Once upon a time, Frank Rich was a brilliant TV critic. Now he’s a brilliant, full-fledged social/political observer and just about the smartest guy we know. (Except maybe for Stephen Colbert?) Here, he combines both his obsessions:
Mayberry R.I.P.
by Frank RichAndy Griffith was a genial and gifted character actor, but when he died on Independence Day eve, you’d have thought we’d lost a Founding Father, not a television star whose last long-running series, the vanilla legal drama Matlock, expired in 1995. The public tributes to Griffith were over-the-top in a way his acting never was, spreading treacle from the evening newscasts to the front page of the New York Times.