"Lots of photos of Perry having nothing whatsoever to do with this story, and not a single one of the rock. Well done, WP!"

The first comment at a Washington Post article about how Rick Perry, early in his career, used to host events at a hunting camp where there was a rock that had the word "Niggerhead" painted on it.

Ranchers who once grazed cattle on the 1,070-acre parcel on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River called it by that name well before Perry and his father, Ray, began hunting there in the early 1980s. There is no definitive account of when the rock first appeared on the property. In an earlier time, the name on the rock was often given to mountains and creeks and rock outcroppings across the country. Over the years, civil rights groups and government agencies have had some success changing those and other racially offensive names that dotted the nation’s maps.

Does this have anything to do with Rick Perry (who, asked about the rock, said the word is an "offensive name that has no place in the modern world")? Well, yes, if you're inclined to think that Perry's rural Texas background has bred something nasty into him:

Perry has spoken often about how his upbringing in this sparsely populated farming community influenced his conservatism. He has rarely, if ever, discussed what it was like growing up amid segregation in an area where blacks were a tiny fraction of the population.

So what's he hiding, eh?

Reading on, we see that — according to Perry — Perry's father leased the property in 1983, and the first thing he did was paint over the word on the rock. And every time Perry saw the rock, it was painted over. But WaPo found 7 individuals who say they remember seeing the name on the rock during the time when Perry's father's name was on the lease. And:

Longtime hunters, cowboys and ranchers said this particular place was known by that name as long as they could remember, and still is.

“The cowboys, when they were gathering cattle, they’d say they’re going to the Matthews or Niggerhead or the Nail” pastures, said Bill Reed, a distributor for Coors beer in nearby Abilene who used to lease a hunting parcel adjacent to the Perrys’. “Those were all names. Nobody thought anything about it.”...

“You know, Texas is a little different — you go where it’s comfortable,” Reed said. “. . . It would have been one thing if [the Perrys] had named it, but they didn’t. So, it’s basically a figure of speech as far as most people are concerned. No one thought anything about it.”

No one thought anything about it. Those who are looking for a racial issue to play know how to jump on a phrase like that. Okay, then, let him who is without sin cast the first rock.

"I don't sit around talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."

Obama talking tough. Reminds me of George Bush's "dead or alive" cowboy style.

The main difference between Obama's statement and Bush's is...
	Bush actually intended to do what he said. Literally.
	Obama's line is not true self-expression, but what others seemed to push him to say.
	It's one thing to allude to the cowboy tradition, quite another to sound like a schoolyard bully.
	Obama is trying to counterbalance his professorial image, but Bush was pretty much all cowboy.
pollcode.com free polls

"Oh man, he was always cowboyed up."

"We are all Natives around here and there he was with his Wrangler shirt and jeans. He really stuck out."

He = Neal Wanless, who just won a $232 million Powerball jackpot.

"Madison gun owner Auric Gold said he often carries a handgun in a holster while walking in his east side neighborhood..."

"... a right that attorney general J.B. Van Hollen affirmed in a memorandum to prosecutors on Monday. Van Hollen said it's legal to openly carry a gun on the street in Wisconsin and advised prosecutors that merely having a gun doesn't, by itself, warrant a disorderly conduct charge."

It's like a Western movie up here. Can you really just swagger around the sidewalks of Madison and Milwaukee with a gun in a holster? In your hand?

Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn said he'll continue to tell officers they can't assume people are carrying guns legally in a city that has seen nearly 200 homicides in the past two years.

"My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we'll put them on the ground, take the gun away and then decide whether you have a right to carry it," Flynn said. "Maybe I'll end up with a protest of cowboys. In the meantime, I've got serious offenders with access to handguns. It's irresponsible to send a message to them that if they just carry it openly no one can bother them."

Today, tea parties. Tomorrow, a protest of cowboys.

AND: Glenn Reynolds says:

So if you see Police Chief Ed Flynn, put him on the ground, take his wallet away, and then decide whether he’s accepted any bribes that day. If, after doing that, you think the money’s his, give his wallet back. Who cares what the law says? It’s the Milwaukee Way!

Also, in the comments, Sigivald says:

A gun in your hand is likely to be brandishing.

"No one wants to miss 20 6-year-olds in red cowboy hats tapping to 'These Boots Are Made for Walkin'."

Says Michelle Obama, referring to the one dance recital of his daughter Sasha's that Barack Obama missed.

