How mean-spirited are House Republicans? So mean-spirited that they would end federally funded cowboy poetry! Last Tuesday, Harry Reid, the majority leader, took to the Senate floor to thunder that this town ain’t big enough for both him and the Mean-Spirited Kid (John Boehner).
“The mean-spirited bill, HR 1 . . . eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts,” said Senator Reid. “These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy-poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.”
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“Tens of thousands” would “not exist”? There can’t be that many cowboy poets, can there? Oh, c’mon, don’t be naïve. Where there are taxpayer-funded cowboy poets, there must surely be cowboy-poetry festival administrators, and a Bureau of Cowboy-Poetry Festival Licensing, and cowboy-poetry festival administration grant-writers, and a Department of Cowboy Poetry Festival Administration Grant Application Processing, and Professors of Cowboy-Poetry Festival Educational Workshop Management at dozens of American colleges credentialing thousands of cowboy-poetry festival workshop coordinating majors every year.
It all adds up. In western railroad halts where the Last Chance Saloon shuttered in 1893, dusty one-horse towns are now glittering one-grant towns, where elderly hoochie-koochie dancers are being retrained to lead rewarding lives as inspectors from the Agency of Cowboy-Poetry Festival Handicapped-Access Compliance. Used to be a man could ride the range for days on end under lonesome skies with nuthin’ on the horizon ’cept a withered mesquite and a clump of sagebrush, but now all you see are clouds of dust and all you hear’s the mighty roar of thundering hooves as every gnarled ol’ wrangler in the territory races for the last hitching post outside creative-writing class.
Well, it’s easy to mock, and in the hours after Senator Reid’s effusions many of us on the Internet did. I liked Mary Katherine Ham’s channeling of Ted Kennedy: “John Boehner’s America is a land in which cowboys would be forced into back-alley poetry recitations.” Funny — although, being an example of private-sector non-government-funded wordsmithing, it obviously doesn’t “create jobs.”
But what’s more difficult to figure out is why everyone doesn’t mock — and why Senator Reid (and presumably senior flunkies in the bloated emir-sized retinues that now attend our “citizen-legislators”) thought this would be a persuasive line of argument. This year, the NEA will be giving $50,000 toward the exhibition “Ranchlines: Verses And Visions Of The Rural West” in Elko.
What’s the big deal? It’s 50 grand, a couple of saddlebags in small bills. Not a large sum. But then when you’re Harry Reid staggering around in your trillion-gallon hat, it’s all small potatoes, isn’t it?
He and too many other Americans seem to be living their version of the old line: If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem. America owes the world $14 trillion, so the world has a problem.
And, if it’s the world’s problem, why bother our pretty little heads about it? I’m struck by the number of times I’ve been blithely assured by insiders in D.C. and elsewhere that “it’s not in China’s interest” to yank the rug out from under America: We don’t need to do anything drastic, because they won’t do anything drastic. I’m not so sure I could claim with any degree of confidence to know what China considered to be in its interest. But we have the planet’s most lavishly funded intelligence agency, so they’re bound to be on top of it, aren’t they?
Every year Reno hosts the "National Gay Rodeo," which draws thousands of tourists to cheer the bareback riders. Why couldn't that organization "earmark" some of their gate receipts for the Cowboy Poets?
Right on as usual, Mr. Steyn. Now don't get me wrong, I love good cowboy poetry but I'm wondering why the heck are they scrabbling around Elko? Here I thought any cowboy poet worth his hat went to Nashville and made money.
Figuring out why "mean spirited" seems persuasive is key. Or rather, figuring out how to persuade those who remain persuadable that there is no meanness in cutting off cowboy poetry when, after all, it's just one little thing, won't make any difference on your taxes, and deprives somebody of something they find meaningful. For starters, maybe we shouldn't be depending on government to provide our meaning.
Besides the cynical left that needs no persuading to cowboy poetry programs, there are lots of people (maybe even majorities of certain races) who see themselves as victimized and dependent on government to straighten everything out. I'm afraid many of them would knowingly prefer their resulting dependence on government for everything to anything actually approaching independence. When the piper must be paid, they are lost along with the rest of us. But we can always say it's China's fault.
