Viggo Mortensen reveals that wherever he goes people think cowboys, i.e. Americans, are a**holes. Seems to me that says more about his social circles then it does about cowboys:
In a lot of places in the United States and certainly even more places around the world, the image of the cowboy has become, for some people, a negative one. The word cowboy implies a strong, stubborn individual whose individualism depends on pulling down other people’s individualism. The cowboys I met and liked and learned from are not that way.