BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy

Subject: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: outfidel
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 10:15 AM

All this talk about Bush and his "cowboy diplomacy" gives real cowboys a bad name...

GENE AUTRY'S COWBOY CODE

1. The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage.
2. He must never go back on his word, or a trust confided in him.
3. He must always tell the truth.
4. He must be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals.
5. He must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant ideas.
6. He must help people in distress.
7. He must be a good worker.
8. He must keep himself clean in thought, speech, action, and personal habits.
9. He must respect women, parents, and his nation's laws.
10. The Cowboy is a patriot.

Source: Autry Museum of Western Heritage (http://www.autry-museum.org/museum/gene_autry.php)

At the very least, GWB has broken or is about to break rules 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 10:22 AM

I'd include #2 as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 05:45 PM

Thank you!! My dad thanks you and we both know that my granddad and his dad would thank you if they were still here punching cows!

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 10:31 PM

Only someone like Gene Autry could get away with promoting that list. Well, maybe Audie Murphy. And Bush sure as hell ain't no Audie Murphy, either.

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: Troll
Date: 19 Mar 03 - 10:35 PM

Outfidel, why are you up past your bedtime?

troll

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: DougR
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 01:28 AM

Outfidel: would you know a cowboy if you saw one?

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: GUEST,amergin
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 01:51 AM

I would..grew up around some...and Junior ain't no cowboy...

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: Teribus
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 08:31 AM

Going by Gene Autry's list most cowboys would not make good cowboys - But that's Hollywood for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 09:11 AM

Hell, Dubya doesn't even make a good stooge for the Junta behind him- he can't even learn to deliver his lines properly. And that irrepressible smirk, even now....

Why SHOULD he make a good cowboy, or anything else?

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: DougR
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 04:44 PM

I wasn't suggesting Bush is a cowboy. I don't think he is either. He is just a good president and world leader.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 05:41 PM

duck and cover. . . you know that's like throwing gasoline on a lighted match, DougR. He stinks.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: SINSULL
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 05:48 PM

DougR,
My father's response to that would be "Yeah. Very good. But good for what?"
Implied is "Nothing".

I admired Bush's handling of the September 11 attacks. Right now, I am shaking my head in disbelief.

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: GUEST,amergin
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 05:55 PM

actually tossing petrol on a lit match would just douse the match.

i tried to compare Junior to dogshit...but then realised that dogshit is at least good for something

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 06:02 PM

Stilly River Stage, don't forget Tom Mix! he was prettu cool too.

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Mar 03 - 10:22 PM

I usually would use the image of throwing a lighted match on gasoline, but didn't go back to retype it when I saw it was reversed. But maybe this is why the thread didn't go up in flames!

That list sounds like Autry had been reading the Boy Scout Handbook or something. Very idealistic, and I think the person who actually had all of those qualities would be pretty insufferable to have around.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: outfidel
Date: 21 Mar 03 - 08:52 AM

FYI itooks like Roy Rogers wouldn't let Dubya ride with him, either.

ROY ROGERS RIDERS CLUB RULES:

1. Be neat and clean.
2. Be courteous and polite.
3. Always obey your parents.
4. Protect the weak and help them.
5. Be brave but never take chances.
6. Study hard and learn all you can.
7. Be kind to animals and take care of them.
8. Eat all your food and never waste any.
9. Love God and go to Sunday school regularly.
10. Always respect our flag and our country.

Source: Roy Rogers and Dale Evans tribute page

GWB has fallen short on rules 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 10

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: outfidel
Date: 21 Mar 03 - 09:54 AM

> Why SHOULD he make a good cowboy, or anything else?

I'm not saying GWB *should* make a good cowboy. I'm just trying to correct the popular misperception that the Iraq invasion is an example of "cowboy diplomacy". According to Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, cowboys wouldn't do what we're doing in Iraq right now.

Maybe "outlaw diplomacy" or "gunslinger diplomacy" or "Wild West diplomacy" is more accurate.

Just a thought...

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Mar 03 - 10:15 AM

How 'bout "Dickhead Diplmacy", pardner?

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: DougR
Date: 21 Mar 03 - 11:01 AM

"Dickhead Diplmacy?" what's that Greg?

Based on the response to my statement, I suppose Bush shouldn't expect to receive any fan mail from you folks, right?

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: outfidel
Date: 21 Mar 03 - 11:32 AM

Fan mail?

I voted for Bush in 2000. I thought his response to 9/11/01 was inspiring. I supported his going into Afghanistan to track down Bin Laden and take apart his terrorist network.

