The Ruination of Society

and matlock

Next time you walk out your front door look around you. What do you see? Chaos. Burning cars in the middle of the street, overturned cars on fire, and the flaming wreckage of cars strewn about the road. How did it get this bad, where did it all go wrong? 

To me, to us, it’s clear that society started to crumble when Television (that’s with a capital T) stopped teaching us important lessons. Television used to be like a kindly old grandparent, comforting and instructive, all too happy to pass on the wisdom of previous generations , quick with a sage bit of advice or an uncomfortable comment about the Puerto Rican family that moved in down the street but now Television is like an angry homeless man outside of the liquor store, now Television is making crude comments about our wives and following us back to our cars daring us to “say that to his face”, now television is making us seriously consider buying a gun.

Take a look at the top shows of the past; Bonanza, Sugarfoot, The Roy Rogers Show, The Lone Ranger, The Sociable Ranger, The Camel Cigarettes Variety Hour, Gulchweed Run, Sheriff Jack Orleans Killing Crew, The Horse and the Heifer, Cheyenne, BridgeWharf Ranch, Kid Despicable and the Rats, The Rusty Pistol, Union Canyon, Big Bill Bartlett’s Bordello, The Old American Spirit Cigarette Variety Hour, The Gomer Triplets and Old Duke Glen, The Booger Hoyt Program, The No-Good Corral, Rope Burn, Have Gun Will Travel, Ol’ Dusty Angel,Texas Jack’s Excruciating Exhibition, The Fictionalized Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin, The Full Grown Kid, Colonel Cucamonga’s Reasonable Riders, Ghost Horse, The Lucky Strikes Cigarette Variety Hour, Straight Laced “Curly” Ronnie Joe Robinson’s Ranch, Brothel Junction, Buck Fucko, Rawl and Oates, The Cedar House Reloaded, Barbara Wire’s Travelling Medicine Show, Chico North’s Stationary Medicine Show, GOLD RUSH, Gold Mosey, The Dirty Dan Wild Wild Wild Wild Wild Wild West Extravaganza, The Marlboro Cigarettes Variety Hour, Riverboat Kings and I Dream of Jeannie.

One thing was clear, people fucking loved cowboys and who could blame them, they combine the violence of soldiers with the animal husbandry skills of a farm worker, it’s an irresistible combination, but cowboys offered something else too, they offered clarity. Back in the Old West there was good and there was evil and you could tell cause the good guys always wore a white hat and the bad guys always wore a black hat and the bad guy usually had a cool moustache as well.

Back then people had heroes they could look up to and when they ran into a moral dilemma in their own lives they could could think to themselves “What Would Sheriff Jack Orleans do in this Situation?” and they could be damned sure that Sheriff Jack would have ridden up to the homestead of that insurance agent that was giving him trouble about his auto insurance and he would have put every living soul in that house human or animal in front of the barrel of his gun, and why would he do that?            

BECAUSE IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

It was easy for people to understand what was important in life. Family. Community. Defending Against Cattle Rustlers. Patriotism and never, NEVER letting the insurance companies push you around no matter how many times you get caught crashing into the horse racing track office while blackout drunk. When you watched these shows you understand that no matter how much fun the cattle rustlers seemed to be having they were going to get hung if they were a main guy and blasted off the top of a wagon or something if they were a henchmen, you understand that the bank robbers were always going to get caught and they were always going to get hung if they were a main guy and if they were a crony they were always going to get blasted off the top level of a saloon or something.

Imagine one of these beloved Television programs today…..yeah I can picture it now……sinister character walks in through the saloon doors…..piano player stops playing, owner even told him he said  “Goddamnit Jim you keep getting too startled to play the pian-ah and ill find someone with a back bone to play” doesn’t matter…. thats how startling an individual this guy who just strolled in is…..now imagine that the main character (or the hero, these are the same thing and if you think otherwise you are part of the problem I’m describing ) walks up to the guy and says “I don’t think we are that different, I have some dishonourable characteristics myself” WHAT THE FUCK??? DO YOU SEE WHAT I’M SAYING??? Instead of protecting the saloon he has basically invited this guy in to shoot up in the bathrooms, collect welfare undeservedly and teach our children sexual education.