Here are the lyrics of that kinky dominatrix song. Which line do you consider least appropriate for 6-year-old girls to sing?

"American Idol" -- San Antonio.

Pushing the Texas cowboy angle, the play "Rawhide" and edit the footage of the gathered crowd to seem like cattle. We're supposed to smirk at the kids' willingness to sing "Rawhide." Don't they know they're being led to the slaughter?

"Are you an aggressive performer?" Ryan asks the burly Bryan Kyrish. "Oh, yeah," he says. Ryan: "Why do you say it like that? It's almost creepy." Bryan is the first audition, and we're left puzzling over whether he's on because he's going to be great or because he's going to be awful. You'd think by now I'd've picked up the cues and would know what was going to happen, but all I know is that it's going to be one or the other. He sings "Rebel Yell," yells "Rebel Yell," and it's not creepy, it's scary. "It was a lot of shouting without a melody," says Simon. Yep.

Haley Scarlato looks good, sounds good, "a bit caberet." I thought they'd love her, but they're just: "You deserve a second chance."

Next is Jasmine Holland, who's terribly shy. She's a black woman from a gospel choir, so I assume she'll be terrific, but she's awful, and they laugh in her face. Paula says she seems sad, and she bursts out and says it's because "y'all're being rude" -- which is true. She then proceeds to attack Randy: "What do you do? I'd never heard of you before 'American Idol'... You were in the background..." Outside the audition room, she's all: "Simon, what is he? He's not even American." Her mother backs her up: "He needs to go back to... where's he from? French." Ryan corrects: "No, he's British." Mom: "He needs to go back to British and be the judge for British people. He's not American, so how can he tell who sings and not sings?" I'll bet they put some thought into whether to use this segment, since it invites viewers to laugh at people who aren't well educated, but I can see how they overcame whatever resistance they had. The young woman was quite bad and deluded, and she got nasty and abusive. She also cried two giant streaks of tears out of each eye.

Next is Baylie Brown, the girl from Krum, who lives around horses, but is also afraid of them. She has a brilliant smile and dimples, and she tells us that at heart she's a city girl. She's only 16. She looks fabulous and sings in a charming country style. "You're commercial with a capital C," Simon tells her.

They do the "wrong door" routine again, the lamest source of humor this season. Why is one door locked? There was at least a punchline: One girl got through the locked door.

A guy sings "Amazing Grace" all off key and gets a no. He's entirely accepting of that but as a joke, after he leaves the room, he starts yelling at them as if he'd lost his cool. His cousin Akron Wilson is next, and he sings the great song "A Change Is Gonna Come." They tell him he's charisma challenged but give him another chance, so he tears into "Let's Get It On," and they like him.

Next, they make a young woman cry. She's bad, and they say "Are you serious?"

Ashlynn Carr is beautiful but a little strange. She's one of the few contestants who gets a no from Randy and Paula, but Simon's a yes. After she's gone, Simon says we're making a mistake. Bring her back. She does "Inseparable," and Simon leans way back and massages his man-boobs in big circles and opines, "You have some very bad habits." But they let her through.

Jake the Snake -- Jacob Tutor -- says he's influenced by Kurt Cobain, and he sings something I can't recognize -- something about being in Hell. "I think you need to be in a very dark bedroom to sing that song," says Simon.

Jimmy McNeal says he's going to sing "Cupid," but he sings "Another Saturday Night" shifting into "Cupid." Simon says, "You're like a little, fun Ruben, aren't you? Remember when we first met Ruben. That was when he used to smile." Oh, how painful! That's the saddest thing anyone ever said on the show. Ruben doesn't smile anymore? He smiled when they first met him, and they they put him through the "American Idol" machine, and now he doesn't smile anymore. But welcome to the machine, Jimmy!

Arches.

I was just having coffee with a friend yesterday, talking about my recently completed road trip, and she said, "I thought there would be more photographs." Oh, there are more photographs all right. It will take me some time to sort through them all. I got through my Badlands set, from the last day of the trip. Now, I'm going back to the beginning, to the second day, when I drove from Denver to Moab, Utah, and toured Arches National Park, the park with even better rocks than the Badlands. I'll display a few here, but the whole big set is here.

There in the distance is the famous Delicate Arch:



These things are amazing but have a rather obscene vibe:



The road gives a good idea of the scale:



Like a castle in the distance:



Sublime layers. This is the one I would paint:



Doesn't it seem as though every Hollywood cowboy who ever rode a horse should come galloping out from behind that monolith?