However, if Bush keeps up his policy of preemptive invasion instead of diplomacy -- in violation of basic "just war" ethics and despite international outrage -- then he'll get neither fan mail nor another vote from me.

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Mar 03 - 12:21 PM

Quips are up to your usual standard of wit I see, Dougie.

Here, try this one: "So's your old man!"

Subject: An American Myth Rides Into the Sunset
From: outfidel
Date: 31 Mar 03 - 11:07 AM

Looks like Teddy Roosevelt would agree with Gene Auttry and Roy Rogers...

"The image being invoked by the president and his posse has deep roots in the American soil. But if Mr. Bush's cowpoke credentials seem to be all simple syntax and bodacious belt buckle, his policies actually flout the cowboy charter. Teddy Roosevelt, in "The Cattle Country of the Far West," called cowboys "quiet, rather self-contained men." The president's actions have violated the basic terms of the American Western romance and, thereby, the terms by which we call ourselves Americans. He's declared war on a foundational national myth."


An American Myth Rides Into the Sunset

March 30, 2003
By SUSAN FALUDI

PORTLAND, Ore. - On the eve of the Iraqi invasion, the
president's advisers were working hard to embed George W.
Bush inside the script of the American Western. Rejecting
the widespread European frustration with Mr. Bush's Lone
Ranger act, Vice President Dick Cheney used his "Meet the
Press" appearance to make clear that the president is "a
cowboy" who "cuts to the chase." Mr. Bush's blunt talk, the
vice president told Tim Russert, is "exactly what the
circumstances require."

The president has done his part. For some time now, Mr.
Bush has been obliging, dutifully working his way through
the Western cliché checklist: "smoke 'em out of their
holes"; "hunt 'em down"; "go it alone"; "wanted: dead or
alive."

The image being invoked by the president and his posse has
deep roots in the American soil. But if Mr. Bush's cowpoke
credentials seem to be all simple syntax and bodacious belt
buckle, his policies actually flout the cowboy charter.
Teddy Roosevelt, in "The Cattle Country of the Far West,"
called cowboys "quiet, rather self-contained men." The
president's actions have violated the basic terms of the
American Western romance and, thereby, the terms by which
we call ourselves Americans. He's declared war on a
foundational national myth.

It's worth recalling that the cowboy of the myth wasn't
trigger happy and he wasn't a dominator. He carried a gun
to protect himself and his cattle - cattle that didn't even
belong to him. His mission was their safe passage, and by
extension, the safe passage of the civilizing society to
follow. And his honor was grounded on his civilized refusal
to fire first. "Didn't I tell you he'd not shoot?" says a
spectator to a gun fight that didn't happen in "The
Virginian," Owen Wister's 1902 novel. "He's a brave man,"
he adds. "It's not a brave man that's dangerous. It's the
cowards that scare me."

"The Virginian" is the urtext of the cowboy myth. Its
protagonist, like Wister and Wister's old Harvard classmate
Teddy Roosevelt, was a transplanted Easterner whose manhood
was fashioned in the West. "No man traveling through or
living in the country need fear molestation from the
cowboys," wrote Roosevelt. They "treat a stranger with the
most whole-souled hospitality" and "what can almost be
called a grave courtesy."

Wister dedicated "The Virginian" to Teddy Roosevelt. Our
20th-century presidents have lived under the sway of its
central ethic, and never more so than in the grave buildup
to conflict. Understanding the necessity to at least appear
to uphold the credo, no matter what the reality, William
McKinley took advantage of the sinking of the Maine in
Havana harbor, Franklin Roosevelt waited (some say
intentionally) until our fleet was destroyed at Pearl
Harbor, and Lyndon Johnson contrived the Tonkin Gulf
"incident" before entering their respective wars.

One cannot imagine F.D.R., before declaring war on Japan,
or even Ronald Reagan before Grenada, pumping a fist and
saying of himself, "Feel good" - as President Bush did
before he announced the beginning of the Iraq war. Indeed,
the doctrine of pre-emptive warfare flies in the face of
the humble, reluctant cowboy myth Mr. Bush holds so dear.

Of course, American identity has always contained competing
models; even the original frontiersman, the cowboy's
immediate ancestor, had two faces. He was either Daniel
Boone or Davy Crockett - that is, either the man who rode
into the wilderness to build and nurture a society called
Booneville, or the man who ventured out only to collect and
count the pelts. In his time, Daniel Boone was the hero at
the heart of our myth, the Indian fighter turned
homesteader, the war-hating American archetype. As Richard
Slotkin observed in "Regeneration Through Violence," his
history of the American frontier, for this kind of man
"solitary hunting trips are, not ends in themselves, but
means to a social end . . . the ultimate creation of a
better society." By contrast, Davy Crockett was, as V. L.
Parrington, the literary critic, dubbed him, "a frontier
wastrel," a rapacious aggressor and "a huge Western joke."

