[lbo-talk] media birdbrains

[Carl Remick]

>From: Jon Johanning <jjohanning at igc.org>
>
>On Sep 3, 2004, at 11:55 AM, Carl Remick wrote:
>
>>Does the (deeply tedious) myth of the cowboy really have that much of a 
>>death grip on the national consciousness?  Back in the fifties and sixties 
>>TV and the movies were crammed full of horse operas -- no more.  HBO's new 
>>expletive-intensive Western (which I haven't seen) is the first major 
>>Western in years, and it doesn't seem to have attracted much attention.
>
>As others have pointed out, the cowboy figure is only one of a number of 
>alternative embodiments of this American myth. I'm not sure why Westerns 
>fell out of fashion -- perhaps the TV and movie audiences just got tired of 
>them. In any case, I think the myth that engendered the cowboy, detective, 
>Han Solo, etc., figures lives on.
>
>Perhaps the best embodiment of it -- in the sense of illustrating the Bush 
>appeal -- I can think of is the Gary Cooper figure (forget the character's 
>name) in High Noon. The quiet, strong defender of law and order in the 
>perilous frontier, who doesn't enjoy violence at all, but "does what a 
>man's gotta do," and proves that the Quaker approach to evil just isn't 
>practical.
>
>  If Shrub were just the deranged, vicious, trigger-happy ghoul a lot of 
>his detractors picture him as, he would be far from as popular as he is. 
>But he is able to project that steady, reliable 
>protector-of-women-and-children side of Cooper -- don't talk much or put on 
>fancy East-Coast airs, but ya needn't fear the outlaws, ma'am, when I'm 
>around.

But that's just it:  I don't think George Butch matches the High Noon 
template of lone hero at all.  Totally on the defensive, Gary Cooper was 
just one guy with a pistol against, what, six or more hired guns?  He was 
literally a *lone* hero.  Butch, OTOH, has had history's most awesome armed 
forces at his beck and call while swaggering around the world on one 
self-appointed harebrained chase after another.  Butch is more the head of a 
lynch mob than he is an embattled romantic hero.

Carl

"The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is -- a mob; they 
don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's 
borrowed from their mass, and from their officers."

                                                         --  Adventures of 
Huckleberry Finn