Andy Griffith, dead at 86.
Someone on Twitter said that Sheriff Andy Taylor and the residents of Mayberry showed television a Southern alternative to Bull Connor. That’s as may be, and inasmuch as it’s true, the South should be grateful. But as with Atticus Finch and George Wallace, the problem of Sheriff Andy vs Bull Connor is that one of them is a fictional character. And tragically for an entire region – maybe the entire nation – it was the wrong one.