From the Land of Cowboys to You; or, The Modern Buckaroo’s Guide to the World
The Kid is in. The Great Decider is out–and so are slimy campaign innuendos. I’ll not be sorry to hear the last of the slander of the good Maverick family name. I’ll not be sorry to have less of cowboy-diplomacy-this* and cowboy-foreign-policy-that drop into my inbox with such alarming regularity. And I won’t be surprised if […]
In times of moral confusion, I turn to my collection of a gajillion western paperbacks from the 1940s and 1950s*. Their bold colors and bolder titles (such as Action by Night, Gunsmoke Justice, Dig the Spurs Deep) bring me back to my center. Good/bad. Right/wrong. Yes/no.
The one-two punch of pulp writers, who must have banged […]
I’ve been unwilling to saddle up the presidential cowboy analogies for some time–Dubya too easy of a target–but THANK ALL THAT IS COWPOKE for recent presidential candidate news.
Barack Obama resists the cowboy hat–all I can see him as is the lawyer/Dude from a big city, or maybe as a laid-back (yet pistol-packing) James Stewart in Destry Rides […]
A patriotic theme for a patriotic day—Happy July 4th!
On July 1, 1898, Roosevelt was cursing the fact that he had to dismount from his steed, Little Texas, to lead the cavalry charge up Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill in Cuba. But he knew that if he could get up to the top and strike […]
When life appears frustrating, demeaning, terrifying, unfixable, and/or immutable, it is helpful to ask: “What would Gary Cooper do?”
His example—and that of other western celluloid heroes—provides an antidote to the life of the office drone, the frustrated housewife/husband, or the cog in the machine. Following the Cowboy Way allows one to stand tall in the […]
Cowboy.
Independent. Rough-hewn. Clean-cut. Hell-raiser, and all in good, clean fun.
But for however many hardworking cowpokes out there, “cowboy” is also code for another array of attributes: rough-and-tumble, no-holds-barred, antiquated, nonrefined, in-your-face. Add that to “diplomacy” and you have a thick brew of Ugly American.
“Cowboy diplomacy” has made it to Wikipedia. In Wiki-speak, it […]