Many, including that pair of boots
in the White House, seem not to know
the phony origins of the cowboy,
the straight-shooter, the man with the gun,
from James Fenimore Cooper
and his mythology of a West
he'd never known,
his cartoon concoction
of Leatherstocking and Chingachkook,
to the dime novel tall tales,
tarted up to sell books,
tales of sartorial splendor,
unerring accuracy and daring-do,
to the Hollywood of Tom Mix,
Roy Rogers, and John Wayne,
six shooters that never missed,
never ran out of bullets,
varying versions of the one principle
known to moguls, put butts in the seats,
and this extraordinary mythology,
built entirely upon mammon,
still puts Americans into cowboy hats
with some notion that they thereby partake
of a brave and honorable past--
rather than the commonplace,
plus occasional pillage, a rapacious landgrab
sometimes seeming to necessitate
the cutting of body parts off of dead Indians--
always firm in the faith,
a bullet can solve any problem,
bullet as scalpel, performing
some magical surgery,
setting the world straight,
and now putting us all
into a crooked cul-de-sac.
— R.P. Ericksen (October 8, 2005)
Last updated: October 15, 2005