By Judi McLeod
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
If there's anything that gets the knickers of snooty magazine scribes in braided twists, it's the "cowboy diplomat".
Just like most Hollywood celebs, Time magazine finds the specter of the cowboy, not only passé but downright tacky.
So Time Magazine is blowing away the image of the cowboy like so many cobwebs. Now on the newsstands is Time's latest issue with an ingenious cover depicting an oversized cowboy set over a pair of well-shined shoes.
a creative photoplay like that is bound to usher out the era of the cowboy as exemplified by that ‘durnned' Texan George Bush. Or so the creative braniacs of Time would have it.
John Wayne, who everyone knows played his whole life as a cowboy, must be rolling in his grave. But latte-drinking writers at Time magazine do not watch reruns of John Wayne movies; they line up to watch al Gore's an Inconvenient Truth. When it comes to warmth, Time types are the opposite of what you get from algor's global warming.
Cowboys chase cows around all day, get covered in dust, eat their own beef and sometimes smell of cow dung when they come in to dinner. They jeopardize the environment with their wayward ways. Producing red meat when the whole world's gone vegan upsets the likes of Robert Kennedy Jr. and the flatulence of cowboy's cows--way up there on the CO2 list--raises tempers at Greenpeace.
Time journalists come adorned in cravats as crisp as their morning toast, reek of French cologne, have their lily white hands manicured and never, ever leave behind carbon footprints.
Cowboys have this irksome tendency to preface their commonsense verbal philosophies with the words, "I reckon".
The editors at Time will tell us what's best for us whether or not we believe it.
They can predict future trends better than anyone with a crystal ball. They're always right and when they're not, they simply change the storyline in their next issue.
So in their July issue, Time writers tell us that George W. Bush and his cowboy ways are kaput.
…"In the span of four years, the Bush administration has been forced to rethink the pre-emptive "Bush doctrine" by which it hoped to remake the world, as the strategy's ineffectiveness was exposed by the very policies it prescribed, TIME's Mike allen and Romesh Ratnesar report in this week's cover story on ‘The End of Cowboy Diplomacy'." (Drudge Report, July 8, 2006).
"President George W. Bush came to office pledging to focus on domestic issues and pursue a "humbler" foreign policy that would avoid the entanglements of the Bill Clinton years. after Sept. 11, however, the Bush team embarked on a different path, outlining a muscular, idealistic, and unilateralist vision of american power and how to use it, TIME reports. They aimed to lay the foundation for a good strategy to fight Islamic terrorists and rogue states, by spreading democracy around the world and pre-empting gathering threats before they materialize. and the U.S. wasn't willing to wait for others to help. The approach fit with Bush's personal style, his self-professed proclivity to dispense with nuances of geopolitics and go with his gut. "The Bush Doctrine is actually being defined by action, as opposed to words," Bush told Tom Brokaw aboard air Force One in 2003.
"The swaggering Commander in Chief (italics canadafreepress.com) who embodied the doctrine's aspirations has modulated himself too. at a press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in May, Bush swore off the Wild West rhetoric of getting enemies "dead or alive", conceding, "in certain parts of the world, it was misinterpreted."
Swaggering, now there's an objective Time word for you.
and "the Wild West rhetoric of getting enemies `dead or alive'" would be rebuke indeed to feature article writers in lockstep with politically correct times.
Meanwhile, cowboys roaming the range brand cattle. Writers for news magazines brand presidents as "neo conservatives" and "fascists".
Prescient media hacks who think that the only cowboys are the ones, who starred in Brokeback Mountain, look down their noses at the old fashioned type who sweat for a living.
Plain speaking cowboys say what they mean and mean what they say, politically correct or not.
They're so much a part of the american mosaic some Texan is likely to come out with a new bumper sticker that reads, "Cowpoke are good folk".
It takes a rootin'-tootin' cowboy type to tell the enemy to back off, not a preferring to prevaricate John Kerry.
Tell all the little tykes that go to bed dreaming of growing up to be cowboys that "cowboy diplomacy is RIP",
Next they'll be telling us that Tonto's dead.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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