As the nation industrialized, however, Crockett's heaps of
dead pelts became the equivalent of America's capitalistic
might, and his own profile began to rise from pathetic joke
to vaunted hunter and Alamo hero. The honored activity was
no longer husbandry but dominance.

These two contesting ethics were neatly framed at the close
of World War II in the debate over our future. Were we on
the threshold of "the century of the common man," a phrase
coined by Henry Wallace and represented by Ernie Pyle's
homely soldiers? Or were we on the cusp of "the American
Century," defined by Henry Luce, founder of Time Inc., as
the nation's manifest right "to exert upon the world the
full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see
fit and by such means as we see fit"? Luce's vision won the
day.

In this regard, President Bush's self-presentation
culminates a progression long in the works. We've been on
the way to becoming a different America for a while.

A little more than a year ago, the old and vanishing
American mythology of common-man virtue enjoyed an
unexpected comeback - in the aftermath of 9/11. That
antiquated ethic returned to infuse our romance with the
sacrificial firefighters and police officers, and the
average citizens martyred in our national tragedy. Its
presence was palpable in the self-image of an ordinary
embattled people rising to the occasion in countless ways,
as if we were once more "out in some strange night caring
for each other," as Ernie Pyle wrote of the G.I.'s he
chronicled.

Perhaps that is why so many Americans now feel even more
painfully the loss of a myth that, in truth, has been on
its sickbed for a generation. As the invasion of Iraq
began, a lament could be heard across the political
spectrum. A letter in The Times seemed typical: "The
president was speaking and I realized that an old and dear
friend of mine was gone."

What Americans grieve for is not reality. We've carried out
regime change before, whether on Chief Sitting Bull or
Manuel Noriega. We've also waged elective wars, whether in
the Dominican Republic or the Philippines. But to call it a
myth is not to diminish its importance. Mythologies are
essential to defining who we are and, more importantly, who
we want to be. We caught a powerful glimpse of our myth's
possibilities, just before its end. Sept. 11 gave us its
final spark, like the bright flash that the sun shoots up
before it sets for good.

Susan Faludi is author of ``Stiffed: The Betrayal of the
American Man.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/30/opinion/30FALU.html?ex=1050079186&ei=1&en=939fc2ee286e4fa9

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: Peg
Date: 31 Mar 03 - 11:53 AM

wow; great article! Thanks for posting it.

Subject: RE: BS: Dubya does not even make a good cowboy
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Mar 03 - 01:49 PM

In the category of "All I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned from Cowboy Movies," I respectfully submit the following:—

My all-time favorite Western movie is The Big Country (1958), starring Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charlton Heston, Burl Ives, Chuck Connors, and Charles Bickford. It's a sweeping, panoramic Western that contains every cliché you've ever seen in any Western movie—two ranchers, one rich and one poor; a range-war over water rights; a stranger who is a misfit in this background (in this case, a former sea-captain); the spoiled daughter of the rich rancher; the foreman who loves her but is jealous of the sea-captain who has come to marry the rancher's daughter; the beautiful single schoolmarm who owns a plot of land both rangers want; the boorish son of the poor rancher; a battle of wills with a horse that can't be ridden, and a couple of obligatory shoot-outs—but all done with verve and panache (e.g. one of the shoot-outs is not with six-guns, but with single-shot dueling pistols). And a moral lesson in the last look you get at the two warring ranchers. Burl Ives got a well-deserved Oscar for his role as Rufus Hannassey, the poor ranch owner. For any Western fan, this is a "must see."

But be that as it may, one of my favorite scenes in the movie follows after Charlton Heston, the ranch foreman, challenges Gregory Peck, the former sea-captain, to a fist-fight in front of a whole bunch of people. Peck refuses. Everybody assumes that he backed down, afraid to fight the foreman. Then—that night, Peck comes to the bunkhouse, wakes Heston up, and calls him out. They go out, alone, into the corral, and for what seems like hours, they beat the crap out of each other. At last, both of them, bruised, bleeding, and exhausted, lay in the dirt, unable to continue. Then as Peck and Heston struggle to their feet to head back to the bunkhouse, Peck asks, "Now—just what, exactly, did we prove?"

Worth thinkin' about. . . .

Don Firth