A classical cowboy worth his salt would have immediately murdered this guy without even finding out what he wanted, because thats what it takes to defend society against the barbarous hordes. With every moral shortcoming that is written into a main character there is a little kid sitting in front of the Television thinking to themselves “maybe its ok if I don’t make anything of myself and contribute to society, maybe its ok if I become an artist” and that is something that is almost too upsetting for me to contemplate. Once Television stops instructing morality that burden falls onto people like parents and teachers and its not hard to see where things start going wrong after that. Its not that parents and teachers are bad people although in the case of teachers they mostly are its just that they are people, normal people with flaws and wants and immoral desires while the cowboy is virtuous, disciplined and violent , the kind of role model that kids need

Next time you see a teenager high on pot disrespecting their elders don’t be surprised, just take a look whats on Television these days; Animals, Euphoria, Drug Abuse Island,Lil Hitler, Bachelor in Paradise, Who’s That Prostitute?, Promiscuous Pete and His Multiple Misdeeds, Two Holes is Never Enough,4 Non Binaries, The Slutification of Mrs. Emily Armstead, 10 Wacky Drugs Dealers, Porn-Star PreNup, How I Learned to Stop Loving God and Other Lessons From My Fall From Grace. Vanderpump Rules, Naked and Afraid, The Sexual Barber, Animal Magnetism (Welcome to the Fuck Farm), Sissify Me, Captain!, The Masked Freak, The Real Housewives of Intercourse Pennsylvania, RuPaul’s Gender Bender Cook-Off Competition, Two Fat Perverts, Real Subway Gropers of Japan, Pothead Parkour, Intervention; It’s Not Your Fault, Teen Mom, Teen Mom 2, Gary Busey’s Non-Judgemental Junkie Makeover, America’s Horniest Home Videos. Gay Jeopardy, Race to Sin, 90 Day Fiancé, Better Call Saul,Survivor: Penis Falls, and Yellowstone which I actually like a lot I think that one is pretty good

Tune into these abominations of human imagination and you will see a whole lot of debauchery, godlessness and drug use and one thing you will not see is a single jingling spur or moseying cattle hand unless of course you are watching “Cowboy Coupling” which I was unable to sit through long enough to see what I have no doubt are a laundry list of historical inaccuracies. It sends shivers down my spine thinking about a teen who’s only aspiration in life is to collect enough points in the Fluid Funnel on Survivor:Penis Falls to earn immunity through the next round, what happened to operating a small family ranch that was constantly under attack by various minority groups???? People today have no interest in riding through the countryside to threaten some random guy with death cause he smiled at your sister across the cattle fence all they care about is being pimped out to a wealthy watchmaker on ABC Presents: Time For Love. Television teens used to attend the sock hop and race harmlessly around Dead Man’s Curve, flip on the tube present day and you would probably be seeing somebody using the calculator app on their “smartphone” to calculate their “bodycount”. Once upon a time you could turn on Dick Hemsley’s Swinging Desegregated Soap Box and listen to the beautiful melodies of Huge “Fats” Biggly, Giant Johnny Massive, The Big Bugle Man, Hefty Billy Behemoth and Little Joe (who went about 6’5, 235). Nowadays you are more likely to see a rapper promoting violence, drug use, promiscuity, unsafe investing practices, improper storage of food stuffs and general lawlessness, take your pick

I do not dislike every program that has come on Television recently I’m a big fan of Undercover Boss for instance, a delightful program that demonstrates the general disrespect that employees have for the people who keep their lights turned on and how the ‘when the cat is away the mice shall play” attitude that these people have towards life never works out in the end. I still enjoy sports although I don’t think that im the only one who wishes that athletes these days would spend a little less time spending time time in social clubs and a little more time fighting in the Vietnam War like New York Giants legend Jim “The Child Molester” Pulchowski or Mean Bean Green Joe Dean. I am also a fan of Last Man Standing although Tim Allen’s seedy drug trafficking past upset me to the point that I couldn’t bear to look at a Television set for several months when I became aware of it. Certain winner programs aside I feel strongly that there has been a terrible shift in the moral outlook of Television over the past few decades.

Take for instance two representations of the same type of character; the defence attorney. First we have Ben Matlock, southern gentleman attorney and moral paragon now compare him to the present day’s most popular lawyer Saul Goodman or Jimmy McGill the loathsome lead of Better Call Saul and let me tell you right now its not much of a comparison. Ben is of course played by Andy Griffith a beloved American Icon from the halcyon days of early television, Andy’s previous program The Andy Griffith Program was a delightful glimpse into simple small town living, what it takes to preserve a time tested way of life and how annoying it would be to raise a child if the mother wasn’t there to do most of it. Saul Goodman is played by one Bob Odenkirk, a relative unknown whose previous claim to fame ‘Mr. Show’ was an unremarkable comedy program that promoted marijuana use and sauciness. The characters themselves don’t stray far from the men playing them, I’m sure it comes as no surprise that Saul Goodman isn’t exactly an upstanding citizen like Andy Griffith and I couldn’t imagine Ben Matlock speaking about pornography as flippantly as Mr. Odenkirk does.