Whip-crack away! That's a spondee followed by an iamb, right? I never took much interest in poetry in school, but this cowboy poetry program seems to be paying off if I learned something from an article using it for satire.
In New York State, our taxes support the Black Cowboy Association ( or whatever they call themselves). Whatever the parade, Columber Day, Easter, etc., somewhere in there you'll see a bunch of black guys dressed as cowboys on horses. And that's it! Our tax dollars at work!
Of course, they aren't really cowboys, but it warms the hearts of liberals to see this reverse black-face show. But why stop there? Let's pay to dress them as doctors, astronauts, tax accountants and parade them around some more. A liberal delight, worth every penny taken from those, black and white, with real jobs.
Ah yes, the symbol of American spirit, them that tamed the American West, reduced to nursing the Govt teat. No longer do we think Marlboro Man, but Harry Ried as the staunch defender of the handout. Baxter Black is likely wretching at the idea he and his cowboy ilk are merely poets on the dole.
I believe it is mean spirited to care more about funding cowboy poetry than about the future of our children and grandchildren. Let's have a big party, who cares if we starve tomorrow. That is mean spirited and irresponsible.
I, for one, enjoy cowboy poetry and have attended the festivals.
Can't wait for them rhyming words
To come now this doggie
Has escaped from the herd.
See, out here we value a buck
And fer Harry Reid he's so dumb
He couldn't teach a hen to cluck.
Whip-crack away!! Excellent article. Seems to me that all that I've read about the Cowboy and the West was that they were fiercely independent and believed that "everyone should carry their own freight". Gosh, that seems so out of touch with today.
I guess that it never crossed Reid's mind that if it was so gosh darn important for cowboy poetry to flourish that those who wanted to hear it would actually paid to hear the poetry. He may be from the west, but he ain't no Cowboy!
My father-in-law (may he RIP)was one of the last real cowboys. He was way too busy trying to make a living to indulge in cowboy poetry. He might have liked it, if he had heard it.
But he detested the federal government in every respect and would have been sickened if he thought real cowboys were taking other people's money to make-up cowboy poems.
Let's face it--they're like the federal government's "pet cowboys."
It looks like we're agreed, then. Cut off NEA & NEH completely, and cut the CIA and the Defense Department by at least 1/2. I'm an equal opportunity skeptic of the efficacy of government bureacracy. Just as FEMA did a "heck of a job" in New Orleans, so Paul Bremer did a heck of a job in Iraq. The CIA has a grand total of about three Pashto speakers and they're probably all working for the Taliban. The CIA is so inept that they let 7 of their "top" staff be killed when they let a triple agent walk into their midst unfrisked while wearing a suicide bomb External Link Conservatives are rightly dubious of the capabilities of government - except for the military & "intelligence" communities which they view as omniscient & omnipotent. Steyn's buddy Hugh Hewitt wants us to overthrow Gaddafi in favor of...what exactly?
Cut ALL gvoernment spending. Bring the troops home from most foreign bases. Close most of our foreign bases. Let Germany & S. Korea defend themselves. What part of "WE ARE BROKE" do the hawks not understand?
The thing that continues to boggle my mind is how people at the very pinnacle of political power in this country can make public statements that a college freshman would realize are subject to ridicule.
Reid isn't alone here, but he and Biden have to be the current poster boys for moronic statements.
Everyone knows cowboys eat with a spoon
the beans Cookie makes, by the light of the moon
But Tex put on airs and got hisself a fork
Rustled a lobbyist to lasso some pork
-Yodelin' Bob
Nevada is a state in ruins. Unemployment 17%, housing market is collapsing, foreclosures increasing, businesses leaving the state, infrastructure crumbling, corruption, public employment pensions in the red, a crushing state debt and unlike Libya, Obama was decisive in declaring Las Vegas a no fly zone. Yet the people of Nevada are getting what they elected. Six more years of Dingy Harry and cowboy poetry contests! When the roof does finally fall in on Nevadans Reid will call for an equal distribution of the rubble.
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