This is the Moab Fault, where something quite extraordinary -- a 2500 foot displacement -- happened 6 million years ago:



As they say in the movies, let's get out of here:



It was beautiful:

The Village People cowboy has his say about "Brokeback Mountain."

Well, of course, "Brokeback Mountain" means it's time for Randy Jones, the cowboy from The Village People to resurface and do some press. Who better to inform us about whether or not gay cowboys are just a Hollywood concoction?

“There they were, a couple of men, alone together in isolated frontier country, for weeks or sometimes months at a time...

“The thought must have passed through their minds, even if they didn’t act on it, because men are sexy animals. If that wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be so much homosexual sex in prison.”...

Mr Jones ... said that Brokeback Mountain was encouraging “red [Republican] state” gays to come out of the closet. He added that the advice he gave to the actors Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, when they questioned him about the love scenes, was to “keep their hats and boots on in bed. The boots are for traction.”

It sounds as though he knows a tad more what he's talking about than Annie Proulx, the author of the New Yorker short story the movie is based on. (Note to Althouse critics: I read the short story!)

I see the NYT "boldface" reporter talked to Jones a few days ago (TimesSelect link):

This film is described as trail-blazing and pioneering in its depiction of gay cowboys. Does that make you feel underappreciated? we asked.

''I'm a little ----.'' Whoa there, partner. Let's just say miffed.

''They're not even cowboys,'' Mr. Jones said. ''They're sheep herders. If you can't tell the difference between sheep and cows, how can you tell the difference between men and women?''

A good question. But in fairness, we asked him about his own qualifications. For one, he is happily married to WILL GREGA, a recording artist. For another, he said he grew up working in the tobacco fields of North Carolina. Thus, our next question. They wear chaps in the tobacco fields?

''Jeans,'' he said. ''The chaps I left to THE BIKER DUDE.''

Ah. What historical figures do you consider your major influences?

''I was raised on all those 50's Warner Brothers cowboy shows. 'Sugarfoot.' 'Maverick.' 'Cheyenne' with CLINT WALKER. It seems like every week they had his shirt ripped off, and he was either tied to something or another cowboy.''

So who, of HEATH LEDGER or JAKE GYLLENHAAL, best personifies the gay cowboy? Mr. Jones admitted he had not in fact seen the movie yet. But.

''I've got some pictures I've pulled off line of Heath Ledger.''

Yeah, we've heard about those.

Mr. Jones has just finished his role as GOD in ''Sodom: The Musical'' and is moving on to ''I Wanna Be Rosie,'' at La MaMa E.T.C.

''I play all of the men in ROSEMARY CLOONEY's life. Her father, her uncle, her nephew GEORGE CLOONEY, her psychiatrist, JOSÉ FERRER, BING CROSBY, NELSON RIDDLE.''

Mr. Jones also has a film coming out next spring about a country club that is built over the graves of Civil War soldiers, whose spirits are angered when the grounds crew uses extra-strength fertilizer. It is called ''Lawn of the Dead.''

Okay, I never really paid any attention to him before, but I've got to say, I love Randy Jones. He sounds really smart and funny and has an excellent attitude!

"Sodom: The Musical"? Here's a review (from the Village Voice):

Randy Jones ... plays God as a beleaguered office manager, Brian Munn's Abraham, his sycophantic subordinate—or, as he dubs himself in one interminable tune, "God's Li'l Bitch." The white-tracksuit-clad God doesn't want his Sodomites being such sodomites—even though they're cast quite clearly in his own image—and he will smite the land unless Abraham comes up with one good man there.

What follows are songs about sins: The writing team of Kevin Laub and Adam Cohen follows a formula of defining each of the Ten Commandments Greek chorus–style, then demonstrating with a peppy tune how it's violated. Lyricist Laub has his moments, celebrating a sexual paradise where penicillin is doled out "like government cheese," but Cohen's score, trying too hard to satisfy the Broadway musical idiom, is uninspired. Sodom fails the karaoke test: You will never hear these tunes at Pieces or the Duplex.

And here's an interview with Annie Proulx, in which she evades questions about how she got the idea for the shepherds-in-love story.

QUESTION THAT OCCURS TO ME ON REREADING: But what's the hat for?

How political is that "gay cowboy movie"?

