File this under my father & Earle Stanley Gardner are spinning in their graves
In 1971, as a 16-year-old, my father turned me on to Perry Mason Pocket Novels. Author, Earle Stanley Gardner wrote hundreds of them from the late 30s until the early 60s – and I’ve read them all at least twice. In fact, I still have over 100 of those books in my personal library.
The 50s-60s TV series had Raymond Burr starring as Perry Mason and Barbara Hale as Della Street. In the books, Perry was a strong but gentle lawyer constantly kicking Hamilton Burgers ass. He was intelligent, kind and sophisticated. Della Street was his beautiful and incredibly smart Secretary, who ran his command center. She was completely dedicated to her job and to Perry. Paul Drake was a suave and single swinging dick. He was quite the Playboy always having his dates or pokers games broken up by Perry’s emergencies. The TV series from the late 50s – early 60s was about as close to Gardner’s books as any TV series has ever been to book series. I might have had the actors playing Hamilton Burger and Lt. Trang swap roles, but the rest was close to the spirit of the books as I’ve ever experienced.
Fast forward to 2020, where HBO and Liberal Hollywood has rewritten history to be politically correct. Their series takes place in the late 20s and early 30s. Perry is a wimpy, evil, little white man in a cheap suit. Della is a Lesbian who wants to be an attorney. She is far smarter than Perry, constantly pulling his fat out of the fire. She’s the real hero of the series – so far. Paul Drake, is a married with children black man, who was a Detective for the Los Angeles Police Department (yeah I’ll bet there were dozens of them in the late 20s) , who quits to start his own detective agency.
While each of the original of Perry Mason’s cases were real mysteries, having the reader (or watcher) trying to figure out ‘Who did it’. HBO’s story line is very convoluted. Just in case weak and evil white heterosexual men, Superhuman Lesbians and Fantasy Black Men don’t get all of the attention – the story line thus far is based on charlatan Christians pitching tents outside the city limits and screwing stupid people out of their money. I’m sure they’ve hit on many other of their favorite targets (and heroes), but I’ve missed it so far because of my total confusion and shock.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll most likely continue to watch, but only because I love watching train wrecks. I invite everyone to watch the series in order of episodes, and try to pick out what Liberal Hollywood wants to stuff into your head.
