one was a darn good show.