"Brokeback Mountain," the high-class film everyone thinks must be called the "gay cowboy movie," is doing extremely well in the few theaters where it has opened -- in NYC, LA, and San Francisco. The question is whether Middle America is in the mood for this sort of thing. Here's how Frank Rich analyzes it (TimesSelect link):

The culture is seeking out this movie not just because it is a powerful, four-hankie account of a doomed love affair and is beautifully acted by everyone, starting with the riveting Heath Ledger. The X factor is that the film delivers a story previously untold by A-list Hollywood. It's a story America may be more than ready to hear a year after its president cynically flogged a legally superfluous (and unpassable) constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage for the sole purpose of whipping up the basest hostilities of his electoral base.

Got that? We're sick of this damned President, so we want to see cowboys make love. I don't like the constitutional amendment and related political pandering, but I can't imagine how being tired of all that would make me more likely to go see a big outdoorsy melodrama with the selling point that the lovers are both men. In fact, the notion that to go to this movie is a political statement makes me less likely to go see it. The movie purports to be high art, not some tedious demonstration of good politics.

A serious movie about a gay love relationship may very well make a more effective political argument than a movie that presents itself as political argument. But writers must write, and they will spell out the political argument that the movie only implies, thus making it harder for the film's unarticulated, inherent argument to influence people. But the political baggage is not accumulating as fast as it might have. Rich notes:

As far as I can tell, the only blowhard in the country to turn up on television to declare culture war on "Brokeback Mountain" also has an affiliation with the American Family Association. By contrast, as Salon reported last week, other family-values ayatollahs have made a conscious decision to ignore the movie, lest they drum up ticket sales by turning it into a SpongeBob SquarePants cause célèbre. Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America imagined that the film might just go away if he and his peers stayed mum. Audiences "don't want to see two guys going at it," he told Salon. "It's that simple."

Oh, no! Those social conservatives are supposed to be backward louts! Have they learned the elite technique of restraint? Damn! They were supposed to be ayatollahs. How am I going to crank out these columns now?

Only now am I realizing that I'm writing about a TimesSelect article. Too bad it will be hard for you to read the whole thing. Well, elsewhere in the freely accessible parts of today's NYT there are other insights into the "gay cowboy movie." (Really, the guys are shepherds, but there's no shepherd movie genre, no iconic character The Shepherd to play off of by changing some key element.)

First, there's Manola Darhgas:

Less than two weeks after its release, "Brokeback Mountain" is already on the verge of being embalmed in importance. A lightning rod for attention even before it opened, the film has earned plaudits from critics' groups along with predictable sneers, and provoked argument over its gay bona fides. That "Brokeback" is a landmark is a matter of empiricism; its merits as a work of art are a matter of taste. What has gone missing is that this is also that rare American film that seamlessly breaches the divide between the political and the personal, the past and the present. Here, against the backdrop of the great American West, that mythic territory of rugged individualism and the Marlboro Man, is a quietly devastating look at masculinity and its discontents.

Then, there's this piece by Guy Trebay in the Styles section:

But to gay men trying to forge lives in a world where the shape of masculinity is narrow, and where the "liberated" antics of the homosexual minstrels so often depicted on television can seem far off, the emotional privation and brutal violence of "Brokeback Mountain" seems like documentary.

"That could have been my life," Derrick Glover said one bitter cold afternoon last week, referring to the film, which he had seen at a special screening a week before in Jackson, Wyo. A 33-year-old rancher, Mr. Glover comes from a family that has worked the land around Lusk for generations. His father still runs 300 head of cattle....

"They always define it as coming out of the closet, but I don't consider myself to be out of the closet," Mr. Glover explained. There is a reason for that, he said. "Where I live, you can't really go out and be yourself. You couldn't go out together, two guys, as a couple and ever be accepted. It wasn't accepted in the past, it's still not, and I don't think it ever will be."

This is really the most interesting of the three articles I'm linking in this post. Trebay goes to Wyoming, where the story in the movie takes place and where Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998, and interviews some gay men about what life is like for them:

The experience was "extremely, extremely lonely," [rancher Ben] Clark said, leaving him feeling so isolated that he more than once contemplated suicide. "I could not accept being gay because of the stereotypes that were drilled into me," he explained. "Gay men are emotionally weak. They are not real men. They are like women."

Like Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist in the film, Mr. Clark dated women for a time, bowing to the pressure to be "normal" although, unlike them, he never married and led a double life. There's a joke out here about how one goes about finding a gay man on the frontier. The punch line is deadpan: "Look for the wife and kids."

