The dark side of Andy Griffith

ryanteaguebeckwith — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:34:31 -0500

If Sheriff Taylor represents North Carolina's political hopes, then Lonesome Rhodes is its dark side.

In 1957, Andy Griffith played a role that serves as the flip side of the small-town sheriff in "The Andy Griffith Show" a few years later.

In famed director Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd," Griffith starred as Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, a cynical country singer who is catapulted to fame, but loses it all when he calls his audience "miserable slobs" before a microphone he didn't know was turned on.

The movie touched a nerve in political circles.

In 2000, Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene cited it after George W. Bush was caught calling a reporter a name on an open mic at a rally in Naperville.

This year, Washington, D.C., political Web site Wonkette regularly referred to former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards as "Lonesome Rhodes."

Other bloggers have called former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee by the name.

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The dark side of Andy Griffith