Rosen's take on Strauss's take on Gunsmoke is flawed

I'm not sure if Leo Strauss believed exactly as Stanley Rosen describes him believing about Gunsmoke and Perry Mason, but the way he describes it, a viewer of this documentary who has never seen Gunsmoke will come away with a distorted view of the program.

Its storytelling was not "white hat vs. black hat" or simplistic. The very short clip shown gives this impression, but view it in its larger context. The clip is from an episode called "Hack Prine," in which Marshal Matt Dillon has an old friend come to town who has been hired to kill him. His old friend doesn't really want to, but he's doing it for the money. After having a change of heart and murdering the man who hired him so he could leave, Dillon's friend tells Matt he won't let him arrest him. Matt tells him he'll get a fair trial, and that he has to arrest him for murder, because he's a lawman. His friend draws his weapon and Dillon is forced to shoot him.

It's a sad ending, as most were on Gunsmoke, and no one feels good about it after it happens. Dillon is consistently shown as constrained by the law of the land. He doesn't make his own rules or go out looking for evil far and wide, as this documentary asserts that Neocons do.

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