Fortunately, Mr. Clark said, "I never did get married, because I never wanted to hurt a woman like that."

I've made fun of the Oscar ads for the movie, because of the way they emphasize the relationship between the men and their wives. This ad campaign is laughable for intentionally hiding the nature of the central love story. Nevertheless, the story of the wives interests me greatly. And the political argument inherent in this part of the story is, I think, especially strong. Those who would try to prevent or inhibit men from forming lifetime bonds with each other ought to give more thought to what happens to the women they marry. Those who think a man should struggle against his sexual orientation and find a way to form the classic marriage relationship with a woman ought to think about what they are advocating for the woman: a lifetime relationship with a man who has only feigned sexual attraction to her.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lots of interesting discussion. I especially like the part where Palladian says: "Geez, all you straight people can think about is sex, sex, sex. Here we are having a conversation about love and art and all you can think to add is some base, puerile and off-putting remarks about genitalia 'fitting' together, as if it were some sort of dirty Lego set."

"What, exactly, do you think cowboys represent, other than the triumph of alpha males?"

I liked the very cranky interview Larry McMurtry gave to the NYT Magazine's Deborah Solomon, who asked that question. He answers:

Cowboys are a symbol of a freer time, when people could go all the way from Canada to Mexico without seeing a fence. They stand for good ol' American values, like self-reliance.

Solomon: Maybe some American values, but you can't say that cowboys were ever interested in spreading democracy.

McMurtry: No, they were interested in spreading fascism.

I've never read a Larry McMurtry book. I've never even watched the DVD of "The Last Picture Show" that I bought years ago, after long before that missing the movie when it played in theaters. But he seems like an awfully funny guy.

The return of Pee-Wee Herman!

Back in July, I wrote about wanting to buy a DVD of "Pee-Wee's Playhouse":

I am quite nostalgic for this wonderful old TV show, and I would have ordered something on DVD, but nothing is available or even in production. It's very sad the way Pee-Wee was excised from American culture. We still have one of the old Pee-Wee talking dolls around. If you had snapped up a lot of them back when Pee-Wee got into trouble back in 1991, thinking they'd be great collector's items later, you'd be trying to unload them today on eBay for next to nothing. Ah, poor Pee-Wee Herman! Not even a life in the realm of nostalgia?

But look, here's a nice, big article in the NYT about Pee-Wee Herman and the new DVD of "Pee-Wee's Playhouse." Yay! I go right over to Amazon and order the 5-disc set containing seasons 1 and 2. And I'll probably order the second set, seasons 3-5, pretty soon.



Thanks, Pee-Wee.



My sons loved this show when it was originally on in the 1980s. It's just great. (And Laurence Fishburne is in it -- as Cowboy Curtis!) If you don't know the show and only think of Pee-Wee's legal troubles, you're really missing something. There has never been a better TV kids show. It's a great family Christmas present.

"The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance."

I mentioned the other day that TiVo snagged this movie for me and that judging from the beginning, it seemed to be a good movie for lawyers. (I remembered watching it long before I went to law school and liking it.) Anyway, I watched it last night and do recommend it for law students and lawyers. There are many points where Jimmy Stewart proclaims things like "I am an attorney at law!" in a way that is quite charmingly pro-lawyer. John Wayne plays his foil, the kind of guy who says things like "The point of a gun is the only law that Liberty understood." No, he doesn't actually say that line. That's a line from the song "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," by Gene Pitney, which is not used in the movie. (Listen to a clip of it here.) But John Wayne says things like that through the movie, so it's a big movie about law versus raw power. And it includes a lot of nice Jimmy Stewart-style idealism, nicely on the subject of law and lawyers. Listen to him, all you lawyers and law students, and think about whether you could shout out with pride and defiance "I'm a lawyer!" without a hint of sarcasm or humor or irony of any kind. Most of the lawyer types I know could easily say the kind of scoffing, cynical things that John Wayne says throughout the movie. The Jimmy Stewart character even makes a big show of hanging out a shingle, which, as you might predict, gets shot down by Liberty Valance at one point.



There's also some quality material about journalism in the film, including the famous line, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." And there's some good material about politics too: the Jimmy Stewart character is nominated as a candidate and his rival tries to win votes by having a cowboy ride into the convention hall and up onto the stage where he stands on the horse and does rope tricks.

I thought Bush was supposed to be the cowboy. This is a quote from General Wesley Clark:

"I am one tough hombre, and I can stand against George W. Bush, and we will take him down."