Notice the difference in how the two shows unfold in each episode ,during Better Call Saul everything is focused on Saul because he is self interested and evil, the beginning of Matlock never even features Matlock because he stands for something greater. These aren’t just crimes for Matlock to solve to serve his ego these are crimes against society and he owes it to the community, to the people, to lady justice to make sure that justice is served. Matlock also generally doesn’t show up because most of the crimes at the start of the episode take place at night and he hits the hay pretty early. Each defence by Saul is simply a demonstration of his own arrogance and his desire to put himself above the law (as the sympathetic Chuck character points out) he is making a mockery of one of the most respected professions known to man for personal gain and glory. It is impossible to see Better Call Saul without thinking “I am being encouraged to find loopholes in the systems that are set up to preserve civil society” and that “These Flashbacks are ridiculous that hairpiece he’s wearing is as funny as anything that has ever appeared on Mr. Show”. The Lawyer was once thought of as an upstanding figure in society now it seems like it is just another cynical cash grab profession like a nurse or paediatrician. 

Would Matlock bend the rules to win a case? Absolutely not. Would Matlock get his private eye friend to go follow people around and break into their home and illegally collect evidence? Yeah, maybe he would but thats only because he knows his client is innocent. Matlock is so concerned with justice that he not only defends his own client but also finds the real killer, it would be easy for him to take his hundred thousand dollars that he charges for every case and say that’s enough for little old me I’m going home to play the banjo but he doesn’t because he understands that he as a duty to justice. Matlock doesn’t play favourite and he’s friends with every cop, Saul is distrusted by the police and rightfully so, he’s a rat!!! Saul only takes cases that he thinks will earn him a nice paycheque while you can get Matlock to represent you simple by sprinting up to him saying “You gotta help me, the cops are after me but I don’t have much money”. Matlock stood for something, Matlock stood for justice, Matlock stood for being kind of irritable and confused at the best of times and Matlock stood for a better time when folks helped each other out even if somebody didn’t have the standard fee of 100,000 dollars. 

Matlock was a man who treated everybody with respect he came from nothing probably, he worked his way into Harvard by working for 8 years and then timeline is kind of fuzzy to me but even as he became the richest most powerful humble country lawyer in the universe he never let it change the way he viewed his inferiors. Saul is a vile goblin relies on lying and trickery to succeed, Matlock almost never lies and constantly tells people vital case information for no reason and still wins EVERY SINGLE CASE

The line from Matlock to Saul Goodman is one that plummets from respectability into moral decay. Gone are the days of the principled lawyer that gets confused by brand new call waiting technology, here are the days of the crooked lawyer that is going to spend his dirty drug dealer money on unrealistic hairpieces. Where is the kindly Television mayor of the past that was only concerned with building his beloved constituents a new park for the centennial??? All I see is program after program about politicians who are obsessed with sex and high priced liqueurs , what kind of idea does this give people about the world? Am I supposed to believe that my elected representatives don’t even care about the roving gangs of dogs that terrorize the town, that they are strictly concerned with getting kick backs from the bridge  project and cheating on their wives with the wives of their most trusted campaign leader? If this is really all that our civilization has cracked up to be I might as well quit my job buy a ragged Santa costume and a bell and pretend that I’m a down on his luck seasonal Santa, CAUSE I GUESS THATS WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING.

Sometimes when I turn on the Television it makes me so disheartened, it makes it hard to believe in the world, but maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to believe if we had somebody to look up to, somebody who wears a seersucker suit in every situation regardless of location or weather, somebody who moves around very slowly and gingerly, we need more Matlocks and less Saul Goodmans, we need our hope back.

Imagine this World

* A 6 year old boy watches Better Call Saul with his father*

Boy: I can’t wait to grow up and become a crooked drug lawyer like Saul, rules are for losers, getting ahead is the only important thing in life 

Father: It’s hard to blame you son, I can see some qualities in him that I like to think of myself as having and he has the courage to step over people and take the risks that I’m afraid to in my personal life

Boy: It’s already too late for me 

Pretty Awful Huh? Now How About This 

* A 6 year old boy watches Matlock with his Father*

Boy: Matlock’s brilliant legal maneuverings have shown me that real courage is not the ability to ignore the consequences of ones actions but rather to understand the consequences and stand up for those who are not in control of their circumstances, I can’t wait to grow old and solve crimes with my daughter like Matlock 

Father: Let’s go get you a seersucker suit and a banjo

Boy: Yaaaaay!!!

That’s a little better isn’t it?