"From Mayberry to MAGA: The Dangerous (False) Nostalgia of The Andy Griffith Show"

First off, let me say this plain: I love The Andy Griffith Show. No hater here. It’s top-shelf TV, the kind you can still watch without feeling like the world’s on fire. But let’s not kid ourselves, it’s FICTION. Sweet, black-and-white fiction.

Now what got me started down this rabbit hole was a little documentary I stumbled across called The Mayberry Effect, directed by Chris Hudson and Angela Mabe Hudson. Good folks. And one of the fellas featured in it is David L. Browning, some of y’all might know him better as “The Mayberry Deputy.” I’ve met David a couple times, and I’ll tell you this: he’s got Barney Fife’s stance down cold, one bullet and all.

Quick shoutout while I’m at it because David used to be the director of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine outdoor drama right here in my hometown, Big Stone Gap. That’s the official outdoor drama of Virginia, which means we don’t mess around.

The documentary ain't some high-gloss Ken Burns affair with violins and old letters being read in candlelight, but it’s a good watch. Real heart to it. Now, there’s a part in there that lit the fuse for this piece, interviews with political scientists and historians talking about how The Andy Griffith Show was about as real as a two-dollar Rolex.

Think about it. The show ran from 1960 to 1968, right in the middle of one of the wildest rides in American history. You had segregation and civil rights marches down South, cities on fire, young men getting drafted and shipped off to Vietnam, and not one, but two assassinations that shook the country to its knees. Meanwhile in Mayberry, the biggest crisis was a goat eating dynamite or Aunt Bee entering a pickles contest.

Now I ain't knocking good storytelling. But somewhere along the way, a whole lot of folks today started believing Mayberry was how things really were, or worse, how they should be again.

Then it hit me, clear as a Sunday sermon in a half-empty church—if The Andy Griffith Show was airing new episodes today, you’d have folks like Vice President J.D. Vance wagging his finger at it, calling it WOKE and anti-family. He’d be all over cable news, hollering about how it’s destroying traditional values, because let’s face it—ain’t a single soul in Mayberry married, except the town drunk, Otis. And Otis don’t exactly scream “family values,” now does he? 

Worse yet, Mayberry ain’t exactly overrun with babies either, which would really ruffle the feathers of Vance and the far-right crowd pushing this new pronatalist kick, telling women they need to crank out more kids to save the country. You imagine them watching Andy Griffith now and getting worked up over the lack of strollers, playpens, and pregnant housewives. Makes you wonder if they'd deport Aunt Bee, Helen Crump, and Thelma Lou for not having a half-dozen young’uns underfoot.

But don’t think the other side would let it slide either. If the show made it to prime time in 2025, you'd have folks on the far left picketing it as racist for having a town that looks whiter than a jar of mayonnaise and somehow never once mentioned segregation, civil rights, or the fact that the South was boiling over with injustice during the exact years it aired.

And they'd have a point. Mayberry floated above the real world like a balloon in a parade, pretty to look at, but not weighed down by any of the hard truths happening all around it. No Black characters. No protests. No Vietnam. No assassinations.  No poverty lines. Just porch sittin’, pie bakin’, and whistlin’ down Main Street like none of it was going on.

In a way, both sides would be right and both would miss the mark. Because The Andy Griffith Show wasn’t trying to be a mirror, its success was selling comfort. And when you sell comfort long enough, folks start confusing it with truth.

And that’s where my great-grandmother’s voice comes drifting in my mind, plain as day. She used to say, “You know why everybody in Mayberry’s so happy?” Then she’d pause, grin, and go, “’Cause none of ’em are married!”

She’d let that hang in the air like fresh laundry. “Well, except Otis,” she’d add. “Now, you reckon the writers were tryin’ to tell us somethin’?”

I caught an interview once with Ron Howard, yeah, Opie himself. He got asked about this whole Make America Great Again business. His response was sharp: “What decade are we talking about when we say again?” Fair question. What exact chapter of American history are we trying to rewind to?

I’ve had a sales career that’s taken me all over rural America, and I’ve asked that same question to more than a few folks sporting MAGA hats. At first, you get that deer-in-the-headlights look, maybe a shrug. Then it comes, sure as sunrise: “You know… back in the Mayberry days. Where folks knew your name. When you didn’t have to lock your doors at night.”

Now, allow me to call on my great-grandmother again, she never had much schooling, but she knew a thing or two about the truth and history.

She’d say, “People knowing your name can be a blessing, or it can be gossipy and mean as a yard dog. Especially in a small town.”

And that whole “no need to lock your doors” bit? Granny would chuckle and say, “We didn’t lock our doors back then ‘cause we didn’t own nothin’ worth stealing. That’s not nostalgia, that’s called poverty son.”

She wasn’t being bitter. She was being honest. Because the so-called good old days might look clean and safe on a black-and-white screen, but out here in the real world, a whole lot of folks were hungry, broke, and working their fingers to the bone just to make it to payday with no social nets to fall back on during hard times.

Till next time, that’s the story from the ‘Back Forty’. — John W. Peace II

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John W. Peace II is a fifth-generation farmer from Big Stone Gap, Virginia, where he grew up on his family’s dairy, Clinch Haven Farms, and still lives today farming hay and beef cattle. He’s a proud father to Trey and Shelby Peace, and partner in life to Cathy Swinney. A Virginia Tech graduate with graduate studies at Penn State, he served as the youngest Chair of the Wise County Board of Supervisors (2004–2008). John co-owns SafeHavenServices.co and urTOPIX LLC (urTopixLLC.com), a Democratic campaign consulting firm focused on reaching rural voters that is sponsored by www.RuralAmericaRising.com PAC. He’s also a two-time Amazon bestselling author. Learn more at www.JohnWPeace.com.