RIP Andy Griffith

Andy Griffith - actor, comedian, musician - died today at 86. He'll be remembered (hopefully) as a much more influential voice in American comedy than he typically got credit for, but most-immediately for his popular sitcom and career revival as "Matlock."

However - and I'm aware I'll be the 500th movie-geek to point this out today - he gave probably his best performance as Lonesome Rhodes in Elia Kazan's "A Face In The Crowd;" a movie made at the dawn of the television age that warned with eerie-accuracy about the danger of "average joe" political demagoguery. Viewed today, it's like a distress-call from the past trying to warn us about right-wing talk-radio, Fox News, Beck, Palin, the Tea Party etc...
Observe this scene, which depicts Rhodes' show (dig the faux-rural set;) wherein he invites a Senator he's in-cahoots with to deliver discussion staged-rant against Social Security. Key detail: Rhodes helping the Senator sell his ideology to "the people" by nudging him toward a smaller, "folksier" word than "obsessed." Update the clothes and this is a Fox prime-time show from right now:



Griffith's Rhodes was an alcoholic reprobate (today he's immediately recognizable as a straight-up sociopath) who turns out to have a natural talent for galvanizing and shaping the political behviors of "average Americans." His schtick makes him a national star and, soon enough, a sought-after ally for nefarious politicians; as the producers who created him come to realize that they may have unleashed something fundamentally evil into the world. In it's legendary finale, Lonesome proudly embraces exactly what he knows he is and who his "people" are: