Why Westerns Are So Popular
Unlike most of my male friends, cowboy movies were never one of my favorite genres.
Unlike most of my male friends, cowboy movies were never one of my favorite genres. There were a few I liked (“The Westerner,” “Destry Rides Again,” “Red River,” “High Noon,” “Shane,” “The Big Country” and “Quigley Down Under”), but for the most part, even if they starred John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda or Jimmy Stewart, I preferred to take my chances with mysteries, musicals and comedies.
But in the wake of the recent sex scandals, I believe I better understand the appeal of the movies that were full of horses, six-shooters and guys wearing white or black hats. I don’t think it was the barroom brawls or the shoot-outs on some dusty street; I think it was the simple notion that good and evil existed in the world, and that eventually evil had to be confronted and destroyed.
The other message was that for justice to be meaningful, it had to be personal. If someone killed your wife or hurt your kids or burned down your house or had his cattle trample your crops because he wanted your land, you didn’t take him to court and leave it up to a couple of lawyers and a judge to dole out justice. Instead, you strapped on your guns and set out to deliver the sort of justice that couldn’t be reversed on appeal.
That’s what occurred to me while I was watching the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer and sports physician Dr. Larry Nassar finally being called out after decades of abusing women and young girls and getting away with it.
Time after time, I found myself wondering if any of these victims had fathers and brothers. Were their male relatives totally unaware of what these swine were doing? Is it conceivable that they were told by their wives, their daughters and sisters and still did nothing? Didn’t it even occur to them to strap on their guns or at least check the attic for their Louisville Sluggers?
Have we been so brainwashed over the years that we have actually come to believe that doling out justice is best left to the professionals?
Why would we believe that? We have seen the professionals make a mockery of justice time and again. We have seen O.J. Simpson get away with two murders. We have seen Bowe Bergdahl get away with desertion on the battlefield, Sen. Robert Menendez get away with accepting bribes in exchange for political favors and we have seen Bradley (Chelsea) Manning have his 35-year sentence for espionage commuted to seven years by an outgoing president who, it would appear, never met a sexual mutant he didn’t like.
We have seen naïve jurors hoodwinked time and again by slick-talking lawyers. We have seen judges expose their own corruption by doling out sentences to rapists and child molesters that would be more appropriate for shoplifters and jaywalkers.
The Polish legislature just passed a law making it a crime for anyone to state, suggest or imply that Poland played any role in helping the Nazis exterminate three million Polish Jews.
Predictably, from France, there came a chorus of “Neither did we!”
Germany added: “Well, in that case, neither did we.”
I have become increasingly upset with the political haggling over DACA. I think Trump was silly to suggest that he would offer amnesty to 1.8 million illegal aliens when the other side was only bargaining for 700,000. And just who are these so-called Dreamers, whom I prefer to refer to as Schemers? Supposedly, they were brought here by their parents when they were wee babes. But now we’re hearing that the Democrats insist on their parents being brought in via chain migration. If they’re not here already, how did they manage to bring their children?
Each time I see footage of the Democrats at Trump’s State of the Union speech I’m reminded of those sneering football players who spent the season getting more attention for what they were doing on the sidelines than what they were doing on the field.
The 242 Democrats (49 senators, 193 House members) who sat on their hands even when Trump pledged to support family leave, something not even Obama called for, may have thought they were expressing their disapproval of the man, but I suspect that a great many Americans saw it for what it was; they were showing their contempt for those of us who had elected the man at the podium. They were taking a knee and giving the rest of us the finger.
Perhaps the most telling moment came when Nancy Pelosi turned to glare over her right shoulder and appeared to be making sure that none of her stooges were caught applauding for veterans, an end to chain migration or the Pledge of Allegiance.
As embarrassing as it must be for people like Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey to see photos of themselves kissing and snuggling up to Harvey Weinstein, let us never forget that Meryl Streep once referred to Weinstein as God. And I bet you always assumed the Hollywood dingbat was an atheist.
When I used to have a website, I would receive email on a regular basis labeling me a racist. I never rose to the bait. Years ago, I declared that anyone who hated other people simply because of their race was simply lazy. I suggested that once you really got to know people as individuals, you would probably discover a far better reason to despise them than their color.
These days, those on the Left toss the pejorative around so freely, the word has become meaningless. Once a person can be labeled a racist because a white woman wears a sari or a white man opens a Chinese restaurant or a college kid wears a sombrero to a Halloween party, the charge becomes laughable.
If a white person hates a black man simply because he’s black, he’s a racist. But the same holds true for a black man who hates a white man simply because he’s white or happens to be a cop.
So long as you can distinguish between the decent (Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Denzel Washington) and the indecent (Maxine Waters, John Conyers, Samuel Jackson), you’re judging people by their words and actions and are definitely not a racist.
These days, when the insult is tossed around like a frisbee, you really can’t tell the racists without a program. But it helps if you know they’re registered Democrats.
So far, I haven’t had anyone sharing the items on their bucket lists. I did hear from a world traveler who boasted that he had been everywhere and done everything, but I happened to know he hadn’t ever met President Trump. If I had a bucket list, which I don’t, it would definitely include shaking Donald Trump’s hand and thanking him for saving all of us from Hillary.
A lot of people have hopped on the bandwagon and urged Trump to stop talking about the Wall. I, on the other hand, want him to build his big, beautiful wall. It’s possible that we could achieve the same results with a double fence, more border patrol agents, electronics and a squadron of drones. But a wall would be more than a deterrent; it would be a symbol. Like a door on a house, it reminds people that they can only enter by invitation.
If I were Trump, I would ask the American people to contribute to its construction. It’s possible that as the dimes, quarters and dollars started flooding in, even Senate Democrats would finally get the message that their pandering to Hispanic activists was a losing game for them.
I wouldn’t even mind if Trump sold advertising on the wall the way they do at baseball stadiums. And even if he can’t live up to his campaign promise to make the Mexican government pay for it, he might be able to get Mexican companies to pay for ads on their side of the wall.
Ingvar Kamprad, a Nazi sympathizer who made his fortune by founding the Swedish furniture company IKEA, died recently at the age of 91. Ever since, there’s been a joke making the rounds that suggests the reason he hasn’t been buried yet is because they’re still trying to figure out how to assemble the coffin.
