There were no blacks in Mayberry

This line of crap in the "culture war" has always bothered me.

(Mike Huckabee - Arkansas governor and Republican presidential hopeful.)

"Let's face it," he recently told a crowd of Christian conservatives in Iowa, the state that holds the nation's earliest presidential caucuses. "In our lifetimes, we've seen our country go from 'Leave It to Beaver' to 'Beavis and Butt-head,' from Barney Fife to Barney Frank, from 'Father Knows Best' to television shows where father knows nothing."

But see, the problem, Mr. Huckabee, is that Mayberry never really existed. It was on TV. It represents an idealized version of reality you remember from your childhood, not the full reality of life.

For instance, there were no black people in Mayberry. Just how "friendly and genial" do you think a real sheriff or the people in a real North Carolina small town would've been to a black family looking to settle there. And it's not just that.

On the shows, women were opressed into housewifedom, children were at least threatened with being "whipped," and anyone who fell outside the "mainstream values" was not present in the society.

This is the fake TV community in which Mr. Huckabee and so many other "Conservatives" want to live. It's pretty creepy really if you think about it. Citing another old popular show, it's kind of a Twilight Zone type thing. "These people loved the world of their TV so much that they tried to model their society on it."

That's the vision of "American Values" that the Republicans attempt to evoke. It's a very powerful device which taps the collective archetypes within the psyche of the baby boomers crafted in significant part from TV of their childhood. It's an odd call to a psychological regression to the images and simplicity of they collectively share.

But you see, Mr. Huckabee, despite your illusions, that society never existed. On the TV of your childhood, there were no massive layoffs, no outsourcing or health benefits, no substance abuse beyond the "loveable drunk," no divorces or loveless marriages, no child abuse or rape, no one got sick or died, no one went hungry..... hell, nobody even really sweated despite the fact that there was no airconditioning.

That "memory" you have was not the real world, and, I fear that that make believe world is where you want to lead us. But that won't work, because this "model society" never existed.

There were no blacks in Mayberry, Mr. Huckabee.

(If you've never seen the movie Pleasantville, I would recommend it highly. I know that not everybody likes it, but I loved the extremely gentle way in which it depicted the transition from the fifties to the opening of minds of the sexual revolution and freeing of the soul. It's a little long, and the device is a little obvious, but there is a gentleness of the movie I have always found endearing. And, it makes this same point in a very beautiful way.)